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Chris Higgins
The Panic Over Dungeons & Dragons (in 1985)
by Chris Higgins - March 27, 2009 - 12:59 PM

In the mid 1980s, the U.S. media latched onto a story: teens were committing suicide, and the roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons was somehow to blame. As a kid who was himself playing D&D (and not committing suicide) during this media firestorm, I remember the outcry pretty vividly. All the kids I knew who played the game were nerds, just like me. I was vaguely aware that sometimes teens did commit suicide…perhaps even nerds. Was there any connection between nerds playing D&D and nerds committing suicide? Not from what I saw. But I saw a lot of adults up in arms, concerned for my health and my soul, while for me, D&D was just a fun way to socialize and nerd out with my friends. (A similar discussion centered on teen suicide and heavy metal, and it always seemed equally bizarre to me. Though I never dug metal personally.)

In 1985, 60 Minutes broadcast a segment on the controversy over Dungeons & Dragons, interviewing the families of kids who had killed themselves, and who had also been D&D players. 60 Minutes also interviewed D&D creator Gary Gygax (deceased one year ago this month), who stated that the whole thing was just “a witch hunt.” Well, now the 60 Minutes segment has turned up online. If you played D&D in the 80’s, or remember the controversy over it, these two videos are worth a look:

Note: at the end of Part 2, we see a followup on Dr. Thomas Radecki, a psychiatrist (and chairman of the National Coalition on Television Violence) interviewed during the piece. The followup was aired in 1995. Here’s part 2:

Pat Pulling, featured in the 60 Minutes piece, founded Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons (BADD) after her son’s suicide. Read more about Pulling in The Pulling Report by Michael A. Stackpole. (Pulling passed away in 1997.)

Now that most of the people in the 60 Minutes story are either dead or discredited, the whole thing seems like a distant bad memory, one of many moral panics that swept the U.S. in the 1980s. I’m wondering if any of our readers were (or are still) D&D players, and remember this whole brouhaha. Care to share your experience in the comments?

Comments (50)
  1. I was a little too young to remember the controversy but my mom did- when I was in high school she found out I had friends who played D&D and she strictly forbade me from playing it with them saying it was the work of Satan. Ha! I just remember thinking she was silly to get so worked up because 1) she sounded like a lunatic and 2) I wasn’t that interested in it anyway.

  2. I don’t remember anything about suicides, so much as I remember the controversy regarding D&D related homicides. There were a few well publicized murders that were committed by LSD/PCP-using D&D players. They were usually sword-and-sorcery style killings, like, one guy in Roanoke, VA killed his family with a sword after playing D&D while using LSD. The sorcery of that story being the drugs he was using.

    Somehow, D&D got the blame for that, not the LSD. Go figure.

  3. Heck yeah, I remember that stuff. Just like the whole backwards-masking/Satanism/gangsta-rap scares of the mid- to late-1980s did little but jack up album sales, these Witch Hunts only made everything more attractive to us. Suddenly, we weren’t just nerds… we were *dangerous* nerds.

    Of course, if they’d done any serious journalism, like actually experiencing gamer culture first-hand, they’d realize the only thing dangerous about us was our foul language and horrendous diets. We were just a bunch of kids playing with dice and using our imaginations.

    My parents never bought into the hype. In fact, my stepfather at the time owned a gaming/computer store called Dungeons and Disks. It was a great time to be a gamer.

  4. I never played D&D. But I do remember listening to a series of Christian Kids Radio programs called “Adventures In Odyssey” put out by Focus on The Family. There was a two part episode that dealt with some Christian kids playing D&D and almost dying from demon attacks. There was a whole wave of fear sweeping through the fundamentalist churches at the time.

    It didn’t bother me too much at the time because none of my friends played role playing games. BUT, my mom heard it, and took away both Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy, which I DID love playing on my classic Nintendo Entertainment System. The connection between demonic presence and my old 8-bit video game is still a mystery to me…

    If you want more info on the radio program, I can dig it out. Pretty sure FotF still broadcasts it!

