Quote from: The Traveller;649601It could have been worse, folks.

I'm not going to point a quivering finger at religion here, fucked up people will do fucked up things. Such is life.

I hope the council and workers responsible for this get their socks sued off them.

Quote from: Rincewind1;649614I hope the council and workers responsible for this get their socks sued off them.

QuoteRochdale Council said it did apologise at the time of these cases and has criticised the making of the television programme.

Social workers Jill France and Susan Hammersley both continue to work in child protection.

There was a court gagging order on the victims too. Not to downplay anyone else's problems of course.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;649610I also recall attending a showing of a movie called "Revival of Evil" during school (this was a private school).  I remember it because it mentioned D&D and multiple rock groups that I listened to (and still do, for that matter).

Haha -- found it on youtube:
http://youtu.be/__nMG8CuOe8

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;649589I lived in Vista, which is south of you I believe,

Little bit.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;649589and this was very much my experience. You hear california and you think liberal, but our community was quite conservative and deeply religious. Even the local episcopal church was right wing. There was also a lot of racism and anti-semitism in that area at the time (don't know if it has gotten better since i left).

Some of the less densely packed part of San Diego county are positively wingnutty these days. The more urban parts are so jaded by ComicCon that geeky is viewed more as a cash cow than anything else. A study a couple of years ago indicated that ComicCon brought over $120 million in to the local economy (and only coverd people who had hotel rooms), so it's pretty geek friendly for the most part.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;649589The whole rumor about people taking PCP and fighting in the sewers when they played D&D was relayed to me by my mother, who heard it from a church friend (the priest's daughter) who swore her sister's son died because of the game. It was just in the air or something.

So it was your mom's priests'daughter's sister's son, eh? Yeah, that's a reliable source.

I had the advantage of being a legal adult when that really started (just finishing high school when the kid from Wisconson(?) disappeared). Plus, of course, my father was so batshit crazy that I looked normal by comparison anyway.

Quote from: The Traveller;649601It could have been worse, folks.

I'm not going to point a quivering finger at religion here, fucked up people will do fucked up things. Such is life.

That's not fucked up religion so much as fucked up people getting hysterical of "protect the children." Go look up McMartin Preschool some time. There were people looking for the "secret tunnels" when they torn the building down a decade later. (And there was the woman in South Carolina who had her kid taken away for "firing babies into outer space" - I shit you not, though that was overturned on appeal.) Far as I know, there was no religious zealotry involved in McMartin at all. Only stupid, malicious prosecutors.

Quote from: taustin;649619Some of the less densely packed part of San Diego county are positively wingnutty these days. The more urban parts are so jaded by ComicCon that geeky is viewed more as a cash cow than anything else. A study a couple of years ago indicated that ComicCon brought over $120 million in to the local economy (and only coverd people who had hotel rooms), so it's pretty geek friendly for the most part.

That's how Indy views GenCon:  less of a bunch of weirdos and more of a cash cow.

Quote from: flyerfan1991;649621That's how Indy views GenCon:  less of a bunch of weirdos and more of a cash cow.

And as with ComicCon, they do so rightly. Jocks grow up to be midlevel managers, with a decent income because they know the right people. Geeks grow up to be Bill Gates and Larry Page.

Quote from: taustin;649620That's not fucked up religion so much as fucked up people getting hysterical of "protect the children."

Yes, that's what I said. Any excuse will do for some people. Maybe strength in numbers is the lesson here, those kids hadn't justice till the BBC took up their cause.

Quote from: taustin;649623And as with ComicCon, they do so rightly. Jocks grow up to be midlevel managers, with a decent income because they know the right people. Geeks grow up to be Bill Gates and Larry Page.

Or worse, jocks grow up to be in sales, the bane of other departments.

Quote from: taustin;649623And as with ComicCon, they do so rightly. Jocks grow up to be midlevel managers, with a decent income because they know the right people. Geeks grow up to be Bill Gates and Larry Page.

Not really.  One in a million geeks grow up to be Bill Gates.  Most grow up in dead end jobs bitching about how "the man" is holding them down on forums like RPG.net  

Quote from: flyerfan1991;649627Or worse, jocks grow up to be in sales, the bane of other departments.

But, ultimately, working for geeks who make orders of magnitude more money.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;649631Not really.  One in a million geeks grow up to be Bill Gates.  Most grow up in dead end jobs bitching about how "the man" is holding them down on forums like RPG.net  

Heh. And most jocks grow up to be alcholic womanizers with shrewish wives until they become family anihilators. I've seen movies, too.

I suppose circumstance favored me. I grew up and played during the "Satanic Panic". My friends I played with parents were not religious at all. My family was but we are presbyterians which I like to describe as the relaxed christians. (I know accepting people that dont care about your faith, race, or (other thing inserted here) weird I know. There was some hub-bub around me (As I lived just south west of MSU, where the whole would be steam tunnel thing should have went down.)  But it never effected me. My family has always been smart and understanding. I suppose I've been fortunate

Well-meaning parishioners would try to warn my mother about my D&D habit, saying: "Don't you know what he might be up to?"

My mother would reply: "Apparently D&D is all about sitting at your parents' dining room table and drawing lots of maps on graph paper. So we're fine with it."

Note that said dining room table was in the church manse: my father was a Presbyterian minister. The only thing I was ever asked to do with all my gaming and fantasy stuff was hide my Gor covers and my copy of Eldritch Wizardry when my grandmother was around.

My mom once asked about if the stuff she heard in the '80s about D&D was true when she found out I was interested in gaming. She literally knew nothing about it and didn't jump to any conclusions. I said no, and she never brought it up again. The fact that I actually became more devout and more conservative over the following years may have put any nagging doubts(assuming she even had any) to rest.

And one time in school I remember a fellow student claiming that any kind of playing pretend was wrong when the subject of RPGs came up. Not satanic or demonic or anything. Just wrong. He didn't even think it was okay to act or play video games. That was just weird.

Other than that, I've lived in the Bible belt most of my life, gone to a Christian private school for a number of years, attended Baptist, Lutheran, and Presbyterian churches, and I never heard anything negative about role playing. Other than that one weird anti-any-and-all-pretend thing above, that is. To this day, I wouldn't even have known this was a thing if it wasn't for The Big Purple.