Who here played or remembered the game?  The closet I came to it, were the video games.

Same thing happened to Heavy Metal music.  Any entertainment/recreational genre that uses Pagan/Wiccan/mythological imagery or concepts is going to garner a hysterical reaction from one or more Christian groups.

I remember the Mormon church banned it in 1982 (I think?)

Patricia Pulling (from Virginia) had a son named Irving who committed suicide after playing the game.  Pulling blamed D&D and went on a crusade against the game until she died 15 years later.  Very reminiscent of ensuing hysteria over kids who committed suicide with Judas Priest or Ozzy records on their turntables.  Let's not look at the fact that 99.999% of people who play D&D or listen to Heavy Metal don't hurt themselves or anybody else.  Let's not look at the rest of the individual's life apart from D&D or 'Metal.  Let's just blame it all on the Satan getting to your kid via a record or a game!
::)

I never really got into D&D myself, though I had a D&D set.  The most dangerous thing about D&D in the early '80s was the figurines were made out of lead!
:o

I remember that there was even a backlash against Judas Priest.

I remember that there was even a backlash against Judas Priest.


To paraphrase Chris Rock's take on the Columbine shooters --

Never mind what kind of music they listened to, whatever happened to CARRRAZZAYYY!
::)

If they wanted to go after Dungeons & Dragons, they might as well go after Tolkein, C.S. Lewis, and Halloween!

They did?

Never mind.

  I dabbled in D&D but preferred the Marvel Comics role playing game, also by TSR...

  All I remember is one or more kids becoming so upset at the "death" of one of their longstanding characters that they committed suicide.  I never knew if this was true...

   I dabbled in D&D but preferred the Marvel Comics role playing game, also by TSR...

   All I remember is one or more kids becoming so upset at the "death" of one of their longstanding characters that they committed suicide.  I never knew if this was true...


That's why I liked Doom!  Either you kill them or they kill you.  Nothing else.
8)

Who here played or remembered the game?  The closet I came to it, were the video games.


http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/5841/yourdadwasalevel22necro.gif

You're damn right I played it.

Video games don't come close to capturing the experience.  Even the best RPGs only automate the time-consuming part of rolling the dice and adding the numbers. 

What made D&D (and other pen-and-paper RPGs) special was having a human being acting as a Dungeon Master.  The Dungeon Master's role was a fancy title for "guy who's the referee/storyteller/guide/movie-director" for the game. 

In a video game, if the party decides to walk south (even though the big lake that surrounds the fire-belching volcano and the caves of treasure are all to the north), eventually they reach a wall.  The game shatters realism by placing no towns, no villages, and eventually an insurmountable mountain, ocean, or other obstacle if they try to draw outside the lines.  You will go north.  If you don't go to the bridge, you can't meet the guy at the bridge.  Even if you do, if you don't click "Accept Quest", there's nothing to do.  So whether he wants you to save the universe or kill 20 rats, you do it.

In a D&D campaign, it doesn't matter if the players go south.  Or if they ignore the clues that are supposed to set them on the trail of the main quest.  And if the guy tells you to kill 20 rats before proceeding with the quest, you can tell the dungeon master to go fark himself.  A good DM will never give you timesink quests like the killing of 20 rats just to level up, but he will see to it that even if they walk south for a day or two, the party eventually encounters a village full of secretive villagers and talkative bartenders (and if there are any girls there, he'll let you do them, although your character will suffer a dexterity penalty for the rest of the campaign as a result of having to scratch himself every ten minutes!) no matter which way they go.  And a bunch of subterranean tunnels full of treasure in a castle that happens to be surrounded by a big moat... well, that'll do if they didn't go for the volcano.

In both cases, the game is still ultimately on rails.  The players will eventually encounter someone with enough information to make the quest seem worthwhile, they'll eventually have to encounter the water-based monsters in the moat, lake, or other first layer of defense, the firey ones slinking around in the second layer of defense, and eventually make their way to the juicy golden prize that's the object of the quest.  And at no time did they feel like they were nothing more than FedEx deliverymen or hired rat-killers.  Maybe this time your friend, whose character backstabbed yours during the last campaign, has to deal with the resentment from the last campaign.  Maybe the DM has to strategically place non-player characters to antagonize (or calm!) the resentments between various party members.  A good DM will do all that, and more. 

