Talk:Dungeons & Dragons

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Mental Health category

I want ahead and removed D&D from the Mental Health category. Why was it even there? Basically I went to the Category:Mental_Health page and saw a listing of afflictions, drugs, notable relevant people... and Dungeons & Dragons. It seemed really out-of-place. Apokalyps2547 (talk) 20:53, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Because playing D&D with your mates is one of the best therapeutic activities out there! Nullahnung (talk) 07:07, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

I think it's because of the stuff back then where people thought you'd become a Satan worshiping killer or something. See Mazes and Monsters. Woodgod (talk) 11:23, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

I note that Satanic Panic is absent from the Mental Health page. Apokalyps2547 (talk) 16:51, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Here is likely why it was in the mental health category:

"In Chicago there is a wing of the Hartgrove Hospital called for the Center for the Treatment of Ritualistic Deviance. It's influenced by silly Satanism seminars, and one of the criteria for being a potential patient is "heavy involvement in fantasy and role play [sic] games". Therefore, a young teen can be "hospitalized" here with the consent of his parents for being a D&D-player--all legal and proper!" - Reference to information in In Pursuit of Satan: The Police and the Occult (1991) as documented in Satanists and D&D usenet thread.

You could get committed by your parents for playing D&D?! Who ever tried that should have been the one committed.--BruceGrubb (talk) 11:26, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

Possibly there should be some further research - aren't there cases of people dying as a result of spending excessively long sessions playing 'one or another computer game', so D&D is serving as a metonym? Anna Livia (talk) 14:05, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

Considering we are talking about 1991 I don't see the "substitute for something else with which it is closely associated". Heck, the Polybius urban legend was still some 8 years in the future.--BruceGrubb (talk) 18:49, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Answering "The "D&D vs. its own players" edits" to replace section with something less nonsensical

Being new, but spoiling for action, maybe someone can tell me if this seems like a good endeavor. If no one objects, is it inappropriate to boil down the bizarre "D&D vs. its own players" rant to be a few sentences of content rather than pages of context no one cares about? No offence to the writer, and all respect, but it reads like a mostly-good forum. I think we'd all agree a mostly-good forum is often not as good as a somewhat-bad wiki. Any vaguely impartial, inexperienced reader of this site is likely skipping that section; let's be honest, we came here for the Chick Tract jokes, not to argue or vent about niche nerd culture, and there are no Chick Tract jokes. Then, because that would chop out so much of the page, other people and I could add in new stuff and rename the heading something that expresses "Why you might care if you don't already;" this would include citations about the impact philosophy has had on D&D (there's a lot of that), famous players that have had lasting cultural contributions that have been affected by D&D specifically (screenwriters, TV personalities), popular geeky phenomenon such as Critical Role? Considering the impacts such things can have on rational pursuit, and written and (unlike the current section) using multiple citations to address exactly why it relates, is this an example of what the wiki could be used for? Is that too TVTropes? SocraticrystalMethod (talk) 03:23, 7 December 2017 (AKT)

The "D&D vs. its own players" edits

The whole point of the section is to talk about where they actively went against their own players ( not decisions that hurt them financially, while still pleasing their core fanbase. For example, a punk band deciding not to soften their sound to expand their audience would hardly be described as being against their fans, would it? The "many buckets" thing, while maybe not great for TSR financially, is hardly "vs. its own players", as in it's the players themselves who liked the various settings enough to stick with them. Even the article itself says that many of those settings (Planescape, Ravenloft) were acclaimed, with the one developer that's occasionally quoted there saying so. Hell, one of the biggest complaints against D&D nowadays is that they don't pay enough attention to their other settings, mainly sticking with Forgotten Realms for the last two settings. One of the most appreciated things about 4e was them releasing a Dark Sun book. Part IV even states that many fans were unhappy with WoTC cutting non-Forgotten Realms stuff, and the developer quoted there himself says that he was sad to see some of them go, but you make it seem like new settings were a bad idea, period. Also, it's kind of strange to criticize them for too many settings in one paragraph and then complain about them not covering the "entirety of the Sword & Sorcery genre" (whatever that means) in the next.

