Satanic Panic

The Satanic Panic was an issue that afflicted the tabletop roleplaying community, centering itself on the Dungeons & Dragons fandom, from a period of roughly the end of the 1970s to the start of the 1990s. In a nutshell, it boils down to American moralfags accusing D&D of being a bad influence on their communities and actively persecuting D&D players or anyone who could be mistaken as a D&D player.

The roots of the whole mess began in 1979, when a trouble teenager named James Dallas Egbert III disappeared for a month after, reputedly, having earlier attempted to commit suicide in the utility tunnels under the campus of Michigan State University. Failing to off himself, he instead hid in a friend's house for a month. During that time, private investigator William Dear, hired by Egbert's parents, speculated to the media that he might have gotten lost during an attempt to use the utility tunnels for a Live Action Roleplaying session. The press, of course, ate this shit up, especially when Egbert went and blew his brains out in 1980.

This incident was later used by hack writers to produce the cheesey 1981 "horror" novels "Hobgoblin" and "Mazes and Monsters", both of which had the basic idea of "roleplayer loses his mind because of roleplaying and ultimately ends up killing or nearly killing himself" - Mazes and Monsters even got a freaking film adaptation a year later.

This controversy was bad enough, but at the time, America was tying itself up in knots over widespread fears about the existence of Satan-worshiping cultists being everywhere, seeking to subvert Good Old Traditional Values and commit murder, rape and torture. The two became a heady brew together, all thanks to one asshole:

Meet Patricia Pulling. When this fuckwit's son Irving killed himself in 1982, she claimed it was because he had been placed under a "D&D curse". She tried to sue first Irving's principal, and then TSR itself. Naturally, the legal system threw her out on her ear, noting that this made absolutely no sense and that the more logical answer had to do with pre-existing social and psychological problems, such as being bullied at school. But the damage was done in giving her a public appearance to begin with.

Inspired by the two-year legal battle, some fucktards in Canada produced the 1983 film "Skullduggery", which went a step beyond its equivalents from before, where a roleplaying game explicitly identified as D&D (Hobgoblin had titled itself after a fictitious Celtic themed RPG, whilst Mazes & Monsters had used its same-name D&D pastiche) ultimately turned a player into a serial killing lunatic.

Furthermore, by 1983, Mrs. Pulling was making connection with a bunch of fundy Christian groups, and also with Illinois psychiatrist Thomas Radecki, director of the National Coalition on Television Violence. Together, they founded Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons - a collection of religious bigots, bullies, jerks, clueless parents and assorted well-meaning but brainless idiots out to stop the depredation of "evil D&D". When Pulling's case was finally dismissed in 1984, BADD went into full attack mode.

Incidentally, the infamous Dark Dungeons tract by Jack Chick was written in 1984.

It must be repeated that BADD lost every single attempt at litigation they ever attempted, but the credulous public ate up their bullshit and responded by shitting on D&D players everywhere. Teachers, parents, Christian pastors and even on occasion the police tried to stomp on those who liked to roleplay, everything from verbal and emotional harassment to seizing and destroying roleplaying materials, blocking RPG groups from using public spaces to socialize, sabotaging groups by planting false evidence of satanic rituals, and/or possession of drugs and/or pornographic materials before calling the police, tacitly encouraging violence, theft and abuse being directed against gamers, privacy invasion, expulsion from school for continuing to play after a ban had been put in place and harassment/arrest for supposed satanic desecration of graves and churches.

Amazingly, during the 80s, the gaming community actually just took this shit. For a significant portion of the 80s, the prevailing attitude was of apologetics and self-censorship, striving to prove that they were moral people by passive resistance. However, behind the scenes, angry players were going on the attack; writers began publishing investigations into the seedier side of many anti-D&D big names in Dragon Magazine. The academic credentials of Thomas Radecki and Patricia Pulling were debunked. Numerous links were forged with academics and government agencies studying youth suicide and academic publications on gaming were collated and made available to gamers wanting to investigate and/or debunk anti-RPG claims. Gamers began to coordinate lobbying campaigns by phone, letters, public forums, the burgeoning internet and word of mouth as a means of informing the media, law enforcement, educators and local government about RPGs and their role in youth culture. Links were forged with the Skeptics Society and other secularist organizations. Articles were written in Skeptics Society journals and journals of psychology, and law enforcement officers and criminologists, such as Robert Hicks, began to debunk and expose the supernaturalist origins of anti-gaming claims and question their relevance in law enforcement initiatives. Perhaps the greatest blow to B.A.D.D, Patricia Pulling’s and Thomas Radecki’s credibility was the publication of Michael Stackpole’s “Pulling Report” in 1989, which severely criticized the ethics and methodology of anti-RPG campaigners, provided conclusive evidence that the suicide rate was lower amongst roleplayers, and was widely distributed amongst law enforcement, educational bodies, game manufacturers, gamers and government agencies.

The cultural zeitgeist changed. Thanks to years of work by D&D's defenders, the "Satanic Ritual Abuse" phenomenon being exposed as equal parts mass hysteria and con artistry, and the recurring failure of its attackers to actually win any legal battles or otherwise fail to void being debunked, people grew out of it. People tried to keep the fire of it going - for example, in 1988, authorities chose to focus on Chris Pritchard's being a D&D player as the "reason" for his murdering his stepfather, rather than his long history of mutual antagonism and his heavy drug & alcohol use - but years of moral hysteria with no actual payoff, combined with a steady stream of actual intelligence and growing information access, had robbed BADD and its fellow shitheads of any real standing in the public eye. When, in 1989, an absolute fuck by the name of William Schnoebelen published a pair of articles that claimed D&D was a New Age Satanist front to steal people away from Christianity, people looked at how he claimed D&D could actually summon real fiends and work real magic, and the fact he was being bankrolled by Jack Chick and dismissed him for the mindless screwhead he was.

Ironically, the Satanic Panic had some rather positive effects on the RPG world.

First and foremost, it was instrumental in forging a shared sense of community amongst roleplayers of all types; they might still bicker and argue over internal minutia, but now they'll come together in the face of an outside threat. Prior to the Panic, RPGers had just been hobbyists; coming together for support under the Panic's suffocating blanket made them a culture in their own right.

Secondly, it established roots between roleplayers and alternative religious subcultures; though the sentiment is perhaps waning now, during the late 80s and the 90s, the roleplaying community became extremely critical of Christianity, if not outright hostile. Years in which the most public face of all Christian churches and doctrines had been of violent bigots eager to oppress people for their "crime" of enjoying the innocent pasttime of roleplaying had bred a strong resentment of Christianity into the RPG community, and made it more open to embracing Gothic-derived cultural symbols and increasingly subversive themes in games. White Wolf sprang into being and flourished during the post-Panic years of the 90s, specifically because it could tap into that air of taboo and the forbidden that had been forced upon RPGs during the 80s. Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu erupted in popularity during the time period for similar reasons.

There are still some lingering attempts to tap into this long-dead phenomena - in 2013, several news articles claimed that in Israel, playing D&D was actually frowned upon by the Israeli Defence Force. Almost immediately, reporters who'd done actual research reported that this was complete bullshit; D&D Is hugely popular in Israel, to the point that a good DM can actually get paid money for being willing to run peoples' games. Fundy churches, who by their very nature can't learn that cracking down on RPGs is a good way to drive off the next generation of worshippers the way that more moderate churches have, still make the same old complaints - but nobody listens now outside of their own echo chambers.

This was the Satanic Panic. Good fucking riddance, but it's a shame that history keeps repeating itself.