With a human referee, the players can pretend the whole thing was their idea... and be mostly right.  There are no canned responses, no "accept quest" buttons, and the story can be as complicated as the DM and players - acting cooperatively and/or competitively with each other - cares to make it. 

When we played, it wasn't considered a complete all-nighter of D&D if it didn't devolve, at least at one point, into at least one five-minute period in which everyone in the room (DM and players alike) were lost to fits of hysterical laughter.

D&D is more than just gaming:  It's creative writing, communication, problem-solving, logic, probability theory, and improvisational comedy all rolled into one.

As a small example, what would have simply been a clang as a weapon bounced harmlessly off a structure (or a "You can't do that" in a text-based adventure game), can turn into the following bit of awesomeness:  Oh no, you've awakened the gazebo!


   I dabbled in D&D but preferred the Marvel Comics role playing game, also by TSR...

   All I remember is one or more kids becoming so upset at the "death" of one of their longstanding characters that they committed suicide.  I never knew if this was true...


You're probably thinking of Mazes and Monsters, the made-for-TV movie that marked the jumping of that shark in pop culture.

No D&D discussion would be complete without a link to the story of Dark Dungeons, the Chick Tract that took the hysteria to new levels of madness.  (Bonus: Some incredible parodies at the link cited, as well as some historical revisionism on the part of Jack Chick.  And a parody 25th reunion of the characters.)

It seems like D&D helped kids explore a deeper realm of fantasy within the confines of a game of chance.  That alone is going to have strong appeal to adolescents whose imaginations are still flourishing.  If they remain stimulated, they will remain able to access this deeper level of fantasy throughout their lives.  This phenomenon often leads people to become nerds but it pays to be a nerd, even if you kinda suck at being a nerd.  Just ask Bill Gates!

Okay, so that's a little scary for older generations who might not have been familiarized with the greater fabric of their consciousnesses via, say, transcendental mediation, a positive LSD experience, a profound spiritual awareness, or anything beyond meat and potatoes, go to church on Sunday, be a good neighbor, do the right thing.  Before the counterrevolution of the 1960s, in America there was no incentive for the average person to think of themselves as a spiritual being, as an abstract concept.  This kind of thinking was relegated to philosophers, spiritualists, philologists, mystics, shaman, and the like.  A lot of America was terribly provincial in the 1980s -- certainly more so than now.  If you got problems.  Talk to the minister/priest/rabbi.  If you have extra special problems, make an appointment with the talking doctor.
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/13/icon_scratch.gif

It seems like D&D helped kids explore a deeper realm of fantasy within the confines of a game of chance.  That alone is going to have strong appeal to adolescents whose imaginations are still flourishing.  If they remain stimulated, they will remain able to access this deeper level of fantasy throughout their lives.  This phenomenon often leads people to become nerds but it pays to be a nerd, even if you kinda suck at being a nerd.  Just ask Bill Gates!


+1

Ask me to describe the ideal sysadmin or programmer?  Start with an imaginitave and creative, problem-solver.  If he's in his 30s to 40s, he probably played D&D or some other pen-and-paper RPG.  (Today's closest equivalent would be WoW, but within the context of guild-vs-guild interaction, where humans still have to interact with one another to achieve goals within the gamespace that cannot simply be preprogrammed into the game by the developers.)

But back to the '80s.  Of my circle of 8-10 D&D-playing friends in high school, at least 6 of us wound up in science/technology fields.  At least two of them got into computers solely because they wanted to solve problems related to the game (chiefly the archiving and printing out of up-to-date character sheets with automatically-calculated statistical bonuses/penalties), and because the rest of us knew enough about programming to help them out when they hit a rough spot.

RIP, Gary Gygax.

Now people play the Pokemon, Yu-gi-oh!, Bakugan, etc. card games. The cartoon shows the card games were based off are for kids, though I've noticed the more serious players seem to be older teens and adults!

No D&D discussion would be complete without a link to the story of Dark Dungeons, the Chick Tract that took the hysteria to new levels of madness.  (Bonus: Some incredible parodies at the link cited, as well as some historical revisionism on the part of Jack Chick.  And a parody 25th reunion of the characters.)




I have to say...I saw that on http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.asp and it was okay. I just can't stand Chick hating Catholics though!

PS-If I would be a D&D Character, it would be...Your Mom!

