Okay, Me and some friends had a descission about how people percieve the RPG hobby and talk eventualy ended up about the perceived connection between rpgs' and satanism...

Now mostly this is something that existed back in the 80's and then only in the minds of bible thumphing, fearmongering fanatics. Those dark days seem far behind us, or are they?

Has anybody encountered extreme reactions or prejudice from people when you told them you play RPG's for a hobby?

In hindsight i should have waited for another 60 posts so it would have been 666...

ah well the devil is in the details it seems...

Honestly, when I have dealt with that kind of thing... I do the worst thing possible and laugh in the face of the person who says that due to there sheer stupidity

This topic is so 1980's.

The closest I've ever come to prejudiced reactions is being called a nerd.

I would laugh, and point out that in most RPGs, if there is a 'satan'-type entity in the setting, the point is usually to kick its and/or its minions' asses.*

Also, it's a game . Fiction. Not real. If someone thinks that it's real, the problem isn't the RPG, the problem is that the person has an untreated mental disorder.

*Admittedly, that's not really the case in Black Crusade, but someone who believes gaming has a connection to satanism probably won't know the difference.

Yes. I usually ignore those people though.

I thought this was going to be a discussion about the demon prince in the Frozen Heart that is an analogue to Dante's interpretation of Satan. That would have been way more interesting.

Hysteria of the "D&D is Satan worship!" sort usually depends on newness to whip the gullible into a furor. RPGs have now been out long enough to become mainstream, like rock & roll, so the evangelists have had to look for new targets. Heck, I can't even remember the last time I heard someone complain about gangsta rap...

I live in Norway where the majority are atheist or none religious (we're often registered in the church but we never go, pray or care) so I've never heard anything of the sort.

I get a bit "oh that's nerdy", but not overly hostile or derogatory.

In ex-USSR, where no such thing as DnD was known in 80's and religious movements, oppressed back in the commie days, are now rampant, you might just find yourself facing people with views not unlike something you describe as something from the 80's.

I know a guy who is both religious (bordering on fanaticism) and plays warhammer at the same time. Not having a problem with playing or roleplaying imperial forces, he is visibly uneasy if you bring your chaos army in his house for the game, and joining a game of Black Crusade is out of question. But yeah, he's roleplaying redemptionists and puritans frightently natural

I like to refer to the following whenever this comes up:

http://io9.com/how-we-won-the-war-on-dungeons-dragons-1550936588

I remember when I was in primary school in the 80's watching a current affairs show on how role-playing games can make you insane.

The next day at school I pointed at a group of people playing D&D and laughed saying "you're all going to go insane!".

After doing this for a few days I thought this looks interesting and asked to play, I've never looked back since.

I think this thread is probably about 30 years too late......

My grandmother forced me to meet an Exorcist because of RPG (WoD). Beat that .

The WotC boards had quite a long and detailed thread on this subject when 3.x was in its prime, and some of the stories were both funny and sad. But at the same time, some were current .

One guy recounted a time when his ultra-conservative town had literally ambushed him, took his books, and burned them. He was an adult when this happened [in the 80s].

Another guy told his story, which happened in the late 90s when he was a teenager; he and a friend had somehow ended up getting confronted by a priest (an actual, Catholic Priest), who threw actual holy-water on them. What threw him through a loop (and was news to me at the time) was that holy water is actually more than just water with a prayer said over it; it has some additional stuff in it, which he found out the hard way he was allergic to because it caused him a skin burn. Kinda freaked him out at the time, but he later found out it had other stuff in it.

A different guy told a story of when he and his friends were playing in his parent's garage (open, it was summer) when some jerk from his school came by, dissing them and kept calling them all wizards. I don't remember the exact wording, but his response was along the lines of "you're level zero, because you have no class".

It was somewhere along the line of a hundred pages, and the stories were really great. Unfortunately the old threads are kind of messed up and I can't seem to find the thread (it may have been deleted), otherwise I'd post the link.

How is calling someone a wizard an insult?

My grandmother forced me to meet an Exorcist because of RPG (WoD). Beat that .

"SATAN I CAST THEE OUT OF THIS POOR MORTAL SOUL!!!!"

"Dammit I rolled a natural one on my banish evil outsider roll, sorry kid I can't help you......."

My grandmother forced me to meet an Exorcist because of RPG (WoD). Beat that .

"SATAN I CAST THEE OUT OF THIS POOR MORTAL SOUL!!!!"

"Dammit I rolled a natural one on my banish evil outsider roll, sorry kid I can't help you......."

"It's okay, padre. I don't do LARP."

My grandmother forced me to meet an Exorcist because of RPG (WoD). Beat that .

WOW... just wow...

Sooo did it work?

How is calling someone a wizard an insult?

Sorcerers can be suprisingly sensitive about that.

10 years ago my friend's parents threw away his warhammer fantasy books because they were ultra christians. That was lame. Few years later during fantasy convention me and my friends meet older guy who was checking if his kids could play rpg and if it could damage them. After hour of talking we didn't manage to convince him that it could develop their imagination and take them away from vandalism and alcohol. But if some day I will be a parent I will introduce my kids to rpg because how awesome it is

How is calling someone a wizard an insult?

Sorcerers can be suprisingly sensitive about that.

+1 for Eddings.

Interestingly enough I grew up in a very a Catholic community and I never had any issues with any fantasy books or games being seen as any way linked to devil worship or Satan. And this isn't just ignorance by the various 'community leaders' (for want of a better word) and parents as to what was involved in the games either, its just that they (like most sane people) were able to distinguish acting a part from actually conducting a satanic ritual/black mass/human sacrafice.

Indeed I've actually played warhammer fantasy roleplay with a jesuit novitiate and one of the most religious people I know is in my current Deathwatch group. He's played all kinds of characters ranging from noble space marine, psychotic gene created 'False Man' pariah to a Hive scum slave trader.

I remember as a teenager asking a priest about the religious hysteria in America over DnD (he knew I played WFRP) and what his thoughts were. It was quite a long answer that I won't go into completly as it involved his view on the core differences between protestantisim and Catholicism which is likely inflamatory, but it did boil down to essentially that the haters should spend more time helping the poor (you know like as in Christianity) and less time worrying about what sword and sorcery book teenagers were reading.

That said, what I've read about the subject since indicates that the religious hysteria really was blown up by the media rather than manifesting in any real sense beyond a few odd instances.