To Hell with Dungeons & Dragons ! ! !

[Dire Bare]

While I certainly see the appeal of making D&D seem like an object of devil-worship (increased sales!), I do see some downsides.

You may be using hyperbole on purpose here, but as I'm not sure . . . D&D was never designed to appear as satanic or occultic, and it never truly was in any way. It was the perception by a certain community that caused the "satanic panic", not actually the game itself. The game was never intentionally designed to fuel that panic, and I don't think it would be wise of WotC to try and do so today, not that I'm worried they might, mind you.

In fact, I've experienced some of those downsides growing up, and this was long after the "Satanic Panic" of the 1980s. When my best friend's parents found out that he played D&D, they rounded up the family for an intervention. They took him and all of his books to somewhere in the country. While the burned his books, they prayed for his soul.

And then anytime his parents even thought he was hanging out at my place, they would rally the family and surround the apartment building where I lived until he came out. One day they waited for four hours until they discovered they he was at another friend's place.

Speaking of which, when the grandmother of that friend passed away and the grandmother was mourning, my best friend's mother went to visit. The grandmother confessed to my friend's mom that she could still "feel" her late husband's presence in the house. My best friend's told the grandmother the her husband's spirit was still around because her grandson played D&D. And so, the grandson (the other friend) had to throw all his D&D/RPG books away--which included the classic boardgame HeroQuest.

So basically I lost two players--and almost two friends because of a couple parents going ballistic about D&D.

All of us who played as kids in the 80s, and even for some still today, this story is sadly all too common. I didn't have it as rough as you and your friends, but I know many folks personally who went through similar trials, and there are, of course, tons of similar stories from our fellow internet nerds who hand out here on ENWorld.

If, regardless of the choices WotC makes, the conservative right gets all freaked out about D&D again (moreso than they still are today), then more kids will go through this crap again, I'm sure of that.

But I don't think that the design of the new game, no matter how "edgy" or not, will really affect that. If WotC manages to make D&D popular again, so that the mainstream society starts paying attention again, then the "satanic panic" could very well return. If D&D stays at the sales level it is at now, there is very little chance of a major resurgence in ignorant panic. And, ironically, WotC needs to make D&D as popular and as high-selling as possible. A bit of a Catch-22 in my opinion.

 

[Dire Bare]

I'll go ahead and make all the following assertions as to what I believe:

a) The Satanist scare is the reason that D&D toys aren't still being sold in the stores alongside Transformers and GI Joe.
b) The Satanist scare is the reason that we didn't see a third or fourth season of the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon.
c) The Satanist scare is the reason that we haven't seen a big screen live action version of the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon (with a terrible script and a CGI budget bigger than the GDP of many small countries).
d) The Satanist scare is the reason that all D&D movies have been embarassingly bad.
e) The Satanist scare is the reason that TSR went out of business.
f) The Satanist scare is the reason that WoW is the biggest Fantasy MMORPG, Skyrim is the biggest fantasy cRPG, and neither has D&D associated with their titles or content.

Wow. I think you're making some HUGE leaps here. HUGE.

I agree that the "satanic panic" vs D&D's popularity in the 80s could be argued as a chicken-vs-egg problem. Which came first?

But your assertions about the panic causing the D&D movies to suck? WTF? They sucked because the projects were not well funded, and they were produced by productions teams with a distinct lack of talent. It happens all the time in Hollywood, nothing special here.

And TSR's demise had absolutely nothing to do with the satanic scare, it was pure crappy business mismanagement, coupled with the rise of CCGs and MMOs.

The satanic scare of the 80s is largely over, and it's effects were largely finished by the early 90s. Sure, some conservative religious folks still hassle their kids about it, but the effects on D&D sales is long over.

 

[Jawsh]

I agree that I like edgy things. But what elements exactly are we talking about?

Polytheism/paganism? Already got it.

Ghosts, goblins, demons, devils, witches? Got those.

Violence, gore, torture? Yep, got those.

Drugs and alcohol? Hmm, D&D could use more of those, in my opinion. And let's start with cocaine and heroin as a baseline. Magical fantasy drugs are fun to have in the game too, but I did not like seeing a litany of Abyssal drugs with no mention of real-world examples.

Rules-wise, I doubt any of our real-world drugs have any effect on game statistics. For example, PCP makes you feel stronger, but it doesn't make you stronger. Cocaine makes you feel smarter and more alert, but doesn't actually do that. I'd like the Player's Handbook to point this out, and provide market prices. Not that cocaine or PCP would be available in the typical time period of D&D, so I'd suggest whatever historical analogs might be there. Opium, coca leaves, mild marijuana, mushrooms, wormwood.