I haven't played D&D myself(although I was curious about trying it). The closest thing to that that I play are console RPGs(Like Dragon Quest).

http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/5841/yourdadwasalevel22necro.gif

You're damn right I played it.

Video games don't come close to capturing the experience.  Even the best RPGs only automate the time-consuming part of rolling the dice and adding the numbers. 

What made D&D (and other pen-and-paper RPGs) special was having a human being acting as a Dungeon Master.  The Dungeon Master's role was a fancy title for "guy who's the referee/storyteller/guide/movie-director" for the game. 

In a video game, if the party decides to walk south (even though the big lake that surrounds the fire-belching volcano and the caves of treasure are all to the north), eventually they reach a wall.  The game shatters realism by placing no towns, no villages, and eventually an insurmountable mountain, ocean, or other obstacle if they try to draw outside the lines.  You will go north.  If you don't go to the bridge, you can't meet the guy at the bridge.  Even if you do, if you don't click "Accept Quest", there's nothing to do.  So whether he wants you to save the universe or kill 20 rats, you do it.

In a D&D campaign, it doesn't matter if the players go south.  Or if they ignore the clues that are supposed to set them on the trail of the main quest.  And if the guy tells you to kill 20 rats before proceeding with the quest, you can tell the dungeon master to go fark himself.  A good DM will never give you timesink quests like the killing of 20 rats just to level up, but he will see to it that even if they walk south for a day or two, the party eventually encounters a village full of secretive villagers and talkative bartenders (and if there are any girls there, he'll let you do them, although your character will suffer a dexterity penalty for the rest of the campaign as a result of having to scratch himself every ten minutes!) no matter which way they go.  And a bunch of subterranean tunnels full of treasure in a castle that happens to be surrounded by a big moat... well, that'll do if they didn't go for the volcano.

In both cases, the game is still ultimately on rails.  The players will eventually encounter someone with enough information to make the quest seem worthwhile, they'll eventually have to encounter the water-based monsters in the moat, lake, or other first layer of defense, the firey ones slinking around in the second layer of defense, and eventually make their way to the juicy golden prize that's the object of the quest.  And at no time did they feel like they were nothing more than FedEx deliverymen or hired rat-killers.  Maybe this time your friend, whose character backstabbed yours during the last campaign, has to deal with the resentment from the last campaign.  Maybe the DM has to strategically place non-player characters to antagonize (or calm!) the resentments between various party members.  A good DM will do all that, and more. 

With a human referee, the players can pretend the whole thing was their idea... and be mostly right.  There are no canned responses, no "accept quest" buttons, and the story can be as complicated as the DM and players - acting cooperatively and/or competitively with each other - cares to make it. 

When we played, it wasn't considered a complete all-nighter of D&D if it didn't devolve, at least at one point, into at least one five-minute period in which everyone in the room (DM and players alike) were lost to fits of hysterical laughter.

D&D is more than just gaming:  It's creative writing, communication, problem-solving, logic, probability theory, and improvisational comedy all rolled into one.

As a small example, what would have simply been a clang as a weapon bounced harmlessly off a structure (or a "You can't do that" in a text-based adventure game), can turn into the following bit of awesomeness:  Oh no, you've awakened the gazebo!

You're probably thinking of Mazes and Monsters, the made-for-TV movie that marked the jumping of that shark in pop culture.

No D&D discussion would be complete without a link to the story of Dark Dungeons, the Chick Tract that took the hysteria to new levels of madness.  (Bonus: Some incredible parodies at the link cited, as well as some historical revisionism on the part of Jack Chick.  And a parody 25th reunion of the characters.)




That reminds me, Gen Con recently ended here in Indy.

I have to say...I saw that on http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.asp and it was okay. I just can't stand Chick hating Catholics though!

PS-If I would be a D&D Character, it would be...Your Mom!


Is that "chick hating Catholics" or "chick-hating Catholics"?
:o

Is that "chick hating Catholics" or "chick-hating Catholics"?
:o


Chick...hating Catholics!

Like this tract here....http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0082/0082_01.asp

Jack Chick, You are a sad, strange little man, and you have my pity.

::)

Chick...hating Catholics!

Like this tract here....http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0082/0082_01.asp


Oh that Chick.  Little slow on the uptake here in Maxwell Land!
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/08/rudolf.gif

Use of God to divide men from one another is abuse of His name.

