the best part of the satanic panic now in retrospect is just how uninformed most of the tracts are so it ends up being a gold pile of memes for the ttrpg community
Right?!?! Kind of related, but I was in a youth group sponsored by the Freemasons (it's called the Order of DeMolay) and I recall some folks at school commenting, "Oh, you're part of the Illuminati, right? You're trying to take over the world?" and my best friend (also in the organization) responded back, "Dude, we can't even pull off a pancake breakfast for a fundraiser!" Cracked me up. Thanks for watching and commenting!
One of my best friend's parents were very religious. He ended up getting a copy of the Dark Dungeons Tract. We all read it and laughed and laughed... Then we decided that we wanted to find a group that had girls in it. Fortunately, my friend's parents were really cool -- his family was a big game family, and it was his dad who introduced him to D&D...
@@daddyrolleda1 That pancake fundraiser comment is so funny because it's so true. Things that look exciting and scary often are something terribly mundane and daggy.
It was an insane situation. We kids were rolling dice and moving figurines on a map. Meanwhile other kids were sniffing glue, shoplifting, fighting, vandalizing property, drinking etc. And we're the problem?
Thank you so much for your continued support! I truly appreciate it! I only ever got saddled with the "nerd" part of D&D. I didn't know anybody who thought it was Satanic but I did know a few friends who hid the Monster Manual from their moms, I think mainly due to the nudity.
I was given a giant pile of TSR material from my aunt, who was a former nun (though still very religious). She got them from friends who worked at TSR. I figure that helped save me from scrutiny.
Great topic! The satanic panic was alive and well in the early 90s in rural east texas. I wanted to play D&D with my uncle but was not allowed to because it was satanic, so my parents said anyway. Jokes on my parents though, I don’t talk to them anymore and I eventually did get to play D&D with my uncle. It was seriously one of the highlights of my life. I actually ran the game for him and he got to play for the first time in like 30 years.
@@daddyrolleda1 he is. I don’t get to talk to him as much as I’d like but my aunt keeps me up to date on what he’s doing. I’ve tried to play online with him but his schedule isn’t consistent enough for a game anyway. (Not to mention I hate playing online. lol)
I also dislike playing online. When the pandemic lockdowns started, I began doing a weekly online happy hour with my pub friends, and a monthly online board game with a different group, and I found that I couldn't pay attention and then I would just get depressed that I wasn't seeing these people in person. For roleplaying games, when I DM, I an up walking around, constantly moving, and that doesn't translate to online play.
When i was in the Navy 1985 i served with a couple of guys that were Chick adherents. One was so deep he would buy cases of tracts and pass them out when we were overseas. He handed me Dark Dungeons and every new tract he would get. They were both horrifying and hilarious at the same time. Ahh ... The memories.
56:22 Took me a while to figure out why half-orcs were removed. But the problem is, if you have a race known to be evil such as orcs, and that race produces a half-race character, the question then becomes how was that child produced. And while force and violence are not the only possible reasons why, they are on the very top of the list. That's probably why.
Reminds me of the Order of the Stick comic where a half orc is talking to an Orc Chieftain and the Chief says "Me Half-Orc too! Other half also Orc" "No! I mean I'm half human!" "Oooohhh.. That implies tragic back story"
I didn't see the Dark Dungeons tract in the wild, but I grew up on a Christian radio drama called Adventures in Odyssey, which had an episode release in 1990 titled "Castles & Cauldrons," which was a cautionary take about D&D. It was similar to Dark Dungeons, portraying RPGs as inevitably leading to getting into the occult, but wasn't nearly as dark.
True story: When I was in middle school, they had an after-school conference in the auditorium. This was all about making sure your children didn't stray... my mother and I went to it. During this, they stated that heavy metal music was Satanic as well as Dungeons & Dragons. Then, they went on to mention that Motley Crue and Depeche Mode were heavy metal... Afterward, when I got home, I went to tell my older brother about how hilarious it was, and he of course had Motley Crue cranked up, and the D&D books laying on the table.
I honestly blame these campaigns for the eventual abandonment of Christianity by the youth of the 90's and 2000's. In my experience, it's a very commonly cited reason for the younger generations to not to take Christianity seriously as a religion. I've seen a decent number of zoomers coming back to Christianity, but it's with a very different mindset than the Satanic Panic days. Less clown shows, more serious introspection.
Thanks for the video! I'd been playing and running D&D games since 1974, so perhaps that is why this never seemed to affect my family or friend group. Also, I was in far Northern IL, and then in Chicago in the mid-80s, so maybe the areas I was in were less susceptible to such things. I vaguely heard about James Dallas Egbert III, and later Irving Lee Pulling and Pat pulling, and Mazes & Monsters was just a substandard Hanks film based on a crappy book. I worked at and helped manage a couple of bookstores in the early 80s so Rona Jaffe's book was well known even before the film was rushed into made-for-television existence. The book wasn't any better received than the subsequent movie. Never saw a Jack Chick tract until I was an adult and folks were sharing scanned versions online. The whole thing reminded me of the Rutles joke where Stig had been misquoted as saying the Rutles were bigger than God and the news reels touted how sales soared, people were buying Rutles albums just to burn them (from the Eric Idle mockumentary "The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash" from 1978). Quincy Jones lives on in his daughter, Rashida, a wonderful talent in her own right.
I have the Rutles on DVD! Great stuff! Thanks for sharing your experiences - I wasn't really aware of a "satanic panic" during my time playing. I just had some friends who were very religious and their parents were anti-gaming, but it didn't seem to be part of a conspiracy or based on any kind of agenda or even organized group. It wasn't until the late 1990's when I met a new group of friends that I first encountered someone who, as a kid, had a mom who was swept up in the panic and had refused to let him play D&D specifically. I forgot about Rashida Jones, but yes, she's great!
My long-time friend, back when we were pre-teens in the early 1980's, his parents did not allow him to play D&D. We used silly, childish "code words" in order to get together to play. We've continued playing D&D for over 40 years now.
Ah, the Satanic Panic... I think most of it missed me and my friends. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and in that "wild" place religiosity and the church were not as overwhelming as some other parts of the country at the time. I started playing D7D in '79, at age 8, and had a pretty solid group from the beginning which linked up with other groups in connecting neighborhoods. Out of all of us, only one kid in the group had any issues with his parents and the perception of the game and his mother was very religious. I was lucky enough to grow up with educated, open-minded and creative parents with friends who shared a much similar benefit. My very firstp layers were, indeed, my mother and father whosat down at a table and went through a clumsily run homebrew adventure i had created after playing the game once. The adults in my life read science fiction and fantasy and were into rock music. I even had adult gamers in my life who played D&D and the games that came before it. The adults in my life at the time were the sort of people that came out of the 60s and had kids and hadn't quite shaken off all their countercultural ways. My mother even defended me when one of her more religious friends came at her (and me) with teir concerns over my potential corruption by the "evil" game. My mother, progressive in so many ways already, saw D&D as beneficial to me, her awkward, socially hindered, creative and imaginative son. It got me reading and through the game I made friends. She saw how the game taught teamwork and problem-solving and how through gaming, I learned and took an interest in so many other things - history, folklore, even arts and sciences. The ONLY time I ever got in trouble for D&D is when i spent too much time with the game and not my studies and the time i got caught shoplifting a game book.
I think it completely missed a few parts of the US. My dad was born in '59, so he'd have been around for it. But, when I brought it up to him, he had no clue what I was talking about. I think part of the reason for that is that we're in a heavily Catholic region of New England. That sort of anti-catholic Protestant moral panic wouldn't have been that strong here. In fact, back in the 70's, the Italian mob was still pretty strong in the region and they probably would have sent you to the bottom of the ocean if you were that openly hostile to Catholics.
@@TheGreenKnight500 Plenty of Catholics were as duped by the same anti-D&D superstitions as Protestants were. My dad, for one. But many more examples are mentioned in Laycock’s book, Dangerous Games. I think you just got lucky.
Great episode! The content about conspiracy theories and the psychology surrounding them was very good. This episode is a great intersection of two things I really enjoy- RPGs and The Skeptical movement. Excellent work, sir!
I had a guy in our D&D group back in the 80s who had his parents really buy into this whole Satanic Panic thing and after they saw Mazes & Monsters... and then the final straw was that infamous 60 Minutes segment. In 1985, we were playing D&D pretty consistently every weekend, but his parents threw out all of his stuff and banned him from playing. In the end, he still came over and played and just lied to his parents about what we were doing. heh
The one thing that didn't help matters was edgy teens in the area I lived in (Ohio at the time) breaking into some old abandoned houses & spray painting pentagrams & burning candles around it. This was in addition to the usual Heavy Metal posters & such. This added fuel to the panic. Mostly for me, by the time I was getting into the game, it was considered something super nerdy in addition to the Evangelicals looking at me suspiciously if I mentioned that I played it. Tho to be fair, the Evangelicals were more likely to burn me at the stake for being an LDS church member than for me playing D&D. 🙄 I saw a Jack Chick Tract in the wild that was saying some really foul things about Catholics. Friends of mine that were video gamers used to collect & laugh at the ones going after them.
My mother bought all my D&D stuff in the '80s. She always supported my hobbies. I did not have to deal with the whole "Satanic Panic". I got my first Player's Handbook from my local Toy's R Us for 9 bucks. I still remember trying to get the big orange sticker off my front cover.
I have only 1 regret in my life : I burned all my rpg books because my church told me so. Stupid me (I was a teen) and stupid f* religious manipulators. That was end of 80s in Europe (satanic panic took a couple of years to cross the ocean but I also was attending a "charismatic protestant church" implanted by American "evangelists"
Evangelicalism really is cancerous. I live in a very Catholic area of New England so we never really had that problem (we had other problems, lol). Plus, I think people in my region still have a cultural memory of the witch trials and how pointless they were.
Feel you're pain. Same. Sold everything I had. 1988-9, because of manipulative evangelicalism mixed with a player having a mental health crisis. Makes me sad.
As teens in SA in the state library adult Christians would spy on us and follow us and leave us copies of Darkest Dungeons Librarians kept them away from us They complained to library services and the head watched us play "none of you boys are casting real spells or levitating ho ho" they went on to double down keeping weird creepers away .
I'm the youngest of 6 kids and one of my older sisters sent me the red boxed set of D&D back in the day as a birthday present. I think I was 12 at the time. I had no idea what D&D was outside of the cartoon series on TV. Anyway I was instantly hooked and credit her to my gaming obsession to this day. Oddly enough this sister, who was going through a rough time in her life, found God and went "born again" becoming the church lady you want to avoid. She told me she should have never bought that game for me, LOL.
