There's Powerful Deviltry at Work Here...

[JohnSnow]

Celebrim, were you, or were you not, claiming that D&D's popularity was damaged by the controversy surrounding the game in the early 80s? Were you not also claiming (or agreeing with those who claimed) that putting tieflings and warlocks in the game might bring a return to the controversy that surrounded it in the 80s?

Are you aware that said controversy was mostly the result of a marginally-sane group called Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons (BADD)? The woman who started it objected to D&D because her son had gotten lost in a sewer because he and his friends were playing there. Then when he committed suicide, she totally lost it, and blamed his death on D&D.
When she looked into it, she found occult influences and concluded that the game was EE-VILL and had led her poor innocent boy astray.

The lady who started BADD was interviewed by an ultra-conservative evangelical group and was railing about occult and satanic influences, and talking about D&D as a gateway product. She went so far in an interview as to equate D&D with "satanic works like the Necronomicon" - a fictitious book which H.P. Lovecraft made up (hence my "marginally sane" comment).

That's the origin of the "controversy" surrounding D&D. And no, I don't think that had any bearing on the game's popularity. Certainly I don't feel it affected it in a negative way. I do think the controversy "got legs" because the game wasn't all that popular to begin with, and it's a whole lot easier to demonize something that's unpopular.

Why wasn't it popular? Because it was primarily a geeky hobby for nerdy kids. And back then, things that were geeky weren't mainstream. They were fringe, like D&D. Many of them have SINCE become popular, like the Transformers, WoW, and G.I. Joe. But they did it by overcoming their fringe status. WoW succeeded despite its similarity to D&D, because when video games became less fringe, there was room for a video game based on fantasy roleplaying to become hugely popular. The better question to ask is "Why wasn't that video game branded Dungeons & Dragons?"

I don't feel the D&D brand is tainted by anything but the fringe association tied to "tabletop roleplaying game." As the "standard-bearer" for tabletop roleplaying games, D&D bears the taint of that negative association. That's a taint that could be overcome with smart marketing, and WotC clearly believes it's possible, or they'd do away with the brand. And if you don't think businesses will shed an unpopular brand, I have a few examples.

Firstly, when a couple of the baby Bells wanted to go into the cell phone business, many of them realized that their parent company name was a liability, not an asset in that market. So they created new brand names (Cingular, for example). Now that the parent company's name (which is now AT&T) is no longer seen as a liability in the cell phone market, they've decided to retire the Cingular brand. This happens all the time in business if a brand is actually seen as a liability. As another example, Pepsi dumped the "Slice" brand and came out with "Sierra Mist" and "Tropicana Twister" instead.

Sometimes, retiring a brand (even a well-established one) is a smart idea. If that were the case with D&D, then WotC would do so. But clearly they feel the brand is more of an asset than a liability.

And from what you're saying, you agree.

However, it sounds to me like you're worried that putting tieflings and warlocks in the PHB will re-taint the brand. Is that what you're saying?

'Cuz if that's what you're saying, I just disagree. Whatever damage that could do to the game was done and finished years ago. The people who thought D&D was satanic think Harry Potter is too, so I think it's safe to say that they're well outside the game's target market, and always will be.

EDIT: Okay, finally got the facts of the BADD founder's son straightened out. Sheesh! I hate re-editing.

 

[WayneLigon]

The only real such material that predated it was 'Mazes & Monsters', which was printed in 1981 and had a TV movie in 1982. According to this report, criticism of D&D reached it's peak between 1988 and 1992. So I'm not really seeing a relation between the controversy of D&D in the pop culture and sales.

The major 'controversy' is the James Egbert disappearance and assumed (and later, actual) suicide which was in 1979; that got the entire ball rolling.

Let's go to the horse's mouth, shall we; in this case, the only horse that counts.

Wow! did sales ever jump when the media attacked the D&D game. They were doing it to boost their ratings and sell ads. Sure worked for TSR too. We quadrupled sales instead of only doubling them as I had projected for the year. We couldn't print dfast enough, and that too increased demand.

The peak was likely 1983, and then the "fad" players began to drop off, as it was no longer the symbol of rebellious behavior to play D&D.

 

[WizarDru]

I'm certainly not going to assert that controversy was the 'reason D&D ever got big.' But Gygax himself seemed to think there was some correlation. He wrote this in Dragon Magazine #35, a few months after the Egbert disappearance:

Gary's sort of streamlining things, there. He also said this:

GameSpy: And all of a sudden it blows up and becomes extremely popular.

Gygax: Well, not all of a sudden. It was over about five years. I got the idea after about three years that we had a much larger audience and a more universal appeal than I had assumed.

GameSpy: How did it feel in those early days? All of a sudden they're talking about it in the newspapers and you're getting letters from California and Maine and Florida.

Gygax: Phone calls at three in the morning asking about rules. [Laughs]

The Egbert incident occured in 1979. It made D&D a cause celebre and got it media exposure it had never had before, but only for that individual case. Egbert killed himself in 1980. (The "Pritchard Event" occured in 1988, long after.)

Basically, Gary says that D&D suddenly took off in 1978...and that after the Egbert incident, D&D caught fire AGAIN. But it's equally likely (since it was just one story) that it was the sudden exposure of a otherwise unknown hobbyist game in popular media that helped the sales. D&D got a lot of exposure and was suddenly available in normal bookstores where it never had been before. I would hazard THAT was a more significant reason, though without any actual sales numbers, all we have is conjecture.

 

[JohnSnow]

The major 'controversy' is the James Egbert disappearance and assumed (and later, actual) suicide which was in 1979; that got the entire ball rolling.

