Paul Cardwell, Jr., Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 18, No. 2, Winter 1994, 157-165
© 1994 Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
Television productions, particularly made-for-TV movies, are a popular source of paranormal claims. These are especially troublesome when they claim to be documentaries, since the producers and networks frequently retreat behind a defense of “entertainment” when challenged. One of the long-time favorite subjects has been role-playing games – almost exclusively Dungeons & Dragons, which is trademark of TSR, Inc., but often misused as a generic term.
These games are not only the favorite topics of TV movies. The Associated Press and United Press International, between 1979 and 1992, carried 111 stories mentioning role-playing games. Almost all named only Dungeons & Dragons, even though there are several hundred such games on the market, and among their manufacturers are more than a dozen companies beyond the desktop publishing level. These articles contained 51,182 words in 2,197 paragraphs.
These paragraphs were divided into four categories: those favorable to gaming, those unfavorable to gaming, those neutral (stating they excisted, describing them accurately, but without value judgements, etc.), and those paragraphs not mentioning them at all, even by interference. Those in the last category were discarded. Based on the remaining paragraphs, each of the story was tabulated as having a majority of pro-game paragraphs, anti-game paragraphs, neutral paragraphs, or with no category having a majority. Of the 111 stories, 80 were anti-game, 19 had no majority, 9 were neutral, and only 3 were pro-game. Those three pro-game stories were all from UPI, which is a considerably smaller wire service than AP.
Dungeons & Dragons was first marketed in 1972 as a supplement to the miniatures wargame system Chainmail. The D&D rules as a seperate system were published in 1974. The game grew rapidly from a very small base, doubling sales each year primarily through word-of-mouth advertising (Gygax 1989). This occured mostly on college campuses, which became its natural environment. During the late 1970s, several other role-playing games entered the market too.
The first attacks on role-playing games (RPGs) came in August 1979, during the disappearance of Dallas Egbert III from the Michigan State University campus just before exams. The campus police could not find him, and since all evidence indicated that he left the campus voluntarily, their jurisdiction was limited. Egbert’s uncle then hired private detective William Dear, and the nature of RPG changed forever.
Egbert was a troubled kid. In 1979, according to Dear’s book, The Dungeon Master, he was a sophomore in college at 16, with a 180 IQ, socially retarded (Dear 1985: 20-21), an epileptic not quite under medical control (pp. 88-89), a drug addict (p. 163), who claimed to make his own drugs (pp. 17, 22), and under severe pressure from his mother to make perfect grades, even though he had no difficulty making good ones (pp. 20-21, 316). Also, since Egbert was a homosexual (p. 316), the homophobia on campus in 1979 undoubtedly was a contributing factor to the stress that caused him to vanish. I am not comfortable relying on Dear for all this information, but since the Egbert family will not help, I must assume that either they are not interested in correcting the record or that Dear is essentially correct in his statements.
Dear came to campus and from fragmentary tales, second- and third-hand, or worse, he pieced together the story that has become a cliché: Egbert, generally discribed as a “computer genius” – an exotic title at that time – was also involved in an even more exotic activity. He was playing the “strange” game of Dungeons & Dragons in the steam tunnels under the Michigan state campus (pp. 31-32), a statement denied by Dear’s publisher in the acknowledgements and on page 13. In this story, Dear confused three seperate and unconnected things.
First, almost every college has steam tunnels and steam-tunnel stories. Yet access to these tunnels virtually always invokes at the least the crime of breaking and entering. MSU at that time was something of an exception in that access to the tunnel system could be gained through buildings under construction – still trespassing, but a lesser crime (Flinn 1988). The tunnels are cramped, hot, humid, and dirty. They are hardly an easy way to get from one building to another, as many students believe. Indeed, even if one had the proper keys to make the trip, one would look a mess upon arrival. One can get scalded from valving steam, and getting lost is a distinct possibility. It is the combination of the forbidden territory and real danger that makes this a modern urban legend on campus.
Second, RPGs are played sitting around a table and improvising adventure tales (in a wide variety of genre, although classic fantasy is the most popular) within the constraints of a set of rules. It is played with pencil, paper, and an assortment of various-sided dice, which serve as random-number generators. The math field of probability is a major factor in playing these games. Everything is described, and nothing is acted out. This is quite contrary to the common impression generated by Dear and spread by credulous mass media.
Finally, there is the Society of Creative Anachronism, which was started in 1966 and recreates a fictional sort of medieval life of fairy-tale legend. The members get some media attention for their jousts, but their equally exotic costumes, lute-playing, juggling, and such, which typify the popular concept of the late medieval and early Renaissance, are largely ignored.
Dear, putting parts of all these folktales and campus rumors together, came up with the hypothesis that Egbert was lost in the steam tunnels, where he had gone to play D&D with his fake broadsword. Never mind that a steam tunnel is too small a place to swing a fake broadsword, D&D is played indoors, and that fake broadswords belong to a wholly different context. This was Dear’s hypothesis and he promoted it at numerous press conferences.
There was another flaw in Dear’s hypothesis. Neither Dear’s crew nor the campus police found any game material in Egbert’s room, even though he disappeared with only the clothes he was wearing. Nor could they find anyone on campus who had ever played a game with him (Dear 1985: 80). Egbert did subscribe to Dragon, the official D&D magazine, and had at least once registered at a gaming convention sponsored by TSR, GenCon (Kask 1979: 2, 11); although there is no real evidence he actually played, it can be assumed he played at least some. Certainly he was not deeply involved in the game.
Egbert eventually “found” himself about a month later – in Morgan City, Louisiana, claiming to be an oilfield roughneck (Dear 1985: 324). Since at 16 Egbert looked about 12, this does not ring true; but then very little else about the Egbert case does either.
While the reputation of RPG never quite recovered from this media circus, things went a bit quiter for about four years. TSR’s sales did not double that year – they quadrupled (Gygax 1989: 13). TSR seemed to think that this proved that bad publicity was good publicity, and it rarely defends its game. Other industry watchers point out that at this time TSR entered into a distribution agreement with Random House, and this just might have had some positive effect on sales.
