Not the original Satanic Panic (I started playing in 86), but when I moved to Victoria BC in 1990, it was right after a grisly double murder. The criminals were three guys who went to my high school and played D&D together.  Their victims were the DM's grandmother and aunt. Apparently they wanted their inheritance right now.

My parents didn't care. But some of my teachers took a dim view of anyone playing D&D.  So we kept it out of school.

It had largely run out of steam by the time I started playing in '89 .  I'd get some guff about it at school or church, but if I stuck to don't-ask/don't-tell, it was no big deal.

My little brother wasn't allowed to play D&D with one particular friend, so they played Heroes Unlimited and other non-fantasy games.  

I think I remember another friend's mom confiscating his 1st edition DMG because of the cover.  That was especially weird as his mom was otherwise so permissive as to be seriously neglectful, but she gave it back eventually.  

My mom asked me if my rpgs ever made me think about hurting myself or someone else.  Laughing, I said "No" in a tone that made it clear I thought the question was beyond ridiculous.  She never brought it up again.  My parents did, however, confiscate my RPGs more than once, and regularly gave me a hard time about playing, but this was because I was "wasting my time".  

I was, however, once seriously harassed by a cop who thought I might be "one of those satanists".  It wasn't directly D&D related, but was an outgrowth of the "satanic panic" and the "ritual child abuse" scare that some ideologues and their useful idiots pushed on police departments across the US.  

By far the most difficult thing about being a TTRPG player when and where i grew up was negative peer pressure.  Adults generally left us alone.

Was a non-issue in our household. To help me learn English my mom read the Hobbit, as well as the Lord of the Rings to me, starting in 1967. When Mazes & Monsters came out in 1982, I knew it couldn't possibly be true that there was a gamer who was so twisted that he would run off into some college steam tunnels to live in a Dungeon. We did our own tunnel and cave expeditions out in Colorado, and came back with fluorite after exploring an abandoned old mine, and slayed some rattlesnakes in the rather large drainage pipes that ran under our streets, all great fun! But not one of us thought about making this a vocation.

Tom Hanks lost a serious amount of credibility playing James Dallas Eggbert, and portraying RPG gamers so negatively. It would be a couple decades before I started watching him in other movies.  ..and of course, later on, everyone found out almost the entire story was fabricated.

Patricia Pulling and the rest of the religious right nutcases didn't affect any of my gaming groups at all, as we were playing original D&D, and not AD&D. We were also playing wargames, and we weren't constantly morally toeing the line while we were playing our games. We just kept to ourselves, and shared our games with people that would appreciate them. They did force TSR to reign in the themes, npcs, monsters, and stories that had made D&D really interesting and entertaining, and I watched as D&D became more and more bland. They made D&D suitable for only for kids, even though it had been originally designed as a game for adults. The worst part... TSR was self-censoring and pandering to the moral majority (who were really immoral, after all, many of the old gamers and especially the moral majority had just come back from vietnam after doing their tours of real killing and murder-hoboing), ...and here we were, just playing this silly fantasy game. Most of the gamers in my group were a bunch of wimpy nerds who spent most of their time at school avoiding fights and conflicts, and dodging the very christian children of the vietnam murder-hobos, who all weren't very christian at all, and they would be found cruising with their friends on the weekends with a carload of weapons looking for another gang to rumble with, or some hapless nerd on the street to torment.

No. we just played games and kept an eye out to dodge the retards all the  while the religious right were ignoring the real problems that were developing in our country.

My parents left me with relatives while they were out on an overnight trip. I brought my AD&D books with me to read. One of my aunts took my books from me with the plan on burning them. After my parents picked me up the next morning once we were back home they realized I no longer had my books with me. I explained that my aunt and cousins had basically browbeat me into letting her take them. They went right back to my aunt's house and took the books back from her off of her front porch. She was too afraid of the books to keep them in house. Thankfully, my folks never left me with that aunt again.

I suspect most of us with stories dealing with the Satanic Panic end on positive notes since we're still gaming. I feel sad for those gamers who did have their books taken away and weren't allowed to take with their friends anymore. Their stories aren't likely to be heard as much as they should.

