article about BADD

[Dracyian]

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

A short article about the beginning of D&D and the struggles waged by the kids in the beginning, as it is before my time (I'm slightly younger than OD&D) but I found it interesting

[Arduin]

I'm too old. Although there were plenty of kids (<18 yrs old) back in '78 at the local game store and I never heard any parents complaining about D&D. I think the media blew it out of proportion back then.

[DMMike]

Ah, yes... The "BADD" old days, if you'll forgive the pun.

Growing up in Mississippi and East TX in the late 70s-early/mid 80s had this in your face all the time. I knew guys whose parents forcibly took their gaming books and burned them. I went to a church that wanted to create 'counseling' for at-risk-of-D&D teens.

I say "D&D", because when I played Champions, Traveller, and Top Secret? Not a peep from these folks. Even Aftermath, which suggested using Soldier of Fortune magazine as a resource for games...nothing.

It was the name. Thanks to the media frenzy, the Mazes & Monsters book and movie, etc. etc that caused such insanity. Well, tantasy RPG I suppose, since when you tried telling these people you weren't playing D&D but T&T, The Fantasy Trip, Harn, etc; they didn't differentiate. Its all D&D if it has fantasy elements.

I remember in the 1990s when Vampire and other such games became popular. I wondered, where the radical BADD folks were...Here's a game where you literally play a monster who lives by killing people? Nothing.

Well, I think there was one news story about some VLARPers taking a van trip to Florida...but nothing like the anti-D&D craze.

Hard as it may be to believe it sometimes...but we're really living a RPG golden age now.

Mike

[Dracyian]

One thing that caught my attention was the suggestion that the war may be transferring over to video games and I remember growing up not really having a war waged upon our video games outside parents still kicking their kids outside to go play, now this might be in part due to my father having grown up playing ad&d. But the war started shortly after I got out of highschool and thankfully isnt at the fevered level of that of D&D yet, but it is growing and kids aren't doing themselves favors with the fact that they are becoming nasty little things, like the kid that received a 25 year prison sentence for swatting another kid

[Arduin]

One thing that caught my attention was the suggestion that the war may be transferring over to video games and I remember growing up not really having a war waged upon our video games outside parents still kicking their kids outside to go play,

With my kids (who are about your age) I allowed them 30 minutes of video games a day until they were ~14. Then it was a hour, AFTER homework.

[Dracyian]

One thing that caught my attention was the suggestion that the war may be transferring over to video games and I remember growing up not really having a war waged upon our video games outside parents still kicking their kids outside to go play,

With my kids (who are about your age) I allowed them 30 minutes of video games a day until they were ~14. Then it was a hour, AFTER homework.

Mom and dad were always, thankfully, homework first before any fun time. When I hit the teenage years they didn't really restrict my time as long as my chores and stuff were done

[serleran]

I did and continue to do whatever I want.

[Jyrdan Fairblade]

Reading BADD literature is a hoot in present-day context. Patrica Pullings' The Devil's Web is filled with insanity and nonsense. But at the time, it definitely had a harmful effect.

Fortunately, my parents never were one for believing such nonsense. Some of the teachers when I tried to start a D&D club in elementary school, on the other hand...

[ssfsx17]

I was born in the 1980's and didn't tell anyone I played D&D until around the late 2000's. I still got a few comments about how D&D is a "game of the devil" from super-traditional people. Although, these tend to be the same people who think that vaccines cause autism and Obama was not born in Hawaii. Usually, if I got a negative comment about playing D&D, then it was about how nerdy it was, or how visually-inferior it was compared to video games.

There isn't really a war on video games anymore, besides criticisms of its addictiveness. Pop culture has been very quick to try to exploit the video game generation for all the allowance money they have. But there is a war between SJWs (social justice warriors, who look for any reason to get offended) and Redpillers (guys who think that ISIS, Saudi Arabia, Caesar's Legion, etc. have the correct attitude on the roles of men & women). Both groups have a disproportionately-high presence on the Internet, and they are both "gamer" groups.

In fact, if anything, my fear is that fictional worlds are getting too watered-down and losing a lot of their really distinct flavor. And when people do go back to the original legends of old, they're always going to Norse mythology, rather than any other kind, in the hopes that Norse mythology will somehow make them more manly and muscular.

Although, thanks to so many people being gently introduced to fantasy & sci-fi through pop culture, there is a revival in Lord of the Rings scholarship, which has helped me to see how "Tolkien-esque" is actually not Tolkien-esque at all. If LOTR were properly translated to an RPG, then it would look a lot more like FATE or Burning Wheel rather than D&D.

[Dracyian]

I was born in the 1980's and didn't tell anyone I played D&D until around the late 2000's. I still got a few comments about how D&D is a "game of the devil" from super-traditional people. Although, these tend to be the same people who think that vaccines cause autism and Obama was not born in Hawaii. Usually, if I got a negative comment about playing D&D, then it was about how nerdy it was, or how visually-inferior it was compared to video games.

There isn't really a war on video games anymore, besides criticisms of its addictiveness. Pop culture has been very quick to try to exploit the video game generation for all the allowance money they have. But there is a war between SJWs (social justice warriors, who look for any reason to get offended) and Redpillers (guys who think that ISIS, Saudi Arabia, Caesar's Legion, etc. have the correct attitude on the roles of men & women). Both groups have a disproportionately-high presence on the Internet, and they are both "gamer" groups.

In fact, if anything, my fear is that fictional worlds are getting too watered-down and losing a lot of their really distinct flavor. And when people do go back to the original legends of old, they're always going to Norse mythology, rather than any other kind, in the hopes that Norse mythology will somehow make them more manly and muscular.

Although, thanks to so many people being gently introduced to fantasy & sci-fi through pop culture, there is a revival in Lord of the Rings scholarship, which has helped me to see how "Tolkien-esque" is actually not Tolkien-esque at all. If LOTR were properly translated to an RPG, then it would look a lot more like FATE or Burning Wheel rather than D&D.

Yeah I will be honest I ostrich a bit when it comes to ISIS, I'm well aware of the atrositicies but the best way I can help combat that backwards of thinking is to make sure I'm constantly growing and learning and not staying silent when there is a situation I can help.

Also I completely agree with your views about the reemergence of Tolkien fantasy. It is a very low magic world fraught with danger and heroes tend to die rather than retire. I do have the one ring rpg which I haven't played but seems to be more centered around character development, exploration and roll play versus combat and becoming beings of epic nature, just ordinary people in an extraordinary time trying to do the best with what they have. While that is said I can't remember the Author's name but he wrote the Percy Jackson series which has helped revive Greek and to a degree roman and egyptian mythos bringing them to the forefront.