She may buy into hype but still thinks for herself
Good point, actually. Seems like these days, a lot of people wouldn't change their opinion after seeing what this grandma saw.
These days, some people wouldn't even attempt to see the game with their own eyes and completely makes up their mind based on one FB post.
The conspiracy and accusations must always go deeper.
I'm also surprised it ended with the grandma realizing it was just math, because it could have just as easily ended with her thinking that they're obviously hiding what the real game is about, and how bad it must be be that they'd go to such great lengths to cover it up.
I have to assume having a good, strong relationship with her grandchild must also be a contributing factor. If D&D remained something only anonymous ne'er-do-wells do, it'd be easy to continue buying into the satanic panic. But someone you know and trust to be responsible telling you it's no big deal might make it a bit easier to accept.
There are 2 sorts of ignorance. Incidental and willful. Incidental can be fixed easily, with more information. Willful only look to support their pre-decided views, and so are far harder to change.
Before the internet became a big thing, both were common on topics. We were forced to rely on what we were told. This lead to a lot of incidental ignorance. The internet made it easy to fix this.
The end result is the ratio has changed. It used to be, say 80% incidental, and 20% willful. Now 90% of the incidental is mostly fixed. So it's 29% incidental, 71% willful. And so looks a lot worse to casual observation.
The Grandma seems the incidental type. Going to a game gave her the information to update her views.
Also to note, the numbers here were pulled from my arse for example purposes only. Actual ratios may vary.
D&D players aren't satanists. They're much worse. They're math addicts.
A friend calls it "narrative gambling", because eventually we're all throwing dice and hoping it doesn't "ruin" us.
You don't even need the dice! I was definitely gambling last session when I attuned to a prosthetic eye filled with the trapped souls of everyone that's ever used it. It gives me 60 feet of Truesight though!
Speaking as a Satanist studying computational fluid dynamics...
Need a DM?
Exactly why I dislike D&D, it's more about combat and math. I prefer systems that are less math heavy and more narrative/roleplay focused.
You should check out GURPS. Its a simpler system with universal campaigns (modern, fantasy, mech, dimension hopping, steampunk). The system is super easy. You start with 100 points to make your character. You can spend them on stats, skills, spells, and perks. You can even gain more points by taking quirks.
You roll 3d6 for everything. Your goal is to get under your skill number. Fireball of 13 needs to roll under 13. If its raining or something, your GM can choose to put a -4 on that. So now you need to roll under 9. Just simple addition and subtraction, but it works really well.
I'm going to second the other commenter in my enthusiasm for GURPS, but for the opposite reason.
Gurps has the problem of being a universal role-playing system, like Fate, which means session zero includes a long sit-down with your DM about what precisely we will be doing in this game and what mechanics we will be using to create the desired experience. You then fill out the appropriate forms in triplicate to create your character. Usually, your DM makes a template for you to use like a shopping list, but the rulebook assumes you are digging through the first 300-page volume selecting your abilities and skills over the course of a day.
Then, once you start playing, you never have to look at the rulebook again. All the rules you will be using were written (by you) on your character sheet. You roll the dice, see if you managed to roll under your target numbers, and then either succeed or fail. The DM barely has to adjudicate anything.
Oh wow, it sounds so much simpler and easier. Thanks for expanding on the other person's point!
I bought the Fate Accelerated Edition because it sounded fun but I've literally not found any published adventures. I've found campaign settings, yeah, but nothing explaining what an easy encounter should look like, how to structure an adventure, nothing.
Fate seems fun so I'm ready to be proved wrong.
I like your grandma. She cared for you; she took a risk by exposing herself to potential danger, fact-checked, and knew math when she saw it.
And the most important part: she admitted she was wrong and that it's fine
This is the part where Republicans and have the biggest problems with, as in the face pf evidence they usually just double down and that's it.
I hope not people are like that. I have a coworker insists Harry Potter is "Satan". She has never read it watch a single book or movie.
I bet she'd like it if you told her it was racist and anti-trans...
And it doesn't even add up to the number of the beast!
Could you imagine doing 666 damage in one turn? I’d be riding that high for weeks.
Weeks? More like decades.
I knew a guy who got into d&d in middle school and it drastically improved his grades.
The fact is that gaming is reading, writing, math, make believe, structured socializing, and sometimes history and sometimes art. It's exactly like school, except fun.
