Pearse Hutson's List: Dungeons and Dragons Research

• Holy Water to the Face.
   
   I went to a Catholic high school. One day, the fire and bromstone vice principal came barging in to our session (held in the most veteran priest's classroom, no less. He demands to know which "son of Satan" is running the group.
   
   So I stand up and say hello. For my troubles, I get doused in holy water. I just shook my head. "Look Jack Chick, I have a pulse and a - your water don't work on me." This woke the priest/teacher whose room we were using up.
   
   Then the 70+ priest started yelling at Fire and Brimstone being an "ignorant, embarrassing example of how not to behave with the colar on."
   
   It was glorious. :D
   
   You know, if that had been me, I would have *HAD* to have started writhing on the floor and screaming "IT BURNS! IT BURNS!", then hammed up a 'death' scene with such overacting that Bugs Bunny would have rolled his eyes at me ... because I'm a positive ***hole when provoked. :)
• I learned of this years after the fact....
   
   When I was a kid some of the busybodies in our neighborhood learned I played D&D.
   They aproached my Mother wanting to discuss "a serious problem concerning your son...."
   Now I was a pretty well behaived, normal, kid with a stable normal family. Mom & Dad did a good job raising my brother & I. They always had a really good idea of what we were up to.... But my Moms response was of course; "Okay."
   
   So they proceded to tell her that they'd heard we'd taken to playing Dungeons & Dragons, all the standard wild tales of the time about how awfull it was, etc.
   
   Moms response? She laughed in thier faces.
   .She informed them that she was well aware of the exact TRUE details of this game (Because she'd made it a point to do her own research & had even read all of our books when we weren't home!).
   .She informed them that she knew exactly what her sons were doing, where, when, and with whom. And that if she had disaproved we wouldn't be doing it.
   .She then topped it off by revealing, in detail!, what THIER kids were doing after school- wich was a great deal worse than pretending to kill orcs or whatever - & suggested that they clean up thier own messes before trying to give her any advice on child rearing. (Mom was REALLY good at keeping track of everybody)
   THAT was the final word on this neighborhood subject....
   
   Flash forward 20some years. My brother and I have long since matured into well adjusted, well educated, successful, responsible adults.
   Those other kids Mom refered to? Not so fortunate. One's a suicide, one's in prison, several have drug problems, none went on to any kind of college/etc. And few could be classed as being productive members of society.
   Guess Mom knew what she was doing letting us play that "evil" game - you know, this one that's based upon reading, writing, math, further learning, & that can absorb hours upon hours of free time .... :)
• Back long, long ago... When Geraldo was doing his level best to make a name for himself by trying to demonstrate the suicidal tendencies of D&D players and MMS (Mad Moms Syndrome) had taken root all through out our fair land, I had my most memorable reaction to my playing.
   
   One of the women at church whose son my best friend and I had invited over to play D&D one Sunday found out about the invite. She went to the pastors and begged them to intervene before our souls were utterly destroyed. They promised to look into the matter. The pastors had all heard the stories, but thankfully, being Methodist, weren't going to take them at face value. That evening, Pastors Bill and Dan showed up at our house. They talked with my dad for a while, then called me downstairs. It was so odd, having these two ministers sitting there asking if they could borrow my D&D books for the week. My dad, who had never had a problem with the game, especially seeing as how my grades had shot up since I had taken it up as a hobby, told me to let them. I was afraid they'd be burned, but since I trusted them, I agreed. Turns out my buddy Mike agreed, too.
• The next Friday evening, we got a call from Pastor Dan. He wanted to know if I could get my gaming buddies together and meet at his place for a game session. He would provide the refreshments, all I needed to do was bring some players. Again, I agreed and showed up with 4 or 5 guys in tow. Both pastors, the associate pastor, the assistant pastor, the youth pastor, and several church board members were there when we showed up. All I could think of was "This is an intervention". How wrong I was.
   
