We are seeing a different version of the satanic panic right now with trans panic. They took all the lessons learned and just put a different spin on it.
You’re not wrong. There’s probably even a chick tract for that.
Without the satanic panic I would probably still think satanists were cringe… But they rule, and they owe it all to fundies.
I was playing during the 80s, while this was going on.
A couple years ago I wrote a book-form adventure module and I still felt the “what will the crazies think” stigma…and my writing was about plants, not demons.
I was too young in the 80s, but the lingering effects were still there in the 90s when I became aware of D&D. There were always rumours circulating in our small town church about other people who lived in the town and (sacrilege!) played D&D. It took until age 13 or so before I realized it was just a game and not some sort of actual demonic secret society.
But I did also get booted from my church a few years later for using a Ouija board, so I suppose that distinction (being only a game of imagination) was not relevant to the adults.
Pivot: did you ever publish that module? Can you post it? :)
Search for The Green Cauldron on DriveThruRPG. :)
I also have a generic fantasy resource book there called Fantasy Game Town Hooks, if you’re interested!
Hard copies of both are going to stores in the Vancouver area soon.
Nice! I’m not in Vancouver, nor do I run a game store in Winnipeg which can stock things. But I did find you on DriveThuRPG. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/325376/The-Green-Cauldron – and the thumbnail version looks great!
Feel free to self promote in this sub – just be transparent about it :). We’re tiny, and the signal to noise ratio is irrelevant at this point – more content is better than less content. There are other D&D or ttRPG communities forming on other servers, so the likelihood of this one shaking out as the primary community in the long term is above zero, but still quite low. At a minumum, it’d be interesting to get some insight into the self-published RPG content community and might spawn some fun discussions – even if it’s just me ;)
Gosh what a time. I am far too young to have experienced this (born in mid nineties), but as a DnD lover, I can’t help but smile at this history, and how far we’ve come (fairly slowly, granted).
