Portrait of the blogger as a young D&D addict

Here's a mid-1980s CBC News scare-story about Dungeons and Dragons driving kids to suicide featuring (at 2:49 onwards) me and my classmates (the video is dated 1985, but I'm pretty sure this couldn't have been later than my graduation from Junior High in 1984). Ignoring the crazy-ass fearmongering, it's incredibly nostalgic to see all those kids I grew up with, playing with their minis and rolling their dice.

Dungeons & Dragons D&D Canadian Doc 1985 Part #2 (Thanks, Tim!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: Culture • Funny • Games • Kids • security

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Here ya go Gilmoid1:

http://www.amazon.com/Mazes-Monsters-Tom-Hanks/dp/B000BGQUHA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1258571689&sr=8-1

some good ol Tom Hanks fun. you might need to be loaded to enjoy this one now, tho…
devophill

Ha! I knew Cory was the kid in the trenchcoat!
- hundred
  
  yes, it may not be a cape and goggles but a badass black duster is just as good i think
Derek C. F. Pegritz

NATURAL 20!
friendpuppy

Hey, did you guys listen to Rush?
lasttide

This is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.
Zadaz

I remember seeing this when it was on 60 minutes originally. Or more accurately I remember my parents seeing it.

That was when I had to start hiding my porn in my D&D boxes and start hiding my D&D boxes. Dark days for a teenage nerd.
mbenevides

What’s funny is how UNscary and UNsensational–indeed downright balanced–it seems in comparison with such news reports today. Or maybe funny isn’t the word at all.
- wingeddog
  
  I noticed that this piece seemed more fair than what I remember from the 80′s. I was in the US though. Even Sixty Minutes was hating on D&D:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbcWKWp2UE4
Pantograph

I think it wasn’t D&D or satanic rock music that drove kids to suicide. It was growing up in the ’80s.
Neko

What, you’re not going to even give me a saving throw for that wooden drawbridge trap?!
awkward_amma

absolutely adorable… the little ones playing d&d, that is. why weren’t the boys i played d&d with that innocent-looking and precious?? also, i may have stayed in regular high school if my gifted program let me play d&d.
Cory Doctorow

For the record, it wasn’t a gifted program — it was just an alternative school where kids got to participate in the design of their lessons.
Gilmoid1

I wish that old Tom Hanks 1982 tv-movie, Mazes & Monsters, (AKA Rona Jaffee’s Mazes & Monsters) was on tape or dvd. It’s a real hoot:

Young Robbie Wheeling (Tom Hanks) plays the Mazes and Monsters game with his friends. They’re everything to him; a refuge from his family and the heartbreaks of reality. One day, as he and his friends undertake their first live-action roleplay, Robbie’s mind snaps; in that instant, he takes on the simple personality of Pardue, his cleric character in the game. He vanishes, and Lieutenant Martini (Murray Hamilton) suspects foul play, whether accidental or intentional, on the part of his fellow players… until Robbie, in one brief moment of clarity, calls home from distant New York. Returned home, he returns to being Pardue, now safe in the arms of his friends and family, who pray he will someday return to normal.
mgfarrelly

I played Rifts and Vampire in college and met many of my life-long friends in games and clubs over the years. All the FEAR talk always makes me laugh when I think that my college Rifts group included people who are now
-A Pediatric surgeon
-A Catholic Priest
-An Army Ranger
-A Navy Chaplain
-A world Champion Competitive eater
-And me, a librarian.

I’m sure we could all be pulling off one hell of a conspiracy…hmmm….
Anonymous

That’s bullshit, the DM didn’t even give that kid a saving throw. I call cheats.
PaulR

Interesting: while you guys were playing D&D, we were playing Pyroto Mountain!

…and Paranoia.
Phikus

I remember well the media scare, especially the thumpers’ concerns about dealing with demons and devils, but I also remember an article that came out (in Texas Monthly I believe) in the early 80′s written by a brain surgeon who advocated FRPGs as a great exercise of the imagination and a healthy expression of our darker nature (with playing evil characters or adversaries as DM) without actually hurting anyone.

I am glad my parents did not have a problem with it other than when we’d inadvertently wake them up while pulling an all-nighter. Good times.

I still play an FRPG on a regular basis with friends. It’s our equivalent of poker night, but we all leave the table enriched. None of us lives in our parents basement and it never got in the way of getting laid (a much more real concern) at least for anyone in my group. ;D
Domomojo

Wait, which one is Cory? Did I miss the part where someone said a name?
Cory Doctorow

Oh, I played a LOT of Pyroto!
Cory Doctorow

I’m the kid with the huge cheeks, standing up in the left side of the frame at 3:05 and onward.
idontwant2liveinoprahsworld

I always remember James Dallas Egbert III

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Dallas_Egbert_III

http://spartanedge.com/images/dallas-120.jpg

As the wiki entry states, the real story was not revealed until after he had died.
Comatose51

I think it was video games for my generation:

http://www.evilcon.net/media/nyt.html

Sixth paragraph down, starting with “In a small town in South Florida…” That was us. All of us grew up without shooting anyone or ourselves.

Video of A & E interview of my friend back when we were in high school and this happened:

http://www.evilcon.net/media/evilcon-fast.rm.ram

Sorry about Real Media but that was dominant when the clip was made.
SamSam

You know, I actually agree with #2: this was actually quite remarkably balanced.