I think it was 1988 when some cousins from the other side of the country came to visit at Christmas. They were obsessed with my D&D books, they had never seen anything like it. So I asked my parents if we could get them the BECMI red box set as a Christmas gift. (I didn't have any money, so of course they had to buy it! 😄) They agreed, and my cousins were super excited when they opened the gift. I found out that their mother took that box, those books, the dice, the whole lot and burned them. No Satanism in their house! For a little context, their dad is my dad's brother, and he and his wife had divorced some years earlier. There was some definite animosity between my parents and her. She was a Jehovah's Witness. My parents knew this. They had to know she was going to freak out when she saw those books. I guess they felt it was worth the investment just to anger her. Felt bad for my cousins though. They really liked those books. ☹ Also relevant to the video; I discovered Chick Tracts in an outhouse at a beach in Florida. Saw one about evolution just laying there. I should have just tossed it in the bog. Instead I read it, and, well... it sure convinced me I didn't evolve from no monkey! 🐒
My sister and I were both active in the SCA and playing DnD in those days. My sister had to have "the talk" with Mum over DnD during the satanic panic, yet I didn't. Also, Mum did everything she could to dissuade my sister from fighting in the SCA, yet apparently, it was perfectly acceptable for me to hit people with sticks.
I experienced blowback from both my parents and the faculty at my high school. My parents were aware of Mazes and Monsters and weren't aware that they were fiction, so they wouldn't let me play when I was younger. I started playing Basic and then 2E in 1990-1991, and was attending an Orthodox Jewish high school. The faculty completely bought into Patricia Pulling's schtick, and harassed me and my fellow players. As a result we were viewed as "bad kids", and we weren't invited by the principal to his home to be sexually abused by the principal. It turned out that the administration of the school knew what the principal was doing and covered it up.
I was going to Carolina Christian Academy in the 80’s when it happened. We played D&D at lunch. A teacher noticed and said we could keep playing but only if we didn’t use spells or if we did it had to be tied to Jesus. So we was like okay… a little while later during game I yell,” Jesus fireball these kobolds!”
I do find it rather interesting how much of the material in Unearthed Arcana involved ways to summon, commune with, and bind demons and devils, given the timing.
I very much remember some of my friends in the '80s having their parents gather up and throw away their D&D books because of this influence. Lucky for me my parents were more enlightened, and were happy to see me have a hobby that involved reading, math, and socialization.
Having lived through this era in my childhood as both a fundie and a fan of fantasy, it was a magical time! Believing that cartoons could allow demons into your home, games would make you possessed, and juvenile metal lyrics could make you kill yourself was better than any creepypasta we have today. It was like a ghost story come to life. And yes, many adults I knew actually believed 1 in 10 people was a devil worshiper, and statuettes of unicorns were actually idols to pagan gods.
I once found a Chick Tract on the counter of the bathroom of the gym I go to. I kept that thing because I'd never seen one in the wild before and they're basically a collector's item.
Hey Martin, did you mention the Dark Dungeons film in the video? It's available to watch for free on UA-cam. It seems to be a parody of the pamphlet. I found it pretty funny! LET'S GET READY TO R-P-G!!!!
I remember in 1982 we'd heard about Mazes and Monsters and were so excited to see it. (This was before we had VCRs so we had to wait until it showed up on TV.) We knew it was critical of D&D but in those days there was virtually no visibility for TTRPGs in popular media. We started playing in 1981, so in the beginning of the Satanic Panic, but we actually didn't run into this at all. We'd heard it was happening. None of our parents objected to the game, they even supported it because they saw how it inspired creativity. We had a D&D club in the public high school, and played regularly at the town library.
I've got a dvd of this movie, I didn't realize till watching this episode it was based on this true story - was really weird to know the history of D&D, watch this movie in my 40's (few months ago), and see how it was portrayed then and how far it's come in a positive light
About a year ago I started telling my dad about my D&D campaign world, and he immediately started warning me about accidentally worshiping demons and false gods. 😂
When accusations of Satanism were made against Harry Potter in the late 90s, my first thought was been there, done that. Like with D&D, it was the best possible marketing campaign.
Oh, also - somebody made a feature film adaptation of Dark Dungeons in 2014 - it's hysterical. They added Cthulhu to it. My friends and I now shout, "Are you ready to R - P - G?!!" whenever we're going to actually play :)
3:45 I've mentioned this before in these comments, James Egbert III grew up in the town where I did, and where I live now. He attended the high school I did, where I just went to vote yesterday. Some of the teachers I had in high school had known him when he attended, and used him as a touchstone when talking to me and people like me (late-'80s to mid-'90s young goth/metalhead, clearly smart and well read but also very disaffected, very into sci-fi and fantasy literature, heavily into the geek and hacker subcultures of the era, etc) because they were worried about potential outcomes. His story, and especially suicide attempts, had a lot more to do with how the satanic panic was expressed in my local area than stuff like the Chick tracts or the demi-religious propaganda.
Thank you so much for, again, sharing your history and experiences with James. I really appreciate it and I hope that me talking about him doesn't bother you or open up old wounds, etc. Thank again.
I think 2nd edition with renaming of the classes and getting rid of devils as a monster was lousy. Like I said before my sister in law’s Mom absolutely believed all that stuff so much so my sister in law wouldn’t even let the game in her house! She ended up lightning up though and my nephew plays 5e now. So much easier to blame other things rather than look in the mirror.
My friend's mom was similar, although I didn't meet him until I was in my late 20's so by that point it didn't affect him or me. Thanks so much for watching and commenting!
@OldHeadAlan You're right. I've read through the old monster manuals from 1st and 2nd editions. They kept the demons and devils (and "daemons") in 2e but just used different words to refer to them. The name yugoloth for daemons stuck though and it's still used to this day. In later editions, it seems they repurposed those new words for demons and devils as specific tribes of each.
I remember in the 70s that nobody really knew what dungeons and dragons was. In fact, there was a very large church group at my church who played there was even a visiting priest who actually played. Of course he played cleric as soon as the Satanic panic began, I was already pretty well known for being active in the church youth group. in fact, I happen to be in the youth directors office when we were planning the next Halloween set up. We had a famous spookhouse that we ran. some people began to know who I was because I was effective at getting people to do things. And they were trying to push me to say something about how evil Dungeons & Dragons was and to help end this Satanic activity The youth group Director gave me a funny look because he realized I was one of the biggest players in the neighborhood. And when I mean, big, I mean big. justice that was happening the local visiting priest overheard them putting pressure on me and they clearly didn’t realize how much I was invested in the game he jokingly came in and said that he’s looking forward to the game next week and he’ll be sure to bring his cleric We never played together and he just simply did that to give them the hint that they’ll probably not get the support they’re hoping for. they later did ask me some questions about the game and I explained to them what their panicking about is not true. They began to question the information more and more and I was more than happy to tell them. That was mild compared to some of the effects I’ve seen. I had a friend who was at his church and congregation where their youth group Director was very militantly role-play games. Of course, the group there try to get me involved with their youth group and of course I was more than happy. He had heard about how effective I was getting people to show up at things. I just kept my mouth shut anytime we started talking about role-play games because I knew from seeing him talk that was not gonna go over well. He had already made up his mind without any evidence or question what he has been told. I once had a family tell me that I’m not gonna try to commit suicide am I? to which I was trying to figure out what they were talking about they tried to tell me that the game will kill people. I gave them a funny look with confusion and said well I’ve never seen a book fly off the shelf and attack anymore if that’s what you mean. Basically, the whole situation people realize how ridiculous their thoughts were. I even fended off assumptions from my own parents. apparently they were some pamphlets being handed around, and I was trying to figure out where they were getting their information because it seemed legitimate, but not quite. I discovered the book that they were reading from and went to buy my own copy. I read it from cover to cover, which was probably about 5 to 10 pages to be honest and decide to rewrite the entire booklet but taking the same information they present and rewording it. I carry the same tone and attitude, just twisting the same information the other way around. And of course, I hate it in a very clever spot where I knew it would be found. Under my pillow. Of course, my parents found it. They were livid. And they wanted to know where I got my information from and then I told him and everything in the book came from the very same information that they themselves were reading from. And if they had any doubts about the information, they would have to have doubts about their own version of the book. that was enough to get them to realize how ridiculous the anti-role-playing groups are that I had thoroughly thought through what I’m doing and have no interest in backing away On the other hand, if I had backed away, I’d probably have a lot more money. Lol.
I found Dark Dungeon in the wild during the summer of 1984. It was in Sonara, California. I found it and a couple of other Chick Tracts on a payphone outside a grocery store.
@@StephenFain Willy Aames(70's teen poster boy) was Hank, Donny Most (Ralph the Mouth) from happy days was Eric the Cavalier, Adam Rich (Eight is Enough) was Presto, Peter Cullen (Optimus Prime) was Venger, The Great Sid Miller ( a famous 30's actor) was the Dungeon Master.
I even remember residues of that from being a kid... it was like pastors interpreting very much into the role of the game master, like he was using the game to make children emotionally dependent on them, becoming addicted to,the group experience and the spooky near all-might a game master supposedly has over his players... crazy!
There's a mall near a place I lived a few years back, there was a guy that always went through the mall leaving Chick Tracts on tables, chairs, and anywhere else he could put them, but I never saw the D&D one.
There were some things you barely touched on and others which were left out, yet pertinent to this topic involving James and the situation in the country during the 70's which would give a clearer picture of the societal demeanor. I lived just south of East Lansing and one of the people I was playing with worked at the State News as a reporter/editor. Another person I played with, his dad was a detective on the case. I was also right in the middle of what was going on there being at the Hobby Store constantly. The way William Dear presented his findings at the press conference had a huge impact on public perception as seen the next day in all the major newspapers in the country after the story went over the AP newswire. I watched it on our local television station. As I recall, James ended up in Texas with his uncle and never returned home. I can provide you with some more information if you wish.
The panic was revived somewhat for Vampire: The Masquerade in connection to the (separate) crimes for which Jon C. Bush, Rod Ferrell, and David Anderson/Alex Baranyi were convicted in 1996. All were blamed on how their behavior was influenced by the game. See chapter 5 of Dangerous Games by Joseph Laycock.
