D&D General Satanic Panic at the Disco- Did Beelzebubba Cause D&D's First Crash, Y'all?

[Warpiglet-7]

At 21, it was movies, restaurants and the cheapest Ikea furniture. The lady in question was very 'serious'. I had to put all my toys in a box because they were childish. I escaped before the marriage and children phase.

I'm 60 and still have not taken ballroom dancing lessons. My excellent wife prefers playing board games with me. I'm hoping to get her back in RPGs now that she retires at the end of June.

My wife rolled with it. Now our children play games with Dad along with friends of decades.

My wife has zero interest but accepts my glass cabinets full of toys…she can watch her shows which hold mom interest to me. We can watch LOTR or Dune movies together though.

You dodged a bullet, sir.

Allowing people to be themselves is so important!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Hades throws shades at Roman pretenders.

My sleep deprived brain envisioned this literally. As in Hades throwing undead critters at Pluto.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Anecdote: despite attending a private Catholic HS in the Dallas/Fort Worth area in the early/mid 1980s, the only people who genuinely confronted me about playing D&D (and listening to heavy metal music- another target of the Satanic Panic) were my godmother and my born-again art teacher.*

In fact, I started a (short lived) RPG gaming club while there. All clubs required a faculty sponsor/monitor- ours was my form master- a Catholic monk.






* My godmother was both very religious AND mentally ill. Eventually, her concerns were forgotten.

The art teacher and I remain on good terms to this day.

Mom was briefly worried, but trusted me enough to hold her tongue until she was certain there was no actual crisis- I didn’t find out about how se felt until a decade+ later.

 

[arakasi]

Probably counting on the Church Karens breezing on by an inoffensive cover.

Nobody thinks the CKs actually read the stuff they were condemning, do they?

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

Nobody thinks the CKs actually read the stuff they were condemning, do they?

Realistically, I don't think many folks who have knee-jerk fear reactions to a thing, regardless of political or religious bend, fully explore why they have that reaction.

 

[Cruentus]

Anecdote: despite attending a private Catholic HS in the Dallas/Fort Worth area in the early/mid 1980s, the only people who genuinely confronted me about playing D&D (and listening to heavy metal music- another target of the Satanic Panic) were my godmother and my born-again art teacher.*

In fact, I started a (short lived) RPG gaming club while there. All clubs required a faculty sponsor/monitor- ours was my form master- a Catholic monk.

* My godmother was both very religious AND mentally ill. Eventually, her concerns were forgotten.

The art teacher and I remain on good terms to this day.

Mom was briefly worried, but trusted me enough to hold her tongue until she was certain there was no actual crisis- I didn’t find out about how se felt until a decade+ later.

We started DnD back in '82-83 (Catholic gradeschool), I was the president of our DnD club in high school (private Catholic high school, enshrined in the year book ), and there was not a peep about the Satanic Panic from any adult, except my one friend's (our DM's) uncle, who was deep into the panic, but everyone ignored him. Our folks were all happy they knew where their teen kids were - playing games with their friends at someone's house all weekend, including staying up all night - and that we weren't getting in trouble. Our same group of 5-6 players still plays over 40 years later.

We didn't talk about DnD much outside our circle, cause it still wasn't 'cool', but none of the adults in our orbit paid it any mind. We were in one of the 5 largest cities in the US, maybe that mattered.

 

[jeffh]

1. By 1982, TSR already had a one-page Code of Ethics that required, inter alia, that good always triumph, ridicule of religion is not permitted, and evil will neve be presented in glamorous or alluring circumstances.

Sounds like they cribbed it directly from the Comics Code.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

Sounds like they cribbed it directly from the Comics Code.

Yeah, that was my immediate thought.

 

[MGibster]

In fact, I started a (short lived) RPG gaming club while there. All clubs required a faculty sponsor/monitor- ours was my form master- a Catholic monk.

You played D&D with a monk? What level was he?

Sounds like they cribbed it directly from the Comics Code.

It's not too dissimilar to the Hays Code which was a guideline for American movies from the 1930s until the late 1960s. Because D&D proved so popular with kids, I imagine TSR was pretty adamant about keeping things somewhat family friendly for public relations purposes.

 

[jeffh]

It's not too dissimilar to the Hays Code

True, but at the time the Comics Code was still current, albeit slightly liberalized in the 70s, whereas the Hays Code had been abolished for about 20 years. Plus, for all that movies were far bigger overall, comics were near and dear to the nerd culture D&D grew out of (and came to partially define); I believe Gygax himself mentioned the old EC horror titles in the original Appendix N (notably at the center of the controversy that spawned the Code), and elsewhere expressed admiration for early Doctor Strange, so almost certainly he was familiar with it.