Then came the second event that would permanently imbue RPGs with the same aura that haunts so many of the subjects examined in this publication. Another 16-year-old super-genius, this one still with his own age group, committed suicide. This was Irving (Bink) Pulling II: He had actually played D&D as a part of the gifted/talented program at school. However, he was as troubled as Egbert. A nominal Jew, he was apparently a fan of Adolf Hitler (Bauerlein 1988). He got up one night and killed 17 rabbits and a neighborhood cat for no apparant reason. He was socially isolated, once failing to get even a proforma “campaign manager” to sign on for him when he wanted to run for school office (Isikoff 1983).
Yet his mother, Patricia Pulling, described him as “a happy, well-adjusted kid” and blamed D&D when he committed suicide with her pistol. She also claims receiving ESP knowledge of the event upon reaching the gates of their house (Pulling 1989: 4).
The suicide mechanism, she claims, was a curse placed on Bink’s game character during a school game. She claims that this curse compelled him to kill and that he heroically sacrificed himself rather than carry out the curse. Classmates present at this time of this supposed curse deny there was any such event (Picton 1985). The attackers consistently confuse player and character and try to make them the same thing.
Pat Pulling then embarked on a decade of lectures attacking the game. She has only recently abandoned this tactic. She sued the school for Bink’s death, only to have her suit quashed (Pulling v. Bracey, 1984). She teamed up with the National Coalition on Television Violence (NCTV), essentially a one-person organization headed by Illinois psychiatrist Thomas Radecki, and ultimately became a director at NCTV. Pulling also created her own organization, Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons (B.A.D.D.).
In January 1985, B.A.D.D. and NCTV jointly filed a petition with the Federal Trade Commission demanding that warning labels be required on the games. stating that they were hazardous and could cause suicide. The FTC forwarded the petition to the Consumer Products Safety Commission because the petition alleged an unsafe product rather than fraudulent advertising. The CPSC finally decided that there was not a close enough connection between the product and the alleged danger to warrant such labeling.
The list of “victims” submitted with this petition became the basis of ongoing compilation. The petition had nine cases, one of which gave no name, date, place, or documenting citation. Another was an accident, not a suicide as stated. Three were children of members of Pulling’s B.A.D.D. group for whom Pulling’s simplistic explanation may have been a means of their avoiding facing the deaths of their children. This is not a universal reaction. Three other cases were disputed by the parents of the victims, who claimed that the games had nothing to do with the deaths (AP 1985; Grice 1985).
NCTV and B.A.D.D. claim 120 such cases implicate role-playing games; this figure remained unchanged from 1987 until Radecki upped it to 128 in March 1993 (Gil Gross Show 1993). During that time of stasis, they still added “cases” to the list. They provide names, dates and/or places (rarely all three) in fewer than 25 of these. Of those few, one has never been found in any documentary account, and another was from an item in a newspaper from a town more than 250 miles from the alleged event, but no newspaper coverage could be found in the city in which it supposedly happened. In the few cases of citations, they are almost always relatively obscure, small-town newspapers that, when they are finally located, turn out to be based on statements from anti-game individuals. The alleged dangers of playing these games have been treated by newspapers and TV talk shows as fact, as so often happens with claims of flying saucers, the Bermuda Triangle, livestock mutilations, satanic sacrifices, and all kinds of other horror stories.
The collection of anti-game anecdotes has sometimes been called a “modern urban legend”, a term coined by the folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand. Actually, it is a collective delusion. The modern urban legend is a traveling tale, in which the same story is set in various parts of the country and has “actually happened” to a friend of a friend, with only the names of the people and places changing. A collective delusion, on the other hand, is seen to be a situation that is “everywhere” but “they” are keeping it a secret. Thus the attacks on role-playing games are part of a phenomenon that Brunvand calls “satanic panic”.
The attacks have gone through several stages. In the early 1980s, much was made of gamers’, particularly younger ones, “casting hexes” on teachers and parents. Aside from assuming the magic in the games was not only real but translatable into real life, there was another assumption: that the game was teaching this real magic.
Fortunately, I was actually able to observe one of these cases in 1984. A junior high school let those students arriving early go to the lunchroom to escape the bad weather while waiting for school to start. Four students played D&D while waiting and as a result were verbally attacked and ultimately denounced before the school as “Satanists” by one of the teachers.
Two of the students were active members of mainline Protestant denominations, one was a rather nominal Roman Catholic, and the fourth was a extremely devout member of a fundamentalist sect. He moved shortly after the episode and attended a fundamentalist parochial high school that had no difficulty accepting role-playing games.
An additional problem for the school was that the parents of one of the students were both law-enforcement professionals. They conducted an investigation of the episode that totally verified the students’ story. The teacher made an insincere apology, and the school principal promised it wouldn’t happen again. However, the game is still banned from the before-school free time, and the teacher was given a merit raise at the end of that year.
The kids found it more amusing than traumatic. Mocking the credulity of the teacher, they would make weird gestures when they met him in the halls. This ridicule, I contend, is what was really going on in the “hexing” stories.
With the FTC petition, the emphasis changed from magic to suicide. After all, magic is rather hard to prove, while suicides are a matter of public record.
There are more than 5,300 suicides a year in the United States in the 15-to-24-year-old age group (National Safety Council 1988), which in the mid-1980s provided most of the gamers. The average age is climbing, and the average age of the serious players may well be even higher. Therefore, to have no connection whatsoever, there would have had to have been at least 1,060 gamer suicides per year. Yet, in the whole time since 1979, there have been only 128 claimed game-related suicides, murders, robberies, rapes, etc., combined, and Radecki claims only one-quarter are suicides (Gil Gross Show 1993). The statistics are actually arguing that gaming prevents suicides rather than causing them.
Of course it does neither. Role-playing gaming requires imaginative solutions to complex problems. Therefore it attracts those who have some degree of skill in doing just that. These people can generally do the same in real life and thus avoid using “a permanent solution to a temporary problem”, which suicide usually is. Again, the game-bashers have their cause and effect reversed.
In the late eighties, there was another change in emphasis. The games now were said to cause murder. Again some post hoc ergo propter hoc “case histories” were brought out, and again they were disproved on examination.
The final change occurred around 1990. Building on the regular appearance on tabloid TV shows of multiple-personality syndrome cases in which persons claimed to have been the victims of ritual satanic cult abuse, the anti-game campaign came almost full circle. Critics now claimed that RPG was the same as Satan worship.
