B.A.D.D. is coming back!

[David Johansen]

I think the notion that the Mormon church had black listed D&D came from a few articles on it that appeared in the Church News which were of the usual type of fear and uncertainty handwringing.

A year or so ago in The Ensign (the official church magazine) there was an article on Mmporg addiction which was really pretty balanced. It went as far as to note such games were a harmless entertainment for most people. It did have some very fun pictures of orcs dragging happless players into the computer screen. Out of this I've had several church members tell me it was an article about how such games were evil. Perhaps they should have actually bothered to read it.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by ciaran_skye

There's a big difference between "we had a personality conflict/disagreement that go out of hand" and "he went insane thinking he really was his RPG character." I don't want to say the latter has never happened, but as far as I know if it has happened it was with people who were mentally unstable anyway. I knew someone who became so obsessed with White Wolf games that he began claiming, in public, that his security guard job was pretty much Hunter: The Reckoning.

Apparently there was a huge Vampire fad that bunch of high school kids around here got into over a decade ago now (before I moved here). A bunch of friends of mine hung out with people that claimed to be Vampires (and one Fallen Angel). A friend of mine faked stigmata to fit in, apparently. I don't know how much VtM had to do with that or not.

I had a friend in High School that implied he was a Ninja, turned out he was just an alcoholic. :)

I once got in a fight with a guy who claimed he could summon demons. He supposedly put a curse on me. I met him again years later and he apologized.

[Flyndaran]

Whack jobs gravitate to religion as a weapon and security blanket. That's a fact that the sane religious and us atheists must deal with.

[GoblynByte]

To be fair, regarding his confusion between WoW and D&D, most life-long gamers can't make that distinction anymore. So we can hardly blame this outsider for doing the same. ;)

[darksaba]

Originally Posted by GoblynByte

To be fair, regarding his confusion between WoW and D&D, most life-long gamers can't make that distinction anymore. So we can hardly blame this outsider for doing the same. ;)

I can tell the difference between McDonalds and Burger King, and I can spot the differences between baseball and cricket... I'd better be able to tell the difference between WoW & D&D.

[GoblynByte]

Originally Posted by darksaba

I can tell the difference between McDonalds and Burger King, and I can spot the differences between baseball and cricket... I'd better be able to tell the difference between WoW & D&D.

Um... I'm not attempting to challenge an insider's awareness of the subtleties of the hobby. I'm simply eluding to the sickeningly common criticism that D&D 4e is little more than a table-top version of WoW. Gamers often make that comparison, so any misconception an outsider might have regarding the relationship is somewhat understandable, even if it is completely wrong.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Apache

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...:)

Pulling's insane ranting created a backlash even in the mainstream Christian community. Christian Gamers' Guild is one such example. Also unlike then there is the internet. You can role play via flash games anywhere there is a computer.