Mazes & Monsters was based on the novel of the same name by Rona Jaffe, which was somewhat based on the story of James Dallas Egbert III (who disappeared for 6 weeks in 1979). Here’s a posting that describes the events pretty well.
Egbert did play a lot of D&D (and that aspect was heavily played up by the press) but that wasn’t really the reason for his problems. The investigator who eventually found him, William Dear, wrote a book (The Dungeon Master) describing the whole story a few years after. Egbert committed suicide in 1980; it’s possible these events of his life got combined into the urban legend.
I remember an episode of some TV show that had a bunch of kids going crazy in the sewers (essentially LARPing); I think it was on Misfits of Science.
I suspect that the specific case Greenback was told about (assuming that anyone had a specific case in mind at all) was that of Sean Sellers, who murdered his parents and a convenience store clerk. Patricia Pulling blamed his actions on D&D; Sellers himself denies it–Michael Stackpole covers the whole situation in his “Pulling Report”.
GAMA doesn’t seem to have put that particular article online, but I did locate copies of a Wiseman/Stackpole article “Questions and Answers About Roleplaying Games” that’s quite good as a general explanation of RPGs.
I gamed with a group of six people for about 4 1/2 years and never had any problems. Three of the people I gamed with were Psychologists. They always said roleplaying was good for you to get out pent-up emotions.
It is always better to take anger and frustration out on imaginary creatures. Personnally I felt better and calmer after a good session.
I m not a doctor and this is only opinions.
panamajack - I forgot about the Egbert case. Yes, that was the one that Mazes & Monsters was based on. I found another pair of articles that goes into more detail. Part 1 Part 2
Balance - Oops. Yes, you are correct, the OP was probably thinking of the Sellers case. I tend to think of the Pulling case whenever I see questions like this since his mother is the one who is behind BADD. The article we both linked to covers him as well though.
Just for the record, I am a Christian and is somewhat of a RPG-fan ( I don’t realy play D&D - I play Call of Cthulhu…). Not all Christians are against D&D…
My theory on why the religious types got up in arms about D&D was in two parts:
It taught people to figure out problems for themselves, and to realize that maybe people in positions of (religious) authority may be a buncha maroons.
It presented a world where people could, and did, expect specific, measurable, predictable results from their Gods. I.e., you get a 9th level cleric, he can raise the dead, ba-da-boom ba-da-bing. Contemporary real-world religions have a hard time comparing to that (they seem to think that it’s a real big deal to be able to do that kind of stuff…).
I started playing D+D 23 years ago, when I was a programmer.
I still play with friends from that time, but have also been to game conventions in the UK and the US. (The World Championships in Milwaukee featured 30,000 amiable roleplayers. I saw, in my the 4 days there, no drunkeness, no drug use and no swearing, but instead plenty of thinking and enjoyment.
Now I’m a teacher and run the School roleplaying club:
Our Special Needs Department likes the game because it encourages record-keeping and reading manuals, without these useful activities being a chore.
Our English Department likes the sheer imagination involved.
Our History Department wonders why all the continuous interest in Castles and medieaval weapons.
Our Computer Department likes the word processing of characters etc.
I get referrals from parents who want their child to learn to co-operate in a group situation, or to learn to plan ahead, or who don’t talk enough, or who talk too much!
It’s true there is some propaganda from fanatical religious groups, but, as you’re discovering, this is a healthy hobby.
Enjoy!
D&D used to be evil only because of its convoluted, contradictory, and incomprehensible rules allowing only the biggest of geeks to master them. It’s new publishers have helped to simplify the rules a little.
It’s evil now because its new publishers are the Microsoft of role-playing games.
Peace.
Here, be a bud and hold this orb of annihiliation for me for a sec, while I deal with this wandering damage.
Semi-OT, but the best thing I ever read about someone trying to explain D&D to someone convinced that it was about demon worship was posted to rec.games.frp.dnd waaaaaay back in 1999 .
I remember Mazes & Monsters…Tom Hanks was in it. Very lame & sort of funny, in a way.
I play D&D once a week, though we’re not your average players. It’s a lot of fun. I have heard some things from devout Christians about it, but it seems to be the normal type of deranged stuff I hear from born-agains all the time. I’ve never known or heard of anyone who played who went nuts, except for that one article noted above.
I don’t know about Ozzy, but Judas Priest did get sued. It was back in the 80’s in Reno Nevada. I saw a PBS show, maybe Frontline, about it. The family of the boy who attempted suicide was suing. The boy’s face was swollen and distorted. Part of their case was that there was backward masking on one of their albums that said “do it” on one of their many songs of darkness and death.
At first, they denied it in court, but later admitted to having put those words in. Nonetheless, the court found Judas Priest not liable.
I am going by memory here, but surely a search could bring up the information. Maybe I’ll “do it” later and return.
Return to your discussion on murdering satanic role-playing geeks with 64 sided dice.
Ah the old satanic D&D thing. IANARPGer, but Chick’s tract is a must-read on that, although I also recommend this rip-off that’s much more fun, and also this MST2000 version.
If you wanna learn about role-playing, this site is good. They also refer to the whole “satanic” issue, to be found naturally in the “buffoonery” section. I recommend also the 2 mp3’s found in the humour section to be far more accurate.
BTW, it’s probably true that someone playing D&D killed someone. 'course it’s also likely true that someone playing tic-tac-toe killed someone, so I wouldn’t read too much into that. Also, most players think “Dark Dungeon” is most unrealistic because it has too many females in it.
Frequency: Common
No. Appearing: 2-200
Armor Class: 6
Hit Dice: 3d8
% in Lair: 0
Treasure Type: Nil
No. of Attacks: shoot/shoot/stab
Damage/attack: 1-8/1-8/1-6
Special Attacks: Hand grenade 3d10 3"r
Special Defenses: Immune to Psionics
Magic Resistance: Standard
Intelligence: Patriotic
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Size: M
Uhh…no. Priest & Co. may have admitted that the backwards message did exist, but it was completely unintentional and coincidental. (Rob Halford even played back portions of the record to reveal such other backwards messages as “I like pink ice cream”, etc.) The court found them not liable because it was unintentional…whether or not the backmasking actually played a role in the suicides was not ruled on.
Oh, and Ozzy indeed was sued twice over the song “Suicide Solution” causing teens to kill themselves…but the suits were dismissed out of court and didn’t get nearly the intense coverage of the Priest case.
If you’re unfamiliar with some of the terminology of the RPGing world, you might find Gamerjargon.com useful-an online encyclopedia of just about everything RPG related. Enjoy!
I can understand how someone playing Dungeons and Dragons would be driven to murder considering the system.
If only they would play HERO or GURPS they’d be a lot more relaxed and happy playing what they want to play instead of making something “off the rack”.
I used to play D&D quite a little bit when I was in my early teen years (mid 80’s). A friend of mine was not allowed to play because his mother had heard that "some of these kids go further and play ‘Street D&D’ ". Apparently, she honestly believed that fairly large numbers of kids were dressing up as their characters and hacking each other to pieces with broadswords and battle axes.
As to the OP, there were cases where a few people (most of whom already had problems of some sort) couldn’t seperate fantasy from reality, but that’s going to happen with any endeavor, from music to movies, to religion.
I remember while the Egbert case was still in progress, and people were still searching the tunnels under the campus. A reporter interviewed one of his classmates, and asked what he thought had become of Egbert. The kid said, “Well if he’s playing by the rules, he should be dead by now.”
