Satanic Panic of the late 80's

[Lanefan]

By the 90's they'd moved on to video games, honestly.

By the 90s they'd moved on to trying to stamp out the Neo-Pagan movement.

 

[Lanefan]

You can't! Black Leaf is dead!

You sure about that?

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Back in the day, I kinda enjoyed the movie. Sure, I knew it was a total hatchet job on my beloved hobby, but it was still ostensibly a movie about D&D, some sort of recognition.

I recently read the book it's based on. The book makes it abundantly clear the amount of psychological damage all of the characters are laboring with, then waltzes right past all of that trauma to say "D&D is at fault!"

Heard about it and even saw the TERRIBLE young Tom Hanks movie Mazes and Monsters. I was born in 1985 so by the time I learned about DND and heard about the Satanic Pact, it was mid/late 90's.

 

[Weiley31]

Back in the day, I kinda enjoyed the movie. Sure, I knew it was a total hatchet job on my beloved hobby, but it was still ostensibly a movie about D&D, some sort of recognition.

I recently read the book it's based on. The book makes it abundantly clear the amount of psychological damage all of the characters are laboring with, then waltzes right past all of that trauma to say "D&D is at fault!"

Didn't know it was based on a book.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Yes, though certainly not a good one. It's heavy-handed and very saccharine.

Didn't know it was based on a book.

 

[wicked cool]

i lived it

first thing -the tom hanks movie wasn't awful (then) and they tended to put it on tv a lot (this is precalbe). it had an effect on my parents and I bet on most

second-not sure if its related but right around that time D&D was popular. You could buy all the books at your toysrus etc and even my local pharmacy/grocery sold grenadier sets

then it must have been 84 when I remember that stuff went away and demons etc were pulled from the game. we didn't run high level games so it wasn't as noticeable

 

[pming]

Hiya!

It's true! Playing D&D turned me into a Satanist!


(seriously though...I started playing D&D when I was 10; when I was 17 I became a Satanist; I'm 51 now...still a Satanist, although I have split my 'religion' recently between Satanism and Pastafarianism...I guess I'm a "Satanic Pastafarian" now; just picture the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but with more black, skulls and metal blasting over the speakers as his noodly appendages caress your tender face... ).

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[MGibster]

first thing -the tom hanks movie wasn't awful (then) and they tended to put it on tv a lot (this is precalbe). it had an effect on my parents and I bet on most

It wasn't pre-cable. HBO was launched in 1972, CNN first broadcasted in 1980, TBS started out as an Atlanta television station but became a cable station in 1976, and in 1977 the Christian Broadcasting Network was established. By the time Mazes and Monsters aired in 1982, 1 in 5 American households had cable.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Earlier I asked about the timing of this because my memory was that the sh*t had mostly blown over by high school for me (late 80s).

I first played with older kids by age 7. My Mom was not entirely pleased when she heard the DM narrate a native getting cut in half. But whatever, I was little.

we played more after that with my actual peers. All was relatively well until a friend’s mother fed my mother a lot of fear about heavy metal and D&D.

my first vinyl record was a Kiss record and it too was suspect (face palm).

so I started hiding d and d from my mother. It sucked. It was like a drug habit! My family has a religious faith but we are also all educated. It was a weird tension.

fast forward to the late 80s and I let her know my dark secret. My character was killing monsters and saving people all along. Not only that, but all my lifelong friends she loved were in on the debauchery. We had a good laugh about the hysteria. And of course then I started buying up heavy metal shirts as it should have been the whole time.

it’s wild that it happened. I am in a position to understand both sides of the issue since my foot was in both cultures and still is to an extent.

it caused me a lot of grief during the time. But I would also say that movement was damaging to some faith communities. I grew up believing that many of my guitar heroes and proponents of D&D were theistic Satanists with bad intentions. How confusing for a kid! Unfortunate.

And many years later I read about Gygax and his background and have kept up with a lot of the musicians in question and it’s ironic to see how far off the insanity really was.

it’s embarrassing to see how many good intentioned folks let the hysteria effect their beliefs. But it is also hubris to think this cannot happen again in another form.

play on! I cannot wait to play again and want to get my kids involved further. Yes, I will also teach them my faith and values too which are not at cross purposes with the wonderful game of course.

my six year old is also awaiting his first heavy metal show. Post COVID it’s going down and I will buy him a concert shirt too(, you can rest assured.

his first character ‘Halk’ (I got him to change his name from hulk) is a greenish half orc who was raised by and protects halflings. He was splitting some skulls out of the gate, as it should be.

and at six he already knows this just pretend and we don’t hit people with hammers...

 

[Bedrockgames]

It wasn't pre-cable. HBO was launched in 1972, CNN first broadcasted in 1980, TBS started out as an Atlanta television station but became a cable station in 1976, and in 1977 the Christian Broadcasting Network was established. By the time Mazes and Monsters aired in 1982, 1 in 5 American households had cable.

I am often surprised when I watch old boxing matches in the 70s and see that HBO aired it. But one thing to keep in mind, that 1 in 5 number shows just how much cable wasn't a part of the average persons life in the early 80s. And it varied a lot from one place in the country to another. We didn't get cable in our house until, at the earliest, 1985 or so (and that was because we moved into an area where it was available, if we hadn't moved, it would have taken longer). I still tend to think of the early 80s as pre-cable for that reason (I think I knew one person who had cable in 1982)