However, this time the anti-gamers went just a little too far into the spooky area for many followers outside the groups that provide the foundation for the anti-game movement itself. It is true that they have had some success in “cult-awareness seminars”, which are closed to any dissenting viewpoints and are used to indoctrinate teachers, social workers, and police. But this initial anti-gamer success is slowly being countered by gamer backlash and the beginning of skepticism in the general public. Even the mass media have been neglecting such charges of late.
This skepticism is due to several factors. First is common logic. With so much evil in the world, obvious just by turning on the TV news programs, these games pale into insignificance. Some 7.5 million play these games at least once a month (Buettell 1990), mostly in the U.S. and in Canada, with sizable numbers in Britain and Australia, and smaller but quickly growing activity in Scandinavia (including the Baltic republics), France, New Zealand, and Brazil. While this is a small number in percentages, it means that most of the people these attacks are aimed at convincing – the upper-lower to upper-middle-class white, religious suburbanites – personally know quite a few persons who play these games, and they notice the charges are definitely not true for these friends and acquaintances. Therefore, they tend to question the validity of the same charges against people they don’t know.
Second, in 1988, a couple of gamers who had been corresponding after meeting at a game convention decided it was time to organize a defense of gamers. This was the start of the Committee for the Advancement of Role-Playing Games (CAR-PGa). What William Flatt and Pierre Savoie started has slowly grown since, although more in quality than in numbers. After several years of comparative silence, the Game Manufacturers Association is again taking a stand on the issue.
When CAR-PGa was first organized, it was assumed that at least some of the stories must be true, and that the group would find what the variable was, change that, and make the games completely safe. After several years of searching the literature, it became obvious that we were dealing with a colossally successful “big lie”, supported by the mass media’s ignoring and opposing views. How the anti-game groups gained such influence over the generally anti-censorship mass media is yet to be discovered and any such evidence would be greatly appreciated. To be sure, horror stories sell papers and attract audiences, but controversy does so even more. Nevertheless, all controversy was kept out of the media; only the anti-game side was presented.
There was a final factor that undermined the anti-game forces. During the first years of NCTV, Thomas Radecki claimed to be on the faculty of the University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana) medical school. When I checked the school, I found that he had never been on the faculty. Although at one time he had been given the honorary “clinical faculty” status – given to doctors who are accredited to practice at a teaching hospital and not involving any faculty duties, except for the answering of occasional questions asked by medical students – this was pulled in 1985 (O’Morchoe 1988), long before he stopped claiming faculty status in promoting NCTV.
In March 1992, Radecki quit NCTV and turned it over to Beverly Hills colleague, Carole Lieberman.
The faltering campaign against RPG was given a boost during the 1992 “May sweeps” for TV audience ratings. On the first day of sweeps and again on May 17 and 19, two heavily hyped TV movies were shown based on the murder of Leith von Stein, in Washington, North Carolina, in 1988. While the first was a turkey, the second, Cruel Doubt, was better acted, if just as hokey, and returned to network broadcast in August 1993, right after extensive play of the admittedly fictional Mazes and Monsters movie.
In the von Stein case, a boy arranged for two friends to kill his parents. The stepfather was killed and the mother survived. A $2-million inheritance was barely mentioned, as though it couldn’t possibly have been a motive. Both movies, and the books they were based on, had a “smoking gun”, a game scenario describing the murder. The problem is that no such scenario was found after exhaustive searches by CAR-PGa and the university-based computer bulletin board, Usenet.
Yet, since these books were published, there have been two more cases copying the von Stein modus operandi explicitly. In the first, the British-Columbia Huenemann/ Leatherbarrow case, a boy arranged for friends to kill his mother and grandmother, both successfully, for a $3-million inheritance (Mullins 1992). In the second, the Koslow case in Texas, the daughter arranged it for a $12-million inheritance. The stepmother was killed, and the father survived his injuries, but games were never mentioned (Crawford 1993). However, in neither of these cases, were the two “true crime” books investigated as a blueprint – but in the von Stein case a nonexistent game scenario was blamed.
It is still too early to tell what effect these programs will have on public opinion. The original broadcast of Cruel Doubt was opposite a show hyping flying-saucer abduction stories. One can assume that these incredible beliefs will never die out, but will live on in the minds of a credulous minority, be tolerated by an apathetic majority, and to the rest of us sometimes be a source of persecution and always be a source of irritation.
Associated Press. (1985). Son’s deaths not tied to Dungeons & Dragons: mother. September 18.
Bauerlein, Chuck. (1988). “Bink”: A victim of the occult? Newport News Daily Press, April 10, G1.
Buettell, Jack. (1990). Adventure games are on a roll. Toy Book, September, pp. 1-12.
Crawford, Selwyn. (1993). 20-year-old found guilty in Koslow beating death. Dallas Morning News, 1A, 24A.
Dear, William. (1985). The Dungeon Master. Boston: Houghton Mifflin; New York: Ballantine.
Department of Professional Regulation. State of Illinois v. Thomas E. Radecki, No. 91-6666-LEG, consent order.
Flinn, R. T. (1988). Personal communication, September 14. Flinn was in charge of physical faculties at Michigan State University.
Gil Gross Show. (1993). CBS Radio, March 18.
Grice, Royce. (1985). Personal communication to TSR, September 20.
Gygax, Gary. (1989). A funny thing happened on the way to the boardroom. Familiar, Fall, p. 13 (see also an interview on this website).
Isikoff, Michael. (1983). Parents sue school principal: Game cited in youth’s suicide. Washington Post, August 13, 8A.
Kask, Timothy. (1979). Dragon, October, pp. 2, 41.
Mullins, Anne. (1992). Murderers remain a mystery: Shocked community stymied by Dungeons and Dragons style murders. Vancouver Sun, June 5, B1.
National Safety Council. (1988). Accident Facts. (part of a press release by NCTV on that subject is reproduced here.)
O’Morchoe, Charles C. C. (1988). Personal correspondence, August 5.
Picton, John. (1985). Fantasy game linked to murder, suicide. Toronto Star, March 3, A8.
Pulling, Pat. (1989). Devil’s Web. Lafayette, La.: Hunting House.
Pulling v. Bracey. (1984). Hannover District Court, Va., September 17.