In the 90s I used to see those tracts around New Orleans, as well as various trucks stop bathrooms along the Gulf (of Mexico) Coast. IIRC, I would always take them so no innocents would be corrupted.
In the 80's, we visited Ohio, where my mom and grandmother are from. We visited one of my grandmothers friends whose grandson was there and roughly my age (middle school). My grandmother knew that I played D&D and asked this kid if he played. The grandmother quickly said "oh no...that is the devils work." I swear to this day I visibly saw my grandmother lose respect for this old friend.
for me personally i thought i would get some pushback from my mother when i got into d&d when i was in high school because she grew up during the height of the satanic panic. i did eventually after the first few secessions asked her about it and what she felt and knew, her response was something along the lines of " I remember all of that and highly believed all of it until you got into it. I know i raised you right, and if something can get you to read whole books and use your creativity to the extent this has it cant be all bad." i even almost got her and my step dad to play with me before i went into the army but it ended up not happening but my mother sill asks me about the game from time to time and even for Christmas the year i started paying d&d got me some pajama pants that had stewie from family guy rolling craps and saying that's how i roll because she thought it was funny and kind of d&d related. other than that i do remember thigh night i was driving home after getting my EA degree as a mason i was listening to the radio and hit an evangelical channel and the preacher says " Do not partake in activaties that mock God. things like Dungeons and dragons, harry potter, and Freemasonry are works of the devil." before i switch the channel, i do like all of these and have been described as looking like Daniel Radcliff. thank you for this video and hopefully you had fun making it besides having to read or talk about the tragedies that are associated with this topic.
I found & read Dark Dungeons in Sydney, Australia, back when I played a lot of D&D in the late 80s or early 90s. I suspect I found it among gaming convention leaflets in a games store.
I never encountered "Dark Dungeons" in the wild, but I did encounter Jack Chick tracts back in the day! Found one on the sidewalk one day. Military themed. "Holy Joe" maybe. And a year or three later, got on in my bag of candy while trick or treating. A hallowe'en themed one as I recall.
a thought on the “insensitivity” of Gygax’s quote from the clip: while yes, caught off guard, he may have actually been defensive and meant to imply that the parents should have been more attentive before the fact… it also occurred to me that he may have been speaking as a parent, and failed to articulate (in the clip) that yes the temptation, conscious or not, to blame oneself and the resulting urge to reposition that blame on something you don’t understand makes senses.
19:20 Would you kindly keep up this level of work? The satanic panic is of interest to me, because I know an old lady or two in my extended family that still thinks D&D is satanic. The subject interests me.
One of my oldest friends from high school was (and still is) very religious and she actually gave me a Dark Dungeon pamphlet back in 91 after she found out I played D&D. She didn't realize at the time that half our friends from ROTC were into D&D.
Interesting you show the Chick comic depicting people not being able to differentiate reality from fantasy, when so many people playing today openly state they want them to be one in the same. I remember those tracts, a bunch were left in front of the local hobby store.
I grew up in Georgia, north of Atlanta, and played in highschool rock bands and went to a lot of local rock shows. We used to get a lot of Chick comics probably getting left and handed out to kids in more “alternative” groups. Me and my friends knew exactly why we were being targeted and we all liked to compete with each other on our individual collections. I think I still have some, more than 20 years later collecting them in the wild.
I always thought the use of the term "dungeon" to describe the mazes we ventured into during play was a strange word choice. Did Gary choose it merely for the alliteration with dragon? If so, the alliterative expediency probably lent itself to an ominous reputation. A dungeon in real world parlance is a prison, usually found underground. They are (rightly so) associated with torture and horror. So the negative connotation of dungeons in the title of the game probably didn't help the game's image during the Panic!
My experience with the Satanic Panic back in the 80s fortunately did not create any big problems for me other than having a mother that was frightened for a while. Fortunately, she spoke with some sane people from her generation and got positive feedback about D&D, and so she relaxed about it. I did have a friend in college whose aunt was very religious and simply threw out all of his gaming material. That didn't stop him from playing, of course, but I'm sure that this must not have been fun.
TSR's accommodation of the Satanic Panic movement predates Gary's ousting from the company and the development of 2nd edition AD&D. Jeff Easley's art for the 1983 cover of the 1st edition AD&D 'Players Handbook' featured a wizard casting a spell. As it was originally painted, the wizard's hood had a dip at the top, but it was filled in because TSR was concerned that the contour could be interpreted as the wizard having demonic horns under his cowl. You can see the line in the red fabric where the addition was made. Some foreign language editions feature the original art. I was proffered a Jack Chick tract 'in the wild'. It was on a skybridge between hotel-casinos in Vegas in 2011. I think it was on the dangers of gambling, a subject of no interest to me, so I didn't accept it but I did ask the man who was handing them out if it was a Jack Chick tract. He seemed delighted that someone knew what those were and confirmed it was. I asked him if he had 'Dark Dungeons', but he didn't. He suggested I order it from the company which I eventually did along with the Spanish language edition. I don't recall them being particularly expensive. Incidentally, I have a T-shirt from this channel and I love the design. I even got complimented on it at my D&D club! 😀
Started the game in 1980.. I was a 5th grader. I caught alot of flak from my parents over the years and dealt with alot of bullying and fist fights due to my enjoyment of the game. During my army days people actually thought I took part in blood sacrifices and other crazy stuff. I do admit I add fuel to the fire. I told my colonel; how can I be an army captain hold a DOD clearance if I do these things? He nodded in acknowledgement and I was left to my own devices. I run a game in North East Japan now. It's a stress relief for my co-workers. I guess the game isn't that bad.
Wow. I grew up close by to the Naval Submarine Base, New London (CT). Back in the day, sailors would descend upon the local game store days before deployment, with dice and modules flying off the shelves. Nice they had something to do while trapped inside a tin can for months at a time... (Jokes aside, major props to US submariners; brave souls one and all.)
I was born in 71 and started playing in 81, so I was in the thick of it. Even in my remote oart if Canada the Satanic Panic reached us. I read Mazes and Monsters, and another book if the same vein called Hobgoblin. I even watched the movie. I thought they were kind of weird, but they were linked to D&D so I tunes in. I had friends who were twin brothers and they loved RPGs. There dad was a local pastor of a fundamentalist church. They could play any rpg as long as it easnt D&D. They did play it secretly though. So we played a lot if Top Secret and Gangbusters. They even got that religious knockoff of D&D where the treasure was bible scriptures. I also have a memory if being in a book store in a mall that prominently displayed the 1e books. A lady went by and yelled out "Demons!"
On this side of the pond there were rumours about what was happening in the states but by and large everyone got on with what ever they were playing at the time, (by the mid 80's we had MERP, Runequest, Call of Chuthuloo etc etc. We in the UK have always had our own brand of "save the kids from themseleves" zealots (at the time they were obsesed with 'video-nasties; loads on youtube about them) but I think in the end it got more and more people playing and enjoying the 'escapism' style of game with 'no board'! Also it is to be remembered that the game (D&D) was not designed to be a kids game; and as the marketing target audience got younger the sanitisation was inevitable (those that did not like it move to other games). Great content from you as always. (By the way everybody easiest way to get assasins to behave in the game is to only allow them to get XP from contract and contract payments controlled by the guild)....
34:18 dude! Ive seen damn near most of them. Including Dark Dungeons. I grew up in SE TN and the churche I used to go to and churches we associated with would hand these out like candy. There was also a regular comic book imprint of Chick Tracts. There are some doozies in there.
Growing up, I really wasn’t exposed to dungeons and dragons until maybe 1990 or so. I remember going to Toys “R” Us and seeing the Red box. I knew Some of the controversy that Dungeons & Dragons was bad. But my parents never said I couldn’t do it. I just assumed it would’ve been not allowed in our family. To my surprise, my mother bought me that box it. I think it was like $15 and then on a return trip I got the blue box. That was my first experience with dungeons and dragons.
At about 10 years old I got the Holmes, Moldvey box sets, the core a d&d books, and the dungeon board game. My mom played the dungeon game with me. About 1990 I started playing d&d again and mom gave me newspaper articles cutout about the panic. Years later she said that she had nothing to worry about me.
Thanks for delving into this issue. I'm always interested in the Satanic Panic, since I lived through it. I grew up in North Carolina, so those Jack Chick booklets were all over the place, especially around game or comic shops. My dad showed me Dark Dungeons as a laugh, and sure enough, I found it hilarious. Just another one of those extreme religious arguments that fall apart when you think about it. So spells are real, and instead of using them to, you know, take over the world, you just keep playing games? This satanic cult should really reappraise its priorities.
Thanks so much for doing this video. I started playing D&D the summer of 1979, living in Livermore California, by riding my bike to the public library. I was in Jr. High so pretty clueless about current events. The d&d group was open to anyone who came. You could join any game table with an open seat. I recognize now i had Adhd but D&D captivated me. I spent every dime i could get my hands on to buy D&D books and modules. It was one of the best times of my life and I could feel myself learning so much, including a much better vocabulary using words like portcullis and dais. (Lol) I find it sad that D&D got blamed for the boy's tragic demise. I've always felt that the game is a mental refuge from so many mentally challenging issues that youth face. I once ran a game for a boy with severe AdHd & Tourettes with difficulties even sitting still he had so many tics. After our one game session the boy's mother told me in pure awe that she'd never seen her son stay so focused--there were no tics--as he had during the 4 hour session in which he and his dad tactically planned an ambush on a bunch of homebrew cultists in a swamp. Sadly my chance to play the game uninterrupted came to a screeching halt when my family moved from California to Logan Utah, where most of my peers only knew that D&D was for devilworshippers. I had never heard of this til i got into tnis community. Raised LDS, i tried suggesting a game night with my local church group and consistently got shot down. I was relegated to playing the game as permanent DM with some of my younger siblings and an occasional odd stranger from Highschool, but a lot of the really creative players simply never materialized in rural Utah. When i got to university the gamers guild mostly decided that RPGs were being replaced with Magic: The Gathering. I briefly rekindled a group of players when i got my first job and started playing 3rd edition. Like you, i mostly skipped 2nd edition, opting to collect comicbooks like Xmen and Dr. Strange instead of repurchasing all the 2nd ed. supplements. I was an early adopter of UA-cam and so have enjoyed watching online d&d game players for what feels like decades now (lol). It was the simplicity of 5th edition that drew me back into more dedicated weekly gaming again, i even dm i. Adventure league at local gaming conventions here in layton utah... that and my kids reached an age they could play. My oldest daughter grew up without the ridiculous prejudices of D&D being Satan's game. She even DMs now. I have loved seeing the game return to a more mainstream hobby. I do think it is wrong to discount the power of the mob mentality. My mom once looked thru our Monster Manual and i remember her being "concerned" so we took a sharpie and drew bikinis on all the monster boobs in the illustrations. That quelled her worries. I think she could recognize that d&d was better than mindless tv watching. And it involved reading. But those worries do hinder acceptance and I've spent most of my adult years telling other adults they were lied to... Just last month, during Christmas break, my brother's father-in-law started spouting the tired satanic panic stuff when he found out his grandkids were playing D&D, in a game i run. I had to set the record straight. He's a Wyoming rancher and rabid MAGA voter who believes the worst about so many people. It's heartbreaking when i think about how a game run well has such potential to heal and all it takes us some imagination. But so many are scared away. So thanks again for putting this one together. Love your stuff. Be well.