It was very real for me and caused a significant rift between me and my father when he destroyed some of my books. Later, when I had just graduated high school and was aged 17, he gave me 24 hours to remove my (new) rpg books from the house. I left home with my books for good within 24 hours.

As a teenager in the 80s, without internet or widespread physical recreational media, a hoard of RPG books, saved up for and much loved, was a big deal, and to have them destroyed by parents was perhaps, if I may overstate just a tiny bit, akin to having your puppy killed.

I feel for the above story of the friend who ultimately committed suicide. The intolerance of a teen's escapist hobby is part of a story of abuse and neglect. The cycle, for me, was one where the home was a place of rejection and chaos, and then a main (and harmless) source of escapism is singled out and destroyed, in a further act of emotional abuse.

In the late 70's we had a war gaming club that met in a church basement.   One of the Catholic priests played war games with us as well.  
Someone discovered D&D at the local hobby shop and we started to enthusiastically play that.  
The priest played in a few sessions with us (he played a cleric... obviously).
I don't recall anyone having difficulties with their parents over it due to this satanic panic thing.  
This was in suburban northern Ohio.

Actually I do remember one incident where a lady became quite agitated with us because our club was demonstrating a war game (Russian campaign).
She was Jewish and thought making a game based on WW-II was disrespectful.

It was a major factor for me. I was a child in the 80's. I grew up in Texas, and had friends who lived nearby from the midwest. Those friends were into D&D, and their parents didn't care. All was well until one day I had to explain to my parents this game we were playing when I went over there to play.

Shit. Hit. The. Fan.

I was forbidden from associating with those friends. My parents also had a small militia's worth of members from our church congregation come "pray over me". There was, effectively, an exorcism performed to cast the devil out.

Then they took pretty much all my toys - many of which were first edition Star Wars - and burned em all. Because apparently the devil speaks to kids through their toys. And that was the end of my gaming as a child.

But I never forgot it - how much fun I had with it. So years later when I was on my own (I left home as a teen and consequently had to grow up fast), I found a group and we started playing. And I never stopped.

Didn't really have to worry about it.  My mom wasn't a panicky person and I stayed out of trouble, so she didn't mind.  Didn't hurt that dad was a big fantasy fan, so she was passingly familiar with the idea.

As far as I am aware New Zealand missed out completely from the Satanic Panic.

Certainly by the time I was playing in the 80s the biggest problem I ever had was people telling me that I should be playing some kind of sport.  To be honest it seems like Religion is completely different in NZ then in the US.  No anti evolution rhetoric, no humans existing together with dinosaurs.

Not at all. In the second half of the 70s, rpgs were just the hot new thing in the microscopic world of wargaming. Nobody in the mainstream outside that tiny world knew they existed or cared. The satanic panic blew up around, when, 1980 maybe? By then we'd been playing for years, and parents already knew there was nothing to panic about. Of course we did hear about the satanic panic when it emerged, but it seemed very remote and had no impact on us. If anything, I recall a sort of "even bad publicity is good publicity" feeling that yay, people outside the wargaming world were finally becoming aware that rpgs existed.

Quote from: Brendan;1108124I think I remember another friend's mom confiscating his 1st edition DMG because of the cover.  That was especially weird as his mom was otherwise so permissive as to be seriously neglectful, but she gave it back eventually.  

My mom asked me if my rpgs ever made me think about hurting myself or someone else.  Laughing, I said "No" in a tone that made it clear I thought the question was beyond ridiculous.  She never brought it up again.  My parents did, however, confiscate my RPGs more than once, and regularly gave me a hard time about playing, but this was because I was "wasting my time".

When I went to Saudi Arabia in 1987 I brought me AD&D books with me. At customs in Riyadh my suitcases were opened without my knowledge or consent and search for contraband by Saudi Customs people which happened to include a group of Mutaween, otherwise known as The Committee for the Promotion of (islamic) Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. They happen to be looking for books, especially non-islamic religious books, and they routinely censor or deface objectionable illustrations and text in regular books, magazine and media like movies, completely marking out objectionable content, drawing extra clothing on scantily glad women. Because it is against Islam for them to steal, they can't actually tear out any pages of an objectionable book or magazine, but I have had plenty of books that have been colored in heftily with a black sharpie, so much so, that it they were completely worthless as reading material. Same for VHS movies, they just pull the magnetic tape out cassettes and tore it all up. the Mutwaheen would beat anyone smoking or talking to Saudi women (50 lashes), or caught out wandering the street during prayer (10 lashes). They were constantly out messing with foreigners, bullying them. I was usually on a work compound, out in a tent in the desert or on the coast, or in my private walled villa, in the penthouse suite the General had given me.