I learned a lot of English by playing Runescape.
My son taught himself English by setting Minecraft to English. Once he mastered that, he set it to Pirate.
Clearly math is satanic
They're using Arabic numerals! It's obviously all a devilish ploy to subvert our pure Christian souls!
Oh absolutely.
If god and religion demand faith over evidence, then clearly math and science, both of which derive from logic, must be the antithesis of god.
Improv and math, gramma.
I guess it’s like saying gambling is just math. You should sit in on her next bingo session or trip to the Indian casino. except you’re not winning money.
Most people that think things are Satanic are woefully ill informed about the subject.
I would go so far as to say all of them. The whole idea of Satan is ridiculous, it's "The Boogeyman" for adults.
Perception check passed, grandma
So was it better or worse than satanism?
Having experienced math, I’d choose satanism for sure.
People actually think D&D is Satanism? I thought it was a meme
It was totally a thing during the satanic panic. There's an infamous Chick Tract about d&d that I was genuinely given by cult missionaries when I was a kid.
Don't forget Tom Hanks first leading role in the movie Mazes and Monsters, originally titled Dungeons & Dragons, but forced to change it when TSR sued them.
I ran my school's D&D club in Highschool. At one point my Grandma came along to watch me and my Siblings while my parents were out of the house for a month and when i told her that i'd need picked up later on certain days for D&D club, she went off on this long rant about how 'D&D is satanic' and then something about how 'Obama eats babies'. To this day i'm literally shocked she believes that junk.
It was a real moral panic in the 80s or 90s. To be fair, it's one of the less deadly moral panics of the 90s. It got a lot of steam when a private detective was hired to find or investigate a troubled teen and found he had committed suicide, and he wrote a book about it and instead said he had become delusional after playing D&D, thought he was the fictional character of RPd and tried to do things his character could do, but killed him. Eventually enough people pointed out the absurdity of the story and people who knew the kid had grown up and made it very clear he committed suicide intentionally and was never delusional, the author then acknowledged he made up the story, but even more perplexing, claimed the teen met him before the suicide, he made it sounds like mere moments before, confessed to drug abuse, and said he didn't want his parents to find out, so asked him kindly to make up a cover story for his actual actions and motives to protect his family from, or maybe just his mom. Anyway. A lot of people took this seriously, but if you're even slightly aware of what tabletop rpgs are like is like claiming a high schooler who played too much soccer became delusional and thought he was a soccer ball, and kept trying to inflate himself until he died. I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying if that did happen, playing too much soccer wasn't related to the delusional mental health disorder.
Pearl-clutching "christians" used to be deathly afraid of anything with even slightly negative undertones. "Dungeons? Dragons? That's the devil! Away Satan! Our children are making pacts with the devil!" Satan was historically represented by a dragon in Christian mythology.
Don't forget the woman whose son committed suicide so she created an anti-D&D group called Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons. Her group described D&D as "a fantasy role-playing game which uses demonology, witchcraft, voodoo, murder, rape, blasphemy, suicide, assassination, insanity, sex perversion, homosexuality, prostitution, satanic type rituals, gambling, barbarism, cannibalism, sadism, desecration, demon summoning, necromantics, divination and other teachings."
In addition to what others have said, sadly the myth persists among some people. I have a good friend who I used to play Magic: The Gathering with. I had been playing for years before I met him (since 3rd edition) and had a pretty decent collection, and he invested a lot of money in cards in the next few years.
At one point I was moving away to a place where I didn't know anyone and needed to travel light, so instead of selling my collection I gave them to him.
I ended up coming back to my home state and we became roommates. Then he became 'born again' and instead of giving me those cards back, he burnt them all.
I'm not really mad at the guy for it, he was doing what he thought was right, but I do regret giving him the cards in the first place.
IMO, math is the work of the devil... 🤣
I am assuming this was the 2.5ed? THAC0 calculations was treated as an arcane knowledge that only DMs had access to
My husband's parents apparently believed the satanic panic bullshit
My parents use to play dnd in high school. Mother was a custom classed healer/oracle. Dad was a very bad thief.
This is my first time seeing another person using monospace font for social media in the wild. I've changed my phone's system font to Fira Code to make almost everything monospace.
Black Math.
Humor, jokes, memes about TTRPGs