Oh... I have seen many Chick Tracts over the years... I actually have a small collection of them that I have more for ironic comedy purposes than anything else. I even have four copies of the Dark Dungeons tract. I used to see them all the time back in the 90s when I worked at a convenience store... fundamentalist Christians who really bought into the Chick ideals would leave them around the store on shelves and whatnot. I used to snatch them up when I saw them and ended up keeping them as a goof. The Dark Dungeons one is absurdly funny, as you already know... but they are basically ALL as crazy as that in many directions. He REALLY had a problem with Catholics and he always demonized them. There is a funny Dark Dungeons movie out there, by the way. The guy who made the movie actually got permission from Jack Chick before making it, but he never explained that he was doing it ironically and basically thought it was batshit. lol
Thank you so much! I "celebrate" the day every year by changing my FB profile photo and cover photo, and a few years ago, I created a custom cocktail in honor of the night: cocktailcadre.com/guy-fawkes-day-cocktail-the-parkin-highball/ Thanks for watching and commenting. Cheers!
I remember reading that there was a belief during the 80s that children would never lie about SA, and thus any child's testimony about it was inherently trustworthy. This has since been debunked.
Had this garbage land right on my neck, starting with my mom. Took DECADES to get certain family members off my back. And this was in New England. Fortunately for me, most of my detractors moved to another state. 25:08 Fun Fact: my first encounter with Dark Dungeons was in an Air Force BX, wedged in the inner front cover of a 1E DMG. A genuine WTF moment decades before the term was coined... Many years later, one of our running gags at game was "Black Leaf, NOOOOO!" 🤣
I came through the satanic panic with all my RPG gear intact, but I did have a friend who was not allowed to play D&D because it was a "demonic game." Instead, he had tons of Car Wars stuff.
LOL! We weren't allowed D&D either but one of the couple of games I did get was car wars. And a James Bond game if I remember correctly. Never played them but those illustrations were the best!
Very thorough and sincere job. Oprah and Geraldo also jumped into the witch hunt. I Gaygax actually did a good job defending D&D and I am ot his biggest fan. Thanks for telling me my copy of Dark Dugeons might be valuable. It bothers me that Jack Chick chose to show attractive teenage girls succumbing to demon worship and suicide. This was both inaccurate and misogynistic. We laughed about the Satanic Panic at time, but now I know how it hurt people it's just another shameful piece of our history.
The panic hit me too. My dad took away my beloved Holmes Basic and 1e books when I was in 7th grade. I only just replaced them! I’d recommend the book by Joseph P. Laycock, Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds. It’s an intensive study of the panic as it specifically affected D&D.
Heh. My mom's Episcopalian, and my dad a queer atheist, so I was fortunate to have a very open and liberal upbringing. In fact, they encouraged my AD&D (and some MERPS) as it got me to read and do math outside of school. And AD&D got me into the GATE (advanced classes) program in elementary school because I was way ahead of the curve in math and reading comprehension -- thanks to RPGs!
Jack Chick tracts were common in the Southern Baptist church I attended in the late 1970's and early 1980's - I still remember one in which featured some Latter Day Saints missionaries were teaching that during Lucifer's rebellion, 1/3 sided with Lucifer, 1/3 sided with God (and became incarnated as Caucasians) and 1/3 sat out the war (and were incarnated as Africans). Really sick work that played on the fears of the times (nuclear war with USSR; late 1960's social disorder; etc.). I've not been in that subculture for about 40 years but it wouldn't surprise me if the tracts are still circulated among those groups.
Used to have a bunch of these tracts. They were bonkers. The drinking and drugs one were just as out there. Would get them handed to you if you went to gaming conventions in the 90s. There'd be people outside the entrances handing them out and telling you how you were evil and going to hell
I grew up in the Bible Belt (where the Satanic panic never so much died as went underground), regularly interacting with evangelicals and sometimes fundamentalists. Never got "Dark Dungeons," but did see other tracts out in the wild. One thing that usually helps evangelicals (though not fundamentalists) get over D&D is pointing out that Gary Gygax was a Jehovah's Witness when he started the game, but they didn't like it (and his drinking and smoking but nevermind that) and disfellowshipped him, leading him to *evangelical* Christianity. In other words, from an evangelical perspective, D&D (also booze but nevermind that) is directly responsible for bringing Gary Gygax to Jesus. Also, Dave Arneson was an elder in his Lutheran church and did mission work. Then follow up with "hey, ya like CS Lewis? Tolkien? George MacDonald? Medieval Christian legends about knights and dragons?" Doesn't work on fundamentalists though; I know from experience that they're just gonna be angry that you're not already one of them no matter what you do. Also, don't bring up the Hickmans unless you're specifically addressing Latter Day Saints. The worst possible response (and my favorite as a teenager) is to say "no, look, D&D magic is not the same as the occult" and attempt a side-by-side comparison with the PHB and a historical grimoire. This always leads straight to "see? D&D got you into the occult," and they won't accept the blame for it.
People didn't got over it Stanic Panic even today. I was reading Dungeon Meshi a couple months ago, and the answer that "the dungeons were made by Satan" makes everything so more simple and smooth. I loved. 😂
Great video. For anyone interested in the historical lineage of the tropes and ideas coming up in satanic panics reaching back in some cases back thousands of years, I would recommend a video called "The Satanic Panic - Historical, Mythological & Social Origins - How it Nearly Destroyed MY Life" by the channel Esoterica. Which by the way is also a great source for inspirations concerning anything supernatural or occult to put in your games.
I don't think I ever saw a real Chick Tract until I was college age... I grew up during the Satanic Panic, but my parents didn't believe in that crap, so it mostly passed me by. Heck, the first time I played D&D was at our church (my mother was a janitor at the church, and on days when we didn't go to school, 50/50 we'd spend our days at the church. My other brother was the DM). Of course, if we had been discovered, I don't know how much trouble we would have gotten into...
People are STILL arguing whether or not Jack Chick was actually serious about the contents of his tracts because they were all so over the top in content and at parody levels of blatant. I do remember that somebody actually inserted a Jack Chick tract (not the D&D one) into my school locker. :D
I feel (dare I say... blessed?) to not have to deal with stigmas such as these-- my interest in D&D started as my mother gave me a 5E handbook because her brother, my uncle, played in the 80s-- I can only imagine some of the stigma he might have dealt with.
I started playing just as 2E came out. The satanic craze took my parents for a while and almost ended my playing. I started playing Rifts instead which was better in my parents eyes but of course is much more graphic and risque. It's weird to hear you go over this and even weirder to realize this is happening again only worse.
One of my close friend's mom refused to let him play Dungeons & Dragons because she said it was "Satanic" but she was totally fine with him playing MERP, Rollmaster, and Champions! Thanks for watching and commenting. Cheers!
I played D&D and listened to heavy metal and got no magic powers, because they're not real. But I was condemned by people who thought magic was real and thought by reading a book about giants and mad nonsense (the Bible) they could cast out demons and channel the power of their god through incantation. Yet I was apparently the one that wouldn't be able to tell fantasy from reality. The same bonkers mentality is still very alive and well in America, just the targets change.
I'm from rural Middle Tennessee and I definitely saw Chick tracts "in the wild" growing up, but I haven't actually seen one in over 20 years now. The local Evangelical groups seem to have moved on to different tactics. The most common one around here was "Big Daddy", which was an anti-evolution tract. Southern Evangelicals used to be weirdly stuck on the topic of evolution.
I see similar outrage in quite a few of my other hobbies, video games and anime for example. Misplaced outrage sometimes makes these hobbies more popular, but sometimes I think that it would be nice to be treated decently from the start. When I was a kid I received a physical copy of the D&D Chick Tract. I remember believing it. I'm personally much more familiar with the backlash against the Doom series of games and the satanic panic that happened there.
the best part of the satanic panic now in retrospect is just how uninformed most of the tracts are so it ends up being a gold pile of memes for the ttrpg community
Satanic rituals?! Wow, they thought we were so much cooler than we really were, huh.
Right?!?! Kind of related, but I was in a youth group sponsored by the Freemasons (it's called the Order of DeMolay) and I recall some folks at school commenting, "Oh, you're part of the Illuminati, right? You're trying to take over the world?" and my best friend (also in the organization) responded back, "Dude, we can't even pull off a pancake breakfast for a fundraiser!" Cracked me up.
Thanks for watching and commenting!
One of my best friend's parents were very religious. He ended up getting a copy of the Dark Dungeons Tract. We all read it and laughed and laughed... Then we decided that we wanted to find a group that had girls in it.
Fortunately, my friend's parents were really cool -- his family was a big game family, and it was his dad who introduced him to D&D...
'...and when we put on our cloaks and tell the warlock jokes, we are the coolest kids in the school!'
@@daddyrolleda1 That pancake fundraiser comment is so funny because it's so true. Things that look exciting and scary often are something terribly mundane and daggy.
It was an insane situation. We kids were rolling dice and moving figurines on a map. Meanwhile other kids were sniffing glue, shoplifting, fighting, vandalizing property, drinking etc. And we're the problem?
It's funny people thought I was a Satanist because I played D&D, so I played it up for laughs.
Thank you so much for your continued support! I truly appreciate it!
I only ever got saddled with the "nerd" part of D&D. I didn't know anybody who thought it was Satanic but I did know a few friends who hid the Monster Manual from their moms, I think mainly due to the nudity.
I was given a giant pile of TSR material from my aunt, who was a former nun (though still very religious). She got them from friends who worked at TSR. I figure that helped save me from scrutiny.