Paul Cardwell, Jr., is Chair of the Committee for the Advancement of Role-Playing Games (CAR-PGa), an international network researching all aspects of role-playing games. Its address is:
CAR-PGa
1127 Cedar
Bonham, TX 75418
USA
phone: (903) 583-9296
e-mail: waltonwj@aol.com
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What is D&D?
Dungeons and Dragons™ (commonly known as D & D™) is an elaborate fantasy game which evolved from the war games popular in the late 1950's. Instead of a historical battlefield and battle, D&D™ games are fought in the minds of the players as the DM (dungeon master, or god) sets the stage in the fantasy world. Each player assumes the identity of the character he creates. His creature is based on chance roll of the dice. Each character will have six basic abilities: strength, intelligence, wisdom, constitution, dexterity, and charisma. The manual guideline will determine whether the character will be "good" or "evil."
The object of the game is to maneuver these characters through a maze of dungeons (tunnels) filled with monsters, magic, ambushes, and adventures in search of treasures. To survive, each character is equipped with special aids - such as magical weapons, potions, spells, and magical trinkets (holy water, garlic, wolvesbane, etc.) They are also given more conventional weapons: daggers, hand axes, swords and battle axes.
The game is for "three or more players, age 10 and upward."
Each player can stay in the game as long as his character is not killed - from hours to years. If it continues long, most players identify themselves with their character, and the line between fantasy and reality tends to grow fuzzy. One authority concerning this "game" said: "The stuff that makes me nervous is over-identification with characters. I've seen people have fits, yell for fifteen minutes, hurl dice at a grand piano when their character dies."
What is D&D™?
Dr. Gary North, author of None Dare Call It Witchcraft, says, ". . . after years of study of the history of occultism, after having researched a book on the subject, and after having consulted with scholars in the field of historical research, I can say with confidence: these games are the most effective, most magnificently packaged, most profitably marketed, most thoroughly researched introduction to the occult in man's recorded history."
What is D&D™?
After extensive research, the Christian Life Ministries concludes: "DUNGEONS & DRAGONS™ instead of a game is a teaching on demonology, witchcraft, voodoo, murder, rape, blasphemy, suicide, assassination, insanity, sex perversion, homosexuality, prostitution, Satan worship, gambling, Jungian psychology, barbarism, cannibalism, sadism, desecration, demon summoning. necromantics, divination and many more teachings, brought to you in living color direct from the pit of hell!!!"
This is strong language! But its truthfulness is established by a careful examination of the books. Look in almost any toy store or book store. You will probably find twenty or more books on how to play D&D™. They are complicated, intricate, bizarre, expensive (many selling for $10.95 each) -and popular!
How Widely Used?
According to statistics released by the news media, over three million Americans are playing D&D™. The industry grossed more than 250 million dollars in 1981, and expects a large increase in 1982.
Many schools are using D&D™, especially in Gifted and Talented programs. Special "classroom versions" are being produced. Some state-supported colleges offer classes, while others have cancelled them at the insistence of concerned parents and taxpayers.
Parents, teachers, ministers, youth directors, and all young people should spend time in serious research on FRP (Fantasy Role Playing) games because their use is escalating; the issue must be faced by all of us sooner or later.
Other FRP Games
New games are being created, more sophisticated and cruel than the original D&D™, such as RuneQuest, Chivalry & Sorcery, Arduin Grimoire, Tunnels and Trolls, etc.
In the rule book to the Arduin Grimoire game (Vol. 1, p. 60) is listed the "critical hit table." Options listed are: "Dice roll: 37-38; hit location: crotch/chest; results: genitals/breast torn off, shock ... Dice roll: 95; hit location: guts ripped out; result 20% chance of tangling feet, die in 1-10 minutes. . . Dice roll: 100; hit location: head; result: head pulped and splattered over a wide area."
On page 10: "The 'dread vampusa’ a macho beast/man with writhing snakes for hair and a skull face, bristles with Neanderthal sexual imagery, his left hand holding a long, sharp lance sticking straight out from his genitals, dripping blood, his penis hanging limp just above it."
Arduin's creator, Dave Hargrave, defends the grisly specificity. He states: "It's deliberately gruesome. You have to blow a hole through that video shell the kids are encased in. They are little zombies. They don't know what pain is. They have never seen a friend taken out in a body bag. They've got to understand that what they do has consequences. The world is sex. It is violence. It's going to destroy most of these kids when they leave TV-land."
So, Hargrave admits that the game is designed for kids! Supposedly to equip them for the “reality” of life!
What Is Wrong with Role Playing or Fantasizing?
Some mistakenly believe that role-playing is merely acting out a character. Much more is involved. Psycho-drama techniques (the root of role-playing) were introduced in the early 1900's by Dr. Jacob L. Moreno, contemporary of Freud. He said his objective was to develop a "positive religion." His idea was that if you can "play a role", for instance, the role of God and develop that role and stop its playing at will, you will begin to learn how not to be possessed of that role. He said: "The only way to get rid of the God syndrome is to act it out."
What is the "positive religion" that Moreno envisoned? The religion that man is all-powerful, capable of answering all questions and solving all problems apart from any Supernatural Being more popularly known as Humanism. Read his statement again. Then consider its application to D&D™ and other FRP "games."
A principle laid down long ago by God is: "For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he" (Proverbs 23:7). "Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life" (Proverbs 4:23). We are what we think. It is ridiculous to believe that people, young or old, can absorb their minds with violence, murder, human sacrifice, suicide, demonology, rape, desecration, defecation, sadism, cannibalism, sex perversion, insanity, prostitution, necromantics, Satan worship, witchcraft, and every other form of perverted and violent conduct without being intensely, and perhaps permanently, affected adversely. We ARE what we THINK!
Young person, if you want to be successful, productive, well-adjusted, and happy, then refuse to fill your wonderful mind with such garbage! Don't allow someone else to take control of your mind. Think too much of yourself to become a tool in the hands of those whose interest is to get your money and destroy your faith in God.
Testimony of Negative Effects'
John Torell, with Christian Life Ministries in California, received a phone call from a medical doctor in Seattle, Washington. The doctor is treating a policeman for severe depression caused by the suicide of his sixteen-year-oId son. The son, who had been heavily involved in D&D™ for two years, shot himself with his father's service revolver.
