by Richie Caldicott

Created on: January 07, 2009   Last Updated: July 18, 2009

When the fantasy role-playing game (RPG) Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) was released in 1974, it really was unlike anything that had come before it. Not because of its finely tuned yet free-flowing style or its incredibly rational yet open combat system but because it was a game that was played predominantly by Satanists who frequently killed each other in the battle for their imaginary character's supremacy. Players whose characters had fallen in battle frequently killed themselves, so "real" was the world inside that red book marked "Dungeons & Dragons". At least that's what one of my friends at school told me when I was about ten-years-old. I believed him too because I was pretty gullible at that age (it hadn't been that long since I'd continually fallen for a whopper of a fib about an obese and bearded troll who broke into our house once a year just to make sure I had enough Star Wars toys to keep me going).

The D&D franchise came under attack from many Christian focus (or "pressure") groups who objected to the fact that demons and other such mythological (though nonetheless also biblical) races made appearances within the D&D universe. And, apparently, telling an interactive story with your friends about encountering fictional demons and dispatching them by virtue of your imaginary sword or make-believe spell catalogue is every bit as dangerous as playing with a Ouija board on Halloween while reciting the Lord's prayer backward in time to Marilyn Manson's seminal album Antichrist Superstar. Except that the D&D RPG system does not specifically command that the player engage in conversation or combat with such demonic entities. The individuals decide their character's actions while the overall story or plot is the fictional work of the appointed game-master or dungeon-master. So homoerotic wording aside a game of D&D could only be as satanic as the players were themselves.

But then, in 1982, the film Mazes And Monsters confirmed what all rightward thinking good Christian folks knew in their hearts already. It didn't matter what the persuasions of the players were because D&D was dangerous and evil to its core and attempting to play nicely with such a volatile game was as futile as asking Lucifer if he'd settle for a nice picture you'd painted him rather than your immortal soul. For those who are unfamiliar with the direct-to-TV movie, it features an as yet undiscovered Tom Hanks as a young man with his whole life ahead of him,

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