Friendly neighborhood GM jcmrickett posted this love letter to Dungeons & Dragons. It was written in response to this question posed on r/AskReddit, “To the children who’s parents participated in the satanic panic of the 80’s/90’s, what are your stories?”. If you don’t remember, the satanic panic was a moral panic in the US during the 1980s and early 1990s. It was fueled by allegations that there was a vast, underground network of Satanists who were engaging in horrific crimes such as human sacrifice and ritual abuse.
During the satanic panic, some schools and libraries banned D&D and other fantasy games. Some parents also forbade their children from playing the game. There were also cases of individuals being accused of being involved in Satanic rituals and other crimes because they played D&D. In reality, D&D is a harmless game that is played by millions of people around the world. It actually has numerous benefits, including promoting creativity, problem-solving skills, and social interaction.
Anyway I’m sure a lot of people can relate to his story. I’m glad that despite his crazy parents he was able to keep enjoying a life enriched by D&D:
Here is the photo of his Player’s Handbook:
Source: jcmrickett
(via: lumanae)
I hope their parents read this. I hope their children read this. I hope they have the uncomfortable confrontation at thanksgiving about it. Those parents deserve to be shamed.
I also was a victim of my parents fear during the Satanic panic. Cudoos to your friends for helping you.
Just as an example of how any situation like this should be approached by parents:
I was squarely in the target demographic of the Harry Potter books when they were first coming out (though I aged out and lost interest before they finished). I vaguely recall getting the first one in a school book fair before it blew up and when it did I remembered the book I’d gotten and happily jumped on the bandwagon.
And then the satanic panic around the series started up.
I remember specifically one day my mom called me into her room where my parents had their computer set up because she’d gotten an email that made all sorts of claims and seen some other stuff and she was concerned because she knew I’d been reading the books. The important bit though is SHE ASKED ME about the books. I’d read them so she went to me about what went on in them and we actually discussed some of the claims being made. I was like 10 but she trusted me to be reasonably intelligent and not immediately brainwashed into satan worship via a work of fiction. After the mutual discussion we agreed that the email has 1/2 hyperbole and 1/2 just straight up lies and the whole thing was just stupid panic over something completely innocuous.
Kids aren’t in fact complete morons, and based on how most of these stories where the parents flipped out end with the kid just learning to sneak behind their parents backs it really seems that the way to go is to treat them like people capable of reasoning.
I too came to the game of Dungeons and Dragons as a pre-teenager (12), right in the middle of that satanic panic era. Which, by the way, extended far beyond the shores of the US – I lived in Australia at the time. I watched a hell of a lot of people lose their minds on a hell of a lot of fronts, from the claims about D&D through to beliefs about satanic child sexual abuse and kidnapping cults afflicting suburban child care centres. Oh yeah; it was an insane time. Even 60 Minutes’ Australian version ran a ‘story’ claiming that the game indoctrinated people into Satanism and witchcraft, and was responsible for multiple cases of mental derangement and suicide.
My mother was a single parent, and she was vulnerable to the satanic panic to a degree; she got caught up in the child care kidnapping garbage and even had the news ‘stories’ about it video-taped. But she didn’t fall to the D&D arguments, and for a simple reason: I played it. I was identified as extremely gifted at 4 years old; so by the time I was 12, my mother knew full-well that I had no problems whatsoever with comprehending the difference between something twisted and evil versus something harmlessly fun and social. And considering that my autistic social difficulties and intellect meant that I had very few friends, my mother felt that anything that was manifestly harmless and brought me even a small bit of a social life was worth leaving intact no matter how other parents felt about it.
Amongst the gaming groups, I and others would discover that I had a hell of a knack as a DM; which meant that actually getting to be a player became a rare treat that I seldom got to enjoy. I served as various groups’ default DM for roughly the next 30 years, before I discovered the Storytelling system through Mage: The Awakening 2nd Edition. Now I’m the default Storyteller for the groups with which I run Storytelling games, including the aforementioned Mage: The Awakening, Chronicles of Darkness, Vampire: The Requiem, Changeling: The Lost and Werewolf: The Apocalypse. Sigh; the more things change, the more they stay the same.
The satanic panic was slow to die out entirely in Australia; particularly amongst the Christians, who were still peddling that garbage about D&D well into the 2000s. It ultimately did, at least in the main; probably because the whole Harry Potter thing eventually superseded it as the next big satanic threat in Christian minds. Had that not come along and D&D become popularized, who knows when it might have faded? I’m quite sure they’d be having heart attacks about my current gaming choices, too. But I didn’t care then, and I feel even less inclined to care now. I enjoy those games, and tough luck to anyone who doesn’t like it.
Oh her death bed id tell her i was burrning every religious text in her house and giving the ashes to the satanic temple
[Raises hand] yep, I had my books burned by my Jesus freak mom too. She didn’t realize at the time that it only strengthened my resolve to play, and it firmly pushed me away from religion.
I am the “devil-worshiping SOB” who introduced AD&D to the town of Moss Bluff LA in the early 1980s. I ran the very first game played in that town. It wasn’t a good game. I didn’t understand the rules very well. But it was the first.
Speaking as a mother and grandmother who would accept you for who you are:
Please work towards forgiving your Mother. Not for her but for you.
Hanging onto that DOES affect you in ways you may not even realize. Trauma continues to damage us, until we heal it.
That being said, you have the right to have your boundaries now. You don’t need to accept further trauma. You don’t even have to have a relationship with her, if you chose not to have one.
Who you are is enough. Who you are matters.
This story is a fabulous story of resilience and wisdom and determination.
Thank you for giving us this gift.
Lots of Love,
The Mother who would have encouraged your D&D and is cheering you on.
Ironic ….Parents did such evil for fear of satan, and now Satan is everywhere and no one does a thing.