How religion helped shape Dungeons & Dragons
D&D isn't actually satanic, but that doesn't mean it hasn't learned a lot from religion
Originally published on October 24, 2022.
While not a widely-held belief anymore, the tabletop adventure game Dungeons & Dragons was once considered a danger to society.
Many people became fearful of Satanism or Satan worship in the early 1980s, and many activities which were once considered innocent or innocuous suddenly became potential vectors for the devil himself.
Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) was pulled into that mass panic, fuelled by a mix of television pundits, anti-D&D campaigners, and evangelical Christians. Even in major publications or on television programs, people would argue the game was responsible for suicides, murder, cannibalism, and torture.
"This reached the point where an organization was formed called Bothered about Dungeons & Dragons, modelling itself after Mothers Against Drunk Driving,'" said Joseph Laycock, author of the book Dangerous Games, which tracks the moral panic around D&D.
"They would actually create documents that they would mail to police departments for use in interrogating teenagers who played this game because the assumption was they were participating in crimes."
Tapestry host Mary Hynes talks to Laycock about both the fear that D&D once instilled, and why D&D may seem to operate like a religion. Here is part of their conversation.
You grew up playing Dungeons & Dragons. Do you remember when you first heard that the game was developing a reputation in some quarters among some people for being somehow dangerous for being evil?
Yeah, I grew up in Texas in the 1980s. And I was maybe 10 or 11 years old when I began encountering neighbours, or even medical professionals, asking "what are your hobbies?" who would tell me, "I've just heard this is a really dangerous game, and it makes people worship the devil and it makes people commit suicide." And as a child, this was kind of my first realization that adults acted like they had all the answers, but actually, often had no idea what they were talking about.
What are some of the things about Dungeons & Dragons in particular that have made it a prime target specifically for accusations of Satanism beyond that sort of stylized devil on the cover of many of the books?
One thing a lot of people don't know is that Dungeons & Dragons was created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson [who were] both very devout Christians.
At least for some of his life, Gary Gygax was a Jehovah's Witness. And so the game always had these very Christian elements in it. The game was about good versus evil. And there are things like demons in the game.
And so if you set out with the assumption of "I'm going to find evidence of Satanism in this game," you will find pictures of demons and descriptions of different types of demons, like the Demogorgon [in Stranger Things]. And you'll also find heroes who fight those demons. Some of them, like the Cleric character, do that using a religious faith.
By the end of my research, I came to think well, actually, in some ways, D&D is a little bit like a religion.- Joseph Laycock
One thing that I was really interested in was Christians looking at this game, seeing all the Christian elements of the game and instead of recognizing them as Christian, perceive them as somehow being evidence of Satanism. So there was a kind of alienation from their own tradition when they saw it in D&D.
You've been quoted saying one of the reasons some religious critics became so fixated on Dungeons & Dragons, is that the game itself conveys elements of religion. Where do you see some of those parallels?
When Gary Gygax created a Cleric class, he did not want to have his Clerics worship the God of the Bible, because he didn't want to mix his religion with a game because he respected it too much. He also made a class called the Paladin: a kind of holy warrior.
So when the fear mongers looked at Dungeons & Dragons, they would say this isn't actually a game at all. This is a kind of religion. It's an occult, evil religion that is sort of masquerading as a game in order to lure in children.
This isn't true. But as a religious studies scholar, one of the questions is what actually is a religion. It's not necessarily just a belief system. And I do think that there is an interesting connection between the experience that players create when they all sit around together, really bringing an alternate world into reality through their own interactions, and the work that religious communities do, because in a way, a religion is a kind of alternative reality that is sustained and created through a community interacting together.
By the end of my research, I came to think well, actually, in some ways, D&D is a little bit like a religion. That's not entirely off base.
I'm interested in the role of the imagination in all this. How does indulging in fantasy allow people to imagine a better world?
So a defence that was made in the '80s by D&D players is they kept saying this is harmless escapism, they use that phrase over and over in harmless escapism, because they wanted to show that this is not dangerous.
There's nothing going on. But [J.R.R.] Tolkien wrote an essay about the word escapism, and he said, escaping into fantasy implies you're doing something cowardly, like you're running away. And that's not what it was for Tolkien. He said it's more like the escape of a prisoner who manages to thwart his circumstance.
He said [in] a great fantasy story, when it gets to the end of the story, you couldn't imagine this will possibly turn out well. Everybody seems like they're in such terrible danger. And then somehow, it's all resolved. Somehow there's a miracle and everything is saved. You see that very much if you watch the Lord of the Rings movies or read the books.
I think that when we talk about escapism into D&D, I don't think it's an escape from reality so much as it's an annex, you leave reality for a little while in the game, and it gives you a space to kind of look back on reality with a new perspective.
And so by having that kind of mental space from your ordinary life, when you come back to it, you might think, "My boss talks to me in a way that isn't really very respectful. And my fifth-level Paladin wouldn't put up with that," right? "Maybe I can have a conversation with the boss. Maybe things don't have to be this way. Maybe I can do things a little bit differently."
That's where I think these games are really powerful.
Q&A edited for length and clarity.