Thus spake Maxwell.
::)

Jack Chick, You are a sad, strange little man, and you have my pity.

::)


I know, he might as well make a film called "All Catholics go to Hell" (And I don't believe that...I think they'll be in Heaven...the Catholics that is).

Is that "chick hating Catholics" or "chick-hating Catholics"?
:o


http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/hyphen.jpg

For every topic, there exists at least one sweet ass-XKCD.

A "sexy-ass car" conjoins the words "sexy" and "ass" for an adjective with the extraneous syllable "ass" as an emphatic.

"Sexy ass-car appends the extraneous prefix "ass" to "car" implying an adjectival regarding the make, manufacture, style, and purpose of the car.  That one's a surefire loser.  Hyphens-watch your-Hyphens!

Same thing happened to Heavy Metal music.  Any entertainment/recreational genre that uses Pagan/Wiccan/mythological imagery or concepts is going to garner a hysterical reaction from one or more Christian groups.

I remember the Mormon church banned it in 1982 (I think?)

Patricia Pulling (from Virginia) had a son named Irving who committed suicide after playing the game.  Pulling blamed D&D and went on a crusade against the game until she died 15 years later.  Very reminiscent of ensuing hysteria over kids who committed suicide with Judas Priest or Ozzy records on their turntables.  Let's not look at the fact that 99.999% of people who play D&D or listen to Heavy Metal don't hurt themselves or anybody else.  Let's not look at the rest of the individual's life apart from D&D or 'Metal.  Let's just blame it all on the Satan getting to your kid via a record or a game!
::)

I never really got into D&D myself, though I had a D&D set.  The most dangerous thing about D&D in the early '80s was the figurines were made out of lead!
:o


Apparently, Irving shot himself in the chest so my first question would be; "what is a 16 year old doing with a loaded gun?" What I read started Patricia Pulling off was her son left behind a cryptic message of phrases as a sucicide note, believing them to originate with the role-playing game.

I am a bit hard-ball about this kind of thing. Let's say Irving did kill himself soley as a result of D&D, he was an idiot and didn't value his life.

I did play D&D for a short time at school with my history teacher as the dungeon master and came third place with a group of friends in a UK competition about 15 years ago. I thought D&D was okay and, like a lot of hobbies, requires a lot of enthusiasm, money and time, but didn't find it satanic in anyway whatsoever. Pat Pulling would have a fit if she realised the extent role-playing games have on computer games (I thought Oblivion was brilliant and am loving Dragon Age for the PC).

Also to make sure, there are plenty of role-playing games out there that don't fit the sword and sorcery fantasy mode. I played one once about samurai warriors and I know one that was based in a Looney Toons cartoon type world.

I tried to play once in a D & D group, but didn't have any idea what I was doing and nobody explained it in terms I could understand so I never went back.  Also tried playing in a live-action group (you know, people in costume running around in the woods...) Same deal.  Although at least there I could hang out in front of the real fireplace at the "tavern".  Works for me.

I married a DM although he prefers other genres such as space-themed and spy-theme stuff.  He's taught me alot about the hobby and the majority of our friends still play.  I liked the D & D cartoon (with Uni the unicorn.)  Can't say that I'm really a very good actress, so I never really got into playing anything.

I can't believe we made it this deep into the thread and we all forgot the Dead Alewives' take on the controversy.  While the original was audio-only, delivered via CD, the canonical video is "Summoner Geeks", and is rendered in 3D, but if you're feeling retro, you can also get it in 8-bit.

I would want to exorcise my evil demons in D&D, but I don't think my demons like anything as a game of chance.  They like to make bad stuff happen no matter what!
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/05/hat.gif

I can't believe we made it this deep into the thread and we all forgot the Dead Alewives' take on the controversy.  While the original was audio-only, delivered via CD, the canonical video is "Summoner Geeks", and is rendered in 3D, but if you're feeling retro, you can also get it in 8-bit.


I remember listening to The Dead Alewives but didn't understand the significance at the time. I couldn't have imagined what I played at school could have courted as much controversy as it did across the pond, lol.

I was way into D&D and RPG games like white wolf, but I didnt turn into a geek/nerd....I turned into a stoner activist who listened to industrial music and spent his time organizing protests and studying 'Herbalism' which lead to a career in Acupuncture and Chinese medicine.

