1979–1990 · USA and Sweden
Role-playing games lure the young into the occult and suicide!
Role-playing games
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The verdict
Dungeons & Dragons was accused of leading to Satanism and suicide. No link was ever shown.
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What was said?
When the college student James Dallas Egbert disappeared in 1979, the press speculated that he had got lost in a role-playing game in the university's steam tunnels. After her son took his own life in 1982, Patricia Pulling founded the organisation BADD (Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons), which claimed that the game was a gateway to the occult.
The television programme 60 Minutes ran a segment on role-playing games in 1985, and Christian groups handed out comic-strip tracts about the game's dangers.
The verdict: what happened next?
Egbert had never got lost in any role-playing game. Studies have been unable to show any link between role-playing games and suicide or Satanism.
Dungeons & Dragons has instead become more popular than ever, with television series, films and tens of millions of players.
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