Dungeons and Dragons Satanic Panic
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Dungeons & Dragons, a fantasy roleplaying game, was the subject of a Satanic panic during the 1980s. During this time, Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) was repeatedly attacked with accusations that it supported Satanism and led people to commit suicide.[1]
Eventually, these claims were proven false.[2][3][4][5] However, the panic changed D&D (including its official rules) permanently. Nevertheless, millions still play D&D today.
Occult in the 1980s
[change | change source]Beginnings: The McMartin preschool case
[change | change source]In the 1980s, fear of the occult was a big problem. In 1983, these fears exploded when a parent at the McMartin preschool in Manhattan Beach, California accused the school of sexually abusing her child in Satanic rituals.[6]
A number of other McMartin parents soon made similar accusations. At the time, daycare centers were very new, and parents worried for their children's safety. Parents around the country started to worry that their children might also be experiencing Satanic abuse.
Initially none of the McMartin preschoolers reported any abuse. However, they began to tell wild tales of Satanic abuse after being questioned by parents, police, and others using suggestion and/or coercion.[7][8] These tales fueled even more accusations, which began to spread across the country.
When all charges were finally dropped (with no convictions), the McMartin case was the longest and most expensive series of criminal trials in American history.[9][10] This meant it had gotten an enormous amount of attention and that its allegations had been repeated numerous times.
Fueled by the McMartin case, fears and accusations continued to spread around the country about Satanism in various places, from schools to rock music and card games - like Dungeons & Dragons.[11]
Suicides and harm
[change | change source]James Dallas Egbert III
[change | change source]In 1979, a Michican State University student named James Dallas Egbert III tried to kill himself. Two days after he initially disappeared, a private investigator found him alive in the university's utility tunnels. James's mother had hired the investigator after finding her son's suicide note, which said James's character in D&D needed to die because a demon told him to kill himself.
James's mother blamed D&D for his suicide attempt. James suffered from several mental illnesses that were poorly researched and poorly understood at the time, including depression, schizophrenia, and anxiety. Still, the private investigator (a man named William Dear) suspected that the game had caused James' actions.[1] He thought James had gone into the tunnels to play a live action version of the D&D.
The media took Dear's theory as a fact and published it widely. This spread outrage against D&D.
A year later, James died by suicide. His story formed the basis of the book (and later movie) Mazes & Monsters.
Irving Lee Pulling II
[change | change source]In 1983, D&D was blamed for the death of Irving Lee Pulling II.[12]
Police found Irving and his brother dead from gunshot wounds beneath a railroad trestle. Because Irving had a gun in hand, police thought there had been a murder-suicide. However, classmates pointed out that the boys frequently played D&D around that railroad trestle. Investigators found that earlier that day, Irving’s character had a curse cast upon him. The curse was supposed to cause his character “emotional pain and damage.”
Based on this information, the boys' mother Patricia blamed D&D for Irving's death, suggesting that the curse was real and caused his suicide.[12]
Patricia then found other D&D players who did harmful things. These included James Curbing, a very frequent D&D player who killed his school principal, wounded three classmates, then shot himself. Convinced that D&D was causing violence and suicide, Patricia founded a group called Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons (BADD).
Patricia Pulling and BADD
[change | change source]BADD's messages and public service announcements spread around the world, fueled by Satanic panic.
Patricia Pulling (with co-writer Kathy Cawthon) further spread fears with her 1989 book The Devil’s Web: Who is Stalking Your Child for Satan? The book claims that D&D players will become “homosexual satanists who will sacrifice their parents, their sister, and the family cat, then commit suicide in a satanic ritual".[13] It suggests that teenagers cannot see the difference between fiction and reality.
Pulling argued that D&D's manuals were so detailed that they could only have been written by people with a vast knowledge of the occult. (In the original Advanced D&D, some monsters were demons with varying degrees of power over the characters.)
Believing the game was Satanic, Patricia sued her son Irving's school for allowing students to play D&D there. The principal argued that the game was not part of the school's official curriculum, and the lawsuit was dropped.
