Quote from: Rincewind1;735222One out of three isn't a bad score .

I just loved how it couldn't simply be one bad thing, it had to be something that involved murder, demon worship AND drugs. "Hey guys, know what would go great with this cocaine? Satan!"

Quote from: Saplatt;735221Oh crap.  You mean it's not?

No, but the disparity between the belief that it was and the reality that it was just a nerdy fantasy game with dice and pencils is why this dead ale wives sketch was so funny when it came out (because it was mocking actual PSA's by the 700 Club): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVsTtSrOMsI

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;735223I just loved how it couldn't simply be one bad thing, it had to be something that involved murder, demon worship AND drugs. "Hey guys, know what would go great with this cocaine? Satan!"

Five ounces of cocaine, , ten thousand dollars in gold, D20s, six condoms, two condoms ribbed (for her pleasure), Judas Priest Mixtape, 12 bottles of Jack Daniels, D&D handbooks, two dry - cleaned suits, brass athame, six pairs of nylon stockings, a bound virgin victim...looks like we're set for a weekend in Vegas.

Quote from: Rincewind1;735226Five ounces of cocaine, , ten thousand dollars in gold, D20s, six condoms, two condoms ribbed (for her pleasure), Judas Priest Mixtape, 12 bottles of Jack Daniels, D&D handbooks, two dry - cleaned suits, brass athame, six pairs of nylon stockings, a bound virgin victim...looks like we're set for a weekend in Vegas.

the trouble is the D&D player is the bound virgin

Quote from: jibbajibba;735376the trouble is the D&D player is the bound virgin

If there ever was a need for an emoticon blowing coffee over a keyboard, it is now.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;735382If there ever was a need for an emoticon blowing coffee over a keyboard, it is now.

I thought that was pretty funny too.  Luckily for the D&D player, that's the easiest of the bunch to get ahold of.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;735219But that is a good chunk of the US. My parents were liberals from boston, and even I had my books confiscated and the game forbidden while living in Southern California (which has its deeply religious areas). When my mother told me not to play D&D, ot wasn't because the lack of outside activity, it was because she genuinely thought it was the devil's game. I think outside the US, it may not have been as noticeable. But here the notion that gamers were geeky fantasy nerds, wasn't something i encountered until the 90s.

My parents, for whatever reason, despite being conservative republicans, never batted an eye at dnd. I had no clue for years that some people identified dnd with witchcraft, or whatever.

Quote from: Bill;735629My parents, for whatever reason, despite being conservative republicans, never batted an eye at dnd. I had no clue for years that some people identified dnd with witchcraft, or whatever.

Same here.  I grew up in a very conservative rural Roman Catholic household.  And my mom bought my D&D stuff for us for Christmas and birthdays.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;735650Same here.  I grew up in a very conservative rural Roman Catholic household.  And my mom bought my D&D stuff for us for Christmas and birthdays.

Bet you never realized Satan is going to show up and collect your soul!

I mean...if Satan existed....and cared about dnd.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;735219But that is a good chunk of the US. My parents were liberals from boston, and even I had my books confiscated and the game forbidden while living in Southern California (which has its deeply religious areas). When my mother told me not to play D&D, ot wasn't because the lack of outside activity, it was because she genuinely thought it was the devil's game. I think outside the US, it may not have been as noticeable. But here the notion that gamers were geeky fantasy nerds, wasn't something i encountered until the 90s.

Brendan, if your parents really thought it was the devil's game, they may have been more religious than you let on. I guess it might be all relative, but a belief that Satan exists as an active entity that spawns crap to screw humanity, for many, falls into the "very religious" camp.

The appearance of that horrible Tom Hank's movie of Mazes & Monsters and "BADD", which were both bubbling up in 1982, was really when it started to acquire a bad public association. Also note that's the year that ET came out and depicted Fake D&D momentarily on the big screen, too.

I think before that, it was still under the radar and misunderstood by most people, like geocaching.

Quote from: Lynn;735665Brendan, if your parents really thought it was the devil's game, they may have been more religious than you let on. I guess it might be all relative, but a belief that Satan exists as an active entity that spawns crap to screw humanity, for many, falls into the "very religious" camp.

I can attest to my parents (at least, my mother - my father may have just gone along with it to shut her up) buying into the hype as well, while not being particularly religious (we said grace occasionally, but didn't go to church much more than once every couple of years).  One doesn't have to believe in Satan to believe in Satan-worshippers, and the Satanic-panic wasn't constrained to D&D back then.

Satan-worship was a ratings-getting topic, be it for talk shows, TV drama series or whatever movie-of-the-week dreck was doing a mashup of Satan-worship, pedos and human sacrifice.

All of this certainly had mom convinced that evil baby-eating Satan-worshippers were lurking around every corner, and that was enough to make her pick up the pitchfork and torch whenever commanded to by daytime television hosts.

A few years later, after the sheep stopped bleating, she barely raised an eyebrow when I purchased the black box and Rules Cyclopedia...

Quote from: Lynn;735665Brendan, if your parents really thought it was the devil's game, they may have been more religious than you let on. I guess it might be all relative, but a belief that Satan exists as an active entity that spawns crap to screw humanity, for many, falls into the "very religious" camp.

.

I never intended to suggest they weren't religious (my mother was extremely religious and my father was too in his own way----but this intensified while living in a highly religious and conservative community). I said they were liberals from Boston and we were living in a very conservative part of California at the time. That doesn't preclude being religious. My point was that lots of areas of the country are religious like this (including sections of Southern California). I mentioned their being from Boston because they were generally immune to many of these concerns, except in the case of D&D where they bought into the rumors. There was a perfect storm of hype at the time, and heavy metal was swept up in this as well.

A lot of secular non-conservative or not-terribly-conservative people were Anti-D&D during the Eighties panic. They tended to be the type who believed anything they saw on TV. "Liberal" windbag and general douche Phil Donahue ran a particularly nasty Anti-D&D episode of his afternoon talk show that bashed the hobby on the joyless and dubious grounds "That there's something funny about grown adults playing a game".  This "Defender of the working class" brought on some guy who apparently was a semi-famous East Coast DM to defend the game... then mostly attacked the guy for being a handyman and house-painter. How dare the unwashed proles waste time with a game when Donahue Manor's pool needs cleaned! The nerve!

Joyce Brothers, the celebrity psychiatrist, was to her eternal credit the one public figure of the time who stood up for role-playing a defended it as a positive hobby that taught  problem-solving skills.

I really wish there was someplace online that had collected/digitized all of those episodes from back in the day.

Today's entertainment value would be fantastic.

You think you guys had issues my mum started running her own campaigns.
Coming back from uni to find 8 or 9 geeks in the dining room making a pig's ear of trying to start a small scale war in a provincial capital was painful