Jonathon D. Jones

Why Fundamentalist Christians Have Negative Conceptions of Dungeons & Dragons

This paper is an attempt to explain the negative conceptions about role-playing games, especially claims that the games are Satanic. I will be using many primary sources from the Internet, most of which are from Christian websites, to determine precisely what is being claimed about the games. I will be using more academic sources in order to try to explain where the claims are coming from. As the websites primarily focus on Dungeons & Dragons (henceforth noted as D&D), I too will focus on this game. First I will examine the most common conceptions one by one and try to determine the source of each, and then I will examine the claims as a whole to give an overall theory about them.

The first claim that I’ll discuss is that D&D causes players to commit suicide. According to http://www.webzonecom.com/ccn/cults/satn10.txt, Dr. Radedki, “chairman of the National Coalition on Television Violence”, said “[t]here is no doubt in my mind that the game Dungeons and Dragons is causing young men to kill themselves and others.” A character in the Chick Tract “Dark Dungeons” commits suicide after her character dies in the game. The conception seems to be that players get so obsessed by the game, so enthralled, that when something goes wrong (like their character dying) they have difficulty dealing with the consequences. They have so much difficulty, it is claimed, that they sometimes kill themselves because of it.

This claim appears to stem from a few different events. This brief history is agreed upon by a number of authors, but I am specifically using Brian Webber’s account, from http://www.voicesofunreason.com/essays/dungeonsanddragonsnotasatanicgame, and Paul Cardwell, Jr.’s article in the Skeptical Enquirer. The first event was in 1979, when a student named James Dallas Egbert III disappeared from Michigan State University’s campus. It was theorized by an investigator named William Dear that Egbert was lost in the steam tunnels under the campus, acting as a character in D&D. He was found about a month later, but his disappearance had already been highly publicized, starting a new public perception of the game. A year later Egbert committed suicide.

In 1982, a boy named Irving Pulling II committed suicide. He played D&D as part of a gifted program at his high school, and his mother, Pat Pulling, claims that his character in the game had been cursed. The curse compelled him to kill, but he killed himself rather than carry out the deed. In response to this event, she started a group named BADD (Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons), and also joined with a group already mentioned, the National Coalition on Television Violence. They tried to catalogue any and all suicides in which the victim was involved with the game, and would publish these findings. In January 1985, the groups tried to get the Federal Trade Commission to require a warning label to notify buyers that the game was dangerous and could cause suicide, but the FTC denied the request.

Rona Jaffe wrote a book named Monsters and Mazes, very loosely based on the Pulling case. In the book, one of the characters involved in the game ends up thinking that he really is his character, and gets lost in New York pretending to be this character. He never is able to regain his grip on reality. Despite the fact that Jaffe’s book is fiction, many readers have believed that it is based on a true story, and cite things that happen in the book as real occurrences. It was quite a popular book, and in 1983 was made into a movie. This allowed the conception that D&D causes suicide to spread to a very broad audience.

Another claim that critics of D&D have written is that it causes players to commit murder. The above quote by the director of the NCTV is an example of this type of claim. The Watchman Expositor, a Fundamentalist publication, lists a number of news stories about murders that have taken place involving players of role-playing games. William Schnoebelen, writing for Chick Publications, also has a list of cases of murder and suicide that he claims were caused by the game.

This claim is relatively similar to the previous one. The claim is basically that players of D&D sometimes lose track of what is real and what is fantasy. Since the game is a violent game, when the players start to believe that they are really in the game world, they will act this out violently. In a slightly more mundane analysis of the murders, it is claimed that the games conditioned the players to be more violent. This is all quite common, however, and so the explanation falls a bit outside of merely role-playing games.

It has been claimed a number of times that television, video games, fantasy books, and movies, to name but a few, cause violence in those viewing/reading them. As with the claim about D&D, it is claimed that people are either conditioned by these things to accept violence as a good way of dealing with problems, or that viewers lose their sense of reality and fiction and start to believe that they are really part of the fantasy. Obviously, then, this has something to do with a distrust of violent media rather than a distrust of role-playing games. Suffice to say, then, that the explanation for why D&D is targeted as a source of murders is that it is considered part of the group of violent media. Additional factors for this violence claim lie in the fact that it is the target for other claims that increase violent tendencies (for instance, that D&D promotes Satanism).

A third claim about D&D is that it teaches players to cast magic spells. William Schnoebelen, in his article “Straight Talk on Dungeons and Dragons”, states that “the materials themselves, in many cases, contain authentic magical rituals”. In the “Dark Dungeons” Chick tract mentioned earlier, the person running the game takes one of the players aside after she has reached a certain level of playing with her character, and takes her to a witch coven to teach her “real magic”. The fourth frame of the tract narrates “[t]he intense occult training through D&D prepared Debbie to accept the invitation to enter a witches’ coven.” Afterwards, Debbie casts a spell on her father to make him buy her more D&D items.