Some have argued that D&D™ is a healthy release of suppressed hostilities. But seeing the power that can be seized in games, psychiatrist Laurence Johnson cautions, "If I had a child who tended toward schizophrenia, I'd never let him near D&D™. There's a danger that it would reinforce feelings of grandiosity, of omnipotence. Reality and fantasy are hard enough for schizophrenics to differentiate."
This reality distortion is frightening. A city police department in central Washington asks, "Are you a participant in Fantasy Role Games?" as a standard question . . . two people convicted of firing over three rounds into passing motor vehicles admitted that they "constantly fantasized killing someone." Other police departments have confirmed "some correlation" between Fantasy Role Playing Games and incidents showing up on their police blotter.
Many people have been innocently drawn into FRP Games. However, enough information is now available to reveal their true nature and real danger - so there's no need for wise and alert people to be further duped.
Even some Christians try to defend D&D™ and other FRP "games," In this futile attempt, one said: "But the game is helpful because it shows the difference between good and evil characters." To this a brilliant young player replied: "Not so. Nearly everybody would rather play evil characters because they are much more powerful."
In light of the quotes from their own literature, it would be wise to consider:
Does this "game" promote respect for the sanctity of life? Or does it rather serve as basic training in brutality and disregard for life (such as exemplified in the incredible massacres of recent years)?
Does it increase or decrease a player’s faith in God and His Word?
Does it trivialize, and even blaspheme, Christianity?
In summary: Does its over-all influence tend to build up, or tear down, character?
What can you do?
Make sure that your children are not involved with or participating in D&D™.
Distribute this information to young people, youth ministers, teachers, etc.
Contact me for more information, especially if your child or children are involved.
God Bless,
Ben
Read feedback on this article from a D&D player: CLICK HERE
The online version of this article can be found at:
http://pss.sagepub.com/content/25/4/1043
Virtual environments enable people to experience extra
ordinary identities or circumstances. People can take on
superhero or super-villain roles using digital avatars in
virtual space. By acting as these avatars, individuals may
learn new behaviors and model their own, real-life
behaviors after them (Bandura, 1977; Bem, 1972). The
virtual environment is, thus, a vehicle for observation,
imitation, and modeling; players’ avatars may fuel these
processes.
Recent empirical research confirms that the behavior
of players’ avatars can affect players’ self-concepts, cogni
tions, and feelings (Gentile et al., 2009; Greitemeyer &
Osswald, 2010). Thus, concepts related to avatar behav
iors in general (e.g., fighting against evil) or to particular
avatars (e.g., Superman) may affect subsequent behavior
(e.g., good deeds). Identification with an avatar is corre
lated with avatar-consistent behavior in the real world
(Rosenberg, Baughman, & Bailenson, 2013). In the exper
iments reported here, we investigated whether certain
types of avatars and avatars’ behaviors could promote
pro- or antisocial actions in everyday behavior.
Experiment 1
One hundred ninety-four undergraduates participated in
the experiment (95 males, 99 females; mean age = 20.34
years, SD = 2.10). Participants were told that they were
involved in two separate studies: a test of game usability
and a blind tasting test. After signing a consent form, par
ticipants were randomly assigned to heroic (Superman),
villainous (Voldemort), and neutral geometric-shaped (cir
cle) avatars. They then played a game for 5 min in which
they battled enemies as their avatar (see the Supplemental
Material available online for further descriptions of the
stimuli and the game). Participants’ identification with their
avatars was measured using four items (e.g., “While you
were playing the game, how much did you identify with
your avatar?”; Cronbach’s α = .75), each of which they
responded to on a 7-point scale ranging from 1, not at all,
to 7, very much. Then they were told that the first study
was over.
Participants were then informed that a blind taste test
of food additives would take place and were asked to sign
another consent form.1 We manipulated good and bad
action by asking participants to first taste and then give
either chocolate or chili sauce, respectively (Fischer,
Kastenmüller, & Greitemeyer, 2010), to a (fictional) future
participant. Participants were instructed to pour an
unspecified amount of food into a plastic dish (“to allow
the experimenter to be blind to experimental conditions”)
and were told that the future participant would consume
all of the food provided. The total amount poured was
measured in grams. As a manipulation check, we asked
participants to rate the valence of giving chili sauce or
chocolate to a subsequent participant on scales ranging
from 1, bad, to 7, good; 1, unpleasant, to 7, pleasant; and
1, unfavorable, to 7, favorable (Cronbach’s α = .97).
Participants’ identification with their avatars did not
differ significantly among conditions, F(2, 191) = 1.83,
p = .16, η 2 = .02 (hero: M = 3.90, SD = 1.30; villain: M =
p3.54, SD = 1.19; circle: M = 3.88, SD = 1.38). The bad
action (giving chili sauce; M = 1.82, SD = 0.70) was rated
more negatively than the good action (giving chocolate;
M = 5.33, SD = 0.89), t(192) = 30.42, p < .001, d = 4.40.
More important, a 3 (avatar: heroic vs. villainous vs.
neutral) × 2 (behavior: good vs. bad) analysis of variance
(ANOVA) revealed the predicted interaction effect, F(2,
188) = 35.91, p < .001, η 2 = .28, but no main effects, Fs <
p.37, ps > .16. Participants who played the heroic avatar
gave more chocolate than those who played the villain
ous or neutral avatars (see Fig. 1a). Conversely, partici
pants who played villains poured more chili sauce than
Corresponding Author:
Gunwoo Yoon, Institute of Communications Research, College of
Media, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 810 South Wright
St., Urbana, IL 61801
E-mail: gyoon3@illinois.edu
Psychological Science
http://pss.sagepub.com/
KnowThy Avatar: The Unintended Effect of Virtual-Self Representation on Behavior
Gunwoo Yoon and Patrick T. Vargas
Psychological Science 2014 25: 1043 originally published online 5 February 2014
DOI: 10.1177/0956797613519271
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PSSXXX10.1177/0956797613519271Yoon, VargasKnowThyAvatar
Short Report
Psychological Science
Know Thy Avatar: The Unintended Effect of
© 2014, The Vol. Author(s) 25(4) 1043–1045
2014
Virtual-Self Representation Behavior
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Gunwoo Yoon1 and Patrick T. Vargas2
1
Institute of Communications Research, College of Media, and 2Charles H. Sandage Department
of Advertising, College of Media, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Received 10/26/13; Revision accepted 12/11/13
Virtual environments enable people to experience extra
ordinary identities or circumstances. People can take on
superhero or super-villain roles using digital avatars in
virtual space. By acting as these avatars, individuals may
learn new behaviors and model their own, real-life
behaviors after them (Bandura, 1977; Bem, 1972). The
virtual environment is, thus, a vehicle for observation,
imitation, and modeling; players’ avatars may fuel these
processes.
