Quote from: Jaeger on July 09, 2021, 06:08:26 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on July 09, 2021, 03:04:28 PM

No. Not all Christians are/were goons, but these were. I think that's a sufficient delineation.

I agree that it should be.

But that is typically not the intent most have when such terms are generally used together on most RPG boards.

I can't remember the last time I interacted with someone who delineated it out the way you did.

But then this is the RPGSite, all the other discussions I had were on other Forums, and the typical reply back I or anyone else inevitably got was: "Well, my experience with Christians and D&D was X, and..*Insert tirade against Christianity here*...".

So I'll readily admit to incorrectly interpreting your statement based on past experience with different people.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on July 09, 2021, 03:04:28 PM
And a slient majority of Christians that said nothing and let the goons drive the bus of their faith off a cliff.

Christians did write articles in defense of D&D. And these efforts are known.

But it was a different era then and it was virtually impossible to compete against the national media narrative.

And while a big deal for D&D players, it was a side show to the larger 'satanic panic' issue. Which for most of mainstream Christianity was largely a non-issue.

I can easily understand why the heads of major religions at the time took one look at the news coverage, went: "That's so ridiculous, no one's going to believe these nutters.." and changed the channel.
Mistakes made and lessons learned.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on July 09, 2021, 03:04:28 PM

https://religionnews.com/2021/05/18/james-lindsay-southern-baptists-crt-al-mohler-hoax-new-discourses-beth-moorerace-ofallon/

I know of a bunch more examples myself.

Which is why I said Generally more resilient, not utterly immune.

Quote from: Pat on July 09, 2021, 03:07:17 PM
...
You're railing against propaganda while promoting propaganda in your favor. ...

His statement may have been clear to people on this board who were already familiar with his views on the subject.

When you go to other RPG forums and they get into the whole 'satanic panic' nonsense, they clearly use "Christian did X" along with their personal whipping boy stories to conflate their experience with Christianity in general. It is one of their favorite dead horses, although enough time has passed it comes up far less often than it used to.

So when you use the same wording as the outright haters, is sounds as if you are repeating their sentiments to those of us who have interacted with a lot of haters.

As to propaganda in my favor. Don't believe me. Research for yourself the individuals and their associations who made themselves into prominent "Christians" (and a lot of money) by pushing the 'D&D is the devil' panic button.

I grew up in a poor little rural town in the southeast that is filled with several denominations of Christians. One of my friends was the son of a Baptist preacher. We spent many weekend evenings playing D&D in the basement of the church with his father's blessing. I can't speak for every church in my town back in those days, but this was my experience. In fact, the only time I ever saw evidence of the Satanic Panic was when a game store opened up in town and one, 1, preacher and a few of his followers protested the shop for its infernal nature. Most folks around town laughed about it and even made fun of the preacher. It's not all or nothing.

As far as I can tell, the Satanic Panic was almost entirely an American tradition.

My anecdotal evidence on the whole Satanic panic nonsense being neurotic mothers looking for something to blame is what happened with one of my friends. She found his D&D stuff, put it in a box and dragged the box and my friend to see our priest. She dropped the box in front of our extremely conservative and orthodox priest of the Roman Catholic Church and told him "This is my son's devil worship kit!"

Our priest took one look in the box, gave the box back to my friend, and then sat his mother down to explain what D&D actually was to her.

That was the extent of the "Satanic Panic" in my neck of the woods; one crazy mother who used the Boy Scouts for after school care (which is how we became friends) and was upset that we taught him how to play.

Quote from: Shasarak on July 09, 2021, 07:05:19 PM
As far as I can tell, the Satanic Panic was almost entirely an American tradition.

Being America, I was mostly exposed to the Satanic Panic here. But it was present in other western countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_ritual_abuse

Like most panics, there was a lot of noise about a few extreme cases, but it had very little or no effect on most. I do know kids (at the time) who had their books taken away, but they seemed to be a small minority.

The Satanic Panic myth is literally the Media whipping up a controversy and then wielding its power to humiliate Christians. Very much a "blaming the victim" in this case.