  5. Terrible time for a gamer. As a nerd and a christian, I received no small amount of grief from both sides. But I never gave up the games, as they were my one easy way into friends at every new school.

  6. I’ve played it, and I can live without D&D. People have killed themselves who were involved in the military and those that were involved in almost every different religion out there, lets ban those too.

  7. Wasn’t there some CBS movie with Tom Hanks which showed D&D players losing their mind?

  8. I remember the controversy, as my mother panicked when she heard I was playing. I am a gamer fanatic myslef and have been playing for 15 years. I am not a violent person in real life I just enjoy it in an imaginary world, like video games and movies.

    What I find funny is how they point the finger at D&D, not the fact that all these kids have such easy access to guns! Those kids didn’t imagine themsleves to death or clobber themselves with the books or choke on the dice!

  9. Sure do remember all the brouhaha about this. I wasn’t a D&D gamer, but was well aware of it, had friends who played, and I was kind of enamored of the whole thing from an outsider’s perspective.

    I also recall the made-for-tv movie “Mazes and Monsters”, starring Tom Hanks among others, and how much that played into the hysteria. Remember that?

    You are right to compare this phenomenon with the other about heavy metal. I have been a metal head to a degree, and it got a bad rap in much the same way. Remember when Judas Priest was sued (in 1990) for contributing to the death (in 1985) of a boy? Stupid lawsuit, claimed they put subliminal suicidal messages in their music.

    Kids were just trying to have fun. After all, we didn’t have blogs and Facebook back then! Ha ha.

  10. It was called Mazes and Monsters, and was done in 1982.

  11. I feel SO bad for this family’s loss, I can’t even imagine what it would be like to lose a child. But the mom’s whole point seems to be that kids need to be protected from using their imaginations, in case they imagine bad things. Also, parenting warning flags go up when the mother says the first time she heard of D&D was after her son’s death. If his “obsession w/ D&D” loosened his grip on reality and led to his suicide, then his parents would have to be pretty neglectful not to have even heard of the game he was obsessed with.

  12. I was one of the lucky ones. I played regularly and had a pastor who took the time to find out the truth and not believe all the hype. I regular and openly discussed games at church with my friends.

    Now it got weird when I went to college. I attended a Christian College in the south. By then I had stopped playing for lack of a group and boredom. I had to fill out a form in one of my classes to help the teacher get to know us better. Under hobbies I listed that i formerly played D&D. It was barely a day before the articles under the door, the calls to the office, and the offers of prayer began. The kicker for me was when I found out a fellow student was going through my mail and regularly anointing my door with oil. He later told another student that he was convinced that I was a demon in human form there to destroy the school. I reported what was happening and he was expelled. Even after that I would still have bouts of craziness. But in the end they finally just let it go.
    My question tho is this. Who was crazier, me for playing a fantasy game, or him for covering my door with cooking oil and trying to exorcise me?

  13. Looking back, it seems strange that the game wasn’t seen simply as a symptom and outlet for alienated teens, rather than a cause of alarming and tragic behavior. Personally, D&D was a very positive influence on my life, during a very painful and awkward time. I even wrote and published a play about it called The Gifted Program.

  14. Somehow, I knew this post would generate a lot of comments!

    Let’s see, I believe it was the summer of 1985, after my junior year of HS. I lived in Tulsa, OK (known as the Buckle of the Bible Belt, home of Oral Roberts University) and I was attending a gaming convention at a downtown hotel. I was standing in a fast food line for lunch and three women approached me, having apparently seen my OkCon badge and asked me what it was all about. I described role-playing games in general terms (I believe I was actually playing Traveller that particular day), and one asked, “Like D&D?” I said, “Yeah.’ Then they proceeded to tell me that D&D was the work of Satan and I was going to Hell if I played it. I sort of nodded and shrugged, got my food and walked to a table to eat it. They followed me, sat down at my table and spent the next hour or so trying to convince me to renounce Satan and come to Jesus. They had somehow gotten this idea that role-playing games were a form of witchcraft or devil-worship, I guess because of the game’s use of magic spells and having various kinds of devils and demons as monsters.

