It affected us very slightly.

One set of my grandparents were very religious & didn't like the game so we weren't supposed to play it at her house when there on holidays.

My parents heard "the panic" off her probably and just asked us about the game (we strongly defended it as educational with all the math, reading & history), they flipped through the rulebooks and said, "cool, carry on".

That was about the extent of my contact with it down in my corner of Oz. Religion in general is not as pervasive a part of society in Oz as America generally so there was less "hysteria" )if you can even call it that).

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  

I don't believe in bitching about work in a public forum.  That's just an invitation to problems back at the office.

Quote from: taustin;649646But, ultimately, working for geeks who make orders of magnitude more money.

Unfortunately, the geeks who "make it" are a lot fewer in number than the rest of us.

Wait, I'm a geek who makes money in sales.  Ah, shit, I knew I was doing this thing all fucking wrong.

Quote from: KenHR;649668Wait, I'm a geek who makes money in sales.  Ah, shit, I knew I was doing this thing all fucking wrong.

As long as you don't overpromise and then go back to the development staff and say "Can we do this?", you're okay.

Quote from: taustin;649647Heh. And most jocks grow up to be alcholic womanizers with shrewish wives until they become family anihilators. I've seen movies, too.

?  I'm not sure what the movies is in reference to.


I know this is just anecdotal, but most management (both upper and lower) peeps I work with (either of people or of projects) are people who have had some sort of athletic background.  Either sports growing up (jocks) or military.  If I were to guess why, it's because the work force is pretty fucking competitive, so those people used to working in a competitive environment with good communication skills do better.  And it's a harsh reality that the better you look attractively, it works in your favor.  That's just basic human biases at work there.  People with an athletic background tend to be in better shape than your average nerd.

Again, just anecdotal, but I've worked in corporate management myself for over a decade and it seems pretty clear to me.

I made the reference to TBP because soooo many posters over there bitch and moan about not getting a fair shake, but at the same time not doing the things to give you a better shot.  It's like they feel entitled to a job, when the reality is that you're not.  You have to earn it and show why you're better than the dozens of other people wanting it.

Basically it reminds me of my old friend Robert.  We were all geeks, and he decided as a kid to grow his hair out really long and never wear anything more fancy than stained jeans and t-shirts.  And he would bitch incessantly about how it wasn't fair that he couldn't get a good job.

I am not sure how much my input counts as I was not alive during the actual Satanic Panic but in my neck of the wood I don't know that it ever actually ended. My mother remembered a lot of the bullshit that was going around at that time and adding that to the fact that it involved magic which was a dirty word in my house growing up and I was never allowed any where near D&D.

I got caught playing it one time when I was 15 with a few close friends and got a serious talking to about the dangers of demonic influences in our lives. The funny thing is that she worked at a facility for troubled youth and saw the worst shape kids could end up in and heard horror stories of what teens can get up to. I always found that odd as we were well supervised and having good clean fun but it was really an issue for her.

When other kids were sneaking around smoking pot, drinking, and what have you, I had to sneak around to play in a D&D campaign. I got into all kinds of dumb shit later on in my teens but never felt like she was half as mad at me for that as she was when she caught me playing D&D.

Now not that I have felt that this had any lasting impact on me as I always did what I wanted anyway I just got slick about it, and now that I am grown and long since out of the house I play regularly. Growing up in the bible belt though this whole "role-playing is one of the many tools of the Devil" attitude is very much alive and well.

Quote from: flyerfan1991;649667Unfortunately, the geeks who "make it" are a lot fewer in number than the rest of us.

In all seriousness, the geekier ones generally do have higher incomes. And since the subject that started this was ComicCon and cash cows, they certainly do spend it when they're treated right.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;649686?  I'm not sure what the movies is in reference to.

I thought we were talking about movie stereotypes.

It affected me not at all, since I live in a country which is stupid, but not crazy.

Well, except about fucking sport.

The 'Satanic Panic' (this really should be the name of an Alice Cooper cover band) didn't really effect me much. I was already such an outsider in school that my involvement in RPGs was kind of shrugged off as just one more oddity. I had a couple of friends who had to stash their gaming gear at my house, along with their metal albums or they would get burned by their baptist or pentecostal parents. My school was surprisingly low key about the whole thing and even allowed us to form a D&D club which met regularly and was in the annual.

I'm sure the people who were jackasses to me in school would have been jackasses to me no matter what and that's okay, it's not like I've seen any of them since I graduated anyway.

Quote from: taustin;649561miniatures that scream as they melt if you throw them in a fire[2]

That is pretty damn cool.

Quote from: flyerfan1991;649678As long as you don't overpromise and then go back to the development staff and say "Can we do this?", you're okay.

Nah, I work in a pretty tightly regulated industry (business insurance) and have to do a lot of support and account management after a sale, so I'd only be making it hard on myself if I did that.

Didn't affect the D&D stuff at all.  But I think it's because mom was feeling guilty about throwing away all my comic books 6 years earlier.

My father bought into the panic thing enough that for the first few years I played, I had to leave my rpg materials at a friends house. I also once loaned a couple of modules to a guy from school, whose mother then proceeded to find them and throw them away.

My uncle was into supers rpg's, but thought D&D was of the devil. Because, his preacher told him so, or something.

That's it. I never even heard of anyone else who met with any difficulties, whatsoever. I grew up in Mobile, Alabama and AD&D was popular as all hell! There were gaming groups all over the place and the mainstream bookstores were full of TSR & Iron Crown product. You had to go to a local hobby shop to get Chaosium stuff, though.