"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be."

I believe Kurt Vonnegut said that. But he wasn't talking about role-playing games.

Yeah, back in the day, some of my mom's friends took her to task for letting my friends and I play AD&D at our house and their folks's too. My mom exploded, "I know where my son and his friends are, you know, they could be out drinking and carrying on!"
I love my mom, but that stuff came later, after the games...

It's not D&D, it's video games that warp young minds, or is it music, no wait, dancing...

this just proves that what one does not under stand like dungeons and dragons being just a game of fantasy even though one just like world of warcraft one can get so involved and lose their hold on reality its sill in the end a game and some seem to see the dark of it and go over board in this pc world

Everything supposedly leads to kids going crazy and doing horrible things. But it's bullshit. The kid is fucked up, and D&D has nothing to do with that. Neither do cars, Grand Theft Auto, Superman, EC Comics, Elvis, My Chemical Romance, Harry Potter, Pokemon, South Park, or any other element of our cultural history which has at some point been blamed (by morons) for turning kids suicidal or psychotic. It just doesn't work that way. Idiots.

Judas Priest comes to mind when I hear this ridiculous crap. Glad people in the judicial courts rule that the kids who do this stuff are just insane and not influenced solely by whatever they were doing the night before,

This reminds me of when I was kid and me and my cousins would play cops and robbers. I actually convinced myself that I was really a robber and went down to the bank and stole $3.5 million dollars after shooting the place up. Then I led the police on a daring, cross-town car chase that ended with me being shot and killed on live TV.

I have played and ran D&D for 21 years, and only learned math.

No magic powers. No hot women in chain mail. Nothing. But. Math.

15 years of playing and running D&D games for me. Math was definitely something I ended up learning from D&D. Also, imagination. That's always nice.

This video is amazing though. I love it. It's nice to see other things to giggle at beside the Chick Tracts.

Now I'm slightly ashamed to be Canadian but I was amused at the end when she noted that a boy shot himself....to death

Y'all do realize that the fat kid on the left at 2:57 is lil' Cory Doctorow, don't you?

I likes me a good dungeon crawl as much as the next loser, but the phrase "might even keep psychosis under control" at 1:25 makes my jaw drop. When you're talking serious mental illness you're talking about a need for medication. Ten points for trying to cover both sides of an issue, but minus fifty points for reporting a side that doesn't pass the laugh test.

For the most part, though, this argues against knee-jerk panic, so good on 'em.

But fuck any DM who kills you with a rotten-plank drawbridge, no saving throws. Boooooooo!

I am looking for a cassette copy of Aerosmith 'Pump' for you for Christmas. If I can't find that - maybe Huey Louis or Dire Straits.

Yeah, Canada... Way to pick the CREEPIEST kids for this unbiased expose. That Denny kid? *uh-jibbly-jibbly-jibbly*

I really have no words to describe the media. However, all the talk about children getting too into their charactor reminded me of method actors and how they sometimes go too far. I'm not really going anywhere with this, just thought I'd mention it....oh yeah, children shouldn't play games, only adults are able to play games, lol.

Any time debates like this come up, be they about table games, or video games, or music, etc. I always like to point out that there are far more riots after the winning of a major sporting event (football, etc.) than after a concert or D&D campaign...

...Seems to bring some perspective to the whole issue...

I learned PLENTY from runing/playing RPGs over the last 20 years:

*Expository sequences using action figures may SEEM like a good idea, but this is not so.

*Game publishers often can't tell the difference between the words "foreword" and "forward".

*Girls WILL play RPGs, if you don't spend the whole time being all creepy and salivating all over them.

*Never make the players roll to notice plot hooks.

*Some people need to develop their social skills; other just DON'T HAVE ANY, and CANNOT BE TAUGHT.

*Sometimes, RPG authors are funnier and more creative than, say, whoever wrote Ghostbusters II.

The D&D "phenomena" may have passed, but the "parents blaming everything but themselves" phenomena is probably here to stay.

Hey, remember when the movie "The Lost Boys" came out. Some kids jumped off a bridge or something like in the movie. Or "Varsity Blues" when some kids got run over while lying in the road.
~Stupid people just need to be exposed to an idea and they'll do it.

One time I went into my psychic dungeon to get some wrapping paper and there was this totally unexpected dragon in there.

I carried it out to the porch and tossed it out onto the lawn, where it belongs.

True story.

Thanks to the D&D controversy my best friend's mom would not let him play AD&D when we were kids, but she was ok with Rifts... which was fundamentally the same thing only set in the future. *slaps forehead*