    Did the faith-healing session work? Here we are almost 25 years later, and I’m still rolling the dice weekly with the homeys. On the other hand, I never committed suicide or sacrificed a virgin under a full moon, so maybe that little talking-to kept me from losing my soul altogether.

  15. I remember the rumors that D&D was satanic. I got into it a little, but nothing like these kids.

    Seeing the 60 Min piece, Gygax didn’t come off as being too sympathetic. And his lawyer didn’t seem to be very good at explaining their position.

    But I would echo the thoughts of some above, for a game that dealt w/ swords and crossbows, there were a lot of kids dying from gunshots that can’t be found in D&D, and these parents finding out about their kids obsessions after their death pointing the finger somewhere else.

    Also, did you see the look on that little girl’s face, having to hear about her brother’s death, this was before Ed Bradley started asking her questions. I felt bad for her before she started to cry, being used for her mother’s crusade. What a shame.

  16. I can’t believe no one has mentioned the Dead Alewives’ skit of Dungeons and Dragons. I remember the hysteria of the 80s and that sketch (and its sequel) really put everything in humorous perspective.

  17. My late husband played D&D and I got into it on a low level after I met him and we got married. I don’t remember the hoopla about D&D and he and I never talked about it.

    In fact, for some reason, while I pregnant, all I wanted to do was play D&D and various board games. I didn’t have food cravings, just game cravings, haahah.

    We played D&D for hours a day for months and I loved it, it was never enough.

  18. I remember the hype and lucky for me my mom did not buy into it. In fact, I had never heard of the game before she bought my the ‘Red Box’ in 1983 precisely because it was a ‘product for your imagination’.

    This scare was just the latest in a really long line of some people with nothing better to do then stick their nose into other peoples business. My grandma has told me stories of how some adults in her youth just knew that the Jitterbug (dance, not the phone) was a sign of demonic possession…and that old lady can dance! Then there was Elvis on Ed Sullivan, then D&D, then Tipper Gores ‘crusade’ against heavy metal (UGH!), then video games,…

    Anyway, I played regularly until I left the Marine Corps in 1993. I rediscovered the game in 2006 and now every Monday night from 7-11pm is affectionately referred to as ‘Nerd Night’ by my wife and the wives of the other 5 players, and since myself and one other member are practising Catholics and two others are Southern Baptists, I’m pretty sure we are not possessed by demons….yet. ;)

  19. I remember that. Amazing that nobody put the coincidental pieces together: Nerd and Can’t get laid leads to depression which leads to suicide.

  20. I did not play the game during the times in the above “news stories” ; but I play now. I love it. I am a well adjusted adult male with a 50k a year job and friends, family, and a girlfriend that loves me. I also play DnD. Would I teach it to my children? Sure, when they are old enough to handle it.

    The worlds of fey, dragons, elves, dwarves are a strong lure to a developing mind. It is a wonderful way to spend time with your child in a constructive manner. It teaches on-the-fly math, science, how to work together to solve a puzzle, how to think logically in an illogical situation, and also encourages the artistic and imaginary sides of the brain. If you want to censor the material, it can be done. It does not take much thought to modify a villian from being a daemon into a fluffy bunny rabbit.

  21. I played D&D as a teen, and I remember quite vividly the uproar. I had a Sunday School teacher tell my mother that the game was a conduit for evil; after both my brother and I left home for college, my mother threw out all of our manuals and other paraphernalia.

