The Moral Scourge Of DnD in the 80s

[Nodoze]

RE Nodoze's post.

For me the best thing about DnD was the variety in how you approached the game. My personal favourite campaign was that of a drow household where everybody was LE at best and constantly looking over their shoulder for a knife in the back from their fellow PCs. Can't imagine a goodly party, although in the face of an omnipotently evil campaign I can see the appeal. Nothing beats getting one over on your buddies and offing a fellow player in a contest of wits character power.

Yeah being backed into a corner of the world with all "good" races on the brink of extinction made for a great goodly campaign. I understand your point and we had similar "issues" that made things interesting and party dynamics were often the most important to the fun. We had brawls/duels to settle arguments. The rough "borderline good" Ranger not letting the Paladins know he had taken a prisoner while he scared the info out of him behind the farm house. The Ranger and Rogue going "to cover the back entrance" and then not telling the party how they got their success. Drow PC's that were relatively good by Drow standards but not quite on the up-and-up to those on the surface. Paladins player characters who became Anti-Paladins then favorite NPCs whom the party couldn't quite kill. Characters getting turned into vampires then turning on the party. Rogues stealing from the party. Druids turning on us and getting the elves to leave the union... Druid Thief conveniently failing to mention to the party that she was also a thief (we thought she was only a druid). A Paladin getting mind-controlled and still being played by the character (with the DM privately advising him) then turning on the party. I think one of my favorites was when we had a Barbarian who didn't allow magic in the party so everyone wanted the Frostbrand blade that didn't glow (until it dropped below freezing and all hell broke loose when he turned on the wielder). It was pretty funny when the barbarian finally figured out that the Bard's songs were actually wielding magic (he had a low int score) and after warning him the barbarian knocked the bard unconscious in the middle of the fight while yelling "no evil bard songs!".

I did get dared to play evil in a party of all evil or chaotic neutral characters. They kept bugging me about it so I finally gave in. In the end I schemed with a buddy to kill the rest of the party and in the final fight after the enemy dropped and everyone was mostly dead (we held back some) we then killed everyone and then I killed him. After that no one asked me to play evil again.

A LE Drow campaign would be interesting to see unfold. We never tried that and didn't have evil folk who had to be lawful and relatively keep their word.

[Cardoor]

There were 666 views when I clicked on this...spooky!

It is "Shout at the devil" not "Shout with the devil" ~Motley Crue

[Satyriasys]

Dark Dungeons

[skorpeon]

Dark Dungeons

That cartoon was pretty crazy. Started kinda fun and the went weird. Still in my case games were always amongst friends, so there was no evil witch influencing us. Seems rather far fetched to me and makes the producers of such cartoons and articles seem a lot more crazed that I thought. Still I am surprised by the controversy that did not seem to reach New Zealand (We are relatively tolerant of religion or the lack of it).

[Charlese1]

I started playing back in the 80's we had sessions on the weekend that would last 24 hours. My parents didn't understand what the attraction to the game was. Anna Jaffa wrote a book about D&D in which one of the characters of the book started acting out his role-playing character in real life. No one ever talks about the successful people who have played the game, I read an article about three people who have played the game sense college and still play, one is a retired Air Force Colonel, one is a Doctor and the other a Lawyer.

[AlmGhandi]

I remember not getting accepted to a medical school because I listed it as one of my hobbies... the interviewer was very against RPGs and I knew when she started going on about it that this was not going to end well!

[phillymiket]

Me and my friend were reading (not even playing) some AD&D books shortly after the 60 minutes thing came out.

We were brought before the principal who notified our parents that they would prefer we did not play that game in the lunch room.

[Brandwynn]

a I started playing in 1978. The first game ended in a literal brawl with my brothers.. After we that no one questioned the DM.. Me.. I would have rather been a player, but not one of them wanted to read the relevant book.. What book a slim volume.. Shhesh then argue with me over rules that they had no idea about in the first place.. Yes, it was the we settled our arguments.

However, we went on to play the expert rules and the Advanced D&d.. We played the game right up till we all went in different directions. about 1983

Though, I did get a memorable chance to play a dwarf. I played a modified dwarf (thief) named krago.. Tragically he died of a poisoning.. A miss marked healing potion.. I really hated my brother for that bait and switch. lol

I have played AD&D and variety of other RPG's in such places as a national forest. On the street of Santa Cruz.. A one off game with just a buddy and I wandering around San Francisco.

[Brandwynn]

Nice retrospective article from the beeb on the outcry over our "satanic" game in its heyday

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26328105

Anyone take any flack from their family and friends around this time?

The couple of people became ex friends on the spot.. Interesting how that worked. Say something so stupid and suddenly an exfriend.. In those days it was easier.. You simply did not call any more or talked to the person when you saw him/her in public. No face book. twitter, or internet in general.

[Lyr_Levaine]

I recall the day the Larson Letter finally filtered down to my neck of the woods ... my elder brother, being totally brainwashed by the cult he was involved in, set out to destroy his collection of D&D books, comics, and ect. I managed to salvage a few things from the burn barrel before they were completely lost ... the books made it through OK, but his first edition spider man will never fetch the price it should, due to the extreme charring. No, I don't still have it, it was damaged beyond all hope, and I discarded it, along with a lot of other virtually priceless collectibles that the "It's evil" fever destroyed.
Today, the elder brother has become a reactionary atheist, which is sadder still, as there are some redeeming qualities in Christianity and the conservative point of view; he will not even consider those ideas that make perfect sense if they come from a "right wing" perspective. Larson managed to transform many fanatical Christians into fanatical atheists, and that is something I have a hard time forgiving him for; fanatics that abide by a certain set of rules and regulations I can deal with, but fanatics that reject all rules and regulations are a nightmare!
I regard roleplaying, and its benefits and ills from a clinical psychologist's position: The game framework allows people to examine the principles of cause and effect without personally suffering the consequences. When a person plays a CE character, the game world should respond accordingly, and the CE will find their career short indeed. LE and NE characters can get along quite well in society, and indeed, we see a great many of these in public service today! The United States, as it is today, is a LE society, populated by a large number of PN and NG folk, ruled by primarily NE politicians. Me? I'm a NG being pushed towards CG more and more, every day.

[ChaosWolf1982]

And for some folks, the misinformation burrowed so deep that the panic persisted well after the end of the 1980's.

Such as my mother.

Who, thanks to this ill-informed fear, destroyed over $150 worth of D&D manuals I bought, partly with birthday money and partly with earned money, and my very first foray into RPGs... but this wasn't in 1989, it was in 2004.

This wasn't 1E or ADnD texts, this was all the way into 3.5 Edition stuff, decades after the rest of the nation had learned better and moved on. The three core books, Savage Species, and one or two others whose names I have forgotten. All torn apart and trashed.

Worst part was, she didn't even have the courtesy to confront me directly when doing so, but did it while I was out of the house, and grilled me about why I had "those devil books" when I returned home afterwards.

Needless to say, I don't have physical copies of my gamebooks anymore, only downloaded PDFs, even if this means they are of dubious legality.

The fact I, due to various health issues of mine making driving impossible, being broke and unemployed because of these same issues, and thus obviously being unable to move out on my own, means I still live with her, makes getting back into the gaming scene nigh-impossible - no way in hell I'd ever be able to talk her into driving me somewhere for a regular gaming session... especially since the closest store that sells tabletop RPG stuff like books and minis is forty miles away from the ant-fart town I'm stuck in.

Hell, I'm lucky I still have a couple sets of dice...

[blackdoguk]

And for some folks, the misinformation burrowed so deep that the panic persisted well after the end of the 1980's.

Such as my mother.

Who, thanks to this ill-informed fear, destroyed over $150 worth of D&D manuals I bought, partly with birthday money and partly with earned money, and my very first foray into RPGs... but this wasn't in 1989, it was in 2004.

This wasn't 1E or ADnD texts, this was all the way into 3.5 Edition stuff, decades after the rest of the nation had learned better and moved on. The three core books, Savage Species, and one or two others whose names I have forgotten. All torn apart and trashed.

Worst part was, she didn't even have the courtesy to confront me directly when doing so, but did it while I was out of the house, and grilled me about why I had "those devil books" when I returned home afterwards.

Needless to say, I don't have physical copies of my gamebooks anymore, only downloaded PDFs, even if this means they are of dubious legality.

The fact I, due to various health issues of mine making driving impossible, being broke and unemployed because of these same issues, and thus obviously being unable to move out on my own, means I still live with her, makes getting back into the gaming scene nigh-impossible - no way in hell I'd ever be able to talk her into driving me somewhere for a regular gaming session... especially since the closest store that sells tabletop RPG stuff like books and minis is forty miles away from the ant-fart town I'm stuck in.

Hell, I'm lucky I still have a couple sets of dice...

Sorry to hear this. Seems a lot of people in the thread have faced torrents of ignorance over what is a deeply social, communicative and creative hobby - a skill even. Have you looked on reddit for rpg groups? A lot of people use team viewer or programs like d20 pro + skype to do online sessions. You could try looking here for a place to get started with such an online group

https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD

When my uni group moved towns we worked out a d20 pro game, which did have its drawbacks but brought about new benefits. I love dice, maps and models - thats the rpg experience for me, but with roll20 etc a lot of the overhead math, initiative and debuffing is handled for you so the DM can focus on the important stuff. Plus there's infinite amounts of free maps, monster and character icons, even whole campaigns for free out there.

Hope you manage to get a game set up again, if you find you have a lot of spare time living at home you should look into setting something like this up: if you're a DM you'd get players quite easily.

[blackdoguk]

Here's a look at how online play could go

[Ykt]

When I was 7 my father introduced me to AD&D ... then I was so proud I told my aunt who is a nun that I played Dungeons & Dragons .. and she looked horrified, she said the dragon is the beast of the apocalypse. From that day at such a young age I realized she was a nutjob and religion wasn't for me (I still went to sunday school for 8 more years and did all the catholic sacraments of initiation and communion to please my folks).

I'm a NG being pushed towards CG more and more, every day.

You don't get to pick your alignment IRL. Maybe you're NE posing as NG.

[Enderoc]

I invited a friend over from school one day and played D&D. He told his dad what we did and was never allowed back over again as his dad thought it was of the devil.

[Uska]

Yeah being backed into a corner of the world with all "good" races on the brink of extinction made for a great goodly campaign. I understand your point and we had similar "issues" that made things interesting and party dynamics were often the most important to the fun. We had brawls/duels to settle arguments. The rough "borderline good" Ranger not letting the Paladins know he had taken a prisoner while he scared the info out of him behind the farm house. The Ranger and Rogue going "to cover the back entrance" and then not telling the party how they got their success. Drow PC's that were relatively good by Drow standards but not quite on the up-and-up to those on the surface. Paladins player characters who became Anti-Paladins then favorite NPCs whom the party couldn't quite kill. Characters getting turned into vampires then turning on the party. Rogues stealing from the party. Druids turning on us and getting the elves to leave the union... Druid Thief conveniently failing to mention to the party that she was also a thief (we thought she was only a druid). A Paladin getting mind-controlled and still being played by the character (with the DM privately advising him) then turning on the party. I think one of my favorites was when we had a Barbarian who didn't allow magic in the party so everyone wanted the Frostbrand blade that didn't glow (until it dropped below freezing and all hell broke loose when he turned on the wielder). It was pretty funny when the barbarian finally figured out that the Bard's songs were actually wielding magic (he had a low int score) and after warning him the barbarian knocked the bard unconscious in the middle of the fight while yelling "no evil bard songs!".

I did get dared to play evil in a party of all evil or chaotic neutral characters. They kept bugging me about it so I finally gave in. In the end I schemed with a buddy to kill the rest of the party and in the final fight after the enemy dropped and everyone was mostly dead (we held back some) we then killed everyone and then I killed him. After that no one asked me to play evil again.

A LE Drow campaign would be interesting to see unfold. We never tried that and didn't have evil folk who had to be lawful and relatively keep their word.

People playing evil characters didnt help the negative perceptions of the game

[Uska]

I started playing back in the 80's we had sessions on the weekend that would last 24 hours. My parents didn't understand what the attraction to the game was. Anna Jaffa wrote a book about D&D in which one of the characters of the book started acting out his role-playing character in real life. No one ever talks about the successful people who have played the game, I read an article about three people who have played the game sense college and still play, one is a retired Air Force Colonel, one is a Doctor and the other a Lawyer.

I have played since I was 12(a little over 40 years) and I have a Master's degree and a long successful marriage, never been arrested or anything.

[Uska]

I remember not getting accepted to a medical school because I listed it as one of my hobbies... the interviewer was very against RPGs and I knew when she started going on about it that this was not going to end well!

That had to be a horrible medical school anyways. I have played with a a priest, a minister and a Rabbi and doctors and lawyers and we cant forget there is a famous hollywood director who plays games.

[blackdoguk]

To my knowledge at least, DnD was relatively hassle free in Scotland, even back in its heyday. Like a lot of "geek" culture and science fiction it's seen a resurgence in popularity. In Glasgow (Scotland's biggest city ~1m people) we have 5 or so shops in the city center where you can go to meet friends and play, in addition to the university clubs etc. Maybe I'm generalising too much if I say that the sort of moral outcry that can take hold in America is harder to spread in a smaller country with a keen sense or private morality.

Another reason for the apparent growth might be the continued popularity of the Games Workshop brand and Warhammer games - they got their start in the late 80s in England and have grown pretty steadily across every city/town on our little island. There's a museum in Nottingham which is pretty cool, even for a casual observer of that hobby like myself. The models make good DnD minis especially if you have friends that are a dab hand with paints.

That had to be a horrible medical school anyways. I have played with a a priest, a minister and a Rabbi and doctors and lawyers and we cant forget there is a famous hollywood director who plays games.

Yup I was shocked when I read this - I'm in quite a challenging degree and to be honest most kids would benefit from some of the transferable social skills you can pick up in a gaming group.

[Theolin]

Yep was an interesting time.

Also 20/20 did a follow up to their 80's show almost exactly 20 years after & pretty much apologized for portraying it badly, was a surprising piece.
Wish I could find the second show again, I just remember catching about 1/2 of their 20 minute piece about the original.

Unfortunately I still run across the 'devil' worship groups even today.