On Fri, 15 Nov 2024 17:49:28 -0800, Dimensional Traveler
<dtravel@sonic.net> wrote:
>On 11/15/2024 8:34 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>> On Thu, 14 Nov 2024 18:23:33 -0800, Dimensional Traveler
>> <dtravel@sonic.net> wrote:
>>> On 11/14/2024 7:27 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

>>>> but I'm not going to be greedy ;-)

>>> Isn't that heretical in the Church of The Number?

>> The Number is only interested in the size of your video game library.
>> We aren't after making EVERY number incredibly large. That would be
>> silly ;-)

>Ah, so I was thinking of the MAGA splinter of The Church of The Number. :P

<cough splurt laugh>
You owe me a new keyboard.

On 11/16/2024 5:42 AM, Zaghadka wrote:
> On Fri, 15 Nov 2024 17:50:34 -0800, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
> 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  <gmkeros@gmail.com> 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.
>
> LOL. No, ethnically Irish. At the time we had Irish and Italian Catholics
> in America. She was definitely an American.
>
I meant the whole "D&D is a satanic cult" thing was American, not that
playing D&D was only American.

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

Dimensional Traveler <dtravel@sonic.net> wrote at 18:41 this Saturday (GMT):
> On 11/16/2024 5:42 AM, Zaghadka wrote:
>> On Fri, 15 Nov 2024 17:50:34 -0800, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
>> 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  <gmkeros@gmail.com> 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.
>>
>> LOL. No, ethnically Irish. At the time we had Irish and Italian Catholics
>> in America. She was definitely an American.
>>
> I meant the whole "D&D is a satanic cult" thing was American, not that
> playing D&D was only American.

Probably, that tracks with how American christians are sometimes.
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote at 15:29 this Saturday (GMT):
> On Fri, 15 Nov 2024 17:49:28 -0800, Dimensional Traveler
><dtravel@sonic.net> wrote:
>>On 11/15/2024 8:34 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>>> On Thu, 14 Nov 2024 18:23:33 -0800, Dimensional Traveler
>>> <dtravel@sonic.net> wrote:
>>>> On 11/14/2024 7:27 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>
>>>>> but I'm not going to be greedy ;-)
>
>>>> Isn't that heretical in the Church of The Number?
>
>>> The Number is only interested in the size of your video game library.
>>> We aren't after making EVERY number incredibly large. That would be
>>> silly ;-)
>
>>Ah, so I was thinking of the MAGA splinter of The Church of The Number. :P
>
><cough splurt laugh>
> You owe me a new keyboard.

Threw it right out the window, did you?
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

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  <gmkeros@gmail.com> 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.

Ross Ridge wrote:

> But as a cultural thing it didn't really spread far in the non-English
> speaking world. So while there would have been plenty of American
> Catholics concerned about people playing D&D, I doubt there would've
> been anyone in the Vatican who would've admonished some young curate or
> Swiss Guard member for playing D&D or a video game based on it.

Setting aside the concept of whether or not there actually is Satanism
present, the reason is that at its roots its a dice game. Every
red-blooded American loves Monopoly and some even love Yahtzee more. My
point is that different cultures around the world play their games on
different media, be it cards, dice, darts or board games. We play poker
on Thursdays and when it's your deal you can pick the poker format. You
can advance 7 card stud, Texas Hold Em, or even five card, three draw.
However, don't try to say, "I'm going to deal Yahtzee." Everybody will
throw up on their hands (drinks are encouraged), lick it, and
exasperatedly, and exasperatingly, say, "I came to play poker." The
same goes for trying to teach a young Uzbekistanian to enjoy the bones.
He will say, "I came to shake my Maracas."

On 11/18/2024 2:20 PM, candycanearter07 wrote:
> Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote at 15:29 this Saturday (GMT):
>> On Fri, 15 Nov 2024 17:49:28 -0800, Dimensional Traveler
>> <dtravel@sonic.net> wrote:
>>> On 11/15/2024 8:34 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>>>> On Thu, 14 Nov 2024 18:23:33 -0800, Dimensional Traveler
>>>> <dtravel@sonic.net> wrote:
>>>>> On 11/14/2024 7:27 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>>
>>>>>> but I'm not going to be greedy ;-)
>>
>>>>> Isn't that heretical in the Church of The Number?
>>
>>>> The Number is only interested in the size of your video game library.
>>>> We aren't after making EVERY number incredibly large. That would be
>>>> silly ;-)
>>
>>> Ah, so I was thinking of the MAGA splinter of The Church of The Number. :P
>>
>> <cough splurt laugh>
>> You owe me a new keyboard.
>
>
> Threw it right out the window, did you?