Recent empirical research confirms that the behavior
of players’ avatars can affect players’ self-concepts, cogni
tions, and feelings (Gentile et al., 2009; Greitemeyer &
Osswald, 2010). Thus, concepts related to avatar behav
iors in general (e.g., fighting against evil) or to particular
avatars (e.g., Superman) may affect subsequent behavior
(e.g., good deeds). Identification with an avatar is corre
lated with avatar-consistent behavior in the real world
(Rosenberg, Baughman, & Bailenson, 2013). In the exper
iments reported here, we investigated whether certain
types of avatars and avatars’ behaviors could promote
pro- or antisocial actions in everyday behavior.
Experiment 1
One hundred ninety-four undergraduates participated in
the experiment (95 males, 99 females; mean age = 20.34
years, SD = 2.10). Participants were told that they were
involved in two separate studies: a test of game usability
and a blind tasting test. After signing a consent form, par
ticipants were randomly assigned to heroic (Superman),
villainous (Voldemort), and neutral geometric-shaped (cir
cle) avatars. They then played a game for 5 min in which
they battled enemies as their avatar (see the Supplemental
Material available online for further descriptions of the
stimuli and the game). Participants’ identification with their
avatars was measured using four items (e.g., “While you
were playing the game, how much did you identify with
your avatar?”; Cronbach’s α = .75), each of which they
responded to on a 7-point scale ranging from 1, not at all,
to 7, very much. Then they were told that the first study
was over.
Participants were then informed that a blind taste test
of food additives would take place and were asked to sign
another consent form.1 We manipulated good and bad
action by asking participants to first taste and then give
either chocolate or chili sauce, respectively (Fischer,
Kastenmüller, & Greitemeyer, 2010), to a (fictional) future
participant. Participants were instructed to pour an
unspecified amount of food into a plastic dish (“to allow
the experimenter to be blind to experimental conditions”)
and were told that the future participant would consume
all of the food provided. The total amount poured was
measured in grams. As a manipulation check, we asked
participants to rate the valence of giving chili sauce or
chocolate to a subsequent participant on scales ranging
from 1, bad, to 7, good; 1, unpleasant, to 7, pleasant; and
1, unfavorable, to 7, favorable (Cronbach’s α = .97).
Participants’ identification with their avatars did not
differ significantly among conditions, F(2, 191) = 1.83,
p = .16, η 2 = .02 (hero: M = 3.90, SD = 1.30; villain: M =
p3.54, SD = 1.19; circle: M = 3.88, SD = 1.38). The bad
action (giving chili sauce; M = 1.82, SD = 0.70) was rated
more negatively than the good action (giving chocolate;
M = 5.33, SD = 0.89), t(192) = 30.42, p < .001, d = 4.40.
More important, a 3 (avatar: heroic vs. villainous vs.
neutral) × 2 (behavior: good vs. bad) analysis of variance
(ANOVA) revealed the predicted interaction effect, F(2,
188) = 35.91, p < .001, η 2 = .28, but no main effects, Fs <
p.37, ps > .16. Participants who played the heroic avatar
gave more chocolate than those who played the villain
ous or neutral avatars (see Fig. 1a). Conversely, partici
pants who played villains poured more chili sauce than
Corresponding Author:
Gunwoo Yoon, Institute of Communications Research, College of
Media, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 810 South Wright
St., Urbana, IL 61801
E-mail: gyoon3@illinois.edu
Downloaded from pss.sagepub.com at EASTERN WASHINGTON UNIV on May 26, 2014
1044
Yoon, Vargas
a
20
Chocolate
Chili Sauce
b
16
Heroic Avatar
Villainous Avatar
)
g(detacollAtnuomA16
12
8
4
0
Heroic Avatar
Neutral Avatar
Villainous Avatar
Virtual-Self Representation
)
g(d 12
etacollA 8
ecuaSl i 4
ihC0
Player
Role
Observer
Fig. 1. Results from Experiment 1 (a) and Experiment 2 (b). The graph in (a) shows the mean amount of chocolate and chili sauce given by
participants as a function of the avatar they used. The graph in (b) shows the mean amount of chili sauce given as a function of participants’
role and the avatar they used. Error bars show standard errors of the mean.
did participants who played heroes and neutral avatars
(see the Supplemental Material for further details).
Experiment 2
The design of Experiment 2 was the same as that of
Experiment 1, except that there was an additional set of
conditions to test whether our role-taking manipulation
(i.e., playing as a superhero or villain) generated stronger
real-world outcomes than common behavioral-priming
(e.g., Dijksterhuis et al., 1998) and perspective-taking
(e.g., Galinsky, Wang, & Ku, 2008) manipulations, both of
which lead people to behave in ways consistent with the
target. In order to simplify the experiment, we dropped
the neutral-avatar condition and focused on how much
chili sauce players allotted. Thus, we tested whether
game players (who “were” the heroic or villainous avatar)
would show stronger behavioral effects than observers
(who “were primed with” or “took the perspective of” the
heroic or villainous avatar). Observers were asked to put
themselves in a heroic or villainous avatar’s “shoes” and
to watch a game demonstration for 5 min. All other pro
cedures and measures were identical to those used in
Experiment 1.
