it began as a cult phenomenon then it caught on now a new game is sweeping the country you will burn forever and ever an eternal torment you are no more the role playing game Dungeons and Dragons debuted in 1974 it became a hit with many adolescents but critics claimed it was an invitation to devil worship the Witchcraft the demonism the Spells worse it is not fun in games the media set off a satanic Panic a lot of adults who think it's been connected to a number of suicides and murders that connection has been largely debunked it's nothing but a Witch Hunt and the game has generated an unexpected Legacy this was a revolution [Music] on a summer day in August 1979 the family of a missing teenager called a Texas investigator named William deer with some startling information Dallas Eggbert had disappeared from Michigan State University during the summer session James Dallas Eggbert III was a 16-year-old sophomore and his family hired deer to help find him he was a computer nerd and he had a large amount of hair and carried his little briefcase and I wasn't sure that I was being told exactly what precipitated his disappearance so I said well I guess the best thing we can do is I'll go to Michigan State University and I'll find out for myself exactly what was going on what he found when he went to Eggbert's dorm room was a shelf of neatly stacked books and something else there was a court boo with a series of tax in what might look like a random pattern of thumb tax the investigator saw what he thought could be a clue the shape resembled a building that was part of a network of underground campus steam tunnels which students told him they sometimes explored we set out with maps and we started going into the tunnels one morning with press everywhere I entered with the idea that I did not know what I was getting into but he had a hunch that it had something to do with a game that was growing in popularity this is a quest in a fantasy world world of castles and dungeons monsters and Dragons this world has become real to these people it's all part of a game called Dungeons and Dragons Dungeons and Dragons also known as DND D was created by the late Gary gak and Dave Arnon in the early 1970s it was born out of their love for military war games and they devised scenarios with madeup characters that Incorporated their interest in history and fantasy fiction gak said it provided and Escape all of us at times feel a little inadequate in dealing with the modern world it would feel much better if if we knew that we were a a superhero or a mighty wizard the game is played in a group and the guide or dungeon master you enter a very small room talks the players through the fictional sometimes violent Adventures they will go on and each has an elaborate scoring sheet for his character with points for wisdom and strength and the like a throw of these special dice decide the outcome of battles in an intricate scoring system nothing has acted out the real action is in the mind now you guys are entering the castle but some including deer worried that while the action was imaginary some kids might take it too far you leaving the world of reality into the world of fantasy it advocated murder decapitation and I'm going this isn't a healthy game how could it be a healthy game that game and deer's hunch that Eggbert was playing at in the tunnels made great fodder for headlines but it was a dead end and deer went back to Texas empty-handed it wasn't within a day or two that the phone call came in and uh I was told where I could find him um that he was still alive so we flew out and I'm trying to remember exact words but he couldn't really say a lot and I left it like that Eggbert was a complicated teenager whose disappearance was never fully explained and who later committed suicide there was speculation he was the victim of a campus game called Dungeons and Dragons but after a month-long Nationwide search he was found unharmed deer fed into the growing suspicions about DN in a book that pointed to the game as a culprit in Eggbert's disappearance but Tim Cask who helped develop DND with Gary GX says deer was just hyping the story for personal gain he was a publicity hound and uh he knew that he could hanging on dndd and gather a lot of media frenzy and he did Dallas Eggbert it's a tragic story brilliant young man sent off to University at 15 it had nothing to do with d andd and the steam tunnels still that attention set off an unexpected chain of events our stock took off literally we sold thousands of more copies within 90 days of all that stuff happening and we were up in print runs um that that's when we took off sales nearly quadrupled the year after Eggbert disappeared as the cult game was going mainstream Dungeons and Dragons generated interest in two conflicting groups people who wanted to buy it and those who wanted to ban it and T evangelists took on a new Crusade they are kids like yours like the ones in your neighborhood kids who are turning to Darkness because Society has shut God out conservative fundamentalist Christian group would see a game that involved satanic figures evil figures that would be a source of concern Dungeons and Dragons has been called the most effective introduction to the occult in the history of man it is a fantasy