Well wouldn't you if you had just splurted on it?

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

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  <gmkeros@gmail.com> 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.

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

On 19/11/2024 01:31, Jhulian Waldby wrote:
>>> 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.

I did read a 'discussion' in I think White Dwarf many, many years ago
about whether sharp weapons should do half damage on skeletons based on
whether they had an 'energy body' keeping everything together. My
thoughts were who cares either way as long as the game world is
internally consistent.

I play Call of Cthulhu and someone decided to rewrite the firearms
damage to reflect muzzle velocities and projectile weight. Was it more
realistic, yes but they had made it so that instead of combat just being
dangerous, and best avoided where possible, it was outright deadly and
one hit is time to roll a new character.

On Mon, 18 Nov 2024 19:31:43 -0600, Jhulian Waldby
<wichitajayhawks@msn.com> wrote:

>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."

Tabletop RPG afficiandos always point to 'rule zero: the DM has
ultimate say in what goes, overriding even what the books say.' But
few acknowledge that there is --or should be-- a rule -1: the goal of
the game is to have fun. And if you, as DM, are pissing off your
players, you've broken the most fundamental rule of the game. ;-)

>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.

Almost entirely people who had not only never played the game, but had
never even read the books.

Usually small-minded hypocrites who themselves have such difficulty
discerning fantasy from reality that they need an authority (usually
religious in nature) to tell them the difference and can't imagine any
one else not being so restricted in their thinking.

Yes, these people existed, and they still exist; I had somebody
confront me on the game's supposed Satanic connections just a few
years ago. They're far less common (and, as mentioned, almost entirely
an American construct) but they're still around. And it's not just D&D
they have a hate for; Harry Potter, Twilight, tarot cards... it's all
burnable to them.

But it's America; what do you expect?

On Tue, 19 Nov 2024 11:32:24 -0500, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

>But it's America; what do you expect?

My expectations are always overestimated ...and I don't expect much.

--
Zag

No one ever said on their deathbed, 'Gee, I wish I had
spent more time alone with my computer.' ~Dan(i) Bunten

Dimensional Traveler <dtravel@sonic.net> 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  <gmkeros@gmail.com> 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

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

>On Mon, 18 Nov 2024 19:31:43 -0600, Jhulian Waldby
><wichitajayhawks@msn.com> wrote:
>
>>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."
>
>Tabletop RPG afficiandos always point to 'rule zero: the DM has
>ultimate say in what goes, overriding even what the books say.' But
>few acknowledge that there is --or should be-- a rule -1: the goal of
>the game is to have fun. And if you, as DM, are pissing off your
>players, you've broken the most fundamental rule of the game. ;-)
>
>
>>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.
>
>Almost entirely people who had not only never played the game, but had
>never even read the books.
>
>Usually small-minded hypocrites who themselves have such difficulty
>discerning fantasy from reality that they need an authority (usually
>religious in nature) to tell them the difference and can't imagine any
>one else not being so restricted in their thinking.
>
>Yes, these people existed, and they still exist; I had somebody
>confront me on the game's supposed Satanic connections just a few
>years ago. They're far less common (and, as mentioned, almost entirely
>an American construct) but they're still around. And it's not just D&D
>they have a hate for; Harry Potter, Twilight, tarot cards... it's all
>burnable to them.
>
>But it's America; what do you expect?

America, a nation founded by people who were kicked out of England for
being too uptight for the Puritans.

Xocyll

On 19/11/2024 20:23, Xocyll wrote:
> 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."

Sounds like a ideal person to get a job in the incoming US government!