Quote from: Zelen on July 09, 2021, 09:28:00 PM
The Satanic Panic myth is literally the Media whipping up a controversy and then wielding its power to humiliate Christians. Very much a "blaming the victim" in this case.

I have a reply, but we're already going off topic, so I'll let it go for now.

Well now you've all slayed the Satanic Panic.

The SJW problem will be resolved while you're playing "Rainbow Brite the RPG" - in in the gulag with dice made from my bones.

Quote from: tenbones on July 10, 2021, 02:43:57 AM
Well now you've all slayed the Satanic Panic.

The SJW problem will be resolved while you're playing "Rainbow Brite the RPG" - in in the gulag with dice made from my bones.

They better roll me some crits.

  Yeah the Satanic Panic was not the product of any denomination of Clergy from my memory.  It was "Karen" and Jack Chick almost exclusively.   Seems "karen" is here again with the SJW types, and there are 100 Jack Chick types as well (he had to work pretty hard at printing those little leaflets) thanks to the internet.

Quote from: tenbones on July 10, 2021, 02:43:57 AM
Well now you've all slayed the Satanic Panic.

The SJW problem will be resolved while you're playing "Rainbow Brite the RPG" - in in the gulag with dice made from my bones.

History is useful if you're taking the right lessons from it.

In this case the important lesson is that the people behind the attacks on traditional roleplaying are nowhere near a majority but a bunch of fringe Karens just like last time who amount to a fractional percent of the population with a disproportionately large megaphone granted it by the mainstream media of its day.

Another important lesson; just like last time the top dog choked at the onslaught and started making changes they thought would appease the Ur-Karens (ex. changing demons and devils into Ba'ator and T'nar'ri) and they're doing it again with the LGBTQWTFBBQ the modern Karens and their Twitter megaphone blasts out 24/7 as The Greater Good!

A final lesson; this was also when counterculture games like Vampire that didn't cow to the Ur-Karens exploded onto the scene and for a time managed to rival TSR's dominance of the market.

Today's counterculture is The Deplorables who oppose the Neo-Moral Majority (note... if you have to call yourself "the majority" you probably aren't) and that's where you're going to find both your market and setting themes.

For example; I bet a fresh take on Robin Hood (the real one who robbed the government and gave back to the taxpayers) would do gangbusters right now.

Quite a good idea, actually.

I'm wondering what you would do. Perhaps I'm not artist enough to think of it, but...

There seems to be a lack of real right-wing cultural product...the memes are pretty clever and mock the left, but I'm not seeing anything like Conan the Barbarian that sets off a bunch of imitators. The last really culturally conservative era I can think of was the 1980s.

You could rebrand, say, Sigmata as a fight against a communist rather than fascist government pretty easily, but I can't think of anything like Vampire that taps into an emerging subculture (in this case goth) and gets that sort of counterculture popularity. A lot of people (not even all on the right) are getting sick of 'woke'/PC, but I don't see much creative ferment yet.

Any suggestions?

The sjw problem is a cultural problem, not a symptom of pure karen-dom.
The SJWs greatest allies are those that say they are "well meaning just not executed well".

Until the cultural institutions of SJWs are rejected, they will keep influencing D&D

On counterculture stuff:
Low magic gun culture stuff. Or pulp adventure or noir.
Lone wolf heroes manly manning by their own rules.

I get the feeling the SJW issue is a front, a fake, that people are manipulating the movement from some unseen front.

Someone is playing chess on a board we can't see.

Too often the movement seems to gear up and head strait away in one direction then suddenly change and move in another direction running over it's own forces.

The goals of the movement are for sure not the ones stated. They clearly do not have the best interests of those they claim to represent at heart because there actions have so gravely negatively effected those very people.

I really do think forces are at work using the weakness in our culture to their best advantage.

Regardless of what side of the political isle you stand on surly you can see we as a people as FAR weaker than we were only a half decade ago. It's only getting worse. Imagine what shape we will be at in another half decade?