One hundred twenty-five undergraduates partici
pated in the experiment (44 males, 81 females; mean
age = 19.42 years, SD = 1.37). A 2 (avatar: heroic vs.
villainous) × 2 (role: player vs. observer) ANOVA on the
amount of chili sauce served yielded a significant main
effect of avatar, F(1, 121) = 48.35, p < .001, η 2 = .29, and
pno effect of role, F(1, 121) < 1, p = .57. As predicted,
villains administered a greater amount of hot chili sauce
than heroes (see the Supplemental Material for further
details). There was a significant interaction effect,
F(1, 121) = 24.17, p < .001, η 2 = .17. Indeed, partici
ppants who played heroes served significantly less chili
sauce than participants who observed heroes, and par
ticipants who played villains served more chili sauce
than participants who observed villains (Fig. 1b; see
the Supplemental Material for further details). AsExperiment 1, “being” an avatar caused participantsbehave in ways that conformed to their avatars, which
caused stronger effects on subsequent behavior than
did priming or perspective taking.
in
to
Discussion
This research not only demonstrates that acting as a hero
or villain causes people to perform coincident behaviors,
but also highlights that role taking facilitates behavior
consistent with the actions of a target above and beyond
the behavior facilitated by priming (Nelson & Norton,
2005). A 5-min gaming experience with certain avatars
is enough to reverse a potential pattern of behavior.
One likely explanation is that immersion (Weinstein,
Przybylski, & Ryan, 2009) or arousal (Berger, 2011)
derived from the gaming experience imbues people with
agency. In Experiment 2, the perspective-taking manipu
lation was almost certainly less arousing than active game
play; perhaps arousal mediates the effect of avatars on
behavior (e.g., arousal facilitates action).2
Human social responses can be altered by how virtual-
self representations are implemented, and those can play
a role in shaping the way people interact with others. In
Downloaded from pss.sagepub.com at EASTERN WASHINGTON UNIV on May 26, 2014
Know Thy Avatar 1045
everyday gaming, players choose their own avatars, but
creating games with more heroic avatars could encour
age more prosocial behavior. By exploring the important
outcome of virtual experiences, this study broadens the
potential of unintended influence of self-representation
derived from role taking on human behavior.
Author Contributions
G. Yoon developed the study concept. G. Yoon and P. T.
Vargas equally contributed to the study design. Data collection
and statistical analyses were performed by G. Yoon and P. T.
Vargas. G. Yoon analyzed and interpreted the data under the
supervision of P. T. Vargas. G. Yoon drafted the manuscript,
and P. T. Vargas provided critical revisions. All authors approved
the final version of the manuscript for submission.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Jesse Preston and members of the Psychology
of Religion, Agency, and Morality Laboratory for their useful
comments.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest with
respect to their authorship or the publication of this article.
Supplemental Material
Additional supporting information may be found at http://pss
.sagepub.com/content/by/supplemental-data
Notes
1. We handed out different consent forms to make the idea of
“two separate studies” more believable. No participants noticed
a connection between the two consecutive studies.
2. We tested mediation effects linking role taking to behavior
through avatar identification. Results from bootstrap analyses
did not support this avatar-identification account. In addition,
there were no significant correlations between avatar identifica
tion and behavior.
References
Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice Hall.
Bem, D. J. (1972). Self-perception theory. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.),
Advances in experimental social psychology (pp. 1–62).
New York, NY: Academic Press.
Berger, J. (2011). Arousal increases social transmission of infor
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Dijksterhuis, A., Spears, R., Postmes, T., Stapel, D., Koomen,
W., van Knippenberg, A., & Scheepers, D. (1998). Seeing
one thing and doing another: Contrast effects in automatic
behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75,
862–871.
Fischer, P., Kastenmüller, A., & Greitemeyer, T. (2010). Media
violence and the self: The impact of personalized gaming
characters in aggressive video games on aggressive behav
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Galinsky, A. D., Wang, C. S., & Ku, G. (2008). Perspective-
takers behave more stereotypically. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 95, 404–419.
Gentile, D. A., Anderson, C. A., Yukawa, S., Ihori, N., Saleem,
M., Ming, L. K., . . . Sakamoto, A. (2009). The effects of pro
social video games on prosocial behaviors: International
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752–763.
Greitemeyer, T., & Osswald, S. (2010). Effects of prosocial
video games on prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality
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Nelson, L. D., & Norton, M. I. (2005). From student to super
hero: Situational primes shape future helping. Journal of
Experimental Social Psychology, 41, 423–430.
Rosenberg, R. S., Baughman, S. L., & Bailenson, J. N. (2013).
Virtual superheroes: Using superpowers in virtual real
ity to encourage prosocial behavior. PLoS ONE, 8(1),
e55003. Retrieved from http://www.plosone.org/article/
info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0055003
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nature make us more caring? Effects of immersion in nature
on intrinsic aspirations and generosity. Personality and
Social Psychology Bulletin, 35, 1315–1329.
D&D is a fantasy role-playing game created and originally published by Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax who founded the Tactical Studies Rules Association (TSR) in 1973. It was an evolutionary step from earlier war games or military simulations. The game was first marketed 1974. It gained great popularity among teens and young adults. Random House obtained the rights to distribute the game in 1979. In 1997, rights to the game were obtained by Wizards of the Coast. The D&D brand now belongs to Hasbro. Dozens of other companies have since published hundreds of similar games under a variety of titles, such as DragonQuest.™, RuneQuest™, Tunnels and Trolls™, and Villains and Vigilantes™. The games fall into many genres:
These games are played by groups of two or more people; 4 to 7 are typical. One player is commonly called the Game Master (GM) who defines the imaginary environment in which the game is played. Sometimes the GM is referred to as Dungeon Master, Storyteller, Referee, etc. He/she creates a make-believe world through which the players will move and have their adventures. The players each create a single imaginary character, defining their shape, race, intellectual and physical powers, armament, protective devices, supplies and materials. The GM decides what traps, obstacles and encounters the imaginary characters will meet. Sometimes the GM holds the post for a long time; in other groups, the job rotates among the membership.
Adventures may include play-acting the rescuing of people, the quest for money, treasure, power, knowledge and sometimes even survival of the pretend character. Each player makes ethical, philosophical, physical, and moral decisions on behalf of her/his imaginary character as the game develops. The GM describes the environment, the events and the actions of supporting characters (also called non-player characters or NPC's). The players describe their pretend character's actions and reactions. The GM then tells them the results of each event. Many games use the rolling of dice in order to resolve conflicts and to determine the results of various actions (e.g. trying to disarm a trap or leap across a chasm, etc.). Future sessions begin where the previous session quit. Games can continue for years.