On 11/19/2024 12:26 PM, Xocyll wrote:
> Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> looked up from reading the
> entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
> say:
>
>> On Mon, 18 Nov 2024 19:31:43 -0600, Jhulian Waldby
>> <wichitajayhawks@msn.com> wrote:
>>
>>> 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."
>>
>> Tabletop RPG afficiandos always point to 'rule zero: the DM has
>> ultimate say in what goes, overriding even what the books say.' But
>> few acknowledge that there is --or should be-- a rule -1: the goal of
>> the game is to have fun. And if you, as DM, are pissing off your
>> players, you've broken the most fundamental rule of the game. ;-)
>>
>>
>>> 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.
>>
>> Almost entirely people who had not only never played the game, but had
>> never even read the books.
>>
>> Usually small-minded hypocrites who themselves have such difficulty
>> discerning fantasy from reality that they need an authority (usually
>> religious in nature) to tell them the difference and can't imagine any
>> one else not being so restricted in their thinking.
>>
>> Yes, these people existed, and they still exist; I had somebody
>> confront me on the game's supposed Satanic connections just a few
>> years ago. They're far less common (and, as mentioned, almost entirely
>> an American construct) but they're still around. And it's not just D&D
>> they have a hate for; Harry Potter, Twilight, tarot cards... it's all
>> burnable to them.
>>
>> But it's America; what do you expect?
>
> America, a nation founded by people who were kicked out of England for
> being too uptight for the Puritans.
>
*DING* *DING* *DING* *DING* *DING* *DING* *DING*
We have a winner!

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

On 11/18/2024 11:20 PM, candycanearter07 wrote:

>
>
> Probably, that tracks with how American christians are sometimes.

There are few things as confusing as talking to an American Lutheran as
a European Lutheran.

On 11/20/2024 12:01 PM, JAB wrote:
> On 19/11/2024 20:23, Xocyll wrote:
>> 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."
>
> Sounds like a ideal person to get a job in the incoming US government!

He's dead, so yeah. At least he can't do that much harm.

On 11/19/2024 10:27 AM, JAB wrote:
> On 19/11/2024 01:31, Jhulian Waldby wrote:
>>>> 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.
>
> I did read a 'discussion' in I think White Dwarf many, many years ago
> about whether sharp weapons should do half damage on skeletons based on
> whether they had an 'energy body' keeping everything together. My
> thoughts were who cares either way as long as the game world is
> internally consistent.
>
> I play Call of Cthulhu and someone decided to rewrite the firearms
> damage to reflect muzzle velocities and projectile weight. Was it more
> realistic, yes but they had made it so that instead of combat just being
> dangerous, and best avoided where possible, it was outright deadly and
> one hit is time to roll a new character.
>
>

I don't want to yuck anyone's yum, if they think it's a good idea for
their game and their players like it...

On the other hand I also feel one-hit kills might be driving players off.

On 11/19/2024 5:32 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Nov 2024 19:31:43 -0600, Jhulian Waldby
> <wichitajayhawks@msn.com> wrote:
>
>> 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."
>
> Tabletop RPG afficiandos always point to 'rule zero: the DM has
> ultimate say in what goes, overriding even what the books say.' But
> few acknowledge that there is --or should be-- a rule -1: the goal of
> the game is to have fun. And if you, as DM, are pissing off your
> players, you've broken the most fundamental rule of the game. ;-)
>
>
>> 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.
>
> Almost entirely people who had not only never played the game, but had
> never even read the books.
>
> Usually small-minded hypocrites who themselves have such difficulty
> discerning fantasy from reality that they need an authority (usually
> religious in nature) to tell them the difference and can't imagine any
> one else not being so restricted in their thinking.
>
> Yes, these people existed, and they still exist; I had somebody
> confront me on the game's supposed Satanic connections just a few
> years ago. They're far less common (and, as mentioned, almost entirely
> an American construct) but they're still around. And it's not just D&D
> they have a hate for; Harry Potter, Twilight, tarot cards... it's all
> burnable to them.

Ah, Harry Potter recently has gotten into their good graces as JKR
decided to come out hard against trans women. All of a sudden the
previous arguments against HP were forgotten and witchcraft now is A-OK.

On Tue, 19 Nov 2024 15:23:25 -0500, Xocyll <Xocyll@gmx.com> wrote:

>Dimensional Traveler <dtravel@sonic.net> 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  <gmkeros@gmail.com> 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.

On Wed, 20 Nov 2024 18:11:40 +0100, Kyonshi <gmkeros@gmail.com> wrote:

>Ah, Harry Potter recently has gotten into their good graces as JKR
>decided to come out hard against trans women. All of a sudden the
>previous arguments against HP were forgotten and witchcraft now is A-OK.