   I turned out that the assembled group had been passing around our books all week, and found nothing "Satanic" or "suicidally provocative" about these books. Most of the readers had found the rules as clear as mud (1st Ed was written at an almost post-grad level), so they wanted a demonstration to better understand what they had tried reading about. That's why they wanted us game for them, so they could observe. We must have played for nearly 8 hours. It was more interesting than any of us expected.
  
• All these highly educated people were astounded that a bunch of middle schoolers had developed such off-the-cuff math skills, advanced story-telling abilities, and used a college level vocabulary to discuss aspects of our game (Who knew that words like longevity, heirophant, and polymorph were supposed to be 6 years above our reading level?). A few of them even tried following along in the rule books or making up characters of their own. It was crazy, but they were so excited about the benefits that could be imparted that they seemed to forget all the negative hype that had been thrown around the media. By the time we left, it seemed that the church wasn't going to worry about D&D any longer. What actually resulted was much stranger than I could have guessed as I fell asleep that night.
   
   During church the next day, Pastor Dan announced that due to the concerns of several members of the congregation, they had fully investigated D&D and had come to a conclusion. They not only said that it was perfectly safe ("Those who decry it the loudest are those that understand it the least"), but that starting in two weeks, a regular D&D game would be held at the church every Saturday night, chaperoned by the youth pastor and any other interested parties, and that the church was ordering a complete set of the books so as not to force those running the game to transport a small library every week. Most folks looked vaguely confused as to why the church would bother making such a big deal about a game. Many more were upset that the "Satan game" had fooled such good men. I'm pretty sure the rest were as amused by the outcome as my father was.
  
• There has been a role-playing group in the church almost every weekend since. They supported a gaming convention in the community center once a year for a long time until it got too big and was forced to move to a larger venue. There have been D&D themed weddings, trips to rennaisance fairs, geek-themed movie nights, and other gamer-friendly phenomenon ever since. Here, 25 years later, it now has a huge fellowship of gamers and the current pastors sometimes even let D&D references slip during their sermons. Who could have guessed all this would stem from one kid asking another kid, with a wack-a-doo for a mom, if he wanted to play an elf?

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• • *Have Not Read*

  • This should be pretty good for convincing the Christians in the group.
• Confessions of a Dungeons & Dragons™ Addict
• who for years played Dungeons & Dragons(tm) and other role-playing games
• I am a Christian

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• All the groups and individuals who are against D&D and other RPG's lose sight of the facts of the matter. The main fact is that absolutely no evidence of harmful effects from these games has ever been found. And RPG's have been studied immensely.
• • Wow! That's a drastic decrease!
• D&D actually lowers the suicide rate
• fewer crimes were committed by gamers than the average for each age group.
• No links between D&D and teen suicides were found after extensive studies by The American Association of Suicidology, The Center for Disease Control, and Health & Welfare
• Dr. S. Kenneth Schonbert studied over 700 adolescent suicides and found that D&D was not a factor in any of them
• Luis H. Zayas found D&D can help treat disruptive eight and nine year olds.
• here are no connections between RPG's and crime
• Anti-D&D groups base their opinions on speculation and word of mouth.
• it mentions words like spellcraft, resurrection, deity, witchcraft, demon, and hell.
• These terms appear in the Bible, but do not make it any less holy
• Gary Gygax, the actual creator of D&D says: "I made up all the spells out of my head. How can anyone take them seriously?"
• An un-named GM states: "Nobody in my game, 'sees me as a god.' Nobody in my game treats their so-called 'Deities' with reverence or performs some kind of ritual to it."
• the Player's Handbook specifically suggests that characters be lawful and good.
• eople who blame D&D for their child's suicide often don't take into consideration a drug abuse or previous record of criminal activity.
• D&D has made me a quicker math student because of all the calculations I make when I am the GM
• For many people D&D is an alternative to crime and drug abuse, players get their highs from a great game.
• It's too bad when these people focus their attention on D&D, when the real problems like domestic violence and drug abuse are to blame.

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