A nice reminder of the madness over D&D back in the 1980s, which was when I was a teen (and ran a lot of RPG sessions for my circle). Good info for you younger GOGnards who didn't have to live through the hysteria.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26328105

Do you remember this?

"The view of roleplaying games has changed over time," says Smith, "mostly because the predicted 'streets awash with the blood of innocents as a horde of demonically-possessed roleplayers laid waste to the country' simply never materialised."

Are we still on time to fix that?

LOL! We didn't have that over here (actually, we didn't go through all the PnP D&D craze, as well), but it was pretty depressing...

Also, thank you for that interesting read, IAmSinistar, I never thought things got so out of hand in places where Pen and Paper was this big a deal.

I Sir Argronok believe these accusations are false to the core. I a Lawful Good Paladin Cavalier, Savior of the Sword Coast, would never associate myself with the evil Demons.

I suppose this is a good analogue for how hysteria about most social change will pass with time.

I do indeed. Chick Tracts were popular with my college circle, for the wrong reasons. :) Haw haw!

I loved this one quote from the article:

Pulling described D&D as "a fantasy role-playing game which uses demonology, witchcraft, voodoo, murder, rape, blasphemy, suicide, assassination, insanity, sex perversion, homosexuality, prostitution, satanic type rituals, gambling, barbarism, cannibalism, sadism, desecration, demon summoning, necromantics, divination and other teachings".

After reading that I thought to myself - "Hmm, I must've missed that adventure module."

We didn't had D&D when i was a teen, but we had M.A.G.U.S... similar style but in hungarian...

Rather read to me like she just came up with a list of everything bad she could think of!

What do you think they would've thought about F.A.T.A.L. ? :P

I remember back on a rainy summer evening in 1998 a few neighborhood pals and I got together in my parent's basement to play some D&D (and this is the first time any of us had ever even played the damn game, though I did play Hero Quest a lot). About an hour into our adventure and halfway through our pizza my dad comes down, calmly sends everyone home, sends me up to my room, and proceeds to lecture me in a very snide way on how "warped" a game like that is and how it's for "losers" who don't live in the "real world."

I went downstairs the next day to collect my dice, books, and character sheets only to find they had all been unceremoniously disposed of. I came back upstairs to the kitchen and not a slice of pizza was in the fridge; keep in mind there was half a pizza left when he sent me to my room, and a $15 pizza is expensive to a 14 year old. I realized my dad and step-mom ate it all. He waltzes into the kitchen and mockingly says to me "well, I hope you learned something about Dungeons and Dragons."

That weekend I went to visit my mom and step-dad (who took me to different countries and states and always encouraged doing things that fostered imagination and creativity) and didn't come back to see my dad for almost three years, and only spoke on the phone once or twice.

I thought "Yeah, I learned that I'm better off living somewhere else, fucker. Enjoy your real world."

That said, my dad and I have mostly put our differences aside as I'm 30 now, he's almost 60, and we have mutual family. Though he claims to have little to no recollection of this incident. I think when he told me he didn't remember after I brought this up last year it somehow hurt worse than when it actually happened, as I was going to to try and just laugh it off with him.

Exactly. This is the usual laundry list of "Satan's Activities" that your typical fundamentalist sees in everything.

I think this is an unfair generalisation - just because I indulge in blasphemy, insanity, sex perversion and demon summoning doesn't mean I also approve of gambling. ;)

PnP ftw! You havent lived unless some relative has seriously called you satanworshipper. Oh the days.

They would have had a heart attack!

And nothing of value was lost. :D