But down in the underground, you’ll find someone true

My mother panicked when she found out I started playing D&D with a friend at high school. She consulted the closest mental health professional she knew which happened to be the psychiatrist at work. The psychiatrist didn't see a problem with it as long as I knew where fantasy and reality were. After hearing that, my mother gave her blessing for me to play D&D. I should probably add that my mother worked in the local jail as a nurse.

So to make a long story short, I couldn't play D&D without getting the approval of a prison psychiatrist.

“I don’t wanna be Elfstar any more! I want to be Debbie!”

ahh, back when the satanic panic spread by mimeograph and the spittle-flecks of rage and fear damn near left flecks on the page.

I recently set up a short campaign for a few people at work who had never played D&D but wanted a taste. I was surprised that several people were immediately worried for us because of the "darkness" it would bring into our lives. I always thought that was a concern from decades ago, but apparently I was wrong.

Isn't it fascinating how media and parents fear that their children are confusing fiction and reality but in the end it's them who take fiction for reality.

You’ll recall the title of this post from the David Bowie soundtrack for the 1986 Jim Henson film, Labyrinth[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_(David_Bowie_song)

To me, the most important bit is this question:

> When everything is mainstream, when attractive and popular kids are programming computers, immersed in role-playing games, fluent in comic books, writing the rules and setting the boundaries, what becomes of the kids who still can’t fit in? Dear’s book made me wonder who we’re missing. Where are their steam tunnels, real or imagined? Where do they go when they’re tired of being told how to be?

But... what's the answer?

Really bizarre that this author refers to the college student as a "child" and refers to college students in the 70s as "proto-adults" implying that today college students are children. College students are young adults. Its really frustrating to see people treat them like children and especially to imply that they should be treated like children.

And our friends at Campus Crusades for Christ and their annual 'D&D is evil' speakers. The sad part was how easy it was to hand out a pamphlet that refuted all of the speaker's sources before the speaker had ever spoke.

Ah, pharisees, gotta love them.

My first D&D campaign was ended when our Cleric and Fighter (brothers) were banned by their mom who thought it was satanic. We went to the same church, so it wasn't anything from church.

Google and Amazon seem to have done a pretty good job of scrubbing this 1979 book from the face of the earth. Does anyone have “The Dungeon Master” ISBN?

For those interested in media panics over small nothings, check out this full-length 1980's made-for-TV movie about Dungeons and Dragons, featuring Tom Hanks snapping and losing his grip on reality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpcL-fQNPfQ

Unlike the post title implies, this article isn't really about D&D in the 80s. From the OP:

> It’s not a major spoiler to tell you that the Dungeons and Dragons connection, highly marketable when The Dungeon Master came out in 1984, proves to be slight...

The OP's title is now "But down in the underground, you’ll find someone true…" I'm not sure if the post title is right: 1) it doesn't seem to actually make sense given the article content (Dallas Egbert is a kid who played D&D who went missing, but the easiest parse has him blaming it with the media), and 2) it only appears in the OP in a pingback that ripped off this blog post.

Mazes and Monsters, starring a young Tom Hanks, was sponsored by Procter & Gamble Productions. Now decades later, it appears that they keep trying to pander to people's baseless fears.

Spoiler: the teenage Egbert was hiding out at someone else's house, and eventually phoned himself in. Less than a year later, he committed suicide. Coulda had us a Turing!

> "To understand Egbert’s mind, Dear gets so implausibly immersed in a D&D game run by a college kid that he loses his sense of self. A mysterious woman stalks Dear’s room while he’s out investigating the case, strange phone calls and notes hint at sinister conspiracies, and reporters camp out in the hotel lobby, ravenous for news."

This sounds like coming from the blurb of a Paul Auster novel.

I can't believe so many here played D&D. I thought it was terrible, simplistic, shallow, restrictive and just for kids. I refused to play it. AD&D, otoh, is pretty great.

I really wanted to go to bed, but couldn’t stop reading. Made me pine for the ole D&D days

I can’t say what caused me to read this essay but it makes some thoughtful points

I've read a bit about this story over the years -- perhaps it's a little more popular given that about half of my (very large) graduating class attended Michigan State University.

I was the "computer geek" growing up and somehow I managed to avoid getting into D&D. I ended up finding out, later, that it was mostly by design. My parents had been familiar with this story and were generally of the belief that D&D was "of the devil"[0].

When my parents first explained the story and why they didn't want me playing D&D[1], I did what most kids did and polled my friends to see if anyone played. Much to my surprise, a kid two doors down was obsessed. So five of us sat in a room while my friend, walked us through what I can only describe as "playing pretend with dice[2]".

I learned that day that "Tabloids" and "The News" are distinguishable from one another only in that the former is expects you to be skeptical, the latter expects your trust. At the end of the day, the product is very nearly identical. As a young man when Columbine occurred, which I followed very closely, I think my faith in the general news media was completely destroyed.

Here I am, sitting in a room with four of my friends, one behind a board with notes, random-seeming things happening requiring dice rolls. Dude. I was bored as hell. Common sense, at that point, told me that if someone became so immersed in this that they lost their mind to ... insanity ... SATAN ... what-have-you that the issue wasn't D&D, it was a far more complicated mental illness. How come a 13-year-old kid could see this but a flurry of adults -- my parents included -- couldn't? Had D&D not existed, this would have still happened, and I'm confident that "The Media" would look for an explanation outside of "human beings sometimes do shocking things" or "mental illness". Those don't have easy solutions.

And I think a lot of it is our fault as consumers. Not because we watch the news, but because we want to know that a tragedy like this "has a reason". We want the news to tell us that "Violent Video Games", "D&D", ... I don't know ... "GMO Foods" are the reason and if we just ban those things, we won't have to worry ourselves with that whole classification of problems. It's a knee-jerk reaction because we're uncomfortable accepting the fact that bad things happen for complicated reasons and people do bad things, and that often "good people" are capable of incredible evil.

Consequently, I've been a bit vague about exactly what happened because I don't know that I ever received the "true story". My parents recollection was as good as an urban legend and I got a chuckle out of the opening line: "you probably heard tales from a college your friend’s brother’s cousin attended on the fringes of wherever you lived". It reminded me of the year after High School, when somehow, nearly every girl I knew from High School who was a Freshman at MSU somehow narrowly avoided being abducted on the "Rape Trail"[3].

[0] I think the only other thing we were told was "of the devil" was a Ouija board.

[1] I was never forbidden from playing, but they weren't buying, I had no income and I hadn't found any friends who were into it.

[2] If it's not already clear, my knowledge on this subject is just about zero. I'm really not trying to bash D&D by over-simplifying -- this was my impression as a 13-year-old kid and since I've had no further experience, it's the one I carry as an adult. It's also not the point.

[3] My attempts to triangulate the location of this mysterious Rape Trail resulted in the discovery that there wasn't a general consensus across campus of what really was the "Rape Trail". I concluded that "Rape Trail" was a phrase used to describe every walking path that was not in a building.