You'll have to tell that then to people like Greg Locke (a Tennesee
Pastor) who is still calling for the Harry Potter books to be burnt.
He was doing so long after Rowling's anti-trans views were known.

There's probably more people in the US who still believe in the
'Satanic Panic' than use of Usenet worldwide. There's a lot of very
backwards people there.

(the US, that is, and not Usenet. Although maybe Usenet too ;-)

Kyonshi wrote:
> On 11/19/2024 10:27 AM, JAB wrote:
>> On 19/11/2024 01:31, Jhulian Waldby wrote:
>>>>> 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.
>>
>> I did read a 'discussion' in I think White Dwarf many, many years ago
>> about whether sharp weapons should do half damage on skeletons based
>> on whether they had an 'energy body' keeping everything together. My
>> thoughts were who cares either way as long as the game world is
>> internally consistent.
>>
>> I play Call of Cthulhu and someone decided to rewrite the firearms
>> damage to reflect muzzle velocities and projectile weight. Was it more
>> realistic, yes but they had made it so that instead of combat just
>> being dangerous, and best avoided where possible, it was outright
>> deadly and one hit is time to roll a new character.
>>
>>
>
> I don't want to yuck anyone's yum, if they think it's a good idea for
> their game and their players like it...
>
> On the other hand I also feel one-hit kills might be driving players off.

This might be kind of digressive, but one of the few times I tried my
hand at being DM, the party was fighting a colony of bats when one of
the guys asked, can't this go any faster? Is there a way to abbreviate
combat for players that don't like to focus on that aspect of the game?
I felt silly sitting there enjoying it while they were more story-focused.

Kyonshi wrote:
> On 11/19/2024 5:32 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>> On Mon, 18 Nov 2024 19:31:43 -0600, Jhulian Waldby
>> <wichitajayhawks@msn.com> wrote:
>>
>>> 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."
>>
>> Tabletop RPG afficiandos always point to 'rule zero: the DM has
>> ultimate say in what goes, overriding even what the books say.' But
>> few acknowledge that there is --or should be-- a rule -1: the goal of
>> the game is to have fun. And if you, as DM, are pissing off your
>> players, you've broken the most fundamental rule of the game. ;-)
>>
>>
>>> 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.
>>
>> Almost entirely people who had not only never played the game, but had
>> never even read the books.
>>
>> Usually small-minded hypocrites who themselves have such difficulty
>> discerning fantasy from reality that they need an authority (usually
>> religious in nature) to tell them the difference and can't imagine any
>> one else not being so restricted in their thinking.
>>
>> Yes, these people existed, and they still exist; I had somebody
>> confront me on the game's supposed Satanic connections just a few
>> years ago. They're far less common (and, as mentioned, almost entirely
>> an American construct) but they're still around. And it's not just D&D
>> they have a hate for; Harry Potter, Twilight, tarot cards... it's all
>> burnable to them.
>
> Ah, Harry Potter recently has gotten into their good graces as JKR
> decided to come out hard against trans women. All of a sudden the
> previous arguments against HP were forgotten and witchcraft now is A-OK.

Oh I don't think they would allow witchcraft. The worst Harry Potter
does is Devil summoning.

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> 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 <Xocyll@gmx.com> wrote:
>
>>Dimensional Traveler <dtravel@sonic.net> 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  <gmkeros@gmail.com> 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

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote at 18:33 this Wednesday (GMT):
> On Wed, 20 Nov 2024 18:11:40 +0100, Kyonshi <gmkeros@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Ah, Harry Potter recently has gotten into their good graces as JKR
>>decided to come out hard against trans women. All of a sudden the
>>previous arguments against HP were forgotten and witchcraft now is A-OK.
>
> You'll have to tell that then to people like Greg Locke (a Tennesee
> Pastor) who is still calling for the Harry Potter books to be burnt.
> He was doing so long after Rowling's anti-trans views were known.
>
> There's probably more people in the US who still believe in the
> 'Satanic Panic' than use of Usenet worldwide. There's a lot of very
> backwards people there.
>
> (the US, that is, and not Usenet. Although maybe Usenet too ;-)

USENET is pretty obscure, so I'd bet you're right.
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom