I guess I’m going to Hell, then. It’s OK, though, I already knew that if there is a God it’s almost certainly not any of the ones any human has ever believed in, so I’ll be in good company.
But yeah - 2nd edition AD&D was ridiculously complicated compared the 3rd and later. I started playing at ~ age 12 and it took me months of re-reading things to piece the basics together, and I still had to bookmark dozens of tables to actually play.
I don’t know if you ever saw the first edition or “gold labeled” stuff, they came up with some armor definitions and adjustments that were at best cumbersome. Unearthed Arcana has a lot of it.
I grew up on first ed, second seemed so simple at the time. Until all the brown player’s handbook supplements came out. I have grown to like the 3.5 and later though for it’s simplicity and ease of customization. i think my favorite set of mechanics though was twilight 2000, easy to use and character creation took no time at all.
That’s my problem with gaming tropes in general. Considering table-toppers, LARPers, or electronic gamers as unattractive, basement dwelling, virgins will make a lot more enemies than friends.
I think I interpreted that thing about gaming preventing you from getting laid as meaning if you were gaming with your friends, you weren’t out dating and meeting new people. I didn’t take it as “gamers are unattractive and socially inept,” but I suppose that is the old stereotype. I just figured Jason wouldn’t go there.
I saw Monsters and Mazes on tv when I was around 9 or 10, which was also when all my free time revolved around either breakin’ or D&D (with the same crowd, no less.) All the boys at my school obsessed over D&D, but we were a bit young to be trusted to play it fairly, we cheated all the time. Anyway, despite that I lived in MI, I never knew about Egbert; I didn’t realize Tom Hank’s character was tied to a news figure. Despite the watered-down dramatization, I did feel sad for that character. Now that I know Egbert’s whole story, I feel pretty terrible for that poor boy.
Was it theoretically possible to die during character creation? Or is that merely Traveller?
Only Traveller. You didn’t have to worry about anything more than bad stats, radiation poisoning, and the fact that you were living in the aftermath of a nuclear war in Twilight.
By the way, 1st Ed or 2nd Ed of Twilight: 2000?
I got so hacked off with that mechanic that I learnt enough BASIC to automate it.
And the most ironic thing about being banned from playing D&D due to its “Satanic Influence”? My gaming group went from being a band of Lawful Good-y two-shoes in AD&D, to a bunch of amoral assassins with no conscience in Traveller because there’s no Alignment mechanic …
Why is Mazes and Monsters “infamous”? I liked both the book and the movie.
William Dear didn’t put out his book to ‘correct’ things, he put out his book as part of his personal self-promotion. Dear let manufactured the D&D story, then let it stand (and populized it when it suited him) until sales of his book started to slack off, then he pushed the drug angle. He was self-agrandizing. I mean, look at this guy:
Interested folks should go to the RPG Advocacy site for more details.
People on the left did as much to advance Satanic Panic as the right did. Misguided feminists, anti-CIA activists, etc pushed it hard, and some continue to do so to this very day. On the other hand, there were evangelicals, such as the Passentinos who worked hard against it. The wasn’t, and isn’t a left or right to this issue - there are the children of the inquisition, and children of the enlightenment. You find inquisitors across the political spectrum.
I got the joke, and I’m thirteen. My dad used to play and he got me into it very recently. He dug out his AD&D books and somewhere in the PHB, there it was: THAC0. (I play by the 5e rules now though.)
As a matter of fact, I’m not even really a nerd. I have a lot of friends, sit at the “popular table” at lunch, and although I don’t have a girlfriend at the moment, I’ve had them before, and they were popular too.
D&D is NOT dead.
When I think of this period and gay men, I always think of Darby Crash, and how he hid his sexual orientation from everyone in the scene. I always thought that this contributed to his suicide at 19 (the night before Lennon was shot). Between the early stages of the AIDS epidemic, and young men who feared coming out of the closet, way too many young people were lost. But the more we know about this time period and how this sort of bigotry impacts people and can kill them, the better we can move forward into a better, more open society. But it can never bring back those lives lost.
It’s good you made it through to the other side of this dark time.
There were some side rules if you joined the military and kept doing deployments, I can’t remember if you could die or not though.
Ironic that the real Evil behind all this are the religious and homophobic parents who can’t accept their own children for what they are. That, and the fact the people who believe in magical angels and devils consider playing a game that involves magical stuff “evil”… Do people even think for themselves at all?
Me and my partner got together over the gaming table (so to speak), and we now play Dungeon World and Savage Worlds with our little girl every weekend. Birth control my arse!
I was tempted to write something like ‘GAMERZ4LIFE YOLO’ but I decided against it.
I’ve made a post here before about the Satanic Panic and it’s effects on me and my gaming group (even in the UK) so I won’t re-hash it again. It’s amazing to me that so many intelligent, thoughtful individuals suddenly went full-on rabid bat-shit insane over little more than a musical genre and a fecking tabletop game.
That would explain why I’m blind and insane currently… wait that doesn’t really explain why I’m blind unless… uh, never mind it does make sense…
You have no idea how correct you are Craig. Many of us use Peter J. Carroll’s ideas, but we threaten no one. There is no need, for once Great Cthulhu arises all shall be consumed.
ph’nglui mglw’nafh cthulhu r’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn
