Dungeons & Dragons: Satanic Panic | Retro Report | The New York Times

it began as a cult phenomenon then it caught on now a new game is sweeping the country you will burn forever and ever in eternal torment you are no more the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons debuted in 1974 it became a hit with many adolescents but critics claimed it was an invitation to devil worship the witchcraft the demonism the spells and worse it is not fun in games the media set off a satanic panic a lot of adults who think it's been connected to a number of suicides and murders that connection has been largely debunked it's nothing but a witch hunt and the game has generated an unexpected legacy this was a revolution on a summer day in August 1979 the family of a missing teenager called a Texas investigator named William dear with some startling information Dallas I Burt had disappeared from Michigan State University during the summer session James Dallas Eggbert the third was a 16 year old sophomore and his family hired deer to help find him he was a computer nerd and he had a large amount of hair and carries his little briefcase I wasn't sure that I was being told exactly what precipitated his disappearance so I said well I guess the best thing we could do is I'll go to Michigan State University and I'll find out for myself exactly what was going on what he found when he went to Egberts dorm room was a shelf of neatly stacked books and something else there was a court board with a series of tacks in what might look like a random pattern of thumbtacks the investigators saw what he thought could be a clue the shape resembled a building that was part of a network of underground campus steam tunnels which students told him they sometimes explored we set out with maps and we started going into the tunnels one morning with press everywhere I entered with the idea that I did not know what I was getting into but he had a hunch that it had something to do with a game that was growing in popularity this is a quest in a fantasy world of castles and dungeons monsters and Dragons this world has become real to these people it's all part of a game called Dungeons and Dragons Dungeons and Dragons also known as D&D was created by the late Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson in the early 1970s it was born out of their love for military war games and they devised scenarios with made-up characters that incorporated their interest in history and fantasy fiction Gygax said it provided an escape times feel a little adequate in dealing with the modern world it would feel much better if we knew that we were a superhero or mighty wizard the game is played in a group and the guide or Dungeon Master you enter a very small room talks the players through the fictional sometimes violent adventures they will go on and each has an elaborate scoring sheet for his character with points for wisdom and strength and the like a throw of these special dice decide the outcome of battles in an intricate scoring system nothing has acted out or the real action is in the mind now you guys are entering the castle but some including dear worried that while the action was imaginary some kids might take it too far you're leaving the world of reality into the world of fantasy that advocated murder decapitation and I'm going this isn't a healthy game how could it be a healthy game that game and dears hunch that Egbert was playing it in the tunnels made great fodder for headlines but it was a dead end and deer went back to Texas empty-handed it wasn't within a day or two that the phone call came in and I was told where I could find him that you're still alive so we flew out and I'm trying to remember his AK words but he couldn't really say a lot and I left it like that Eggbert was a complicated teenager whose disappearance was never fully explained and who later committed suicide there was speculation he was the victim of a campus game called Dungeons & Dragons but after a month-long nationwide search he was found unharmed deer fit into the growing suspicions about D&D in a book that pointed to the game as a culprit in Egberts disappearance but Tim Cask who helped develop D&D with Gary Gygax says deer was just hyping the story for personal gain he was a publicity hound and he knew that he could hang it on D&D and gather a lot of media frenzy and he did dallas Eggbert is a tragic story brilliant young man sent off to university at fifteen it had nothing to do with D&D and the steam tunnels still that attention set off an unexpected chain of events our stock took off literally we sold thousands of more copies within 90 days of all that stuff happening and we were up in print runs that that's when we took off sales nearly quadrupled the year after Egbert disappeared as the cult game was going mainstream Dungeons and Dragons generated interest in two conflicting groups people who wanted to buy it and those who wanted to ban it and televangelists took on a new crusade they are kids like yours like the ones in your neighborhood kids who are turning to darkness because society has shut God out conservative fundamentalist Christian group would see a game that involved satanic figures evil figures that would be a source of concern Dungeons & Dragons has been called the most effective introduction to the occult in the history of man it is a fantasy role-playing game that teaches demonology witchcraft Gygax a religious man himself was put on the defensive the company hired psychologist dr. Joyce brothers to and off criticism there is good and evil in life and the white Dungeons & Dragons is set up is that good triumphs over evil Tim cask says that in private he and Gygax couldn't believe the game was being linked to devil worship without sounding disrespectful at all we left our butts off most the time because it's like are you kidding me you really think we're teaching your children demonology but the controversy grew after the news media reported that a string of teen murders and suicides had one thing in common the killers or victims were D&D players Mary tau e was killed by two friends Ron Adcox and Darin Molitor the crucial point is can a game create psychosis or is someone like Darren Molitor an accident waiting to happen with or without the game if you found 12 kids in murder-suicide with with one connecting factor in each of them wouldn't you question it that's all people I would certainly do it in a scientific manner and this is is unscientific as you can get it's nothing but a witch-hunt but many grieving parents believe there was a connection Pat Poland's teenage son committed suicide and she spoke publicly claiming that his game plan contributed to his death these children not only begin to have violent dreams or violent thoughts or negative depressing type things they become very much a part of this character young people commit suicide for a whole variety of reasons in my research I saw nothing that led anyone towards depression or suicide Northwestern University professor of sociology Gary Allen fine wrote a book called shared fantasy and studied the D&D subculture they were the kind of kids and young people who didn't go to dances or date on the weekends it was part of a a nerd culture I guess you would say the D&D culture intrigued filmmakers and fiction writers Rona Jaffee's book mazes and monsters was loosely based on what people thought had happened to Dallas Egbert it was made into a movie starring young Tom Hanks let the journey begin well which way we go they went down the storm tunnels and got to play D&D in the stand the tunnels we had to like sit around a table like like how awesome would it have been if it turned out that D&D was like what they did Cory Doctorow is a writer and activist who early on was profiled as an avid D&D player in this story from 1985 the moral panic was mostly laughable the idea that there were people who were fundamentalist Christians for whom Dungeons and Dragons represented some kind of existential threat to my soul was silly you could go around and have really satisfying arguments with like profoundly ignorant grown-ups over time the Dungeons & Dragons controversy lost steam and today the common thread between D&D players is less likely to include any reported links to violence and more likely to involve any awards and literary prizes Stephen Colbert and writers tana Hussey coats and Junot Diaz are among the millions of smart bookish kids who play D&D and shrugged off any sense of panic people with bananas my mom moral panic she was way more worried of us getting shanked you know or getting caught up in some nonsense it was a lot of fun it also provided them a variety of other skills leadership skills negotiation skills we helped each other without even knowing it man I learned an enormous amount about what it meant to be courageous and what it meant to be passionate and the kind of moral hard moral choices that one needs to make in real life and this kind of fake sort of imagined plane of action and for Diaz as a young immigrant from the Dominican Republic the game had special meaning this was a revolution being a bunch of kids of color in a society that tells us but we are nothing being permitted and are under our own power to be heroic to have agency to do the hero stuff to take and be on adventures it's there was nothing like it for us very very very very impactful while some parents used to worry about what kids were playing now they're more likely to be worried about how they're playing cell phones and social media have revolutionized the way we live but it was plugging in changed the way your kids are growing up through the 20th century you have this tension between free play and controlled media I mean that we were concerned about what sitting in darkened movie theaters would do to our children just wait 30 years and they will be worried about what their children are doing and it will no doubt be something different than sexting and bullying as we know it today this is not a new phenomenon this it just changes with each new technology the American Academy of Pediatrics says that in this media-saturated age it's important for kids to use their imaginations in free play and in a twist the role-playing games that set off a moral panic in the past may look more like a solution than a problem to today's parents it's a great thing to dream yourself in other places and it helps understand who you are it's just nice to spend a lot of time thinking imagining in a group collaborating imagination is a good thing man very powerful

Channel: The New York Times

Views: 737,633

Rating: 4.804996 out of 5

Keywords: The New York Times, NY Times, NYT, Times Video, nytimes.com, news, newspaper, feature, reporting, Retro Report, NYT Retro Report, Dungeons and Dragons, Satan, Satanic Panic, Witchcraft, D&D, Military, War Games, Dungeon Master, Suicide, Cults, Murder, Psychosis, Depression, Nerds, Nerd Culture, Mazes and Monsters, Dallas Egbert, Stephen Colbert, Emmy Awards, Emmys, Bookish, Moral Panic, Junot Diaz, Board Games, Immigrants, Immigration, Gaming, Internet, Bullying, Media, Imagination

Id: ATUpSPj0x-c

Length: 13min 13sec (793 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 07 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/BillionTonsHyperbole]

Hail Satan and pass me that D20.

[u/SeudonymousKhan]

Now the same crazies blame Harry Potter instead.

[u/retorquere]

Which is hilarious, because if there's one thing that fosters a belief in witchcraft and magic, it's religion.

[u/MeatySoup]

There WAS that one kid that was huffin glue

[u/JukePlz]

If I remember correctly, in the last episode of Stranger Things there's a reference to this: we are shown a newspaper with a "satanic cult suspected" headline (or something like that) and the pictures has some D&D book or illustrations.

[u/crumpuppet]

I remember this being a big deal in South Africa - not D&D specifically, but just everything conservative parents decided they didn't want their kids to fiddle with. The Satanic panic in SA) was pretty crazy and unfortunately carries on to this day.

The dumbest example I can remember was a friend of mine wasn't allowed to watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles because his mother deemed the connection to "ninjas" to be Satanic. Fucking ridiculous. Even more ridiculous is that we got the British version which was actually called Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, but she must have caught wind of the evil ninja version somewhere.

[u/Mikejg23]

Religious people getting upset about people believing in magic and witch craft. The irony is painful

[u/BlueSunAnomaly]

Awesome report, and one that brings back so many memories of playing D&D. I was one of those imaginative, full-immersion Dungeon Masters that built props, created scrolls and visual puzzles, and placed those items in a nearby, and very detail-mapped woods where our little group of adventures would gather at our ramshackle "clubhouse," and play D&D. It was an imagination-and-escapism-driven, beautiful memory and time of my life I will never forget! SO-much-better-than rotting a youthful (or any age's) mind in front of a TV.

[u/Sack_J_Pedicy]

Lots of really edgy young idiots and people who identify as wickens and satanista DO also play D&D.

But most of the player base? Nerds, gamers, regular people.