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She may buy into hype but still thinks for herself
Good point, actually. Seems like these days, a lot of people wouldn’t change their opinion after seeing what this grandma saw.
These days, some people wouldn’t even attempt to see the game with their own eyes and completely makes up their mind based on one FB post.
There are 2 sorts of ignorance. Incidental and willful. Incidental can be fixed easily, with more information. Willful only look to support their pre-decided views, and so are far harder to change.
Before the internet became a big thing, both were common on topics. We were forced to rely on what we were told. This lead to a lot of incidental ignorance. The internet made it easy to fix this.
The end result is the ratio has changed. It used to be, say 80% incidental, and 20% willful. Now 90% of the incidental is mostly fixed. So it’s 29% incidental, 71% willful. And so looks a lot worse to casual observation.
The Grandma seems the incidental type. Going to a game gave her the information to update her views.
Also to note, the numbers here were pulled from my arse for example purposes only. Actual ratios may vary.
So was it better or worse than satanism?
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I would go so far as to say all of them. The whole idea of Satan is ridiculous, it’s “The Boogeyman” for adults.
Well some adults are also just plain stupid.
I like your grandma. She cared for you; she took a risk by exposing herself to potential danger, fact-checked, and knew math when she saw it.
And the most important part: she admitted she was wrong and that it’s fine
This is the part where Republicans and have the biggest problems with, as in the face pf evidence they usually just double down and that’s it.
I hope not people are like that. I have a coworker insists Harry Potter is “Satan”. She has never read it watch a single book or movie.
I bet she’d like it if you told her it was racist and anti-trans…
I knew a guy who got into d&d in middle school and it drastically improved his grades.
The fact is that gaming is reading, writing, math, make believe, structured socializing, and sometimes history and sometimes art. It’s exactly like school, except fun.
People actually think D&D is Satanism? I thought it was a meme
Pearl-clutching “christians” used to be deathly afraid of anything with even slightly negative undertones. “Dungeons? Dragons? That’s the devil! Away Satan! Our children are making pacts with the devil!” Satan was historically represented by a dragon in Christian mythology.
It was totally a thing during the satanic panic. There’s an infamous Chick Tract about d&d that I was genuinely given by cult missionaries when I was a kid.
This is parody, right ?
Chick tracks all feel like a parody of reality, the man was very disturbed, there’s a whole track about a seemingly normal couple and their seven year old daughter, and when missionaries come teach them about Jesus they ask if it’s wrong that they sexually abuse their daughter, after being told that it is in fact wrong, but luckily they can be totally forgiven through Jesus, they decide to be Christians and say the magic words that make you saved, then they promise their daughter to stop abusing her, and all of this is played like it’s really wonderful Jesus is here to save people who molest their kids for years from consequences.
Sadly, no. It was quite real. I was given some while trick or treating as a kid.
I ran my school’s D&D club in Highschool. At one point my Grandma came along to watch me and my Siblings while my parents were out of the house for a month and when i told her that i’d need picked up later on certain days for D&D club, she went off on this long rant about how ‘D&D is satanic’ and then something about how ‘Obama eats babies’. To this day i’m literally shocked she believes that junk.
It was a real moral panic in the 80s or 90s. To be fair, it’s one of the less deadly moral panics of the 90s. It got a lot of steam when a private detective was hired to find or investigate a troubled teen and found he had committed suicide, and he wrote a book about it and instead said he had become delusional after playing D&D, thought he was the fictional character of RPd and tried to do things his character could do, but killed him. Eventually enough people pointed out the absurdity of the story and people who knew the kid had grown up and made it very clear he committed suicide intentionally and was never delusional, the author then acknowledged he made up the story, but even more perplexing, claimed the teen met him before the suicide, he made it sounds like mere moments before, confessed to drug abuse, and said he didn’t want his parents to find out, so asked him kindly to make up a cover story for his actual actions and motives to protect his family from, or maybe just his mom. Anyway. A lot of people took this seriously, but if you’re even slightly aware of what tabletop rpgs are like is like claiming a high schooler who played too much soccer became delusional and thought he was a soccer ball, and kept trying to inflate himself until he died. I’m not saying it’s impossible, I’m just saying if that did happen, playing too much soccer wasn’t related to the delusional mental health disorder.
Perception check passed, grandma
Clearly math is satanic
They’re using Arabic numerals! It’s obviously all a devilish ploy to subvert our pure Christian souls!
D&D players aren’t satanists. They’re much worse. They’re math addicts.
Exactly why I dislike D&D, it’s more about combat and math. I prefer systems that are less math heavy and more narrative/roleplay focused.
You should check out GURPS. Its a simpler system with universal campaigns (modern, fantasy, mech, dimension hopping, steampunk). The system is super easy. You start with 100 points to make your character. You can spend them on stats, skills, spells, and perks. You can even gain more points by taking quirks.
You roll 3d6 for everything. Your goal is to get under your skill number. Fireball of 13 needs to roll under 13. If its raining or something, your GM can choose to put a -4 on that. So now you need to roll under 9. Just simple addition and subtraction, but it works really well.
A friend calls it “narrative gambling”, because eventually we’re all throwing dice and hoping it doesn’t “ruin” us.
You don’t even need the dice! I was definitely gambling last session when I attuned to a prosthetic eye filled with the trapped souls of everyone that’s ever used it. It gives me 60 feet of Truesight though!
60 feet of truesight, unfortunately you can’t see shit because of all the souls in the way