D&D is a sword and sorcery game. It takes place in a fantasy world in which warriors and wizards do battle with each other. Obviously there is magic use for the characters in the game. But how could this fact make people think that the game allows people to use real magic?

I think that the claim is able to be made only after a few premises are accepted. First, the person making the claim must believe that magic really exists. In other words, people involved in the “occult” are not just misled people that falsely believe that they are using magic. Rather, they really do have this power, and the power comes form dark forces, most notably Satan. For these people, magic is very real, and very evil.

Second, it is necessary to believe that D&D is more than just a game. Instead, it must be viewed as training material to be part of the occult and use real magic. This is different from the previous claims in that, with this claim, the effect is deliberate. The game is being created as part of a plan to bring people into witchcraft, or even Satanism (discussed later).

It is fairly easy to see then, after these are accepted, why someone might believe that D&D is really teaching someone magic. This might also help to explain why most of the people making these claims are Fundamentalist Christians – most other Christians don’t believe that magic is real.

Closely related to this last claim is that D&D is a gateway to Satanism. The claim is, effectively, that people playing D&D are really involved with Satanism. This website (http://www.generationyes.com/yes/children.htm) claims that a player was effectively “doing satanic rituals on her dining room table”. William Schnoebelen also believes that D&D is related to Satanism, but I will discuss his analysis in a later section.

Who is spreading rumors that D&D is part of Satanism? According to Daniel Martin and Gary Alan Fine, “organizations that have explicitly attacked Dungeons & Dragons include Media Spotlight, Chick publications, Pro-Family Forum, Christian Life Ministries, and The Daughters of St. Paul…” (108). BADD and NCTV were already mentioned as other groups that attack the game. As is perhaps evident from the titles of the organizations, many of these groups are “associated with fundamentalist Christian sects in the United States and Canada” (Martin 108).

It should not come as much of a surprise that fundamentalist Christian groups are spreading the Satanism rumors about D&D. These are, in fact, the religious groups that most commonly try to make the public aware of the supposed problem of Satanism (Victor 230). They’ve targeted school textbooks, library books, clothes with symbols (like the peace symbol, celebrations (like Halloween), heavy metal rock music, and more as satanic (156-163). Jeffrey Victor claims that the reason these things are targeted is that they are perceived as things that help to shape a child’s mind (179). These are all things that parents view as morally corrupting and do not have direct influence on, except through censorship.

William Schnoebelen, writing for Chick publications, writes in “Straight Talk on Dungeons and Dragons” that Dungeons & Dragons is “a feeding program for occultism and witchcraft” (1). He also says that the Bible warns to stay away from all appearances of evil, and that since D&D deals with aspects of evil (e.g. demons and magic) Christians should stay away from it. He also claims that D&D teaches real magical rituals to its participants. Obviously, the occult and magic are things to stay away from as well, since you could summon up a demon or curse someone. Note here that Schnoebelen is not saying it is wrong because one should not try to do these things; he actually believes that playing D&D will really conjure up a demon (2). He is far from being unique in this analysis. He notes also that there are sexual themes in the literature and artwork, inappropriate for Christians and “decent” people (3). He also believes that D&D is a form of “Do-It-Yourself Brainwashing” (3). Finally, as mentioned earlier, he lists a number of cases of suicide and murder that he claims were caused by the game. Obviously, his claim is that the game is dangerous and that it should not be played, especially by Christians.

His arguments are interesting, and in fact seem to be fairly common among those with negative opinions of D&D. But there is a fundamental claim which, I think, explains why he, and other opponents, are so quick to attack the games with the other claims (which appear to be completely unfounded). In his new work, titled “Should a Christian Play Dungeons and Dragons”, he claims that the main “problem is that the cosmology of D&D is fundamentally anti-Biblical.” The world of Dungeons & Dragons has nothing to do with Christianity; it has many gods, all equally valid to worship, and none of these gods is the Christian one. According to Linda Thompson, writing for the Journal of Child and Youth Care, “religion is twisted, transformed, and beliefs are not taken seriously in gaming experiences.” Also, she says, the game serves to “retain and keep viable past myths, legends, villains, and heroes of society.”

These quotes are quite telling, and can help to explain why Fundamentalist Christians are such a prominent part of the group condemning D&D. Alternative worldviews to theirs are always seen as morally corrupting, and for the extremists alternative worldviews are seen as the work of Satan. Other tracts sold by Chick publications, for instance, denounce Catholicism, Buddhism, Islam, and Judaism, as well as Wicca, as being created and run by Satan. These religions are all elaborate tricks by Satan to get people to not follow in the path of God, they say, and D&D is another trick by him. Because these religions are created by Satan, belonging to them is a form of Satanism. The same holds true for the game.