I think they were actually posing a legitimate question when wondering what exactly role-playing does to a person’s mind. Sure, we know now that the answer is “pretty much nothing, except for learning some good interaction skills,” but I don’t think the answer was so obvious then.

Certainly, many people did get obsessed with their characters, and really could feel like the character was “them” while they were playing. This isn’t so absurd: I often feel like I’m the protagonist in whatever book I’m reading, and D&D allowed you so much more autonomy that you couldn’t help but feel that you were him. I don’t think that kid’s reaction to his character dying was particularly unique.

I think people knew even less about the mind then than they do now, so the question of whether regularly entering the mind of a character that kills others might lead to a twisted mind wasn’t so crazy. Think of we still have the stereotype of the method actor who gets too into his role and goes crazy. The fact that they were wrong doesn’t mean it wasn’t a legitimate question.
querent

that’s awesome cory. i’m terribly jealous that you got to play in your gifted classes, and that you made it into this weirdness.

i grew up in mississippi, and was constantly fending off my fundamentalist sister and my (sister-provoked) mother in defense of my love of the game. i caught myself arguing with the broadcasters in the above piece.

all it left me with was an abiding, cosmic wanderlust. course, growing up in mississippi, it was probably just an early outlet for that. /grins.

gratz again cory.
- baghwanb
  
  While in high school, I got to DM a group as part of a Jr. High gifted class outside of school hours. Lots of fun while it lasted.
Domomojo

I didn’t recognize you (Cory) without the cape and goggles.

I wonder what happened to the boy in the class who seemed drunk with dungeon mastering power. It sounded so ominous! ;-)
brianeisley

I was in the first gifted classes at my elementary school in the late seventies. One of the things we did was play D&D. I remember having fun with it, but it didn’t stick; to this day I’ve never been a big gamer.

Somebody needs to do a story about the gifted classes of the late seventies and early eighties. In mine, we also painted, learned about classical music, and even had a computer for awhile (a TRS-80 Model 1, the first computer I ever used).

And this was in the suburbs of New Orleans. Remarkably progressive for that time and place; we obviously had the coolest teacher ever. I tried to find her a couple years back and found that she’d died of cancer in 2005. Sad; I would have loved to get to know her again as an adult.

b.
JacobZ

There are Torrents out there for Mazes and Monsters, if you are so inclined. Though I remember it as pretty lame, not even really quality fear-mongering. And, like the video games argument that some people can’t distinguish the games from reality, it’s the same defense: that makes a pretty good argument against mental illness but not really against D&D, or video games, or whatever’s next.
Fred Bush

Heh, when the DM started talking about the two gargoyles, I immediately thought, “sounds like Ravenloft”, and sure enough…
Cowicide

Man, that’s some serious feather action here. I wonder if hair feathering will ever make a comeback or is it a dead hairstyle like mullets that’ll never be resurrected?
Jugglepunk

“Unexpected dragons in our psychic dungeons”

Even crazy fear-mongers can turn the odd pretty phrase.
- Trent Hawkins
  
  sounds like a great campaign setting.
Trent Hawkins

It’s kind of making me sad to see where the game has gone since those days. It really was all about the character back then, now it’s all about your tank build with a slew of magical nick nacks and books bought because they contained some OP feats and so forth… use to be so much simpler back in those days… well except for thaco.
Chorske

My parents obsessed about my D&D playing to the point that they sent me for counseling. I still don’t get why- my grades were awesome, I played baseball and sailed in the summer and played hockey and skied in the winter- but we would have incredible fights over this game. Mom was convinced I’d go crazy and/or kill myself, and Dad thought it was “nerdy, mind-bending shit”. Duh.

When I played a nostalgic round with old friends a couple of years ago (old school AD&D!), I told my parents about it, hoping to initiate a discussion about why they reacted so strongly to the game back in the 1980s. Dad left the room in a huff and mom spoke in hushed tones of my “addiction” and expressed concern about a “relapse”.

I intend to encourage my kids to play RPGs- I surely would prefer they do THAT than play video games. I can only imagine how my folks will react to THAT.
- IronEdithKidd
  
  That’s really sad. I’ve always considered RPGs to be a creative outlet much like drawing, writing or crafting. They’re not for me, I’m a full-fleged, life-long video gamer*, but I can’t imagine being scared shitless of my own child having such an outlet. Your parents really need to explain themselves to you. What the hell were they really afraid of and why can’t they converse with you like an adult surrounding this particular topic?
  
  *Dad had me playing Pong with him when I was 3 or 4. Yes, in the ’70′s.
- MooseDesign
  
  That’s such a shame… That your folks still can’t have a conversation with you about it is so sad. That and some of the stories from the video make me feel even more lucky my parents encouraged my creativity, including gaming. That an alternative school would incorporate it into the curriculum is mind-bogglingly awesome! I had never heard of that before…
  
  That said, as fantastic and visual as video games are nowadays I can’t help but think that the vast majority leave little room for both independent and cooperative creativity of the D&D type. Its a shame to think that most kids won’t get the opportunity or even realize what they are missing out on…
  
  Someone made a similar statement at a toy convention I attended a while back about doll designs for kids that talk, react, wet themselves, etc. and how that imposing such solid interactive limits robs the child of essential freeform creativity in giving the doll a name, making it talk, walk, poop, whatever… and just generally being imaginative.
Crawford Tillinghast

So Cory, fill us in on everything that’s happened to you in the ensuing 20+ years since the game drove you to commit suicide…..