Quote from: Brooding Paladin on March 01, 2023, 09:52:42 AM
Very well said, Brad.  I lived through the "Panic" and come from a Christian/religious home.  My parents were genuinely concerned because they bought the popular rhetoric they were hearing but also saw that their nerdy sons were still the same nerdy sons despite continued exposure to this supposedly dangerous element.

This is part of how I learned that communication and education/exchange of ideas were fundamentally needed in any disagreement.  When my parents fully realized it was all a game of pretend and that we weren't suddenly radicalized into devil-worshiping haters of all stripes, they eased off.  They never entirely trusted the game and even (eventually) recommended we stop playing but by that point my brother and I were comfortable enough to just take it underground so everyone could live their lives peacefully.

Pretty much where I was at, too. My mom was ADAMANT about me not playing D&D anymore. So I moved on to Rolemaster and Palladium FRP, which are arguably waaaaay worse. Hey, it wasn't D&D! When i got to high school I pretty much just started AD&D and she left me alone, but yeah, there was a lot of "suggesting" I stop, although by that time I was more into Starfleet Battles so that took up 90% of my gaming. I can vividly remember her watching Pat Robertson discuss the githyanki image from Fiend Folio...that was a weird time.

Quote from: Dapig on March 01, 2023, 08:12:55 AM
I was thinking this and then read on to see this dude SAY IT:

" That statement is nothing more than a religious article of faith.  I have YET to see anyone demonstrate how this "harm" is done, other than hurt feelings because it doesn't appeal to someone's tastes or morals.

This is literally no different than the hyper-religious nut-bars of the 80's and 90's claiming that D&D caused harm because it eroded Christian values and gave the Devil a foothold in people's lives.

No one has EVER been able to demonstrate how D&D lead to murder and suicide during the Satanic Panic, and no one since then has been able to demonstrate how its content has lead to loss of life, limb, or property, despite what today's current crop of Neo-Puritans is saying.  The best answer we've gotten so far is some version "you're just not enlightened enough to see it the way I do".

Ha, I liked this as well. I will always be astounded and fascinated by the way human beings think/act/say.

Quote from: Brad on March 01, 2023, 10:48:54 AM
Pretty much where I was at, too. My mom was ADAMANT about me not playing D&D anymore. So I moved on to Rolemaster and Palladium FRP, which are arguably waaaaay worse. Hey, it wasn't D&D! When i got to high school I pretty much just started AD&D and she left me alone, but yeah, there was a lot of "suggesting" I stop, although by that time I was more into Starfleet Battles so that took up 90% of my gaming. I can vividly remember her watching Pat Robertson discuss the githyanki image from Fiend Folio...that was a weird time.

As a Christian, I really hate the Pat Robertson types (well hate most popular preachers really). They're just grifting off of moral outrage, and both sides do it equally. The Pat Robertson's and Jesse Jackson's are the same creature.

Quote from: Brad on March 01, 2023, 10:48:54 AM

Quote from: Brooding Paladin on March 01, 2023, 09:52:42 AM
Very well said, Brad.  I lived through the "Panic" and come from a Christian/religious home.  My parents were genuinely concerned because they bought the popular rhetoric they were hearing but also saw that their nerdy sons were still the same nerdy sons despite continued exposure to this supposedly dangerous element.

This is part of how I learned that communication and education/exchange of ideas were fundamentally needed in any disagreement.  When my parents fully realized it was all a game of pretend and that we weren't suddenly radicalized into devil-worshiping haters of all stripes, they eased off.  They never entirely trusted the game and even (eventually) recommended we stop playing but by that point my brother and I were comfortable enough to just take it underground so everyone could live their lives peacefully.

Pretty much where I was at, too. My mom was ADAMANT about me not playing D&D anymore. So I moved on to Rolemaster and Palladium FRP, which are arguably waaaaay worse. Hey, it wasn't D&D! When i got to high school I pretty much just started AD&D and she left me alone, but yeah, there was a lot of "suggesting" I stop, although by that time I was more into Starfleet Battles so that took up 90% of my gaming. I can vividly remember her watching Pat Robertson discuss the githyanki image from Fiend Folio...that was a weird time.