Role-playing games are not the only non-religious target for the claims of Satanic influence. Scientific principles, like the Big Bang Theory and evolution, have been condemned because they offer worldviews that conflict with the Fundamentalist Christian one. In addition, other leisure activities, like billiards, surfing, pinball, motorcycling, and dancing have been seen as morally corrupt (Martin 107). These could be seen as distracting people from the message of God. That is, if a person is playing games or surfing, they aren’t in church, and they have other goals than getting into Heaven (like scoring the highest score in a game, or riding a really big wave). As such, it could be claimed, these activities are hurtful to their souls.

Victor writes that “the manufacturer of the game estimates that about 4 million people play Dungeons and Dragons with some regularity.” The books are, for the most part, not sold in mainstream stores, but only in hobby shops. So, with a relatively small user base, and the books only really being sold in places where people are specifically looking for them, I think it would be safe to say that this game is part of the fringe of society, not of the mainstream. The movie Dungeons & Dragons may have helped make it more mainstream, but as that movie was only released in 2001, it doesn’t say much about claims occurring before that.

The reason I mention the relative obscurity of the game is that I think this helps to allow the claims to be made, and to be spread. Many people have heard of the game, but relatively few have actually played it. As such, most people are unable to critically examine the claims. According to Mark J. Young, “Christians have by and large abandoned it to the enemy.” That is, Christians are even less likely to have played the game, no doubt due in part to the claims made by others about the anti-Christian content. As such, within the Christian community the claims are able to be spread with even less impunity, as even less people know first-hand the truth of them.

Earlier it was mentioned the D&D is viewed as having a negative outlook on religion, and an anti-Christian cosmology. Another problem Christians have with the game, and which, I think, is part of the reason they make some of the claims they do, is the “alignment” system that the game has in place. The “alignment” of a character tells the values of the character. There are two axes that these values are on: lawful/chaotic and good/evil. A character has a combination of these two, such as “chaotic good” or “lawful evil”.

In a site called “A Biblical View of Dungeons and Dragons”, the author writes “Good and evil seem to be presented as equal and opposite sides.” The concern is that there is no inherent reason to choose “lawful good”, for example, over any of the others. Characters are by no means required to be of that alignment, and many interesting characters are not. So, unlike in the Christian perception of the world, there is no absolute morality in the game. The consequences of being evil, for example, are simply that good gods will not like your actions, and evil gods will like them. To choose evil or good is, effectively, merely choosing one side of the war of good and evil to fight on. Neither is better than the other; they are equal and opposite.

Obviously, this is troubling. If morality in this fantasy world is not absolute, if there is no real reason to choose good over evil aside from personal preference, could this not also be true of the real world? Again, as in the discussion about a cosmology involving numerous gods, Fundamentalists find this alternative worldview troubling. This, I think, could be part of why they make the claims about D&D that they do.

What I have attempted to show in this paper is the numerous reasons that negative claims are made about Dungeons & Dragons. I have also shown why the people making these claims are primarily Fundamentalist Christians. I have said nothing about the truth of these claims, as I am not interested in explaining them away, but merely to come to some conclusions about their origins. Even if someone has a poor reason for believing something (and I’m not saying that in this case they do), it is still perfectly possible that there is some truth to what they believe.

Works Cited

Cardwell, Paul Jr. “The Attacks on Role-Playing Games.” Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 18. New York, 1994.

Chick, Jack T. “Dark Dungeons.” Chick Publications. Ontario, CA, 1984.

“Children.” http://www.generationyes.com/yes/children.htm Viewed April 20, 2002.

“Dungeons and Dragons - Concerns For The Christian” http://www.webzonecom.com/ccn/cults/satn10.txt Viewed April 20, 2002

Jones, Scott. “A Biblical View of Dungeons and Dragons.” http://logosresourcepages.org/dnd-bv.html Viewed April 20, 2002.

Martin, Daniel and Fine, Gary Alan. “Satanic Cults, Satanic Play: Is “Dungeons & Dragons” a Breeding Ground for the Devil?” The Satanism Scare. New York, 1991.

“More About Dungeons and Dragons”. Originally in the Watchman Expositor. http://www.falwell.com/press%20statements/prsarchives/prsocc5.htm Viewed April 20, 2002.

Schnoebelen, William. “Straight Talk on Dungeons and Dragons.” Chick Publications. Ontario, CA, 1989.

Schnoebelen, William. “Should a Christian Play Dungeons & Dragons?” Chick Publications. Ontario, CA, 2001.

Thompson, Linda. “Parental and Young Adolescents’ Views on Fantasy Role-Playing Games (FRPGs).” Journal of Child and Youth Care, Vol. 6-4. Calgary, 1991.

Victor, Jeffrey S. Satanic Panic. Chicago, 1993

Webber, Brian. “Dungeons & Dragons: Not A Satanic Game”. http://www.voicesofunreason.com/essays/dungeonsanddragonsnotasatanicgame. Viewed April 20, 2002.

Young, Mark J. “Confessions of a Dungeons & Dragons Addict.” http://members.aol.com/MarkJYoung/confess.html Viewed April 20, 2002.