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Old 01-27-2011, 10:38 AM   #21
Pmandrekar
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Default Re: B.A.D.D. is coming back!

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Originally Posted by Asta Kask View Post
B.A.D.D. is Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons.

...
Apparently, Dungeons & Dragons is a "popular video game" and can cause "addictions." I wonder what the symptoms are.
Let them try to revitalize this effort. It will come to naught.

When I first started hearing about these types of groups arrayed against roleplaying, roleplaying games were in their infancy, and really were played by a segment of the kids that I grew up with, and not most of them.

That may be true today, but gaming, and roleplaying in general have spread to the mainstream. As any activity is partaken by a larger proportion of the public (and if you look at Roleplaying in the population as including computerized RPG's you're talking about large proportions of the public), it becomes harder and harder to isolate and demonize that activity.

There are people who talk about how, for example, computer gaming will utterly destroy your life, and there are always individuals who take it too far, ignore real life and end up in horrific circumstances, but it would be very difficult to 'ban' computer gaming.

In other words, I have fewer fears about a group that attempts to ban rpgs in 2011 (when I'm over 40) than I had in 1981 when I was 11 years old, and the adults around me might have feared for my safety and sanity in picking this hobby up.

-P.
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Old 01-27-2011, 11:07 AM   #22
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Default Re: B.A.D.D. is coming back!

I was given an anti-RPG pamphlet in middle school and told to show it to my parents. So I did. And then I pointed out all the places where they had quoted text totally out of context or quoted different books entirely from what they claimed to be quoting, and my parents said, "OK, sounds like you know this game better than they do."

Fortunately, they didn't ask to see the lamia noble.
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Old 01-27-2011, 12:44 PM   #23
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Default Re: B.A.D.D. is coming back!

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I was given an anti-RPG pamphlet in middle school and told to show it to my parents. So I did. And then I pointed out all the places where they had quoted text totally out of context or quoted different books entirely from what they claimed to be quoting, and my parents said, "OK, sounds like you know this game better than they do."

Fortunately, they didn't ask to see the lamia noble.
My father stood off to the side and watched us kids play. At some point, he convinced himself that it was a whole lot of lather over nothing, and that it was harmless fun.

Sometimes, he would ask us some probing questions about how the mechanics work and he did point out that if we used multiple dice in our dice pool, that we could generate a gaussian distribution of outcomes. We were middle schoolers and didn't really understand the comparison he was making.

Dad has been on the Michigan State University Statistics and Probability faculty since 1968. I suspect that beyond the harmless fantasy angle, he recognized that we might actually stand to learn a little bit about probability.

:)

-P
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Old 01-27-2011, 12:56 PM   #24
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Default Re: B.A.D.D. is coming back!

I had a few friends that weren't allowed to play D&D but were allowed to play other RPGs. In high school I ran into a few problems, a player got my original 3e Basic Set confiscated once, and it got back to me with every single weapon word highlighted (your tax dollars at work!), the Christian club wrote 2-3 letters to the campus paper decrying the Gaming Club as Satanic, and I once (as President of the gaming club) brought before the Superintendent of Schools because he thought we were a gang or something.

The Patricia Pulling hysteria of the 80s and early 90s was much much more shrill than this guy. Remember that she blamed D&D for her son's suicide! This guy doesn't say that gaming kills, he's just saying that it's too worldly and young people should spend more time in church. Religious people say the same thing about books, movies (both of which the quoted article spends more verbiage on then D&D), sports, and really anything that isn't religious devotion.
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Old 01-27-2011, 08:02 PM   #25
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Default Re: B.A.D.D. is coming back!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Pmandrekar
My father stood off to the side and watched us kids play. At some point, he convinced himself that it was a whole lot of lather over nothing, and that it was harmless fun.

Sometimes, he would ask us some probing questions about how the mechanics work...
My Senior year in high school, my father would occasionally sit in when we played. He never played himself, but would just watch and listen...and occasionally ask questions.