  22. I never played Dungeons and Dragons, and never found it appealing, but I did make several whole-hearted suicide attempts growing up. I can see a vague connection between suicidality and those given to fantasy, though. First, I agree with Hurricane that players of D&D and the like were often “social” outcasts more likely to feel alienated by the brutal teenage caste system, and suffer from depression. I did, which was the root of my own suicidality. The other underlying factor is my hypothesis that game flayers and fantasy lovers have a very broad imagination, as do literary and philosophical types such as myself. More often than not, real existence just doesn’t measure up to what could or should be as visualized by the hyper-imaginative individual. Sometimes, the world just feels meaningless and boring and these kids don’t want to be in it anymore. Bringing us around full circle is the fact that people, especially youths, who are depressed on a clinical level tend to be attracted to escapist pastimes. So D&D could very well be a commonality but not a common factor. The factor is how they fell about their existence to begin.

    The idea that people tried to actually convince these kids that they were possessed by actual demons or supernatural evil is what stuns me. I think those people need to rethink their grip on reality. I would bet that almost all of the gamers know the difference between real and imagined, but I’m not sure the religious detractors did.

  23. Yeah. I still play D&D. I work at a place where there is well, a lot of people go to church (I live in the DEEEP south). So whenever I tell someone I play D&D as a hobby. They say it’s the devil. I just roll my eyes.

  24. The only oddly shaped die I’ve ever rolled was while playing Scattergories, but I sure do remember the hysteria that D&D caused in the 80’s. This was a particularly big issue in my home state of NC, because one of the most famous “D&D murders” happened there.

    A college student and two of his D&D playing friends killed his parents, and the media and cops really played up the D&D angle. This was despite the fact that the actual motive was the kid’s $2 million inheritance and serious drug and alchol abuse by all three suspects. Because the kid was the Dungeon Master the other two tried to defend themselves by saying he held some kind of magical power over them. It was ludicrous. You can wiki Chris Pritchard or Lieth Von Stein for more info.

    After that I remember my mom warning me about the dangers of D&D, but I was only 8 or 9 and I had no idea what she was talking about. As an adult I ended up reading a couple of books about the murder case and was astounded at how ridiculous it all was. There were even two made for tv movies.

  25. No discussion of ’80s D&D hysteria is complete without Jack Chick’s classic tract on the matter: ‘Dark Dungeons.’

    (links not allowed… hunt for it on chick.com)

  26. My mom LOVED D&D. As far as she was concerned, if it got kids to read, it was a good thing. You had all those books and rules. You had to use math…she considered it an educational tool.

  27. I was 13 when this first aired, and I had just started playing D&D. My mom sat me down and we had a long discussion about the whole thing. Then she created a character and sat in on a few games with us. Then I got her to read the Hobbit, and Lord of the Rings.

    Now, she is in her late 60’s and playing Dragon Wars on Facebook.

    As for me, I am in my late 30’s still playing D&D with a group of friends that includes a Award winning animator, a professor from UCLA and a former magazine cover model.

    If it wasn’t for the social outlet of D&D as a kid I think I would have killed myself as I was very depressed and hated life. But finding a group of friends that enjoyed escaping the assualt and harrassment of this world as much as I did helped me through a very dark time.
    Of Course they would never run a series on how D&D saves depressed teens from themselves….

  28. I went to a church youth group with a friend a number of times when I was a teen in the 90’s. There was a youth pastor there who insisted that D&D was evil because he himself had once stabbed someone over a game. All I could think was “Would you stab someone over Monopoly? What is your problem?”

  29. i remember the whole d&d thing. Anyone remember when the Christian crazies got the cartoon kicked off of Saturday morning cartoons. Thinking about it still makes me laugh

  30. My friends Parents burned our copy of Baldur’s gate one night. We came home to his house to them burning it right there in the driveway! They blamed that game for the decline of his business. HA! And who are/were the psychos? They blamed me for bringing demons into their house. This was in 1997!!! Geta life, people.