Our DM made a thieves guild named the "Black leaves" as a reference to this comic.
Great topic! The satanic panic was alive and well in the early 90s in rural east texas. I wanted to play D&D with my uncle but was not allowed to because it was satanic, so my parents said anyway. Jokes on my parents though, I don’t talk to them anymore and I eventually did get to play D&D with my uncle. It was seriously one of the highlights of my life. I actually ran the game for him and he got to play for the first time in like 30 years.
Thank you so much for this! And, sorry for the delay. I had no idea about the story of how you got into D&D. Is your Uncle still with us?
@@daddyrolleda1 he is. I don’t get to talk to him as much as I’d like but my aunt keeps me up to date on what he’s doing. I’ve tried to play online with him but his schedule isn’t consistent enough for a game anyway. (Not to mention I hate playing online. lol)
I also dislike playing online. When the pandemic lockdowns started, I began doing a weekly online happy hour with my pub friends, and a monthly online board game with a different group, and I found that I couldn't pay attention and then I would just get depressed that I wasn't seeing these people in person.
For roleplaying games, when I DM, I an up walking around, constantly moving, and that doesn't translate to online play.
When i was in the Navy 1985 i served with a couple of guys that were Chick adherents. One was so deep he would buy cases of tracts and pass them out when we were overseas. He handed me Dark Dungeons and every new tract he would get. They were both horrifying and hilarious at the same time. Ahh ... The memories.
56:22 Took me a while to figure out why half-orcs were removed. But the problem is, if you have a race known to be evil such as orcs, and that race produces a half-race character, the question then becomes how was that child produced. And while force and violence are not the only possible reasons why, they are on the very top of the list. That's probably why.
Those orc ladies are notorious for knocking out handsome adventurers and having their way with them.
@@BenFrayle😂😂
Reminds me of the Order of the Stick comic where a half orc is talking to an Orc Chieftain and the Chief says
"Me Half-Orc too! Other half also Orc"
"No! I mean I'm half human!"
"Oooohhh.. That implies tragic back story"
Sounds like some psychological projection from the Catholic Church. They are notorious for doing specifically what you're alluding too.
I didn't see the Dark Dungeons tract in the wild, but I grew up on a Christian radio drama called Adventures in Odyssey, which had an episode release in 1990 titled "Castles & Cauldrons," which was a cautionary take about D&D. It was similar to Dark Dungeons, portraying RPGs as inevitably leading to getting into the occult, but wasn't nearly as dark.
True story: When I was in middle school, they had an after-school conference in the auditorium. This was all about making sure your children didn't stray... my mother and I went to it. During this, they stated that heavy metal music was Satanic as well as Dungeons & Dragons. Then, they went on to mention that Motley Crue and Depeche Mode were heavy metal...
Afterward, when I got home, I went to tell my older brother about how hilarious it was, and he of course had Motley Crue cranked up, and the D&D books laying on the table.
I honestly blame these campaigns for the eventual abandonment of Christianity by the youth of the 90's and 2000's. In my experience, it's a very commonly cited reason for the younger generations to not to take Christianity seriously as a religion. I've seen a decent number of zoomers coming back to Christianity, but it's with a very different mindset than the Satanic Panic days. Less clown shows, more serious introspection.
The 60 Minutes D&D segment was a straight-up hit piece.
Thanks for the video! I'd been playing and running D&D games since 1974, so perhaps that is why this never seemed to affect my family or friend group. Also, I was in far Northern IL, and then in Chicago in the mid-80s, so maybe the areas I was in were less susceptible to such things. I vaguely heard about James Dallas Egbert III, and later Irving Lee Pulling and Pat pulling, and Mazes & Monsters was just a substandard Hanks film based on a crappy book. I worked at and helped manage a couple of bookstores in the early 80s so Rona Jaffe's book was well known even before the film was rushed into made-for-television existence. The book wasn't any better received than the subsequent movie. Never saw a Jack Chick tract until I was an adult and folks were sharing scanned versions online. The whole thing reminded me of the Rutles joke where Stig had been misquoted as saying the Rutles were bigger than God and the news reels touted how sales soared, people were buying Rutles albums just to burn them (from the Eric Idle mockumentary "The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash" from 1978). Quincy Jones lives on in his daughter, Rashida, a wonderful talent in her own right.
I have the Rutles on DVD! Great stuff!
Thanks for sharing your experiences - I wasn't really aware of a "satanic panic" during my time playing. I just had some friends who were very religious and their parents were anti-gaming, but it didn't seem to be part of a conspiracy or based on any kind of agenda or even organized group. It wasn't until the late 1990's when I met a new group of friends that I first encountered someone who, as a kid, had a mom who was swept up in the panic and had refused to let him play D&D specifically.
I forgot about Rashida Jones, but yes, she's great!
My long-time friend, back when we were pre-teens in the early 1980's, his parents did not allow him to play D&D. We used silly, childish "code words" in order to get together to play. We've continued playing D&D for over 40 years now.
Ah, the Satanic Panic...
I think most of it missed me and my friends. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and in that "wild" place religiosity and the church were not as overwhelming as some other parts of the country at the time. I started playing D7D in '79, at age 8, and had a pretty solid group from the beginning which linked up with other groups in connecting neighborhoods. Out of all of us, only one kid in the group had any issues with his parents and the perception of the game and his mother was very religious.
I was lucky enough to grow up with educated, open-minded and creative parents with friends who shared a much similar benefit. My very firstp layers were, indeed, my mother and father whosat down at a table and went through a clumsily run homebrew adventure i had created after playing the game once. The adults in my life read science fiction and fantasy and were into rock music. I even had adult gamers in my life who played D&D and the games that came before it. The adults in my life at the time were the sort of people that came out of the 60s and had kids and hadn't quite shaken off all their countercultural ways. My mother even defended me when one of her more religious friends came at her (and me) with teir concerns over my potential corruption by the "evil" game.
My mother, progressive in so many ways already, saw D&D as beneficial to me, her awkward, socially hindered, creative and imaginative son. It got me reading and through the game I made friends. She saw how the game taught teamwork and problem-solving and how through gaming, I learned and took an interest in so many other things - history, folklore, even arts and sciences. The ONLY time I ever got in trouble for D&D is when i spent too much time with the game and not my studies and the time i got caught shoplifting a game book.
I think it completely missed a few parts of the US. My dad was born in '59, so he'd have been around for it. But, when I brought it up to him, he had no clue what I was talking about. I think part of the reason for that is that we're in a heavily Catholic region of New England. That sort of anti-catholic Protestant moral panic wouldn't have been that strong here. In fact, back in the 70's, the Italian mob was still pretty strong in the region and they probably would have sent you to the bottom of the ocean if you were that openly hostile to Catholics.
@@TheGreenKnight500 Plenty of Catholics were as duped by the same anti-D&D superstitions as Protestants were. My dad, for one. But many more examples are mentioned in Laycock’s book, Dangerous Games. I think you just got lucky.
Great episode! The content about conspiracy theories and the psychology surrounding them was very good. This episode is a great intersection of two things I really enjoy- RPGs and The Skeptical movement. Excellent work, sir!
I had a guy in our D&D group back in the 80s who had his parents really buy into this whole Satanic Panic thing and after they saw Mazes & Monsters... and then the final straw was that infamous 60 Minutes segment. In 1985, we were playing D&D pretty consistently every weekend, but his parents threw out all of his stuff and banned him from playing. In the end, he still came over and played and just lied to his parents about what we were doing. heh
The one thing that didn't help matters was edgy teens in the area I lived in (Ohio at the time) breaking into some old abandoned houses & spray painting pentagrams & burning candles around it. This was in addition to the usual Heavy Metal posters & such. This added fuel to the panic.
Mostly for me, by the time I was getting into the game, it was considered something super nerdy in addition to the Evangelicals looking at me suspiciously if I mentioned that I played it. Tho to be fair, the Evangelicals were more likely to burn me at the stake for being an LDS church member than for me playing D&D. 🙄
I saw a Jack Chick Tract in the wild that was saying some really foul things about Catholics. Friends of mine that were video gamers used to collect & laugh at the ones going after them.
The satanic panic is one of my favorite topics in geek culture. D&D, MTG and Pokemon not only survived, but absolutely thrived.
My mother bought all my D&D stuff in the '80s. She always supported my hobbies. I did not have to deal with the whole "Satanic Panic". I got my first Player's Handbook from my local Toy's R Us for 9 bucks. I still remember trying to get the big orange sticker off my front cover.
I have only 1 regret in my life : I burned all my rpg books because my church told me so. Stupid me (I was a teen) and stupid f* religious manipulators.
That was end of 80s in Europe (satanic panic took a couple of years to cross the ocean but I also was attending a "charismatic protestant church" implanted by American "evangelists"
Evangelicalism really is cancerous. I live in a very Catholic area of New England so we never really had that problem (we had other problems, lol). Plus, I think people in my region still have a cultural memory of the witch trials and how pointless they were.
Feel you're pain. Same. Sold everything I had. 1988-9, because of manipulative evangelicalism mixed with a player having a mental health crisis. Makes me sad.
This was in the UK. Same religious grouping
As teens in SA in the state library adult Christians would spy on us and follow us and leave us copies of Darkest Dungeons
Librarians kept them away from us
They complained to library services and the head watched us play "none of you boys are casting real spells or levitating ho ho"
they went on to double down keeping weird creepers away
.
I'm the youngest of 6 kids and one of my older sisters sent me the red boxed set of D&D back in the day as a birthday present. I think I was 12 at the time. I had no idea what D&D was outside of the cartoon series on TV. Anyway I was instantly hooked and credit her to my gaming obsession to this day. Oddly enough this sister, who was going through a rough time in her life, found God and went "born again" becoming the church lady you want to avoid. She told me she should have never bought that game for me, LOL.
I think it was 1988 when some cousins from the other side of the country came to visit at Christmas. They were obsessed with my D&D books, they had never seen anything like it. So I asked my parents if we could get them the BECMI red box set as a Christmas gift. (I didn't have any money, so of course they had to buy it! 😄) They agreed, and my cousins were super excited when they opened the gift.
I found out that their mother took that box, those books, the dice, the whole lot and burned them. No Satanism in their house!
For a little context, their dad is my dad's brother, and he and his wife had divorced some years earlier. There was some definite animosity between my parents and her. She was a Jehovah's Witness. My parents knew this. They had to know she was going to freak out when she saw those books. I guess they felt it was worth the investment just to anger her.
