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    "Your 'reality', sir, is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever."
    — Karl Friedrich Hieronymus, Freiherr von Münchhausen

    B.A.D.D. to the Bone Wednesday, March 23, 2005

    This blog entry links to an article about the organization B.A.D.D. — "Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons". Written in 1990 by one Michael Stackpole, he discusses the founder's blatant disregard for objectivity and irrational arguments against the game.

    While she is obviously a bleeding idiot, Alex's blog and Michael's analysis do make one point pretty clear to me: there was an awful lot of pagan and occult material being churned out by TSR back in the day. And while there's nothing wrong with that in itself, I can understand how it made the fundies (fundamentalists) nervous.

          

    Comments on B.A.D.D. to the Bone
      Comment from Blogger Alex at Thursday, March 24, 2005 12:21:00 AM
    I can assure you that the old TSR material was entirely fantastical, with little connection to "real world" pagan/occult beliefs or practices.

    There is a lot more pagan/occult material released in the last ten years than in all of the seventies and eighties.
      Comment from Blogger Red Bull at Thursday, March 24, 2005 2:35:00 AM
    Without a doubt it's true that TSR's books were more influenced by Tolkien than La Vey, but they chose to use way more concepts from real-world religious and mystical systems than a 21st-century game would have -- includng paladins, golems, succubi and other demons mentioned by name, cataloguing entire pagan pantheons, and the like. I think it's obvious that the designers had at least a passing interest in the occult and were likely fairly knowledgable about historic forms of paganism, and that these ideas were all present in the original D&D books.
      Comment from Blogger Alex at Thursday, March 24, 2005 3:42:00 AM
    Their knowledge of paganism was superficial to say the least.
      Comment from Blogger MacFurious at Thursday, March 24, 2005 4:52:00 PM
    Yes indeed Alex, but the average person on the street has never even heard of the term "Golem" before or "Succubi" or anything like that. I see Maltese's point and I see your point, but you're really splitting hairs.

    To the average 1980's Christian Fudementalist, the works of TSR was tantamount to "worshipping SATAN!"

    *laughs*

    See ya folks, I have to go bind a Balor to servitude.

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