I know this happened and I heard stories about it but I never lived it directly. My parents bought me D&D and encouraged me to play because it went hand in hand with my reading a ton and having a good social life. Then again I came from a Jewish household and "reading" was way more important than "might get into devil-worshipping." They would have just laughed about devil-worshipping as they didn't believe in devils and nobody did much worshipping in our household.

I did have a close friend in my gaming group whose parents were like your parents and he secretly played D&D with us. He'd sometimes leave his books with us so his parents wouldn't find them and other times hide them in his garage.

I am reading the thread from the beginning (maybe I am crazy)   But the guy in this post makes a damn good point:

https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/general-discussion/165343-no-plans-for-5e-dark-sun?comment=116

Basically WOTC/Hasbro find the Dark Sun setting problematic, yet on Drivethrurpg they are selling the box set for Dark Sun.   How problematic could it be if they are happy to take money for the older version? 

Quote from: GhostNinja on March 01, 2023, 01:55:57 PM
I am reading the thread from the beginning (maybe I am crazy)   But the guy in this post makes a damn good point:

https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/general-discussion/165343-no-plans-for-5e-dark-sun?comment=116

Basically WOTC/Hasbro find the Dark Sun setting problematic, yet on Drivethrurpg they are selling the box set for Dark Sun.   How problematic could it be if they are happy to take money for the older version?

Problematic problematic that's how problematic.

Really though, should we be surprised by this behavior from a company that hates its customer base?

Quote from: rytrasmi on March 01, 2023, 02:03:57 PM

Problematic problematic that's how problematic.

Really though, should we be surprised by this behavior from a company that hates its customer base?

Nope just more hypocrisy from the woke and WOTC.

Quote from: GhostNinja on March 01, 2023, 02:11:01 PM

Quote from: rytrasmi on March 01, 2023, 02:03:57 PM

Problematic problematic that's how problematic.

Really though, should we be surprised by this behavior from a company that hates its customer base?

Nope just more hypocrisy from the woke and WOTC.

They think you should buy the book, then burn it.  No reason why their finances should suffer.   

Quote from: S'mon on March 01, 2023, 03:32:29 AM

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on February 28, 2023, 11:17:53 PM
Every day is a day closer for D&D to be sold off to a company that likes their customers and RPG's.

Not going to happen I reckon, short of Hasbro going bankrupt. Hasbro hate hate hate selling off IP, and would rather warehouse it for decades. If/when ONE D&D fails, I think that's quite likely to happen. We got a taster of it with the failure of 4e D&D, from 2011 until the release of 5e in 2014. But there they could see the big problem was the rules. The 5e rules were fine, so they had to come up with some quite creative ways to destroy the brand.

I'm wary of talking about corporate "success" and "failure" when I don't have access to actual revenue figures.

From a corporate perspective, the problem with a good ruleset that everyone loves is that it is a one-time purchase. That means that further profit is cut off. So there's a trade-off, where an incomplete or flawed ruleset may generate more corporate revenue than a complete and solid ruleset. But they can't make it too bad, or players won't buy it.

Like most corporations, they are there to generate profit for their shareholders, not fun for customers. That doesn't mean that they can't put out good products that are fun for customers, but it's a side-effect rather than the goal. I've enjoyed a number of Hasbro/WotC products over the years. However, I've always been at a minimum wary, and particularly after their OGL fiasco, I'm not buying from them now.

Greetings!

"Dark Sun is problematic!"; "Racist, hate-filled tropes in D&D cause POC's and Trans people harm, bigot!"--I'm paraphrasing generally. All of these people that believe this nonsense are just a bunch of mentally weak, emotionally fragile pussies. They are uneducated, near illiterate morons. I don't care where thy went to school. They have never actually learned to read, to understand, or to think critically, or rationally. Then, add in a dump-truck of Marxist, Libtard brainwashing, and these people are what you get. All of these kinds of activist, Communist morons are deeply mentally ill. They are morally corrupt, and should all be placed in high-security institutions, and properly medicated.

Or, righteously bathed in napalm.