  31. Thanks to the magic of YouTube (and by clicking my name) one can relive Tom Hanks in Mazes and Monsters.

  32. Lisa H, I remember that case….

    in fact, there were ‘dueling’ TV movies:

    Cruel Doubt (based on Joe McGinnis, who also touched on the other infamous NC murder case involving Dr. Jeff MacDonald)

    Honor Thy Mother (Jerry Bledsoe, who did his own work on another infamous NC and beyond murder case)

  33. I have played D&D on and off for over 25 years, mostly as a DM. I am always surprised by this intense (paranoid?) reaction; Driving a car is statistically more dangerous, and military service in a combat zone is more likely to lead to psychotic breaks resulting in violence. As a Gulf war vet, I would say estimate far more likely. One of the advantages of playing D&D is the intense use of charts, graphs and equations; one learns to look at data sets and interpret vast amounts of information rapidly and with precision. I’m now a land use planner and real estate development consultant. Perhaps influenced by the module “keep on the borderlands” my favorite kind of project is brownfeild redevelopment. Wilderness survival guide led me to enjoy many years of outdoor hiking adventures (without trolls), and alove for ecology. The source of the suffering mentioned above does not lie with a book, or game. I would suggest that kids who reacted violently and with psychotic breaks… had parents who were abusive or at least out of touch with their imagination and creative impulse.

  34. I’d started gaming in the late seventies (the years of my twenties,) and the controversy didn’t slow me down one bit. That might be due to the fact that, when I was a younger, I had already heard a similar load of balloon juice about superhero comics and TV shows (anybody else remember Fred Wertham?)

  35. The novel Mazes and Monsters was based on the true case of James Dallas Egbert III who was a troubled college student who went missing for awhile. The media initially reported that his disappearance was related to his being a D&D player. Egbert’s story is on Wiki under “steam tunnel incident.”

  36. I started playing d&d when i was about ten in 89 or 90 And remember the whole
    stuped thing my parents didn’t beleved
    it or didn’t care but one of my friends mother freaked-out when she foundout
    he was playing so for the next year or so he whoud sneak over to my house to play

  37. Great post. That really takes me back. As a victim of parental over-concern I can all too clearly remember this nonsense when I was in Jr High. Sure, we got engrossed in our weekly game, and sure, sometimes tempers flared in-game, but we lived pretty active OUTDOOR lives the rest of the time and just enjoyed being kids. Our parents eventually backed-off after they realized that we were NOT going to go off the deep end and that it was really just harmless fun. But it’s important to note that they KNEW about it from day-one, expressed interest, gave it their parental oversight, and then let us go on being kids. We were the product of good parenting, plain and simple. If you take a troubled kid looking to engage in some escapism, they’re going to gravitate to whatever fills that need, be it alcohol, drugs, violence, or Dungeons & Dragons. I’d be curious to know what the other MAJOR focal points were that surrouded the teen suicides of the day.

  38. This is just another event where people are ignorant and want to blame something instead of realizing that their child isn’t perfect and probably had some serious mental issues. We know more today about mental issues, but that won’t stop people from thinking otherwise.

  39. Oh yeah. I remember.

    My uncle watched a part of it and then decided to have a chat with his son (my cousin) and I about it. He wanted to make sure we weren’t suicidal devil worshippers. My cousin’s little brother who had played a little with us kept on saying stuff like, “Tell him the part about the dungeon master!”

    “Who is this dungeon master guy?” my uncle asked as if he thought we were consorting with some real life unsavory character through a game.

    I almost laughed out loud.

  40. In my 44 years these little panics come and go. It was D and D… there was allar in apples.. cellphones causing brain cancer… militas… shark attacks.. cellphones causing brain cancer… hate crimes…gangsta rap.

    They just come and go.

  41. Bink Pulling was a disturbed youth, and an evil youth. The game may have given him a socially acceptable outlet for that deranged mind, but it didn’t create it. We’d probably have seen him kill himself or someone else around the same time frame in his life even if he hadn’t played D&D.

