These days, The Big Bang Theory presents Dungeons & Dragons – one of modern Fantasy’s origins – as an innocent pastime. However, Eric Grundhauser of Atlas Obscura reminded me recently of the media panic over the game when it had first appeared.
Back in the early 80s, playing Dungeons & Dragons was seen as a surefire ticket to madness and damnation. The game rapidly became associated with violence and teen suicide, casting a spell over the media that resulted in some strident anti-fantasy propaganda.
In the unlikely case you’ve never heard of Dungeons & Dragons, it is a tabletop role-playing game created by Gary Gygax, and first published in 1974. Taking place in a Tolkienesque world of high fantasy, it involves players assuming the roles of fictional characters and talking their way through quests, with the help of the Dungeon Master – a designated player whose imagination makes up the particulars of the world surrounding the players.
Bob Ross would make a great Dungeon Master
The game became an instant hit among mid-70s “indoor kids,” who were looking for a fun way to exercise their imaginations and play around in a vast, complex world of magic and mystery. Unfortunately, that same desire for escape among teenagers often goes hand-in-hand with depression and other feelings of isolation.
The disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III
The catalyzing event that started the moral panic over D&D was the disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III in 1979. Egbert was a gifted computer programmer studying at Michigan State University, having been accepted at the age of 16. While there, he was involved with a D&D group that would sometimes do a little play in the privacy of the university’s underground steam tunnels. Egbert disappeared into the steam tunnels in August of 1979, with the intention of committing suicide by overdosing.
Egbert’s family hired enterprising private detective William Dear to find their son. During his search, Dear learned of Egbert’s D&D hobby, and made it the focus of his investigation. Egbert’s disappearance came to be blamed on a “Dungeons and Dragons game gone awry.” Dear concluded the game had driven him mad, that he lost the ability to discern reality from fiction and had gone off on some insane, delusional quest. Of course when the media got wind of this, it planted the seeds of D&D as a corruptor of youth, and maybe even worse.
T
he truth was much more tragic. Egbert had survived his suicide attempt, and had fled into hiding. He stayed with friends before finally giving himself up to Dear in September of 1979.
As it turned out, Egbert’s participation in D&D games was not the reason for his disappearance. He had struggled with drugs and depression, which were the true culprits behind his suicide attempt. Tragically, another attempt the following year ended in his death. But even with the truth of the case settled, Dungeons & Dragons had acquired a bad reputation.
Mazes and Monsters
Dear sensationalized the Egbert case in his 1984 true crime book The Dungeon Master: The Disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III, but before even he could get there, novelist Rona Jaffe churned out the moral panic classic, Mazes and Monsters. Capitalizing on the public fear of D&D evoked by Egbert’s case, the plot of Jaffe’s novel revolved around a gaming group in which one of the players goes off the deep end, and begins hallucinating that the fantasy world is real, both scaring his friends and eventually attempting suicide.
By 1982, CBS had produced a low budget TV movie based on Mazes and Monsters featuring a young Tom Hanks as the teen who loses himself in the game.
Dark Dungeons
By 1984, fantasy roleplaying had evolved from threatening the innocent minds of America’s youth to threatening their eternal salvation. Religious mini-comic author Jack Chick published a pamphlet about the issue, tying fantasy roleplaying directly to the occult. Called Dark Dungeons, the thin pamphlet tells the story of Debbie, a young woman who gets seduced by a witchcraft-practicing dungeon master who teaches her to embrace evil through the game.
Through the course of the story, Debbie uses a “mind bondage” spell on her father to get spending money and finds the body of a friend who committed suicide after losing her game character. Eventually, Debbie seeks the help of an ex-witchcraft practitioner (a Fundamentalist Christian), who casts the demons from her and invites her to a book burning. Dungeons and Dragons had always featured demons, angels, and other monsters with biblical ties, but these in-game creatures were now being seen as conduits to the “real” thing. Some had even come to believe that the gamebooks contained actual spells and curses that kids were taking part in.