Felt bad for my cousins though. They really liked those books. ☹
Also relevant to the video; I discovered Chick Tracts in an outhouse at a beach in Florida. Saw one about evolution just laying there. I should have just tossed it in the bog. Instead I read it, and, well... it sure convinced me I didn't evolve from no monkey! 🐒
My sister and I were both active in the SCA and playing DnD in those days. My sister had to have "the talk" with Mum over DnD during the satanic panic, yet I didn't. Also, Mum did everything she could to dissuade my sister from fighting in the SCA, yet apparently, it was perfectly acceptable for me to hit people with sticks.
I experienced blowback from both my parents and the faculty at my high school. My parents were aware of Mazes and Monsters and weren't aware that they were fiction, so they wouldn't let me play when I was younger. I started playing Basic and then 2E in 1990-1991, and was attending an Orthodox Jewish high school. The faculty completely bought into Patricia Pulling's schtick, and harassed me and my fellow players. As a result we were viewed as "bad kids", and we weren't invited by the principal to his home to be sexually abused by the principal. It turned out that the administration of the school knew what the principal was doing and covered it up.
I was going to Carolina Christian Academy in the 80’s when it happened. We played D&D at lunch. A teacher noticed and said we could keep playing but only if we didn’t use spells or if we did it had to be tied to Jesus. So we was like okay… a little while later during game I yell,” Jesus fireball these kobolds!”
I do find it rather interesting how much of the material in Unearthed Arcana involved ways to summon, commune with, and bind demons and devils, given the timing.
I very much remember some of my friends in the '80s having their parents gather up and throw away their D&D books because of this influence. Lucky for me my parents were more enlightened, and were happy to see me have a hobby that involved reading, math, and socialization.
Having lived through this era in my childhood as both a fundie and a fan of fantasy, it was a magical time! Believing that cartoons could allow demons into your home, games would make you possessed, and juvenile metal lyrics could make you kill yourself was better than any creepypasta we have today. It was like a ghost story come to life. And yes, many adults I knew actually believed 1 in 10 people was a devil worshiper, and statuettes of unicorns were actually idols to pagan gods.
I once found a Chick Tract on the counter of the bathroom of the gym I go to. I kept that thing because I'd never seen one in the wild before and they're basically a collector's item.
Hey Martin, did you mention the Dark Dungeons film in the video? It's available to watch for free on UA-cam. It seems to be a parody of the pamphlet. I found it pretty funny! LET'S GET READY TO R-P-G!!!!
I remember in 1982 we'd heard about Mazes and Monsters and were so excited to see it. (This was before we had VCRs so we had to wait until it showed up on TV.) We knew it was critical of D&D but in those days there was virtually no visibility for TTRPGs in popular media.
We started playing in 1981, so in the beginning of the Satanic Panic, but we actually didn't run into this at all. We'd heard it was happening. None of our parents objected to the game, they even supported it because they saw how it inspired creativity. We had a D&D club in the public high school, and played regularly at the town library.
It was a made-for-tv film.
I've got a dvd of this movie, I didn't realize till watching this episode it was based on this true story - was really weird to know the history of D&D, watch this movie in my 40's (few months ago), and see how it was portrayed then and how far it's come in a positive light
About a year ago I started telling my dad about my D&D campaign world, and he immediately started warning me about accidentally worshiping demons and false gods. 😂
When accusations of Satanism were made against Harry Potter in the late 90s, my first thought was been there, done that. Like with D&D, it was the best possible marketing campaign.
Oh, also - somebody made a feature film adaptation of Dark Dungeons in 2014 - it's hysterical. They added Cthulhu to it. My friends and I now shout, "Are you ready to R - P - G?!!" whenever we're going to actually play :)
ua-cam.com/video/8qc9JiIiOSQ/v-deo.html
3:45 I've mentioned this before in these comments, James Egbert III grew up in the town where I did, and where I live now. He attended the high school I did, where I just went to vote yesterday. Some of the teachers I had in high school had known him when he attended, and used him as a touchstone when talking to me and people like me (late-'80s to mid-'90s young goth/metalhead, clearly smart and well read but also very disaffected, very into sci-fi and fantasy literature, heavily into the geek and hacker subcultures of the era, etc) because they were worried about potential outcomes. His story, and especially suicide attempts, had a lot more to do with how the satanic panic was expressed in my local area than stuff like the Chick tracts or the demi-religious propaganda.
Thank you so much for, again, sharing your history and experiences with James. I really appreciate it and I hope that me talking about him doesn't bother you or open up old wounds, etc. Thank again.
I think 2nd edition with renaming of the classes and getting rid of devils as a monster was lousy. Like I said before my sister in law’s Mom absolutely believed all that stuff so much so my sister in law wouldn’t even let the game in her house! She ended up lightning up though and my nephew plays 5e now. So much easier to blame other things rather than look in the mirror.
My friend's mom was similar, although I didn't meet him until I was in my late 20's so by that point it didn't affect him or me. Thanks so much for watching and commenting!
They did not rid of devils or demons in 2E. This is objectively incorrect.
@@OldHeadAlanExactly. The OP has it backwards. Classes were gotten rid of and demons and devils were renamed.
@OldHeadAlan You're right. I've read through the old monster manuals from 1st and 2nd editions. They kept the demons and devils (and "daemons") in 2e but just used different words to refer to them. The name yugoloth for daemons stuck though and it's still used to this day. In later editions, it seems they repurposed those new words for demons and devils as specific tribes of each.
I remember in the 70s that nobody really knew what dungeons and dragons was.
In fact, there was a very large church group at my church who played there was even a visiting priest who actually played.
Of course he played cleric
as soon as the Satanic panic began, I was already pretty well known for being active in the church youth group. in fact, I happen to be in the youth directors office when we were planning the next Halloween set up. We had a famous spookhouse that we ran.
some people began to know who I was because I was effective at getting people to do things. And they were trying to push me to say something about how evil Dungeons & Dragons was and to help end this Satanic activity
The youth group Director gave me a funny look because he realized I was one of the biggest players in the neighborhood. And when I mean, big, I mean big.
justice that was happening the local visiting priest overheard them putting pressure on me and they clearly didn’t realize how much I was invested in the game
he jokingly came in and said that he’s looking forward to the game next week and he’ll be sure to bring his cleric
We never played together and he just simply did that to give them the hint that they’ll probably not get the support they’re hoping for. they later did ask me some questions about the game and I explained to them what their panicking about is not true. They began to question the information more and more and I was more than happy to tell them.
That was mild compared to some of the effects I’ve seen. I had a friend who was at his church and congregation where their youth group Director was very militantly role-play games.
Of course, the group there try to get me involved with their youth group and of course I was more than happy. He had heard about how effective I was getting people to show up at things.
I just kept my mouth shut anytime we started talking about role-play games because I knew from seeing him talk that was not gonna go over well. He had already made up his mind without any evidence or question what he has been told.
I once had a family tell me that I’m not gonna try to commit suicide am I?
to which I was trying to figure out what they were talking about
they tried to tell me that the game will kill people. I gave them a funny look with confusion and said well I’ve never seen a book fly off the shelf and attack anymore if that’s what you mean.
Basically, the whole situation people realize how ridiculous their thoughts were.
I even fended off assumptions from my own parents. apparently they were some pamphlets being handed around, and I was trying to figure out where they were getting their information because it seemed legitimate, but not quite.
I discovered the book that they were reading from and went to buy my own copy.
I read it from cover to cover, which was probably about 5 to 10 pages to be honest and decide to rewrite the entire booklet but taking the same information they present and rewording it. I carry the same tone and attitude, just twisting the same information the other way around.
And of course, I hate it in a very clever spot where I knew it would be found. Under my pillow.
Of course, my parents found it. They were livid.
And they wanted to know where I got my information from and then I told him and everything in the book came from the very same information that they themselves were reading from. And if they had any doubts about the information, they would have to have doubts about their own version of the book.
that was enough to get them to realize how ridiculous the anti-role-playing groups are that I had thoroughly thought through what I’m doing and have no interest in backing away
On the other hand, if I had backed away, I’d probably have a lot more money. Lol.
I found Dark Dungeon in the wild during the summer of 1984. It was in Sonara, California. I found it and a couple of other Chick Tracts on a payphone outside a grocery store.
Never forget, Hank the Ranger and Bibleman are one and the same.
Wait I never knew Willie Aames played Hank the ranger.
Yep! And Don't forget Ralph the Mouth as your favorite Cowardly Caviler.
@@StephenFain Willy Aames(70's teen poster boy) was Hank, Donny Most (Ralph the Mouth) from happy days was Eric the Cavalier, Adam Rich (Eight is Enough) was Presto, Peter Cullen (Optimus Prime) was Venger, The Great Sid Miller ( a famous 30's actor) was the Dungeon Master.
I even remember residues of that from being a kid... it was like pastors interpreting very much into the role of the game master, like he was using the game to make children emotionally dependent on them, becoming addicted to,the group experience and the spooky near all-might a game master supposedly has over his players... crazy!
There's a mall near a place I lived a few years back, there was a guy that always went through the mall leaving Chick Tracts on tables, chairs, and anywhere else he could put them, but I never saw the D&D one.
that one is a classic, required for every serious collector of insane religious propaganda! 😂
I found the complete tract online years ago. Poke around and I'm sure you'll find it.
There were some things you barely touched on and others which were left out, yet pertinent to this topic involving James and the situation in the country during the 70's which would give a clearer picture of the societal demeanor. I lived just south of East Lansing and one of the people I was playing with worked at the State News as a reporter/editor.
Another person I played with, his dad was a detective on the case. I was also right in the middle of what was going on there being at the Hobby Store constantly. The way William Dear presented his findings at the press conference had a huge impact on public perception as seen the next day in all the major newspapers in the country after the story went over the AP newswire. I watched it on our local television station. As I recall, James ended up in Texas with his uncle and never returned home. I can provide you with some more information if you wish.
Can you imagine what the panic would have looked like if it kicked off in the early 90s when VtM LARP was starting to be a thing?
The panic was revived somewhat for Vampire: The Masquerade in connection to the (separate) crimes for which Jon C. Bush, Rod Ferrell, and David Anderson/Alex Baranyi were convicted in 1996. All were blamed on how their behavior was influenced by the game. See chapter 5 of Dangerous Games by Joseph Laycock.