    Me, I was running a gaming club at my parish, and the pastor was a trained expert on deprogramming cults. An associate was a trained exorcist. The restriction was that no one was allowed to play evil characters should we do RPG’s at the club.

    Kids like Bink wouldn’t have been welcome in the groups I have RPGd with… Those who took it too personal are not fun to game with.

    And Pat Pulling seemed to need some excuse other than her own lack of connection with her son for her ignorance of the evil in her home: Her own son.

  42. I remember it all…now I’m 32, and still gaming strong. My sister got me into it in about 83 (yes, I was only 7), and I still not a suicidal (or homicidal) devil worshipper. Where did I go wrong?

  43. I remember all the hype back then. In the group I gamed with, most of us knew it was a game and had fun with it. One kid was totally absorbed by it and was one of those who no doubt started all the panic. He didn’t kill himself, but he did go around telling everyone that he was really a 1,500 year old elf who’d been left with his human “parents” as a changeling. He had quite an imagination, but was just too dysfunctional to have a real life.

  44. I currently play VTM (Vampire: The Masquerade) which is similar to D&D with the whole roleplaying angle. I think it’s crazy how people start freaking out over the simplest things. My grandma said I just couldn’t play D&D in her house when I did get into it. She did however not really care when I played Magic: The Gathering (the card game) but later after I had moved out she found some of my cards and couldn’t believe I had that in her house. *rolls eyes* people are crazy in large groups.

  45. I was a kid, but I totally remember that. My dad, sisters, and family friends played D&D. I was the baby in the family, so I just watched. Didn’t seem any different than getting people together to play board games. Brought people and family together. I didn’t understand how people could consider it evil.

  46. I was 20 years old when this segment was broadcaast and was just introduced to the game. I can remember writing in to the show to voice my displeasure over this story and how it amounted to National Enquirer quality of reporting. Made me lose all respect for the show and it’s reporters. Back in the real world, considering where this crap started from, my friends and I along with the more sane of the parents, never even gave it a second thought after the initial “Typical religious nut jobs making yet another scapegoat for the world’s ills.” Sad to say that most ‘religious’ people are exactly the same today, only now their scapegoat is gay people.

  47. I have been playing D&D since about 1974-1975 all was well until the eighties . It was worse for my group as we live in the same area as James Dallas Egbert ( hope I spelled his name right ) lucky for me my dad never jumped on the satanic panic band wagon . he did toss my high school counselor out of the house on her butt when she lectured him on that evil “dungeon game ” .

  48. I’m an avid player of the game. I recently posted an ad looking for folks to join our campaign, and was harassed by crazy Christian types. They were apparently worried about my soul. Fairly standard stuff, it seems.

    I do have to question Hurricane’s statement that these kids died because they were nerdy and “couldn’t get laid.” It seems assinine to assume that because you play D&D you are a)male, b) hopelessly socially awkward c) depressed or d) doomed to never have a relationship.

    Come on, boys. Give us girls some credit. I’ve played in all female groups, and we’re a good looking bunch. We all have friends outside of D&D and are well adjusted. So watch who you’re insulting or dismissing.

  49. I was in the 4th grade in 1985. My teacher’s pre-teen sons played D&D, and they invited me to play along. My parents had no problem with it, because they taught me early on that there was a difference between fantasy and reality. If there is a foundation of dysfunction, anything you heap on top of it will bring tragedy, be it D&D, Beavis and Butthead or Warcraft.

  50. I’m 18 y.o girl who got introduced to D&D this year by some college friends of mine. Love it-I’m in two campaigns right now. My mom found my dice and immediately sat me down to talk, questioning me on what I was doing and why. She told me that it was a involved in cults and that people killed themselves, I shouldn’t play, and why don’t I hang out with more with girls my age and go to a party instead? I have to admit I laughed. I never thought I would hear the day when my parents were encouraging me to go out to parties, full of booze and strange guys, instead of hanging out with friends I know and trust.

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