Research and opposition
[change | change source]Some people still defended D&D and opposed the Satanic panic. Michael Stackpole published articles like The Pulling Report and The Truth About Role-Playing Games to discredit Pulling's claims about the game. Stackpole studied people who played role-playing games, and found they had a lower suicide rate than the general population.[5]
Research eventually showed that there is no link between D&D and violence or suicide.[2][3][4][5] By 1991, the United States Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), American Association of Suicidology, and Health and Welfare Canada had all published statements calling the game safe.[14] However, their statements were not enough to make the D&D Satanic panic vanish.
Game changes
[change | change source]Eventually D&D's maker, TSR Inc., made changes to the game as a result of the panic. James Ward, an executive at TSR, had demons and devils removed from the Monster Manual and Assassins. He also had some spells removed from the Player's Handbook.
Ward explained his actions in an article in Dragon, a magazine about fantasy role-playing games, saying that "avoiding the Angry Mother Syndrome has become a good, basic guideline, for all of the designers and editors at TSR, Inc.".
In later editions, TSR re-added some of the removed features in a separate manual intended for mature readers.
Today, the game is played around the world.
References
[change | change source]- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "The great 1980s Dungeons & Dragons panic". BBC News. 2014-04-11. Retrieved 2018-03-13.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Carter, Robert; Lester, David (February 1998). "Personalities of Players of Dungeons and Dragons". Psychological Reports. 82 (1): 182–182. doi:10.2466/pr0.1998.82.1.182. ISSN 0033-2941.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 DeRenard, Lisa A.; Kline, Linda Mannik (December 1990). "Alienation and the Game Dungeons and Dragons". Psychological Reports. 66 (3_suppl): 1219–1222. doi:10.2466/pr0.1990.66.3c.1219. ISSN 0033-2941.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Simón, Armando (October 1987). "Emotional stability pertaining to the game of Dungeons & Dragons". Psychology in the Schools. 24 (4): 329–332. doi:10.1002/1520-6807(198710)24:4<329::AID-PITS2310240406>3.0.CO;2-9.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 BRMinistries (2016-05-21), Is Dungeon and Dragons Evil? *60 Minutes 1985 special *SHOCKING*, retrieved 2018-03-13
- ↑ Eberle, Paul; Eberle, Shirley (1993). The abuse of innocence: the McMartin Preschool trial. Buffalo, N.Y: Prometheus Books. ISBN 978-0-87975-809-7.
- ↑ Schreiber, Nadja; Bellah, Lisa D.; Martinez, Yolanda; McLaurin, Kristin A.; Strok, Renata; Garven, Sena; Wood, James M. (March 2006). "Suggestive interviewing in the McMartin Preschool and Kelly Michaels daycare abuse cases: A case study". Social Influence. 1 (1): 16–47. doi:10.1080/15534510500361739. ISSN 1553-4510.
- ↑ Garven, Sena; Wood, James M.; Malpass, Roy S.; Shaw, John S. (1998). "More than suggestion: The effect of interviewing techniques from the McMartin Preschool case". Journal of Applied Psychology. 83 (3): 347–359. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.83.3.347. ISSN 1939-1854.
- ↑ Reinhold, Robert (January 24, 1990). "The Longest Trial – A Post-Mortem. Collapse of Child-Abuse Case: So Much Agony for So Little". The New York Times.
- ↑ Mathews, Jay (July 28, 1990). "McMartin Prosecution Halted, Ending Longest Criminal Case". The Washington Post.
- ↑ "The history of Satanic Panic in the US — and why it's not over yet". Vox. Retrieved 2018-03-13.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 Haberman, Clyde (2016-04-17). "When Dungeons & Dragons Set Off a 'Moral Panic'". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2018-03-13.
- ↑ Pulling, Patricia and Cawthon, Kathy (1989). The Devil’s Web: Who is Stalking Your Child for Satan?. Lafayette, LA: Huntington House.
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ↑ Wiseman, Loren K. and Stackpole, Michael A (1991). "Questions & Answers about Role-Playing Games". Game Manufacturer's Association. Archived from the original on January 7, 2007.
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)