Sex? Rules for sex have always missed the mark. So I'm going to vote against rules for sex. But I wouldn't mind seeing some hotter storylines. It doesn't even have to be particularly explicit, but I'd like to see an affair between Regdar and Lidda. I do apologize if you have to go scrub your brain now. Um, here's some pictures of kittens.

Nudity? I already made my thoughts known on the thread that got closed down. Short version: I'm for nudity, but not necessarily in every illustration. Just where it makes sense. Some monsters are naked.

 

[Celebrim]

But your assertions about the panic causing the D&D movies to suck? WTF? They sucked because the projects were not well funded...

I rest my case.

... and they were produced by productions teams with a distinct lack of talent.

Again, this isn't exactly making my argument look bad..

And TSR's demise had absolutely nothing to do with the satanic scare, it was pure crappy business mismanagement

There were a lot of crappy business decisions involved, but a large part of the crappy business management can in part be attributed to Gygax deciding that the real money in D&D was to be found in derivatives (the same realization eventually hit Marvel and saved the comic book as we know it). The problem was, when all that negative publicity hit, D&D's derivatives became toxic property. For example, one of his big successes was the Dungeon and Dragon's cartoon, but when the occult scare hit, CBS became extremely leery of the product and more or less refused to promote it and dropped it despite pretty good viewing numbers for its time slot. All of that put Gygax in a bad position within the company he'd helped to start, and locked D&D out of the mainstream exactly at the time it was positioned to become mainstream. And even had many of those crappy business decisions happened, the company would have stayed afloat if had had additional and stronger revenue streams.

Get this, fantasy is mainstream. D&D is not. Now that fantasy is enjoying is most pervasive mainstream success ever, D&D is not a part of it. There are a lot of contributing factors to that, but the occult scare is a big part of that.

coupled with the rise of CCGs and MMOs.

Neither of which was directly competing with D&D at the time its sales first began to slump. D&D had much bigger problems by that point.

Sure, some conservative religious folks still hassle their kids about it, but the effects on D&D sales is long over.

Direct effects, sure. Lingering effects of damage to the brand, no.

 

[Dire Bare]

Again, this isn't exactly making my argument look bad..

Heh, I understand if my refutations above aren't convincing, I'm still reeling from trying to process your basic argument. Not trying to be insulting, but I really think you are way out there on this one.

If I understand your basic argument now, these later "failures" (or at least, lack of mainstream success) are caused by satanically (fear of) influenced poor sales and mainstream skittishness in engaging with the D&D brand due to fear of association. For example, the D&D movies suck because larger, more influential studios didn't want to touch it and so the talentless hack little guy got his shot and made a predictably crappy movie.

Sorry, just don't buy it. Mainstream entertainment companies and retail stores are skittish in engaging the D&D brand, but I don't think lingering controversy over the satanic scares of the 80s have anything to do with it. D&D is a niche product, with relatively low sales, not because of satanism fears, but simply because it's a nerdy past-time. D&D is complex, difficult to get into, and has a reputation of being played by unsocial types, of the nerdy sort, not occultic.

I'm still think the illicit nature of D&D, gained from the satanism fears, helped drive sales in the 80s, not the other way around. I admit the chicken-vs-egg syndrome involved, and would be willing to consider an arguement that the net effect was negative . . . but to blame all the later failures in your list on the satanic panic is more than a bit of a stretch, IMO.

I doubt I've convinced you, of course, so we'll just have to agree to disagree.

 

[Jawsh]

D&D is a niche product, with relatively low sales, not because of satanism fears, but simply because it's a nerdy past-time. D&D is complex, difficult to get into, and has a reputation of being played by unsocial types, of the nerdy sort, not occultic.

How come D&D has remained stunted while WoW has exploded? Nerd is the word, in case you haven't heard.

 

[gyor]

Heh. For personal reasons Eric's Grandma won't let me go into, there's a devil on my left shoulder cackling the same thoughts. I've had a rough year, in part due to a certain type of conservatively minded folks, and a little gratuitous Satan's-gateway-style D&D sounds pretty good to me right about now.

Not quite to the topless succubus pictures in the Monster Manual, but certainly with less regard to offending certain types.

Agreed, those pics should be reserved the 5e phb as a playable race! *head starts spinning while spewing obsenities*

 

[Celebrim]

...I'm still reeling from trying to process your basic argument.