Like Mazes and Monsters, Dark Dungeons was recently adapted into a short film.
BADD
The fear of fantasy roleplaying was truly legitimized in a 1985 60 Minutes broadcast in which Ed Bradley took an arguably biased look at whether or not Dungeons & Dragons was as harmful as many thought. The highlights of the story are interviews both with D&D creator Gygax, as well as the Pulling family, who in 1982 had started an anti-occult group called Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons (BADD), after their son killed himself.
The Pullings came to believe that their son had been placed under some sort of death curse while playing D&D at school the day he died. Bradley gives some voice to a group of players as well as Gygax and TSR’s PR agent, but most of the piece is spent on the Pullings and investigation of crimes said to involve D&D. At one point, Bradley even asks Gygax why he doesn’t add a warning to the game letting people know of the potentially harmful effects it might have on players, tacitly confirming the fears fantasy role-playing’s opponents had been creating.
Subsequent Editions
The controversy surrounding Dungeons & Dragons continued throughout the 1980s. When the second edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was released in 1989, TSR removed all mention of demons and devils and skewed gameplay to more heroic actions as opposed to the more ambiguous tenor of the first edition. As the 1990s moved on, attention moved away from the evils of pen-and-paper roleplaying games and focused on violent video games or other cultural boogeymen.
D&D eventually got its devils back, publishing such great sourcebooks as The Book of Vile Darkness. However, in those circles where reference to Harry Potter and talk of fantasy violence is still seen as a ticket to the dark side, D&D is still the bad boy of roleplaying.
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I only vagueally remember people thinking D&D was kind of strange. I don’t remember there ever was a true fear here in Italy. Besides, fantasy in all its forms has always been considered (and still is) children’s stuff.
I never imagine there was such a stigma attached tot he game.
Thanks for sharing 🙂
It was a mixed bag here in Greece, too. Most people dismissed it as an innocent (children’s) pastime, but there were a few who were up in arms against it.
We went through the same thing with computer games, of course.
I heard about the rumor, but my son and some friends played it and they all seemed to turn out normal. I also think people are always looking for scapegoats for mental illness and the results of it. Good piece, Nicholas. —- Suzanne
That’s an excellent, if sad, point – that people have such trouble accepting mental illness that they have to come up with an “excuse” for it.
Nicholas, this was an interesting look back in time. My oldest son played D&D. There were two camps of parents, those who let their children play the game, and those who lambasted the parents who allowed their children to play. My son turned out to be normal, despite the claims by the other camp that he would grow up with a twisted mind.
Lol – yes, the other camp could be a bit too much 🙂
Well I must say, all that bad press about D&D in the 80s must have passed me by, I knew none of it! Probably because I hady nose stick in too many fantasy novels! ???
Lol – yep, that usually does it 🙂
The charlston, jazz, rock-n-roll, D&D, twitter … the devil’s playground, I tell you! Where will it all end? … and off they go clutching their pearls!
I think the one thing all these things (and many more throughout history) have in common is that it produces a paradigm shift in the new generation away from the one before, thereby threatening the structures that generation created and believed to be the epitome of civilisation!
Lol – it’s the end of the world as we know it!
Seriously though, nice point about the paradigm shift 🙂
I remember when all this happened. So many of my friends played this game and so much of society had deemed it evil and dangerous. What memories this post brought back to me! Great post. Thanks.
Even in Greece, it was the same. Good times 🙂
“the bad boy of roleplaying” — love it!
You bad girl 😀
Wow. This was so interesting. Where was I in the 80’s? I don’t remember any of this. What intrigues me is how “modern” society still engages in witch hunts (right down to Salem-esque demon possession) in response to some really sad stories. It’s so much easier to blame a game than it is to look at the real causes of mental illness and suicide. So they moved on to video-games, another easy target. What will it be next?
Couldn’t have put it better myself 🙂
I remember all of that. Didn’t stop me from playing.