The whole thing about the magic, and comparisons to other fantasy universes, especially shonen anime, which is aimed at little boys, is pointless. If anything, the popular trend nowadays is low magic of the Game of Thrones sort, so should games now attampt to make wizards even more powerless? Even then there were game systems that were well-liked that had much less flashy magic. So there's no pleasing everyone and there's no guarantee that would have any affect on their fanbase, except maybe causing them to lose the fans they already had. Obviously they're not going to be able to simulate every fantasy universe ever, unless they make an extremely generic system with no flavor (which would hurt their sales even worse than a "fragmented fanbase"". D&D is and always has been primarily heroic fantasy where you start weak and grow into a godlike being at higher levels. Plus, D&D is full of over the top stuff at higher levels, and that's not even getting to classes like monks and druids. In 4e, they made it more balanced between casters and martial classes, but that came with its own share of complaints from the fans, and didn't necessarily mean that wizards were more over the top powerful at lower levels either. The article about Gandalf being a low level caster sort of proves that, since in his own universe he'd be high level. Wizards casting meteor storms at level one would completely break the game. Wizards still had a small set of available spells at low levels post-TSR, so I'm not sure why you think it's much different. And I have no idea why you even bring up "Rune (sic) Explorers", something with a 6 on IMDB from only 172 ratings and a bare-bones TV Tropes article (and if an anime or manga series has a bare-bones TV Tropes article, that's saying something).

It's enough to know that TSR eventually failed financially and sold D&D. We don't need entire paragraphs on possible ways they could have grown their fanbase, when it's all speculative, especially in a section that's not about that. Most of TSR's main failings are already here, and you ignored the more important stuff from the article you linked such as poor marketing, banking on the wrong products, and making half-assed attempts to compete with other companies. The rest is all speculation. There's already way too much stuff that would only be of interest to D&D fans (and they have much better places to get their info), not general readers of this site, as it is. A brief explanation and history of the game and the religion/moral panic stuff is all that's really needed here. Woodgod (talk) 00:06, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

To provide a more concise arguement against the edits - whether the property ownera are fracturingv their own fandom is so utterly outside the scope ofv this wiki that the adder is a major surprise to me. --"Paravant" ^{Talk & Contribs} 00:33, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

It is clear Woodgod is not understanding the referenced article point. The point is you realistically cannot please everyone and by trying to due that TSR was hemorrhaging money like crazy. In fact as the article states "Far from catching more money in their small buckets, TSR was actually making the audience smaller!" Since the audience (ie player base) was shrinking TRS was working against the players...basic logic.--BruceGrubb (talk) 02:09, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Again, that's neither deliberately "vs it's players", nor is it really relevant to the site. Woodgod (talk) 09:56, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Red dragons

Could red dragons too be a reason D&D is so hated by Fundies?. While clearly inspired by Smaug (The Hobbit) they looks to have taken clues of the dragon that appears in the Book of Revelation (better said its associations). Never mind that they're presented in the game -except in derivative works as Warcraft- as the ultimate adversaries and as people very nasty to have businesses with, but Fundies never RTFM.^{— Unsigned, by: Panzerfaust / talk / contribs}

I always thought that their objection was about the use of magic - compare their objections to Harry Potter, LOTR etc. Boredatwork (talk) 12:57, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

I should mention that things like Christian Gamers Guild and Love Thy Nerd show not all Christians are in the Fundy camp and they have realized treating D&D players they way the Fundies do only convinces the D&D players that Christianity as a whole is a bunch of control happy cult minded nutjobs that would make Big Brother drool with envy.--BruceGrubb (talk) 03:54, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

The most hysterical thing is when the Fudies point to LOTR as an example - given it was written by a Christian. Why not point to the Bible itself as there are examples of magic in it?--BruceGrubb (talk) 03:22, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

Should remove this and the roleplaying games page from the Satanism category?

Since D&D was never satanic in the first place, I believe that we should remove this from the Satanism category. User:Anonymous (talk) 2:30 PM. 12 June 2020.(Central) ^{— Unsigned, by: 2600:6C63:637F:E920:50E1:BADF:6054:4C43 / talk}

Its inclusion is mainly related to its role in the Satanic Panic. So probably not. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 19:36, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

In this case I think rule of funny applies--Hastur! (talk) 19:37, 12 June 2020 (UTC)