Celebrating Dungeons & Dragons' 40th Anniversary

[Alan C.]

Celebrating Dungeons & Dragons' 40th Anniversary (thread on Slashdot)

 

Feel free to post your D&D stories, memories, and interesting links.

 

My reminiscence of D&D: I loved D&D when I was growing up in the 80s. Those days of inviting over a group of friends and spending countless hours around the dining room table (covered in books and papers) are among my fondest childhood memories. Regrettably, I don't have a single photo of my friends and I playing. I had all of the books, including Monster Manual 2, Fiend Folio, and Deities & Demigods, bags of dice, metal miniatures, and paperboard map pieces. It was serious business. I even made my own character sheets with a computer.

 

There was the cartoon and plethora of video and computer games. Who remembers Treasure of Tarmin and Cloudy Mountain for Intellivision, or Wizardry, Bard's Tale, or Dungeon Master? How many quarters did you sink into Gauntlet?

 

Not everyone was as enthusiastic about D&D. Hysterical religious fanatics and the National Coalition of Television Violence attempted to link D&D with devil worship, murder, and suicide (go to page 153). A movie with Tom Hanks called Mazes and Monsters, in which Tom Hanks' character becomes psychotic and almost kills himself, undoubtedly contributed to rumors. Several of my childhood friends were not permitted to play D&D or any computer/video games of the genre because their parents believed that it was satanic and demonic.

 

Also check out this amusing article: 12 Nutty Dungeons & Dragons Media Mentions From the 1980s

 

YouTube video of Pat Robertson linking suicide with Dungeons and Dragons. I wonder if Rick Warren's son played D&D?

 

The religious kooks are worried about D&D encouraging murder and suicide while people (including children) around the world are abused, tortured, and murdered for witchcraft and possession. A woman was recently charged with murdering two of her children during an exorcism.