WI: 1980s Backlash Runs D&D and Fantasy Out of Business

yourworstnightmare

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I suspect there's a difference between D&D and Wicca.
Not to a Evangelical. All that smells un-Lutheran of the Devil. And in the 90s a large part of the elder generation was still active Believers. When people say Europe is so secular, they forget it's a relatively recent thing, a result of a slow process.
 
Not to a Evangelical. All that smells un-Lutheran of the Devil. And in the 90s a large part of the elder generation was still active Believers. When people say Europe is so secular, they forget it's a relatively recent thing, a result of a slow process.
A process that started with Darwin. Also, while there may have been believers, I don't think they were as strong-feeling about it.
 
Ranulf wrote:

*Probably the main reason the Mounties investigated is BECAUSE they had a higher level of authority and ability so as to NOT increase the public concern. Local authorities have to answer to local authorities who as part of the local population are more susceptible to pointed local pressure where as an extra-local authority can ignore such pressure and not enter a feedback look which is how the 'panic' operated.

Actually, the main reason for the RCMP investigating was probably that, in Martensville, they ARE the local authorities. In small towns and rural areas without their own police force, the Mounties function as one.

This is somewhat different from the FBI, I think, who can be sent in to the local level to investigate crimes deemed under federal jurisdiction. But in rural Saskatchewan, the federal police force takes jurisdiction over crimes right from the get-go. Get your purse snatched outside the 7-11? Call the Mounties.

But like I was saying, given that they ARE a national police force, I think most people still expect them to rise to a higher standard than say, a small-town sheriff in the US Bible Belt. Which is what makes their getting hoodwinked into the Panic all the more significant, IMHO.
 

yourworstnightmare

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A process that started with Darwin. Also, while there may have been believers, I don't think they were as strong-feeling about it.
Oh there were a visible generational shift in Finland. I remember the outcry that my parent's generation didn't go to church, (and that some of my grandparents' generation stopped bothering with it), and as I said there were worries about kids being into Satanic stuff like Wicca in the early 90s. Funnily enough by the late 90s that all seem to be over. Regarding D&D it wasn't a thing in Finland, and still barely is, but that's for completely different reasons. It being only in English and it being NEERDY are the main reasons.
 
Fantasy along with Horror are easily the oldest forms of fiction out there and have existed well before Dungeons and Dragons. Now,you could technically get a Seduction of the Innocent going on with mass hysteria and backlash against RPG's,but Fantasy itself would still exist in other forms. And Dungeons and Dragons type RPG's might well go underground and either considerably more adult or more child-like akin to Candyland. But the Fantasy genre itself will survive as always.
 
Persuant to the discussion about the Panic spreading outside the USA and UK...

The Satanic panic is a moral panic about alleged widespread Satanic ritual abuse which originated around the 1980s in the United States, peaking in the early 1990s, before waning as a result of scepticism of academics and law enforcement agencies who ultimately debunked the claims.[1][2][3] The phenomenon spread from the United States to other countries, including South Africa,[3][4][5] where it is still evident periodically.[6][7][8] South Africa was particularly associated with the Satanic panic because of the creation of the Occult Related Crimes Unit in 1992, described as the "world's only 'ritual murder' task force". According to anthropologist Annika Teppo, this was linked with powerful conservative Christian forces within the then-dominant white community in the last years of apartheid. Christian belief is a prerequisite to serve in the unit. The concern with the alleged presence of Satanism and occult practices has continued into the post-apartheid era.

Obviously, apartheid SA was about as far removed from a secular, liberal political order as you can get. But elements of the Panic still survive to this day, according to that article.

Satanic Panic(South Africa)
 
Persuant to the discussion about the Panic spreading outside the USA and UK...



Obviously, apartheid SA was about as far removed from a secular, liberal political order as you can get. But elements of the Panic still survive to this day, according to that article.

Satanic Panic(South Africa)

I remember in the early 1990s there being lots of articles about D&D etc and how evil it was in the popular press. I was a youngster but fascinated by it. Some of the stories were quite scary though. I remember reading one where a girl claimed that she saw Satanists outside her bedroom window trying to get her to join them. Her bedroom was on the first floor of her house, so the Satanists were obviously levitating somehow.

:-/

There were also rumours in school that Satanists were having rituals in the minedumps outside of town. Ridiculous looking back on it now.
 
Have a suicide blamed on D&D with parents taking TSR to court for civil damages. Judge finds in favor of the parents/family - at the very least the industry (and it's nascent descendants like Final Fantasy and Zelda) takes a major hit in the US market. As mentioned before a Columbine-esque situation would also have devastating consequences. First changes would be at the state level with some states likely to ban the sale of the genre as individual school districts banned Potter books or worked to ban evolution from being taught. If this mental McCarthyism spreads further it will likely restrict development of fantasy genre and perhaps even vampirism or Wizarding themes in Hollywood/literature severely. Perhaps AOL falls in favor of Netscape or Opera or other 'family-friendly' Internet developers (Compuserve, Prodigy, etc). Unfortunately the 'victory' likely energizes the Christian Right and could serve as a means to advance their development as a political bloc while giving them incentive to stay coherent, i.e. 'well when we worked together look what we accomplished...'. Overall Lord of the Rings might not do as well but will still be a huge success, families in the South and Midwest were refusing to see Batteries Not Included because it included the hint of a creator other than man and the Almighty. Not sure what today might look like under the circumstances.
 
MSR wrote:

Have a suicide blamed on D&D with parents taking TSR to court for civil damages. Judge finds in favor of the parents/family - at the very least the industry (and it's nascent descendants like Final Fantasy and Zelda) takes a major hit in the US market.

If such a verdict were to be rendered, I think what it would mostly do is entrench the opinions of people who were anti-DND to begin with. Pro-DNDers, as well as a good chunk of the fence-sitting or apathetic public, would just laugh it off as another ridiculous court decision wrought by conniving lawyers and dumbassed judges, like the McDonalds hot-coffee verdict.

But yeah, there might be a few erstwhile fence-sitters who would make the calculation that "Well, if a judge says it's true, it must be true". I don't know if there would be enough of them to have a serious impact on TSR's well-being.
 
MSR wrote:



If such a verdict were to be rendered, I think what it would mostly do is entrench the opinions of people who were anti-DND to begin with. Pro-DNDers, as well as a good chunk of the fence-sitting or apathetic public, would just laugh it off as another ridiculous court decision wrought by conniving lawyers and dumbassed judges, like the McDonalds hot-coffee verdict.

But yeah, there might be a few erstwhile fence-sitters who would make the calculation that "Well, if a judge says it's true, it must be true". I don't know if there would be enough of them to have a serious impact on TSR's well-being.

I wanted to focus on the monetary impact as a level of risk under those circumstances. I agree with your view on how society would view the situation - a friend of mine in high school came from anow unusually strict Catholic family (think Opus Dei without the suffering component - mass at least 3 times a week, dietary restrictions, etc.) and met his end by his own hand. We were part of a group of five that were D&D players who subsequently stopped to honor our friend. Parents going after a publishing company if they felt it had a hand in such things would not be unheard of and might work under the wrong circumstances. If they can get sued and precedent for it exists, publishing companies might stop releasing new material altogether for years.
 
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