In the 90s I used to see those tracts around New Orleans, as well as various trucks stop bathrooms along the Gulf (of Mexico) Coast. IIRC, I would always take them so no innocents would be corrupted.
Whoa! That fantasy forest reference unlocked a core memory. I loved playing that game growing up. Great find Martin!
In the 80's, we visited Ohio, where my mom and grandmother are from. We visited one of my grandmothers friends whose grandson was there and roughly my age (middle school). My grandmother knew that I played D&D and asked this kid if he played. The grandmother quickly said "oh no...that is the devils work." I swear to this day I visibly saw my grandmother lose respect for this old friend.
for me personally i thought i would get some pushback from my mother when i got into d&d when i was in high school because she grew up during the height of the satanic panic. i did eventually after the first few secessions asked her about it and what she felt and knew, her response was something along the lines of " I remember all of that and highly believed all of it until you got into it. I know i raised you right, and if something can get you to read whole books and use your creativity to the extent this has it cant be all bad."
i even almost got her and my step dad to play with me before i went into the army but it ended up not happening but my mother sill asks me about the game from time to time and even for Christmas the year i started paying d&d got me some pajama pants that had stewie from family guy rolling craps and saying that's how i roll because she thought it was funny and kind of d&d related. other than that i do remember thigh night i was driving home after getting my EA degree as a mason i was listening to the radio and hit an evangelical channel and the preacher says " Do not partake in activaties that mock God. things like Dungeons and dragons, harry potter, and Freemasonry are works of the devil." before i switch the channel, i do like all of these and have been described as looking like Daniel Radcliff. thank you for this video and hopefully you had fun making it besides having to read or talk about the tragedies that are associated with this topic.
I found & read Dark Dungeons in Sydney, Australia, back when I played a lot of D&D in the late 80s or early 90s. I suspect I found it among gaming convention leaflets in a games store.
I never encountered "Dark Dungeons" in the wild, but I did encounter Jack Chick tracts back in the day! Found one on the sidewalk one day. Military themed. "Holy Joe" maybe. And a year or three later, got on in my bag of candy while trick or treating. A hallowe'en themed one as I recall.
Strange time that was. Lost a friend to it. He joined the church and unfriended us. (He was our GM). Thanks for the share!!
Oh, darn. I'm so sorry to hear that!
Thank you so much for watching and commenting, and for your support of the channel. I really appreciate it!
I remember getting a tract about Halloween, complete with all the urban tropes. It really opened my eyes to the diversity of comic art.
a thought on the “insensitivity” of Gygax’s quote from the clip: while yes, caught off guard, he may have actually been defensive and meant to imply that the parents should have been more attentive before the fact… it also occurred to me that he may have been speaking as a parent, and failed to articulate (in the clip) that yes the temptation, conscious or not, to blame oneself and the resulting urge to reposition that blame on something you don’t understand makes senses.
19:20 Would you kindly keep up this level of work? The satanic panic is of interest to me, because I know an old lady or two in my extended family that still thinks D&D is satanic. The subject interests me.
One of my oldest friends from high school was (and still is) very religious and she actually gave me a Dark Dungeon pamphlet back in 91 after she found out I played D&D. She didn't realize at the time that half our friends from ROTC were into D&D.
Interesting you show the Chick comic depicting people not being able to differentiate reality from fantasy, when so many people playing today openly state they want them to be one in the same. I remember those tracts, a bunch were left in front of the local hobby store.
I grew up in Georgia, north of Atlanta, and played in highschool rock bands and went to a lot of local rock shows. We used to get a lot of Chick comics probably getting left and handed out to kids in more “alternative” groups. Me and my friends knew exactly why we were being targeted and we all liked to compete with each other on our individual collections.
I think I still have some, more than 20 years later collecting them in the wild.
I always thought the use of the term "dungeon" to describe the mazes we ventured into during play was a strange word choice. Did Gary choose it merely for the alliteration with dragon? If so, the alliterative expediency probably lent itself to an ominous reputation. A dungeon in real world parlance is a prison, usually found underground. They are (rightly so) associated with torture and horror. So the negative connotation of dungeons in the title of the game probably didn't help the game's image during the Panic!
My experience with the Satanic Panic back in the 80s fortunately did not create any big problems for me other than having a mother that was frightened for a while. Fortunately, she spoke with some sane people from her generation and got positive feedback about D&D, and so she relaxed about it.
I did have a friend in college whose aunt was very religious and simply threw out all of his gaming material. That didn't stop him from playing, of course, but I'm sure that this must not have been fun.
TSR's accommodation of the Satanic Panic movement predates Gary's ousting from the company and the development of 2nd edition AD&D. Jeff Easley's art for the 1983 cover of the 1st edition AD&D 'Players Handbook' featured a wizard casting a spell. As it was originally painted, the wizard's hood had a dip at the top, but it was filled in because TSR was concerned that the contour could be interpreted as the wizard having demonic horns under his cowl. You can see the line in the red fabric where the addition was made. Some foreign language editions feature the original art.
I was proffered a Jack Chick tract 'in the wild'. It was on a skybridge between hotel-casinos in Vegas in 2011. I think it was on the dangers of gambling, a subject of no interest to me, so I didn't accept it but I did ask the man who was handing them out if it was a Jack Chick tract. He seemed delighted that someone knew what those were and confirmed it was. I asked him if he had 'Dark Dungeons', but he didn't. He suggested I order it from the company which I eventually did along with the Spanish language edition. I don't recall them being particularly expensive.
Incidentally, I have a T-shirt from this channel and I love the design. I even got complimented on it at my D&D club! 😀
Started the game in 1980.. I was a 5th grader. I caught alot of flak from my parents over the years and dealt with alot of bullying and fist fights due to my enjoyment of the game. During my army days people actually thought I took part in blood sacrifices and other crazy stuff. I do admit I add fuel to the fire. I told my colonel; how can I be an army captain hold a DOD clearance if I do these things? He nodded in acknowledgement and I was left to my own devices. I run a game in North East Japan now. It's a stress relief for my co-workers. I guess the game isn't that bad.
Wow. I grew up close by to the Naval Submarine Base, New London (CT). Back in the day, sailors would descend upon the local game store days before deployment, with dice and modules flying off the shelves. Nice they had something to do while trapped inside a tin can for months at a time... (Jokes aside, major props to US submariners; brave souls one and all.)
I was born in 71 and started playing in 81, so I was in the thick of it. Even in my remote oart if Canada the Satanic Panic reached us. I read Mazes and Monsters, and another book if the same vein called Hobgoblin. I even watched the movie. I thought they were kind of weird, but they were linked to D&D so I tunes in.
I had friends who were twin brothers and they loved RPGs. There dad was a local pastor of a fundamentalist church. They could play any rpg as long as it easnt D&D. They did play it secretly though. So we played a lot if Top Secret and Gangbusters. They even got that religious knockoff of D&D where the treasure was bible scriptures.
I also have a memory if being in a book store in a mall that prominently displayed the 1e books. A lady went by and yelled out "Demons!"
On this side of the pond there were rumours about what was happening in the states but by and large everyone got on with what ever they were playing at the time, (by the mid 80's we had MERP, Runequest, Call of Chuthuloo etc etc. We in the UK have always had our own brand of "save the kids from themseleves" zealots (at the time they were obsesed with 'video-nasties; loads on youtube about them) but I think in the end it got more and more people playing and enjoying the 'escapism' style of game with 'no board'! Also it is to be remembered that the game (D&D) was not designed to be a kids game; and as the marketing target audience got younger the sanitisation was inevitable (those that did not like it move to other games).
Great content from you as always.
(By the way everybody easiest way to get assasins to behave in the game is to only allow them to get XP from contract and contract payments controlled by the guild)....
34:18 dude! Ive seen damn near most of them. Including Dark Dungeons. I grew up in SE TN and the churche I used to go to and churches we associated with would hand these out like candy. There was also a regular comic book imprint of Chick Tracts. There are some doozies in there.
I remember a tv show called Quincy MD, they also did a "satanic panic" ep as well
I got my mug I ordered months ago without any issue. Thanks Daddy!
I think I still have a copy of The Satan Seller tucked away in a box somewhere..
Growing up, I really wasn’t exposed to dungeons and dragons until maybe 1990 or so. I remember going to Toys “R” Us and seeing the Red box. I knew
Some of the controversy that Dungeons & Dragons was bad. But my parents never said I couldn’t do it. I just assumed it would’ve been not allowed in our family. To my surprise, my mother bought me that box it. I think it was like $15 and then on a return trip I got the blue box. That was my first experience with dungeons and dragons.
At about 10 years old I got the Holmes, Moldvey box sets, the core a d&d books, and the dungeon board game. My mom played the dungeon game with me. About 1990 I started playing d&d again and mom gave me newspaper articles cutout about the panic. Years later she said that she had nothing to worry about me.
Thanks for delving into this issue. I'm always interested in the Satanic Panic, since I lived through it. I grew up in North Carolina, so those Jack Chick booklets were all over the place, especially around game or comic shops. My dad showed me Dark Dungeons as a laugh, and sure enough, I found it hilarious. Just another one of those extreme religious arguments that fall apart when you think about it. So spells are real, and instead of using them to, you know, take over the world, you just keep playing games? This satanic cult should really reappraise its priorities.
Thanks so much for doing this video. I started playing D&D the summer of 1979, living in Livermore California, by riding my bike to the public library. I was in Jr. High so pretty clueless about current events. The d&d group was open to anyone who came. You could join any game table with an open seat. I recognize now i had Adhd but D&D captivated me. I spent every dime i could get my hands on to buy D&D books and modules. It was one of the best times of my life and I could feel myself learning so much, including a much better vocabulary using words like portcullis and dais. (Lol)
I find it sad that D&D got blamed for the boy's tragic demise. I've always felt that the game is a mental refuge from so many mentally challenging issues that youth face. I once ran a game for a boy with severe AdHd & Tourettes with difficulties even sitting still he had so many tics. After our one game session the boy's mother told me in pure awe that she'd never seen her son stay so focused--there were no tics--as he had during the 4 hour session in which he and his dad tactically planned an ambush on a bunch of homebrew cultists in a swamp.
Sadly my chance to play the game uninterrupted came to a screeching halt when my family moved from California to Logan Utah, where most of my peers only knew that D&D was for devilworshippers. I had never heard of this til i got into tnis community. Raised LDS, i tried suggesting a game night with my local church group and consistently got shot down. I was relegated to playing the game as permanent DM with some of my younger siblings and an occasional odd stranger from Highschool, but a lot of the really creative players simply never materialized in rural Utah. When i got to university the gamers guild mostly decided that RPGs were being
replaced with Magic: The Gathering.
