D&D players aren't satanists. They're much worse. They're math addicts.
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
I mean, it's not entirely wrong, but saying anything involving dice and risk is gambling, thus meaning it contains the same addictive and problematic features that gambling does, is incredibly simplistic and superficial.
It's like saying carrots and coke is the same thing because both contain sugar.
Speaking as a Satanist studying computational fluid dynamics...
Need a DM?
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.
also worth noting that fallout originally used GURPS before switching for copyright reasons
Ooo, that sounds awesome! Thank you for sharing!
I'm going to second the other commenter in my enthusiasm for GURPS, but for the opposite reason.
Gurps has the problem of being a universal role-playing system, like Fate, which means session zero includes a long sit-down with your DM about what precisely we will be doing in this game and what mechanics we will be using to create the desired experience. You then fill out the appropriate forms in triplicate to create your character. Usually, your DM makes a template for you to use like a shopping list, but the rulebook assumes you are digging through the first 300-page volume selecting your abilities and skills over the course of a day.
Then, once you start playing, you never have to look at the rulebook again. All the rules you will be using were written (by you) on your character sheet. You roll the dice, see if you managed to roll under your target numbers, and then either succeed or fail. The DM barely has to adjudicate anything.
Oh wow, it sounds so much simpler and easier. Thanks for expanding on the other person's point!
I just wanted to make sure you understood that the complexity is loaded all at the front, during session 0. Its actually a good deal more complex, but you get to pick and choose what kinds of complexity you want and deal with it at character creation.
Also, their supplemental books really helped me grow as a writer and gamemaster. Most of them tackle a genre and explore it thoroughly.
I bought the Fate Accelerated Edition because it sounded fun but I've literally not found any published adventures. I've found campaign settings, yeah, but nothing explaining what an easy encounter should look like, how to structure an adventure, nothing.
Fate seems fun so I'm ready to be proved wrong.
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.
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 always laugh at these people. I’m paraphrasing, but in the 7th book Harry essentially tells Voldemort, “I died for them, you can’t touch them.”
This is of course mirroring the fact that his own parents had died to protect him from Voldemort in the first place, but it’s also very much symbolic of the central Christian concept of Christ dying to save sinners. Harry is very much a Christ-figure in the end, forgiving those who had been his enemies and even pitying Voldemort himself. It’s not quite as blatant as C.S. Lewis and his, “If people don’t realize the lion is Jesus I’m going to have an aneurysm,” but it’s still obvious.
People who say stuff like this is satanic live in such a pitifully small world. I feel sorry for them.
And it doesn't even add up to the number of the beast!
Could you imagine doing 666 damage in one turn? I’d be riding that high for weeks.
Weeks? More like decades.
Improv and math, gramma.
I guess it’s like saying gambling is just math. You should sit in on her next bingo session or trip to the Indian casino. except you’re not winning money.
Most people that think things are Satanic are woefully ill informed about the subject.
I would go so far as to say all of them. The whole idea of Satan is ridiculous, it's "The Boogeyman" for adults.
Oh I agree, but I leave a little room for people's religions even if I think it's all bullshit.
Well some adults are also just plain stupid.
Perception check passed, grandma
People actually think D&D is Satanism? I thought it was a meme
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.
Don't forget Tom Hanks first leading role in the movie Mazes and Monsters, originally titled Dungeons & Dragons, but forced to change it when TSR sued them.
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.
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.
Don't forget the woman whose son committed suicide so she created an anti-D&D group called Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons. Her group described D&D as "a fantasy role-playing game which uses demonology, witchcraft, voodoo, murder, rape, blasphemy, suicide, assassination, insanity, sex perversion, homosexuality, prostitution, satanic type rituals, gambling, barbarism, cannibalism, sadism, desecration, demon summoning, necromantics, divination and other teachings."
Her group described D&D as "a fantasy role-playing game which uses demonology, witchcraft, voodoo, murder, rape, blasphemy, suicide, assassination, insanity, sex perversion, homosexuality, prostitution, satanic type rituals, gambling, barbarism, cannibalism, sadism, desecration, demon summoning, necromantics, divination and other teachings."
checks notes so... the same as the bible?
I think the Bible fails on the role-playing game front and I don't remember any voodoo, but otherwise yeah?
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.
In addition to what others have said, sadly the myth persists among some people. I have a good friend who I used to play Magic: The Gathering with. I had been playing for years before I met him (since 3rd edition) and had a pretty decent collection, and he invested a lot of money in cards in the next few years.
At one point I was moving away to a place where I didn't know anyone and needed to travel light, so instead of selling my collection I gave them to him.
I ended up coming back to my home state and we became roommates. Then he became 'born again' and instead of giving me those cards back, he burnt them all.
I'm not really mad at the guy for it, he was doing what he thought was right, but I do regret giving him the cards in the first place.
I am assuming this was the 2.5ed? THAC0 calculations was treated as an arcane knowledge that only DMs had access to
Gygax really overcomplicated 2.5
My husband's parents apparently believed the satanic panic bullshit
My parents use to play dnd in high school. Mother was a custom classed healer/oracle. Dad was a very bad thief.
But math is satanism
This is my first time seeing another person using monospace font for social media in the wild. I've changed my phone's system font to Fira Code to make almost everything monospace.
sorry but it's either that she didn't "buy fully into 'IT'S SATANISM'" or this entire post is made up.
people who buy fully into it don't allow a test run. if it did g happen she was more likely concerned it might be some cultist shit but was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and she doesn't deserve to be described as "bought fully into it".
Black Math.
Humor, jokes, memes about TTRPGs