Anyway, I get my luggage at customs, and both suitcases I had checked in were destroyed. Now these were Samsonite suitcases, that you could literally drop them out of a flying aircraft right on to a runway, and they would be completely unscathed. The locks had all been forced open and were busted, and I couldn't even properly close the suitcases anymore. I opened the first one up, to check if anything was missing, and right at the top of the pile, completely untouched was that 1e AD&D DMG with the Demon on the cover, completely pristine and brand new looking. Every one of my magazines that were in the suitcase had been defaced, as well as a few other books. The D&D books were completely untouched though. I was mystified. All the customs people didn't say a single word, they just stared at me.

When I was in Al-Taif a few weeks later I met a Imam (Islamic Priest) who had come to a dinner party hosted by some of my Saudi business partners, and I asked him why the Mutaween had trashed my Luggage, and pretty much all of my books, except for my D&D books. He wanted to see them, ...of course, and I showed him. He knew the Demon on the cover the the 1e AD&D very well, and grew wide-eyed when he saw the image. He explained to me that in ancient times, Demons had walked the earth, and they looked just like the giant Efreet on the cover of the DMG. He told me that the Mutawaheen probably would have very much liked to beat me senseless right when I had arrived, and imprisoned me, but that they were afraid that the books contained actual knowledge of how to summon such a demon, and they didn't want me to summon a demon that would torment them.

I never told him it was just a game, and quietly put away my books. Later I would only take them out to play D&D when I was in my villa, with my American and European friends. I never showed those books to another Saudi, or Arab, in Arabia again.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1108126When Mazes & Monsters came out in 1982, I knew it couldn't possibly be true that there was a gamer who was so twisted that he would run off into some college steam tunnels to live in a Dungeon.

Tom Hanks lost a serious amount of credibility playing James Dallas Eggbert, and portraying RPG gamers so negatively. It would be a couple decades before I started watching him in other movies.  

I had a completely different reaction to Mazes & Monsters. When it came out back then, I thought it was funny to my 13 year old self because nobody played like how they were portrayed in the movie. When I picked up the DVD a few years ago and watched it, you can tell that while Tom Hanks had a crap role to act - he was the only cast member who really could act. I cut him a lot of slack because acting is just a job, it isn't like he wrote the script.

Most of it seemed to be aimed at "rock music" where I lived. (Weened on my brother's Brit-invasion tastes, I had a thick skin by the time gaming came around.) But it did keep our group small due to failed recruiting attempts.

Before gaming I was on the edge of being held back at school, after I was ahead in all my subjects. It was like a light switch. It was so dramatic an especially religious teacher called me "unnatural" which actually turned into a parent/teacher conference since she also loudly claimed I had to be cheating.

People would try to witness, which got old. Sometime later we found Gamma World and just used that as code for all gaming get-togethers in public. I do remember another instance of being at a house after a break of kickball with a guy from the losing team bringing up my D&D playing as sour grapes. An "old guy" (probably younger then I am now) was there and railed games were made by "the jews." Later my friends warned me he was a KKK "snake enthusiast" so I just avoided the place. Especially since he got pretty mad when I asked if that meant kickball was "jewish."

I was lucky with my parents. Their panic was I'd grow up to be a street musician or pot farmer/drug dealer. (We were lower middle class.) They not only accepted my geekism, they fed it when they could.

Not much, priests were only branding as Satanic tools the carebears, the smurfs, He-Man and of course Rock, not forgetting D&D, I might be wrong but the satanic panic was a thing before it impacted RPGs I seem to remember it started with the "autobiographic" book "Michelle Remembers".

If only México only took the good stuff from the USA we would be the world hegemon simply by going forward while you guys were fighting demons.