Path: ...!weretis.net!feeder9.news.weretis.net!news.quux.org!eternal-september.org!feeder2.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Xocyll Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action Subject: Re: [Bell of Lost Souls] It's Canon: Baldur's Gate 3 Brings D&D To The Vatican Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2024 16:06:42 -0500 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 124 Message-ID: References: <96cfjjtj2pbhif7vqrdsclrtepcggk3ebe@4ax.com> <1fspjjhnt0ce4n216lfmg1o5i345kdd3pr@4ax.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2024 22:06:46 +0100 (CET) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="7fd1ac3e97fd547acc5f0be8574cba99"; logging-data="300156"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18Bw/OAnOQEsM+kBGr3oW8D" Cancel-Lock: sha1:3h7u+SGcnHTVJ7N7lp6zEpb0ZT0= X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 2.0/32.640 Bytes: 6943 Spalls Hurgenson looked up from reading the entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs say: >On Tue, 19 Nov 2024 15:23:25 -0500, Xocyll wrote: > >>Dimensional Traveler looked up from reading the >>entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs >>say: >> >>>On 11/18/2024 5:31 PM, Jhulian Waldby wrote: >>>> Dimensional Traveler wrote: >>>>> On 11/15/2024 12:37 PM, Zaghadka wrote: >>>>>> Top post. First off, please knock it off with the non ANSI characters. >>>>>> >>>>>> I've never had so much trouble posting a reply. >>>>>> >>>>>> On Fri, 15 Nov 2024 09:32:27 +0100, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action, >>>>>> Kyonshi wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>>> On 11/15/2024 1:11 AM, Justisaur wrote: >>>>>>>> On 11/14/2024 10:55 AM, Ross Ridge wrote: >>>>>>>>> Kyonshi  wrote: >>>>>>>>>> At any rate, it is ironic see D&D go from Satanic Panic to being >>>>>>>>>> installed somewhere in the Vatican in just a few short decades. >>>>>>>>>> Never >>>>>>>>>> let anyone tell you who you are. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> I'm sure D&D was played in some form in the precincts of the Vatican >>>>>>>>> long before Baldur's Gate 3 was released.  Maybe even during the time >>>>>>>>> when the Satanic Panic thing was raging in the US and to a lesser >>>>>>>>> extent >>>>>>>>> the rest of the English speaking world, but not so much in Italy. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> I don't know that it was Catholics going after D&D.  BADD was >>>>>>>> popularized by evangelicals - specifically the TV kind.  Jack Chick >>>>>>>> was >>>>>>>> was some very weird offshoot of Baptist. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> And I think D&D was too niche back then to even touch some area like >>>>>>> that (which is after all just the size of a small town, even in the >>>>>>> middle of a metropolis), especially as a lot of inhabitants of the >>>>>>> Vatican city are elder professionals. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> One would have to look up when DnD was released in Italian maybe. >>>>>> >>>>>> All I know, and excuse me if I'm repeating this story for the 19th time, >>>>>> is that my Irish Catholic grandmother bought me a first print 1e >>>>>> *Deities >>>>>> & Demigods* for freaking Easter. I asked for it, and she was all "Yup." >>>>>> So no, I don't think her priest was railing against Satan in D&D. >>>>>> >>>>> I'm pretty sure it was an American phoneme. >>>>> >>>> I guess the concern is that players may become unable to differentiate >>>> the truth from the water elemental.  I've noticed this in some Dungeon >>>> Masters who argue rules as if it were a physics laboratory.  Not one >>>> hint of "this is fiction" or "we can't find a rule for that." >>>> >>>> Funny though, I haven't heard anyone mention Satanism in D&D for yrs. >>>> That all stopped a week before I picked up Basic Dungeons & Dragons. >>>> >>>> Who were those people?  I couldn't tell you, I've forgotten. >>> >>>Something about some group of teenagers wandering around in the New York >>>subway tunnels comes to mind. >> >>That's Rona Jaffe's Mazes & Monsters. >>https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084314/ >> >>The Satanism thing was Jack Chick; >>https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/25/jack-chick-christian-comic-cartoonist-death >> >>A snippet: "A lot of people hated Jack Chick. He wrote furious screeds >>against Dungeons & Dragons, against Catholicism and against rock music; >>he waged a long and ultimately unsuccessful war on Halloween. If you >>were Jewish or Muslim or gay, Chick wanted you to be saved from the >>fires of hell and wrote a comic to tell you so." >> >>A collection of his lunacy; >>https://www.chick.com/products/category?type=tracts >> >>Specifically for D&D >>https://www.chick.com/products/tract?stk=46&ue=d >> >>Xocyll > > >I mean, it wasn't _only_ Jack Chick. The American 'Satanic Panic' >thing was fairly wide-spread even before D&D; believers pointed to >comic books, movies, rock'n'roll and all sorts of entertainment as >malefic influences on the youth. D&D was a sort of easy target because >one of its rulebooks featured a demonic idol on its cover. But of any >one person could be pointed to as the driving force for the 'D&D is a >tool of Satan", it's probably Patricia Pulling, nominal private >investigator, author of "The Devil's Web" and founder of BADD >('Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons', an anti-satanism campaign that >specifically targeted tabletop RPGs). > >Chick was an end-times baptist nutjob who wrote a lot of corny and >logically-inconsistent morality plays in the form of comic strips >which reflected his very weird beliefs, of which 'Dark Dungeons' was >only one of many. As far as I can tell, it came out in the mid 80s, >some years after Pulling founded BADD and after the height of the >Satanic Panic frenzy. Looks like the timeline is 1981: Publication of Mazes and Monsters book 1982: Mazes and Monsters CBS TV movie and suicide of Patricia Pulling's son who was active in RPGs. 1983: formation of B.A.D.D because RPGs killed her son Yeah she seems to be the 1980s version of Jack Thompson (who blamed GTA for everything,) except she was a "consultant" not a lawyer, so she didn't get disbarred. 1985: OZZY gets sued for Suicide Solution that another bunch of nutjobs claimed caused their kid to kill himself in 1984. Seems like a lot of "My kid killed himself and I need to blame someone that isn't me" behavior. Xocyll