As for the "Satanic Panic" years, heh. *Shrug* I had a few Christian friends that had to endure their own paranoid parents, as well as their paranoid churches. I'm Christian, as were all of my friends. Just some were from different flavours of Christianity. Catholic, Baptist, what have you. Both of my parents drilled me to embrace the Christian Faith, and also to embrace intellectualism, reading, thinking, and excellence in everything. Theological excellence, intellectual, personal. Be smart. Be faithful. Be honourable and righteous. Both of my parents were Old School. They had me late in life, so yeah. OLD SCHOOL. My mother grew up on a farm in Texas in the 1930's, and was Baptist. My father was Catholic. Latin-speaking, and went to all-boys Catholic schools. Then, he fought in World War II.

My mother and father were some of the very first gamers that played D&D with me. My parents also bought me the dice, the miniatures, the paints, and the rule books. So, yeah. My father used to also take me to hobby shops regularly to buy plastic models, and then would watch me or help me build them. My parents took me to the Library regularly, and checked out books for me by the armload that I had selected, to feed my constant hunger for more and more knowledge. My mother would regularly read the Scriptures to me, and teach me the Bible. My parents took me to Mass every Sunday, and I would attend Bible Study on Wednesday evenings, and often attended a Baptist Christian Youth Group on Friday evenings. I completed my Confirmation studies as an adolescent, taught to us by Mrs. Cleary, and of course, Confirmed by my church's Father O'Malley, and the Bishop.

I also had regular chores to do every day and week, and also got a job as a teenager. My mother taught me how to play Chess, and my father played Squad Leader and Panzer Blitz with me, among other World War II wargames. Was my father a "Nazi" when he played the German Wehrmacht forces? Of course not. I also went shooting and hunting and fishing with my parents. Using guns and real ammunition. As a kid and teenager. I went from BB guns to a .410 shotgun, then to larger shotguns. Similarly, from a .22 rifle to .308.

Honestly, in recent times, I feel like most of these people today, gamers, and so on, come from a different planet than I do. Or I was somehow raised on a sifferent planet. These morons have corrupted everything in our society to become Clown world now. It's sad, and bewildering for certain. That's why it is so important to keep the faith. Hold fast to what is true, righteous, and good.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK   

Quote from: Brooding Paladin on March 01, 2023, 09:52:42 AM
I lived through the "Panic" and come from a Christian/religious home.  My parents were genuinely concerned because they bought the popular rhetoric they were hearing but also saw that their nerdy sons were still the same nerdy sons despite continued exposure to this supposedly dangerous element.

This is part of how I learned that communication and education/exchange of ideas were fundamentally needed in any disagreement. When my parents fully realized it was all a game of pretend and that we weren't suddenly radicalized into devil-worshiping haters of all stripes, they eased off.  They never entirely trusted the game and even (eventually) recommended we stop playing but by that point my brother and I were comfortable enough to just take it underground so everyone could live their lives peacefully.

Emphasis mine above. I completely agree, and this is one of the things that I find very helpful to hear about other people's experiences to compare.

Quote from: SHARK on March 01, 2023, 03:02:47 PM
I had a few Christian friends that had to endure their own paranoid parents, as well as their paranoid churches. I'm Christian, as were all of my friends. Just some were from different flavours of Christianity. Catholic, Baptist, what have you. Both of my parents drilled me to embrace the Christian Faith, and also to embrace intellectualism, reading, thinking, and excellence in everything. Theological excellence, intellectual, personal. Be smart. Be faithful. Be honourable and righteous. Both of my parents were Old School. They had me late in life, so yeah. OLD SCHOOL. My mother grew up on a farm in Texas in the 1930's, and was Baptist. My father was Catholic. Latin-speaking, and went to all-boys Catholic schools. Then, he fought in World War II.

My mother and father were some of the very first gamers that played D&D with me.

I had some similarities and some differences. I'm 53 now and grew up in the 1970s and 1980s. My parents were Presbyterian, though they weren't raised that way.  My father was born in Japanese-occupied Korea, and was raised by his educated farming family in Mugyohoe (Korean non-church Christianity). My mother grew up near Boston as working-class Nazarene, and was the first in her family to go to college. We were fairly devout and I went through Presbyterian Sunday school and youth groups. However, we also were liberal and had no paranoia about Satanist stuff. For example, when I was a teenager, I went with a church group to go see The Last Temptation of Christ and then discuss it critically afterwards. Also, unlike SHARK, my friends weren't all Christian. I had many friends who were Jewish and agnostic/atheist. So I learned about communicating with people of other faiths.