One day he was visited by some local BADD representatives, who wanted him to sign a petition banning the D&D game. He heard them out, looked through the literature they offered him...and told them to get stuffed.
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Old 01-27-2011, 09:46 PM   #26
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I have to say my gaming experiences were directly shaped by the anti-gaming hysteria of the early '80s....I went to a Catholic school, and D&D was banned...so we all started playing Traveller, Champions, Call of Cthulhu/RuneQuest/Stormbringer/Pendragon, FASATrek, and, eventually, GURPS.

We managed to corrup.....er....recruit one of the priests into our Champions game, as it turned out he was into superhero comics in a big way...:)
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Old 01-27-2011, 11:13 PM   #27
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Default Re: B.A.D.D. is coming back!

I know someone locally who's can't allowed to play World of Warcraft and other MMOs because someone at their church "smelled brimstone" coming from the computer. His church is pretty far from the mainstream, though, even among born-again Christians.

Basically, what I'm getting at are is that religious extremists try to find whatever negative, evil entity their faith has in just about anything they don't understand. I'm sure it happens outside of the Abrahamic faiths, too.
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Old 01-27-2011, 11:34 PM   #28
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Default Re: B.A.D.D. is coming back!

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Originally Posted by ciaran_skye View Post
I know someone locally who's can't allowed to play World of Warcraft and other MMOs because someone at their church "smelled brimstone" coming from the computer.
I wonder if this person knows what brimstone smells like? Perhaps "ozone" was more what they had in mind?


+++++++++++++++++

Anyway, back when I was part of the GAMA committee charged with looking into this stuff, we finally got a list of the "104 murders, suicides, and mysterious deaths" caused by RPGs, along with all BADD's evidence. We got a list of numbered items, each with a date, and reference to a newspaper clipping or something similar.

- In one case, the entire evidence was "Details withheld at request of parents."

- One case was an autoerotic hanging by a kid who also happened to play D&D (look it up . . . the biggest thing against it is that you look really really dumb when they find the body.

- My all time favorite was the case chronicled in "the investigative book Mazes and Monsters by Rona Jaffe" I had the pleasure of presenting this information to Ms Jaffe, and it was several minutes before she could talk without giggling. "Did any of them read the book?" she asked me. "They didn't even read the cover," I responded, "there are seven words on the cover of the edition I own, ' Mazes and Monsters, Rona Jaffe, A Novel.'" I asked if she had a formal response, and she said "Tell them I made it all up!" in between giggles.

What I still find distressing is that no one from TSR ever contacted her.
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Old 01-28-2011, 01:21 AM   #29
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Default Re: B.A.D.D. is coming back!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ed the Coastie View Post
My Senior year in high school, my father would occasionally sit in when we played. He never played himself, but would just watch and listen...and occasionally ask questions.

One day he was visited by some local BADD representatives, who wanted him to sign a petition banning the D&D game. He heard them out, looked through the literature they offered him...and told them to get stuffed.
BADD representatives? IIRC one of the points made around the time Pat Pulling died was that she was it's sole member.
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Old 01-28-2011, 04:42 AM   #30
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Default Re: B.A.D.D. is coming back!

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I wonder if this person knows what brimstone smells like? Perhaps "ozone" was more what they had in mind?
Probably. I've met his family and we're not talking about the brightest bulbs in the bunch here. The story was "the computer started smoking and they smelled brimstone" which probably translates to "it blew a capacitor and they smelled ozone and burning plastic".

I'll be honest, I avoided D&D for the longest time, and feel guarded when I compare GURPS to it in any way, because of the FUD I heard about it as a child. These days I jump straight to what is sadly the 21st century comparison and call it "World of Warcraft with paper and dice".

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BADD representatives? IIRC one of the points made around the time Pat Pulling died was that she was it's sole member.
And the guy who draws all those Chick tracts... Can't forget him.
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