I still appreciate how my dad handled the peddling of this toxic paraphernalia, and many years later I would run an RPG campaign at that same church, with 2 deacons and their children in my campaign. He told me to never read them again, and told the father of the kid that gave me one that he better not let another fall in my hands. Fortunately, my dad got a hold of them at some point and hit the roof over how biblically & factually inaccurate Chick tracts were, as well as bigoted in numerous ways. This was the mentality of the church I grew up in, where Chick Tracts were traded like baseball cards amongst us kids that weren’t allowed mainstream comics (for obvious reasons). The morality tale unfolds in the most ridiculous fashion imaginable. “Dark Dungeons” Chick Tract (1984)įortunately, gamers don’t have to worry about misrepresenting the views of those they disagree with on D&D: this religious tract gives plenty of examples of how so many churches completely misunderstood & misrepresented D&D. But in any case, plenty of gamers love to reference this movie. The result is a propaganda film / morality tale that is as unhinged and divorced from reality as “Reefer Madness” or “The Big Bang Theory.” I don’t know what it is about humans that makes us love the things that hate us (again, see stoners’ love of “Reefer Madness’’ or so many nerds’ love of “TBBT”). But this made-for-TV movie starring a young Tom Hanks relies more on psycho-babble warnings against D&D rather than religious babblilng. Honestly, I’m not sure they were really all that separate. I’m not sure if the religious panic or the secular moral panic came first. No overview of Dungeons & Dragons history would be complete without an understanding of the moral & religious panics seen in the late ‘70s and ‘80s over the game.
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