I can get behind that.
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They were full blown adults attempting to verbally abuse a table full of kids. They werenât as witty as us, and it became a verbal game of shooting fish in a barrel.
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My dad was the one who taught me to play. I always felt bad for the kids whose parents thought it was some evil satan thing. I mean, my mom thought it was stupid, but she thought that about all the stuff I liked (and uh still does). I was raised totally non-religious so honestly the whole âoooh itâs SATANâ stuff probably only made my dad like it more. Although, Mr. Bells grew up a devout Mormon who wouldnât listen to anything but classical music for fear of Satanic influence and even HE played D&D with his dad.
Of course, it was the 80âs and I am a girl, so I didnât get a lot of chances to play outside of my immediate family until college.
I still have my dadâs old box set. Some of the books are missing, but thereâs a character sheet for the thief I made when I was 8 still in there. In fact, I think we probably have enough books at our house to play any edition of D&D. It helps that Mr. Bells has a best friend at WOTC so sometimes old books magically show up at our house.
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I played a bit in this era. The rumored occult links made it seem dangerous at first until we realized how stupid and tenuous that connection must have been. My brother and I just got the books and tried with our friends to figure it all out. We were probably 11 or so at the time. We had fun, but never really got serious about it.
I still have that set of nearly mint condition manuals (1st ed playersâ handbook, DM guide) and about 8 near-mint condition adventures, plus an untouched pad of Armory Character Sheets. Amazon has the pieces listed at around $500 in total, for used copies. I expect that is not the best place to sell mine. Any pointers?
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No that makes them Donald Trump.
My hipstery nerd pals looked down their noses at D&D and played something called âMithril.â It was a realistâs version of D&D where you could make more money robbing bars and restaurants than following some idiot quest into a dungeon.
I lost a friend to Satanic Panic over music. That stuff was way more prevalent in the 80s. He was a hard partying rock and roll fan with a scholarly interest in the music. When the âRock = Satanâ charlatans would visit our local churches, heâd be there to brandish the actual copies of âHotel Californiaâ and would challenge the flim-flam men to find the offending Satanism on the actual product. In a short time, my friend became a born-again Christian. That was a much more insidious little scheme they had going there.
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A realistâs version would ignore the bars and restaurants and loot the treasury with the help of a few paid politicians. Generally by providing services needed for the entire kingdom to follow some idiot quest.
(Former Haliburton/KBR CEO and still stockholder Dick Cheneyâs war made him and his friends very rich indeed. Small wonder it lasted far longer than WWII.)
I donât think it has, at least not uniformly. Itâs no longer a national belief, but some people still seem to be hanging on to it. It was still going, to some degree, in the '90s (e.g. West Memphis Three), and just last year there was a family murdered in Florida that was called a âpagan ritual killing.â Because the bodies had been found the day before the âblue moon.â (but had been killed some days before that, which meant there wasnât any connection to the event), were âarranged in a ritual patternâ (except they were in different rooms), and killed in a âritual mannerâ (variously shot, stabbed, bludgeoned). The family member accused of killing them had a book about Wicca, so cased closed, I guess. Every so often I read about other rural, Southern law enforcement talking about âSatanists,â so clearly for some people the panic lives on.
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The irony is that Gary Gygax was so Christian he refused to celebrate Christmas because of its pagan nature⌠http://boingboing.net/2012/12/24/gary-gygax-explains-why-christ.html
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Isnât that basically the point of EVE?
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We all love Gary.
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I wouldnât go that far. But it is definitely a televised form of pure evil incarnate. My niece loves that stuff. Despite my best efforts to introduce her to Studio Ghibli, the Diniverse, and Godzilla, she still just binges on Ponies when I babysit her.
Isnât that what I said? (Possibly my perspective is skewed by the fundie Christians in my familyâŚ)
There are a lot of rumors around Garyâs religion and world view. I have heard everything from Orcs (and their rape encouraging deity) being a stand in for black people to a paladinâs alignment requirement based on God being lawful good. I canât find a lot of support for the former, and a lot more for the latter.
Yeah, the cleric/paladin stuff was heavily modeled specifically on Biblical stories and European Christian history and folklore (such as the false belief that the mediĂŚval Christian clergy who fought in wars used clubs in battles as a way of getting around prohibitions to ânot spill bloodâ). Despite all the fantasy/multicultural deities, religion was very much a (mock) mediĂŚval Christian affair in D&D.
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Not to mention the inspirations of things like paladins coming directly from fantasy novels with heavy Christian leanings, like Three Hearts and Three Lions.
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they just can t admit that humans are quite capable of doing truly dreadful things without the need for supernatural intervention beside anything else that would mean their god got it wrong in the build, just think a sort of divine zero day exploit.
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