roleplaying game that teaches demonology witchcraft a religious man himself was put on the defensive the company hired psychologist Dr Joyce Brothers to fend off criticism there is good and evil in life and the way Dungeons and Dragons is set up is that good triumphs over evil Tim Cask says that in private he and GX couldn't believe the game was being linked to devil worship without sounding disrespectful at all we laughed our butts off most of the time because it's like are you you kidding me you really think we're teaching your children demonology but the controversy grew after the news media reported that a string of teen murders and suicides had one thing in common The Killers or victims were DND players Mary towi was killed by two friends Ron adcox and Darren Moler The crucial point is can a game create psychosis or is someone like Darren molor an accident waiting to happen with or without the game if if you found 12 kids in murder suicide with with one connecting factor in each of them wouldn't you question it and that's all people do I would certainly do it in a scientific Manner and this is as unscientific as you can get it's nothing but a Witch Hunt but many grieving parents believed there was a connection Pat pullen's teenage son committed suicide and she spoke publicly claiming that his game plane contributed to his death these children not only begin to have violent dreams or violent thoughts or negative depressing type things they become very much a part of this character young people commit suicide for a whole variety of reasons in my research I saw nothing that led anyone towards depression or suicide Northwestern University professor of Sociology Gary Allen Fine wrote a book called shared fantasy and studied the D and subculture they were the kind of kids and young people who didn't go to dances or uh on the weekends it was part of a a nerd culture I guess you would say I can still throw death spells huh Steve the DN culture intrigued filmmakers and fiction writers Rona jeffy's book mazes and monsters was Loosely based on what people thought had happened to Dallas Eggbert it was made into a movie starring a young Tom Hanks let the journey begin well which way do we go they went down the storm tunnels and got to play DND D in this in the tunnels we had to like sit around a table like like how awesome would it have been if it turned out that DN was like what they did Corey docto is a writer and activist who early on was profiled as an avid DN player in this story from 1985 tler the moral Panic was mostly laughable the idea that there were people who were fundamentalist Christians for whom Dungeons and Dragons represented some kind of existential threat to my soul was silly you could go around and and have uh really satisfying arguments with like profoundly ignorant grown-ups over time the Dungeons and Dragons controversy lost Steam and today the Common Thread between DND players is less likely to include any reported links to violence and more likely to involve Emy Awards and literary prizes Steven kbear and writers tanasi coats and Juno Diaz are among the millions of smart bookish kids who played DND D and Shrugged off any sense of panic people were bananas my mom moral paniced she was way more worried about getting shanked you know or getting caught up in some nonsense it was a lot of fun it also provided them um a variety of other skills leadership skills negotiation skills we helped each other without even knowing it man I learned an enormous amount about what it meant to be courageous and what it meant to be passionate and the kind of moral hard moral choices that one needs to make in real life in this kind of fake sort of imagined plane of action and for Diaz as a young immigrant from the Dominican Republic the game had special meaning this was a Revolution being a bunch of kids of color in a society that tells us that we're nothing being permitted and our under our own power to be heroic to have agency to do the hero stuff to take and be on adventures it's there was nothing like it for us it was very very very very impactful while some parents used to worry about what kids were playing now they're more likely to be worried about how they're playing cell phones and social media have revolutionized the way we live but how is plugging in changed the way your kids are growing up through the 20th century you have this tension between free play and controlled media I mean that we were concerned about what sitting in darkened movie theaters would do to our children just wait 30 years and they will be worried about what their children are doing and it will no doubt be something different than sexting and bullying uh as we know it today this is not a new phenomenon this it just changes with each new technology the American Academy of Pediatrics says that in this media saturated age it's important for kids to use their imaginations in free play and in a Twist the roleplaying games that set off a moral panic in the past may look more like a solution than a problem to today's parents it's a great thing to dream yourself in other places and it helps understand who you are it's just nice to spend a lot of time thinking imagining in a group collaborating is awesome imagination is a Good Thing Man very powerful [Music]