Friday 21 October 2011

Sorry, did I miss something (30 years ago)?

Just a quick question on the tail of all those posts on other blogs this week concerning the compatibility of Christianity and D&D.

I've noticed that more or less every one refers to the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and the impact that this had on gamers. However, when I think back to my teenage years, I can't recall a single instance of this in my gaming life.

I know it's almost certainly that I'm a UK gamer rather than a US gamer, so the question for today is aimed at fellow Brits and is this:

Was there a Satanic Panic in the UK and I just missed it (being a sheltered little grognard in those days) or did we Brits manage to escape the lunacy?

18 comments:

  1. Don't know about others, but it contributed to my mother *burning* my 1st Ed AD&D books. 'Twas not cool.

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  2. While a friend & I talked on the phone about D&D, my mother tried to sneak up on me with a bottle of holy water. I saw her coming, so when she sprayed the water, I immediately fell to the groung writhing and screaming in pretend agony. "Aaargh, it burns! It burns!"

    It was funny, at least until she chased me and tried beating me with a large bible & cross.

    Some people have no sense of humor.

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  3. I certainly don't remember anything of the sort happening over here. White Dwarf would have mentioned it, surely, and I can't imagine the book burning lunatics -- if they existed -- would have overlooked the bookshops filled to the brim with Fighting Fantasy volumes.

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  4. It must be a US thing. I heard plenty of stories and warnings, even booklets and audio stories all telling of how evil, satanic, and dangerous role playing was, D&D in particular.

    I just looked it up, and the Adventures in Odyssey episode was called "Castles and Cauldrons".

    http://aiowiki.com/wiki/Castles_and_Cauldrons,_Part_2

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  5. I'm a U.S. gamer, played with friends in the 1980's, never experienced any Satanic panic. Me or my friends. No problems at all.

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  6. Hop in your time machine and come to Texas circa 1981 for some good Satanic Panic fun. :) But then again, we burn the Qu'ran, copies of Harry Potter, and Beatles albums over here - so it's par for the course.

    - Ark (Wishing someone would start burning Twilight books soon - but, alas, not gonna happen.)

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  7. We got it in the midwest too. My small Illinois town got all bent out of shape about it in the early 80s. Blew over fast.

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  8. Yes, it was very real. I remember a friend's mother cautioning my own mother, who didn't buy it, to guard my soul. I know lots of people who eitherh ad their stuff thrown away or, in some instances, doubted themselves and fell in step, destroying their stuff.

    I have one friend who will play ANY other RPG out there and is a huge fan of RIFTS who will not touch D&D simply because he doesn't want to risk the name assoiation among his very religious friends and family.

    Heck, there was even a movie about it called Mazes and Monsters, starring a very young Tom Hanks. Pamphlets were circulated that mimic the comic strip style advertisements found in Dragon magazine.

    I remember being sent home from a friend's house after they got back from chuch to find me watching the D&D cartoon on their TV. I had stayed the night and they left me in their house to go to church, rude as that might have been, they thought badly enough of D&D to kick me out angrily.

    A very real thing.

    -Eli

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  9. Oh, and I live in the Pacific Northwest, so it wasn't just a bible belt thing.

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  10. I've been playing D&D since 1979 and I heard about it long after the fact. I've often heard "Catholic" bandied about related to this but I never experienced any anti-D&D sentiment or propaganda growing up Catholic. I went to a Catholic high school in upstate New York and we had a game club where our faculty moderator was a nun who really enjoyed being part of our group and would even DM for us on occasion.

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  11. I'm sure it was more of a US than UK thing. I was raised Catholic in Fresno, CA, and never had any BS from the church about it in the early 80s, but we had close friends that were Evangelicals at the time and I remember bringing the Moldvay Basic book over one evening for my own amusement and it was like if I rolled the dice I was engaging with Satan. The cold stony stares I got from the parents there -- they're still burned into my memory. Even years later in high school I remember them yelling at me in disbelief that being raised Catholic I could believe that dinosaurs were real, and fossils were not tricks planted by Satan. I am dead serious, no exaggeration.

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  12. There's a lot of misconceptions about Catholicism out there, but the fact is, Catholics don't think the earth is only 10,000 years old, actually believe in and teach evolution, and science is respected more and encouraged. It's not perfect, but it's a lot more progressive than some would have you believe.

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  13. Like Eli said, the "Mazes & Monsters" thing gave it a far, far greater coverage than just the usual church groups.

    I think the bulk of my small-town, 80's D&D playing friends were Catholic. Definitely more an anti-D&D thing with Baptist/evangelical protestant denominations than the Catholics.

    Surprised that Mary Whitehouse and her ilk didn't kick up a fuss about it over there...

    It would have been right up her back passage!

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  14. I think in very puritanical circles the game got a lot of flak for several reasons. The use of dice, got it lumped in with gambling. The use of imagination and free-thinking got it lumped in with things like TV, rock music, etc. Thei magery of monsters and devils, got it lumped in with promoting imagery that was "ungodly".

    But, beyond the religious outcry, there was a lot of general crap thrown out at the hobby too. I know a lot of kids who weren't allowed to play it because it was considered a waste of their time or too whimsical to be a good pursuit.

    -Eli

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  15. I grew up in the UK in the 80s and had some minor experiences with Christian anti-D&D sentiments. Well just one really -- a teacher at my school, who was a closet hardcore Christian, disapproved of the game and would make occasional gripes about it. Nothing major though, and nothing that ever stopped us from playing.

    A friend also recently told me that he was a scout leader in the 80s and got into trouble with the local church for offering D&D as an option for the "hobbies badge" (which apparently was even sponsored by TSR, he said -- obviously some miscommunication between the scouts, TSR and the church there!).

    But yes, in general I get the feeling there are a lot less extreme Christians in the UK...

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  16. Oh, and by "after the fact" I mean "not until the advent of the Internet". :)

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  17. I know I'm tardy for the party, but could the difference between the US & UK reaction to D&D from the Christian perspective be related to the rise of the "satanic" hard rock/heavy metal bands of the 60/70s in the UK? If the UK culture already went overboard on seeing the devil in music, maybe there wasn't any fire left to find it in D&D. Does that make sense?

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  18. Here in the UK in the late 80s Dungeondad played a game of D&D round a friend's house. When the kid's mum found out what they were playing she confiscated the books (she was a strict churchgoer) and Dungeondad's mum went round and made her give them back!

    PS check your inbox

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