I briefly rekindled a group of players when i got my first job and started playing 3rd edition. Like you, i mostly skipped 2nd edition, opting to collect comicbooks like Xmen and Dr. Strange instead of repurchasing all the 2nd ed. supplements. I was an early adopter of UA-cam and so have enjoyed watching online d&d game players for what feels like decades now (lol). It was the simplicity of 5th edition that drew me back into more dedicated weekly gaming again, i even dm i. Adventure league at local gaming conventions here in layton utah... that and my kids reached an age they could play. My oldest daughter grew up without the ridiculous prejudices of D&D being Satan's game. She even DMs now. I have loved seeing the game return to a more mainstream hobby. I do think it is wrong to discount the power of the mob mentality. My mom once looked thru our Monster Manual and i remember her being "concerned" so we took a sharpie and drew bikinis on all the monster boobs in the illustrations. That quelled her worries. I think she could recognize that d&d was better than mindless tv watching. And it involved reading. But those worries do hinder acceptance and I've spent most of my adult years telling other adults they were lied to... Just last month, during Christmas break, my brother's father-in-law started spouting the tired satanic panic stuff when he found out his grandkids were playing D&D, in a game i run. I had to set the record straight. He's a Wyoming rancher and rabid MAGA voter who believes the worst about so many people.
It's heartbreaking when i think about how a game run well has such potential to heal and all it takes us some imagination. But so many are scared away. So thanks again for putting this one together. Love your stuff. Be well.
Oh... I have seen many Chick Tracts over the years... I actually have a small collection of them that I have more for ironic comedy purposes than anything else. I even have four copies of the Dark Dungeons tract. I used to see them all the time back in the 90s when I worked at a convenience store... fundamentalist Christians who really bought into the Chick ideals would leave them around the store on shelves and whatnot. I used to snatch them up when I saw them and ended up keeping them as a goof. The Dark Dungeons one is absurdly funny, as you already know... but they are basically ALL as crazy as that in many directions. He REALLY had a problem with Catholics and he always demonized them. There is a funny Dark Dungeons movie out there, by the way. The guy who made the movie actually got permission from Jack Chick before making it, but he never explained that he was doing it ironically and basically thought it was batshit. lol
Happy Bonfire Night from 🇬🇧
Thank you so much! I "celebrate" the day every year by changing my FB profile photo and cover photo, and a few years ago, I created a custom cocktail in honor of the night: cocktailcadre.com/guy-fawkes-day-cocktail-the-parkin-highball/
Thanks for watching and commenting. Cheers!
In Kingsburg, CA where I grew up, it was still going strong in the early to mid '90s. Mostly in the various church communities.
I remember reading that there was a belief during the 80s that children would never lie about SA, and thus any child's testimony about it was inherently trustworthy. This has since been debunked.
Had this garbage land right on my neck, starting with my mom. Took DECADES to get certain family members off my back. And this was in New England. Fortunately for me, most of my detractors moved to another state.
25:08 Fun Fact: my first encounter with Dark Dungeons was in an Air Force BX, wedged in the inner front cover of a 1E DMG. A genuine WTF moment decades before the term was coined... Many years later, one of our running gags at game was "Black Leaf, NOOOOO!" 🤣
I came through the satanic panic with all my RPG gear intact, but I did have a friend who was not allowed to play D&D because it was a "demonic game." Instead, he had tons of Car Wars stuff.
Great compromise!
LOL! We weren't allowed D&D either but one of the couple of games I did get was car wars. And a James Bond game if I remember correctly. Never played them but those illustrations were the best!
@@CountryBwoy Top Secret? There was a licensed James Bond game which I think was just a copy of Top Secret with the artwork changed.
The James Bond rpg has a very different mechanic. I think this channel did an episode on it.
Very thorough and sincere job. Oprah and Geraldo also jumped into the witch hunt. I Gaygax actually did a good job defending D&D and I am ot his biggest fan. Thanks for telling me my copy of Dark Dugeons might be valuable. It bothers me that Jack Chick chose to show attractive teenage girls succumbing to demon worship and suicide. This was both inaccurate and misogynistic. We laughed about the Satanic Panic at time, but now I know how it hurt people it's just another shameful piece of our history.
All moral panics are irrational.
The panic hit me too. My dad took away my beloved Holmes Basic and 1e books when I was in 7th grade. I only just replaced them! I’d recommend the book by Joseph P. Laycock, Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds. It’s an intensive study of the panic as it specifically affected D&D.
Thankfully my parents weren’t idiots.
Heh. My mom's Episcopalian, and my dad a queer atheist, so I was fortunate to have a very open and liberal upbringing. In fact, they encouraged my AD&D (and some MERPS) as it got me to read and do math outside of school. And AD&D got me into the GATE (advanced classes) program in elementary school because I was way ahead of the curve in math and reading comprehension -- thanks to RPGs!
Jack Chick tracts were common in the Southern Baptist church I attended in the late 1970's and early 1980's - I still remember one in which featured some Latter Day Saints missionaries were teaching that during Lucifer's rebellion, 1/3 sided with Lucifer, 1/3 sided with God (and became incarnated as Caucasians) and 1/3 sat out the war (and were incarnated as Africans). Really sick work that played on the fears of the times (nuclear war with USSR; late 1960's social disorder; etc.). I've not been in that subculture for about 40 years but it wouldn't surprise me if the tracts are still circulated among those groups.
Used to have a bunch of these tracts. They were bonkers. The drinking and drugs one were just as out there. Would get them handed to you if you went to gaming conventions in the 90s. There'd be people outside the entrances handing them out and telling you how you were evil and going to hell
I grew up in the Bible Belt (where the Satanic panic never so much died as went underground), regularly interacting with evangelicals and sometimes fundamentalists. Never got "Dark Dungeons," but did see other tracts out in the wild. One thing that usually helps evangelicals (though not fundamentalists) get over D&D is pointing out that Gary Gygax was a Jehovah's Witness when he started the game, but they didn't like it (and his drinking and smoking but nevermind that) and disfellowshipped him, leading him to *evangelical* Christianity. In other words, from an evangelical perspective, D&D (also booze but nevermind that) is directly responsible for bringing Gary Gygax to Jesus. Also, Dave Arneson was an elder in his Lutheran church and did mission work. Then follow up with "hey, ya like CS Lewis? Tolkien? George MacDonald? Medieval Christian legends about knights and dragons?" Doesn't work on fundamentalists though; I know from experience that they're just gonna be angry that you're not already one of them no matter what you do. Also, don't bring up the Hickmans unless you're specifically addressing Latter Day Saints.
The worst possible response (and my favorite as a teenager) is to say "no, look, D&D magic is not the same as the occult" and attempt a side-by-side comparison with the PHB and a historical grimoire. This always leads straight to "see? D&D got you into the occult," and they won't accept the blame for it.
15:35 that's totally a skateboard company logo! 😂 They thought it was satanic cult $#!+!
People didn't got over it Stanic Panic even today. I was reading Dungeon Meshi a couple months ago, and the answer that "the dungeons were made by Satan" makes everything so more simple and smooth. I loved. 😂
Marvelous how stupidity proliferates while knowledge is concealed, by the same actors, in all spheres, in perpetuity.
When I lived in Texas in the 90s and 00s people would leave Chick tracts all over the place. Usually in bathrooms.
Great video. For anyone interested in the historical lineage of the tropes and ideas coming up in satanic panics reaching back in some cases back thousands of years, I would recommend a video called "The Satanic Panic - Historical, Mythological & Social Origins - How it Nearly Destroyed MY Life" by the channel Esoterica. Which by the way is also a great source for inspirations concerning anything supernatural or occult to put in your games.
The Muppet Show was far more important than 60 Minutes, so you had the right priorities. :)
I don't think I ever saw a real Chick Tract until I was college age...
I grew up during the Satanic Panic, but my parents didn't believe in that crap, so it mostly passed me by. Heck, the first time I played D&D was at our church (my mother was a janitor at the church, and on days when we didn't go to school, 50/50 we'd spend our days at the church. My other brother was the DM). Of course, if we had been discovered, I don't know how much trouble we would have gotten into...
such a great video! thank you! i remember that panic well!
Why the platonic solids as dice? Why a grid for movement? D&D is something esoteric. Your dad player knows.
People are STILL arguing whether or not Jack Chick was actually serious about the contents of his tracts because they were all so over the top in content and at parody levels of blatant.
I do remember that somebody actually inserted a Jack Chick tract (not the D&D one) into my school locker. :D
I feel like I saw a track similar recently like 5 months ago in Maryland area
Oh my goodness! Wow!
I feel (dare I say... blessed?) to not have to deal with stigmas such as these-- my interest in D&D started as my mother gave me a 5E handbook because her brother, my uncle, played in the 80s-- I can only imagine some of the stigma he might have dealt with.
I started playing just as 2E came out. The satanic craze took my parents for a while and almost ended my playing. I started playing Rifts instead which was better in my parents eyes but of course is much more graphic and risque. It's weird to hear you go over this and even weirder to realize this is happening again only worse.
One of my close friend's mom refused to let him play Dungeons & Dragons because she said it was "Satanic" but she was totally fine with him playing MERP, Rollmaster, and Champions!
Thanks for watching and commenting. Cheers!
I played D&D and listened to heavy metal and got no magic powers, because they're not real. But I was condemned by people who thought magic was real and thought by reading a book about giants and mad nonsense (the Bible) they could cast out demons and channel the power of their god through incantation. Yet I was apparently the one that wouldn't be able to tell fantasy from reality. The same bonkers mentality is still very alive and well in America, just the targets change.
I'm from rural Middle Tennessee and I definitely saw Chick tracts "in the wild" growing up, but I haven't actually seen one in over 20 years now. The local Evangelical groups seem to have moved on to different tactics. The most common one around here was "Big Daddy", which was an anti-evolution tract. Southern Evangelicals used to be weirdly stuck on the topic of evolution.
I see similar outrage in quite a few of my other hobbies, video games and anime for example. Misplaced outrage sometimes makes these hobbies more popular, but sometimes I think that it would be nice to be treated decently from the start. When I was a kid I received a physical copy of the D&D Chick Tract. I remember believing it. I'm personally much more familiar with the backlash against the Doom series of games and the satanic panic that happened there.