Good.

Not trying to be insulting, but I really think you are way out there on this one.

I'm hard to insult, and the way to do it that really gets under my skin is not anything you are engaging in nor is it something that immediately occurs to most people when they are trying to be insulting.

Let me come clean on this. I'm not sure that I could make my argument stick, but not because I don't think my argument has some merit. Rather, I don't think that I can get my argument to stick because its a counter-factual argument. If you are not familiar with the term, it doesn't mean that I'm arguing against fact, but rather that the basis of my argument is a "what if?" scenario. All arguments built around what might have happened if something else didn't happen are essentially without substance. It's really impossible to know what would have happened in the absense of the Occult scare in the '80's.

What I do feel that I can prove definitively is that the occult scare trailed the growth of D&D rather than proceeding it. That's factual. But either the counter factual argument that without the occult scare it would have grown less, or the counter factual argument that without the occult scare it would have grown more is just so much hot air amongst nerds. What is true is that D&D experienced phenomenal growth, then there was an occult scare, then D&D's audience shrank and its mainstream 'for kids' properties like toys, coloring books, and Saturday morning cartoons vanished at about the same time. It's impossible to prove the exact reasons why that happened, but if you want to claim corellation between the occult scare and D&D's growth, then I think I can show even strong correllation between the reverse and further that it hurt sales in the period immediately following the height of the scare in the public conscious (roughly 1985).

I think for example there is pretty good evidence that the CBS executives were always uncomfortable with the darkness of the material in the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon, and that the show was torpedoed rather suddenly in 1985 despite having won its time slot for two years running (despite relative low promotion compared to other shows in the lineup). Similar things happened to the nascent D&D toy line for which the cartoon was one of the strongest marketing vehicles.

For example, the D&D movies suck because larger, more influential studios didn't want to touch it and so the talentless hack little guy got his shot and made a predictably crappy movie.

More or less, that's what happened. And while Hollywood makes predictably crappy movies, the D&D movie's production values were obviously and severely hurt by the extremely limited budget. And the extremely limited budget was due to the fact the studios didn't percieve the D&D brand as a money winner, which it wasn't in no small part due to the fact that in 1985 the occult/suicide contriversy crushed all of D&D's licensed derivatives in a domino effect leaving D&D only as an esoteric game in the hands of nerds with heightened reputation for misanthropy.

D&D is a niche product, with relatively low sales, not because of satanism fears, but simply because it's a nerdy past-time.

Comic books are a niche product with relatively low sales that are a nerdy past-time, but that doesn't stop movies based on the comics from being mainstream entertainment or licensed Marvel toys from filling an aisle at Target or Wal-Mart. But consider how long it took comic books to recover from the much more well deserved comic book scare of the 1950's.

My point is essentially, if you are arguing for the positive influence of negative publicity on the basis, "Look how successful D&D was.", then you are neglecting to consider not only the timeline (D&D's success leads and triggers the scare), but just how successful it could have been.

 

[Jiggawatts]

Which Hell would that be, the Nine Hells or Baator, either way tell Asmodeus I said hi.

 

[Shemeska]

screeching "Dungeons & Dragons is more dangerous than crack cocaine!" will be sweet, sweet marketing music.

THAT is the D&D I want to play!

As much as I find it amusing to picture Tipper Gore trying to justify censorship because it's for the good of the children wrt D&D being in the media again, it's a bit misguided and two decades too late.

The stuff that made popular panic and cultural fad status with D&D, it's pretty lame and watered down by comparison to the material being put out from around the mid 90's till now.

OMG they call something a demon or devil in the 1e monster manual and use a scattershot of names plucked from middle ages Christian demonology... and then treat them as bigger monsters with no real horror or mature treatment. It was cheesy in the 80s and frankly, I think the game has matured in its handling of fiends since then. We had Colin McComb's brilliant 2e material in 'Faces of Evil' as something of a high bar, and some seriously good material such as Fiendish Codex I, and some other stuff from the Paizo crew in various things they've produced. Fiends are no longer one dimensional cartoon villains who offer little more than the shock value of having demon or devil in their names and riding on the coat tails of that cultural baggage.

The game has grown up, and the people that would have been shocked in the 80s would probably try to ban as obscene some of the moderately darker material from recently published material. We don't really need that sort of attention IMO, because I like being able to assume an intelligent, adult audience rather than 8 year olds if I'm writing about fiends.