Lol – quite right 😀
I didn’t get into D&D until 1992, so I missed the big hoopla. There was more teasing about it, but that only happened if people figured out you played. Probably wouldn’t be a fantasy author without my D&D years too. It’s interesting how often people pick an outside influence for a person’s behavior instead of considering there’s an internal issue. A person with a loose grasp of reality or suicidal tendencies needs help instead of having one of the few things they love get taken away.
This does remind me about when my wife got into D&D. She was looking for a group to hang out with at college and stumbled into the Storyteller’s Guild. That was the name of the role-playing game group. She entered the game where we met, so we got her a player’s manual. Someone in her family found the book and started ranting about there being evil recipes inside. She meant the explanation of spell components, which included griffin talons, dragon blood, and things that simply didn’t exist. Apparently, laughing at that reaction wasn’t the right move.
Lol – typical! I did have you in mind as I was preparing this post. Thanks for sharing 🙂
I wonder if I should look for those two movies/shorts/whatevers. Never paid any attention to the anti stuff.
Only if you want to fry a few brain cells… 🙂
Hmmm. There are a few that have been jerks and won’t let me sleep. Doubt they’d be the ones to go though.
They never are.
I remember the fear, the worry, the concern. We heard stories, but we were able to ignore them because they happened elsewhere, and there was no Internet to keep it in your face every day. My parents paid no attention to it, and never banned us from the game.
My history with D&D: I was introduced to it by the new director of our Boys & Girls club when I was 13 (in the early 80s). I instantly fell in love it. We played it every Friday night for two hours for seven years. Every other month, we’d have a sleepover at the club and do an ‘all-nighter’ where we played from nine to nine.
These were some of the best times of my life. I laugh at people who think it twisted minds; if a mind is meant to be twisted, the Flintstones will make them do their thing. D&D just exposed the weakness.
I still have the handbook I bought back then; it sits within arm’s reach to refer to if I need to. My love for fantasy came from D&D. It introduced a whole new world to me, one I instantly connected with. The game gave me skills and knowledge I would carry with me to this day. And, when I think of it, it probably kept me and some of my friends out of normal trouble a teen might have found themselves in on a Friday night.
I was the mapper, so I learned how to make detailed maps to keep us from getting lost. In sticky situations, I became the speaker for the group. This translated into becoming a junior leader and a leader in various groups. I learned that I’ll follow only until I see no one is leading or the leader is making mistakes. Then I step up and fill that role.
I am who I am today because of D&D. I am a girl. My favourite character to play was a hafling thief. I loved a challenge, and sneaking into a castle and stealing was a thrill. It never transferred into real life. Meeting a challenge did, but the thieving stayed in the game. We had an awesome Dungeon Master who I’ve contacted a few times in the past few years to thank him for introducing the game.
D&D inspired my fantasy novel series. The first draft was telling the story of one of our adventures. It’s come a long way from there, but that’s its origins.
Thanks for the post. it has inspired me to write my own to share my view of D&D; I’ll link back to this post with regard to controversy. You have covered it better than I can.
Thanks for sharing that; I loved reading about your experience with it! “If a mind is meant to be twisted, the Flintstones will make them do their thing” – couldn’t have said it better myself 🙂
I was too old for these games at the time, and thought they were just for Nerds and Swots with nothing better to do.
Come to think of it, perhaps I was right!
Thanks, Nicholas, very interesting.
Best wishes, Pete.
Lol – absolutely right 😀
This post brought back some memories – I can remember my parents been concerned about the amount of time a couple of my brothers spent playing D&D back in the 1980s- they used to pretty much live in our basement after school, weekends and holidays. They loved the game. However, by the time they reached 18/19 they lost interest in playing D&D and moved on to other interests. I think at the end of the day there are a lot of things that people can become addicted to, not just a role-playing games. Great post 🙂
“…and moved on to other interests”
Dare I say, girls? 🙂
I agree : addictive personalities can become addicted to pretty much anything.
Lol, yep, girls most definitely became very interesting for my brothers 😀