I still play. Currently DMing a 2nd edition campaign and looking to play in a 4th edition game (although I'm not impressed by the system as it is, so I don't know how long I'll play). I'm potentially going to start a second campaign (2nd or 3rd ed) since my players' schedules in my first don't always mesh.

http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/5841/yourdadwasalevel22necro.gif

You're damn right I played it.

Video games don't come close to capturing the experience.  Even the best RPGs only automate the time-consuming part of rolling the dice and adding the numbers. 

What made D&D (and other pen-and-paper RPGs) special was having a human being acting as a Dungeon Master.  The Dungeon Master's role was a fancy title for "guy who's the referee/storyteller/guide/movie-director" for the game. 

In a video game, if the party decides to walk south (even though the big lake that surrounds the fire-belching volcano and the caves of treasure are all to the north), eventually they reach a wall.  The game shatters realism by placing no towns, no villages, and eventually an insurmountable mountain, ocean, or other obstacle if they try to draw outside the lines.  You will go north.  If you don't go to the bridge, you can't meet the guy at the bridge.  Even if you do, if you don't click "Accept Quest", there's nothing to do.  So whether he wants you to save the universe or kill 20 rats, you do it.

In a D&D campaign, it doesn't matter if the players go south.  Or if they ignore the clues that are supposed to set them on the trail of the main quest.  And if the guy tells you to kill 20 rats before proceeding with the quest, you can tell the dungeon master to go fark himself.  A good DM will never give you timesink quests like the killing of 20 rats just to level up, but he will see to it that even if they walk south for a day or two, the party eventually encounters a village full of secretive villagers and talkative bartenders (and if there are any girls there, he'll let you do them, although your character will suffer a dexterity penalty for the rest of the campaign as a result of having to scratch himself every ten minutes!) no matter which way they go.  And a bunch of subterranean tunnels full of treasure in a castle that happens to be surrounded by a big moat... well, that'll do if they didn't go for the volcano.

In both cases, the game is still ultimately on rails.  The players will eventually encounter someone with enough information to make the quest seem worthwhile, they'll eventually have to encounter the water-based monsters in the moat, lake, or other first layer of defense, the firey ones slinking around in the second layer of defense, and eventually make their way to the juicy golden prize that's the object of the quest.  And at no time did they feel like they were nothing more than FedEx deliverymen or hired rat-killers.  Maybe this time your friend, whose character backstabbed yours during the last campaign, has to deal with the resentment from the last campaign.  Maybe the DM has to strategically place non-player characters to antagonize (or calm!) the resentments between various party members.  A good DM will do all that, and more. 

With a human referee, the players can pretend the whole thing was their idea... and be mostly right.  There are no canned responses, no "accept quest" buttons, and the story can be as complicated as the DM and players - acting cooperatively and/or competitively with each other - cares to make it. 

When we played, it wasn't considered a complete all-nighter of D&D if it didn't devolve, at least at one point, into at least one five-minute period in which everyone in the room (DM and players alike) were lost to fits of hysterical laughter.

D&D is more than just gaming:  It's creative writing, communication, problem-solving, logic, probability theory, and improvisational comedy all rolled into one.

As a small example, what would have simply been a clang as a weapon bounced harmlessly off a structure (or a "You can't do that" in a text-based adventure game), can turn into the following bit of awesomeness:  Oh no, you've awakened the gazebo!

You're probably thinking of Mazes and Monsters, the made-for-TV movie that marked the jumping of that shark in pop culture.

No D&D discussion would be complete without a link to the story of Dark Dungeons, the Chick Tract that took the hysteria to new levels of madness.  (Bonus: Some incredible parodies at the link cited, as well as some historical revisionism on the part of Jack Chick.  And a parody 25th reunion of the characters.)





Not to mention that most "Video Game" RPG's revolve around combat and killing.

In D&D, you do not have to fight and/or kill in order to advance. Your character could be so weak that he/she could not even lift a sword, and yet be considered one of the greatest characters ever created for the "other" things he/she contributes.

Among those that I played with, our DM had a sign: "Rule #1 - do not piss off the DM"

And the in-joke amonst the players was "it is hard for the DM to get mad when he/she is laughing too hard to say anything".