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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3888338" data-attributes="member: 4937">Yes.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..." - MeI'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.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?Well, yes.  Why aren't you asking that question?  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.</blockquote>

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