So my parents weren't against D&D for Satanic or occult content. However, they were against D&D because it was a game, and they saw hobby games as frivolous. They supported music, art, or sports as hobbies - but they looked down a lot on games. It's still a sore point with them. At best, they see games as time-wasters.

I played RPGs with my son, though, and raised him with a love of learning, literature, and creativity.

Quote from: SHARK on March 01, 2023, 03:02:47 PM
Honestly, in recent times, I feel like most of these people today, gamers, and so on, come from a different planet than I do. Or I was somehow raised on a sifferent planet. These morons have corrupted everything in our society to become Clown world now. It's sad, and bewildering for certain. That's why it is so important to keep the faith. Hold fast to what is true, righteous, and good.

I suspect I am part of the Clown world corruption that you're talking about -- but for me, I am holding fast to my roots and childhood faith.

I learned my feminism from my pastor growing up, Laurie Ferguson. I also learned about the struggle for LGBT rights in church. The first time I learned about gay people was around 1980 when a gay couple brought their adopted baby in for baptism at my church. And my church also spoke up for racial justice at the time. Especially as a mixed-race kid, I got to see just how common racial discrimination was as I grew up.

Kind off off-topic, but for anyone who's interested in "problematic" gaming with Dark Sun, without supporting WoTC, some ambitious individual on Reddit spent 8 years(!) assembling a 5-volume PDF compendium of the Dark Sun setting that's completely system-agnostic.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkSun/comments/11fwm95/dark_sun_grand_compendium_finished/

Chaosium...announces a 10 volume set of Glorantha cult books (TEN) hoping for the first book to be available in August. Response is a resounding thud.

This guy on Reddit..."hey here's 1,300 pages of Dark Sun, system agnostic, available now, at no cost."

Not all heroes wear Cthulhu.

Quote from: Brad on March 01, 2023, 09:36:02 AM

Quote from: Dapig on March 01, 2023, 08:12:55 AMThis is literally no different than the hyper-religious nut-bars of the 80's and 90's claiming that D&D caused harm because it eroded Christian values and gave the Devil a foothold in people's lives.

See, I take issue with these sorts of statements because they try to equivocate deeply held, serious religious concerns over occult-like imagery with purely imagined nonsense. There is a massive difference between stating tomes detailing the statistics of literal demons and devils can be problematic for youth, and having evil races of sub-human monsters is somehow racist against black people. It's not even fucking close. So, yes, the Satanic Panic was mostly stupid, but at least came from a place of genuine concern. This woke nonsense comes from a place of race grifters trying to capitalize on dumbasses buying into their Marxist rhetoric.

This is no different. Everyone sees themselves as the good guys fighting the good fight. Plenty of grifters and ideologues use mainstream religion to garner money and power. And they need a villian to rally the troops. Those troops are the people with "genuine concern".

Quote from: Brad on March 01, 2023, 10:48:54 AM
I can vividly remember her watching Pat Robertson discuss the githyanki image from Fiend Folio...that was a weird time.

Example #1.

Quote from: Brad on March 01, 2023, 09:36:02 AM

Quote from: Dapig on March 01, 2023, 08:12:55 AMThis is literally no different than the hyper-religious nut-bars of the 80's and 90's claiming that D&D caused harm because it eroded Christian values and gave the Devil a foothold in people's lives.

See, I take issue with these sorts of statements because they try to equivocate deeply held, serious religious concerns over occult-like imagery with purely imagined nonsense. There is a massive difference between stating tomes detailing the statistics of literal demons and devils can be problematic for youth, and having evil races of sub-human monsters is somehow racist against black people. It's not even fucking close. So, yes, the Satanic Panic was mostly stupid, but at least came from a place of genuine concern. This woke nonsense comes from a place of race grifters trying to capitalize on dumbasses buying into their Marxist rhetoric.

The woke nonsense isn't exactly the same as the Satanic Panic, because no two things are ever exactly the same, but nearly every single beat of the current woke climate mirrors evangelical Christianity of the late 20th century, and the early 2000s. This is a bitter pill for Christians to swallow, and it's also one of the most important things that Christians don't understand. The view you have of the left right now is how moderate normies have viewed "the right" for the past several decades. Those moderate normies are excusing the radical Marxist revolutionaries the same way you're excusing the radical fundamentalist Christians.