Let's go to the horse's mouth, shall we; in this case, the only horse that counts.

It's interesting that later in that post you reference, Gary compares WotC's 2002-2003 sales to TSR's peak.

Sounds to me like the "fewer people are playing today" crowd is just wrong.

 

[JohnSnow]

Basically, Gary says that D&D suddenly took off in 1978...and that after the Egbert incident, D&D caught fire AGAIN. But it's equally likely (since it was just one story) that it was the sudden exposure of a otherwise unknown hobbyist game in popular media that helped the sales. D&D got a lot of exposure and was suddenly available in normal bookstores where it never had been before. I would hazard THAT was a more significant reason, though without any actual sales numbers, all we have is conjecture.

But without the controversy, they never would have gotten that kind of exposure. They couldn't afford it. So the controversy certainly helped spread the brand.

I seriously question whether the hate heaped on the game by the moral majority hurt it in the slightest. Those people were never going to be customers in the first place. So what you have is a lot of non-customers generating free publicity and letting potential customers know the game existed.

Based on that, it sounds to me like the controversy was, overall, a help rather than a hindrance.

 

[WizarDru]

I seriously question whether the hate heaped on the game by the moral majority hurt it in the slightest. Those people were never going to be customers in the first place. So what you have is a lot of non-customers generating free publicity and letting potential customers know the game existed.

That certainly seems to be the case, based on Gary's comments, for the 1978-1982 period. Interestingly enough, he also says this:

The peak was likely 1983, and then the "fad" players began to drop off, as it was no longer the symbol of rebellious behavior to play D&D.

 

[Shortman McLeod]

EDIT: never mind.

 

[Nifft]

So people with different religious beliefs than you are "mildly insane"? Can't help but wonder if this violates some religious intolerance or group attack rule at enworld.

I suspect he's calling people who attack a game on the grounds that it's got "real magic" in it insane.

Religious or not, confusing D&D with "real magic" is not a sane position.

Crazy people using religion as a shield for their insanity doesn't implicate religion in insanity.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Shortman McLeod]

I suspect he's calling people who attack a game on the grounds that it's got "real magic" in it insane.

Religious or not, confusing D&D with "real magic" is not a sane position.

Crazy people using religion as a shield for their insanity doesn't implicate religion in insanity.

Mistaken, perhaps, but "insane" is a ludicrous word to use, unless you are a qualified psychiatrist and have had a chance to interview the person involved.

At any rate, this is getting old, and I edited my previous post for that reason.

 

[Celebrim]

Celebrim, were you, or were you not, claiming that D&D's popularity was damaged by the controversy surrounding the game in the early 80s?

Yes.

Were you not also claiming (or agreeing with those who claimed) that putting tieflings and warlocks in the game might bring a return to the controversy that surrounded it in the 80s?

No. In fact, if you read what I wrote, I explicitly denied that this would happen.

"No, I don't think a renewed round of D&D contriversy is likely..." - Me

Are you aware that said controversy was mostly the result of a marginally-sane group called Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons (BADD)?

I'm more aware of the controversy than most. I suppose there are a few with more first person experience than I have, but I think mine sufficient. And I'd like to leave that at that.

In edition to personal experience, I wrote three term papers in college on the D&D occult scare, so you aren't bring up anything that I haven't actually read/conduct interviews/etc.

In any event, I don't personally see how the details of the occult scare really directly speak to whether you think it had a positive or negative impact on the brand to recieve negative publicity.

Why wasn't it popular? Because it was primarily a geeky hobby for nerdy kids. And back then, things that were geeky weren't mainstream. They were fringe, like D&D. Many of them have SINCE become popular, like the Transformers, WoW, and G.I. Joe. But they did it by overcoming their fringe status.

Would you accept the claim that D&D's negative publicity had the potential to only reinforce its fringe status? Well, I'm claiming that it actually did. For example, I'm claiming that the D&D cartoon didn't run as successfully as other cartoon properties in the '80's in no small part due to the contriversy over the game and the cartoon itself (which did little to alleviate concerned parents fears). I'm claiming that toy lines failed in part because D&D's reputation crushed its ability to market itself to small children, and that at the time the 'toys as collector items for adults' like we see in the McFarland line hadn't really fully developed. I'm claiming that you need those sort of things to gain mainstream acceptance and overcome your fringe status.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles anyone?

The better question to ask is "Why wasn't that video game branded Dungeons & Dragons?"

Well, yes. Why aren't you asking that question?

'Cuz if that's what you're saying, I just disagree. Whatever damage that could do to the game was done and finished years ago. The people who thought D&D was satanic think Harry Potter is too...

That's just it. They are not, and they don't. The anti-D&D crowd is a lot broader and more mainstream than just Jack Chick or even Pat Robinson, and that this group responds quite differently to the material in 'Harry Potter' than they do to the material in early editions of D&D or (if they were still paying attention) in the Binder class from ToM. You can't just paint them all with one brush. You have alot of people and parents out there who would be initially skeptical of a claim that a game was anything other than innocent fun, but who would modify thier opinion considerably based on exposure to some of the content. These same people exposed to Harry Potter and told 'this is evil' by someone like Patricia Pulling would probably laugh, but if I were to go 'This is the Lesser Key of Solomon' and 'This is a D&D rule book', they probably wouldn't. They might not immediately assume I wasn't full of it, but it would in almost every case color how they percieved the game.

Don't assume that people aren't capable of thinking critically just because they disagree with you or believe something that you find stupid. Pulling and Jack Chick were really the least of D&D's problems. The real problem was I think negative word of mouth between parents, youth leaders, pastors, etc.