A few gamers use a system called Live Action Role Play (LARP) in which the players actually act out the roles of their characters. Sometimes, they dress up in costumes as if in a live play. Some regular gamers do not view LARPs in a positive light.
The society in which Dungeons and Dragons is played is typically pre-scientific. Weapons are at the spear and crossbow level. Some characters may be imagined as having telepathic powers, others as being capable of casting magic spells. Other fantasy role-playing games are set in the wild west, in the far future, etc.
Players are usually in their teens to early 30's, who may be above average in intelligence, creativity and imagination. (Perhaps persons with these qualities are naturally drawn to the games; perhaps playing the game develops these factors). Many younger players will meet for a game once a week; others once or twice a month. The session might last about 6 hours.
The following WWW pages are "game positive":
"I didn't think anyone would take it seriously...Thousands of people...read the page, and a few percent of them apparently took it seriously. They started to e-mail me, and I started collecting the e-mails. I have over 5 megabytes archive...I "enhanced" the page by adding the most outrageous and ridiculous claims I could think of, I added deliberate typos, many contradictions, and silly links, hoping that even the most ignorant person would immediately realize that the page is a joke. It didn't help...More hate mail kept coming no matter what."
"... become satan worshippers and cultists who practice black magic, ritual sacrifice, homosexuality, bisexuality, transvetitism [sic], voyeurism, semitism, communism, necrophilia, sadism, masochism, domination, marxism, darwinism, child pornography...flag burning, fetishism, atheism, islam...demonology, necromancy, jewishness, bondage, spiritism, fascism, anal sex, neo-nazism, ritual cannibalism, occultism, pagan religions, sorcery, sin, arson...satanism, witchcraft, shamanism, incest, adultery and sodomy, feminism, also they drink human blood, listen to heavy metal and rock music, promote evolution theory instead of creationism, use hard drugs and try to summon real demons...All of these victims eventually commit suicide or live rest of their lives in a mental hospital. Satan has taken their soul and they will burn in HELL for eternity!"
His site has won many awards, including ones from the Church of Xaos, Lame Site Award, Irritation Award and Cosmic Jackass Award. Apparently, some of the award givers do not realize that the web site is a joke intended to poke fun at conservative Christians who criticize RPGs. It is similar to the Landover Baptist Church web site, at http://www.landoverbaptist.org .
Copyright© 1996 to 2008 by Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance
Latest update: 2008-SEP-05
Author: B.A. Robinson
"Many people holding a wide variety of religious beliefs enjoy roleplaying games, and there's even a society of Christian roleplayers on the web, as well as some Christian RPGs." 1 RPGs have been ignored by liberal, mainline and by most conservative Christian ministries. However, starting in the late 1970's, these games came under severe attack by a few Fundamentalist and other Evangelical Christian individuals and groups who alleged that they contain "occult" content and inspire people to suicide or criminal activity. D&D permits an enthusiast to choose the role of "Lawful good alignment" or to play a holy warrior on a noble, ethical quest. However, anti-RPG sites never seem to mention this alternative.
After the death by suicide of Irving "Bink" Pulling in 1982-JUN, his mother, Patricia Pulling, organized B.A.D.D. (Bothered about Dungeons and Dragons). Bink had been depressed after he was unable to find a manager to handle his campaign for election to school council. He was apparently an emotionally disturbed student who admired Adolf Hitler. Unfortunately, his mother kept a loaded gun in the house that he was able to access; he used it to commit suicide. Patricia became convinced that the death had been triggered by her son's involvement with Dungeons and Dragons; she believed that his teacher had placed a curse on Bink during a game. She brought a lawsuit against the teacher and school. It was thrown out of court. She then organized B.A.D.D. and started to speak out against RPGs.
Initial charges against RPGs were based on allegations of players casting hexes or evil spells on teachers and parents. By the mid 1980s, the emphasis switched to the potential of D&D and similar games to induce players to commit suicide. 2,3
Michael A. Stackpole has investigated Ms. Pulling and B.A.D.D. and written an extensive report. It is not a pretty story. 4
In 1985-JAN, B.A.D.D. joined up with another one-person organization, the National Coalition on Television Violence and issued a "Press Release from Washington." NCTV chairperson Dr. Thomas Radedki, a psychiatrist at the University of Illinois School of Medicine, said
"The evidence in these [suicide] cases is really quite impressive. There is no doubt in my mind that the game Dungeons and Dragons is causing young men to kill themselves and others. The game is one of non-stop combat and violence. Although I am sure that the people at TSR mean no harm, that is exactly what their games are causing. Based on player interviews and game materials, it is clear to me that this game is desensitizing players to violence, and, causing an increased tendency to violent behavior." B.A.D.D. and NCTV "asked the U. S. Trade Commission to require that warnings be placed on the covers of all D&D books, stating that the game has caused a number of suicides and murders; and to require that CBS, or others, warn viewers and request them to get the message of the Surgeon General on entertainment violence."
The Federal Trade Commission sent the petition to the Consumer Products Safety Commission. The latter decided that D&D was not a danger to the U.S. public.
A third group actively opposing gaming is the Cult Crime Action Network (CCAN). As described elsewhere at this site, the word "cult" is often used as a general-purpose religious "snarl" word to refer to some activity (religious or otherwise) that is not approved of. CCAN accused RPGs of luring young people into the occult.
During the late 1980s, the emphasis changed again. Fears were raised that RPGs caused the players to commit murder. As with the concerns over spells and suicide, factual data was scarce. About 1990, still another switch occurred. This time, RPGs were linked to Multiple Personality Disorder (aka Dissociative Identity Disorder) and Satanic Ritual Abuse. 2
By the early 1990's, the furor had largely died down. The games are still attacked periodically on a small number of Fundamentalist or other Evangelical Christian TV programs and ministries. For example, the Christian Life Ministries has said that Dungeons and Dragons contains many references to cannibalism and sadism. Such topics are rarely discussed in fantasy role-playing games. When they are mentioned, they are not promoted but are shown in a bad light.
In 1996-JUN, fantasy role-playing game industry in Italy came under attack. As in the earlier attacks in North America, games have been accused of causing teen suicide, and distorting minds. They falsely claim that RPG players usually impersonate killers or death-row inmates. The "Stop the Nonsense" campaign was mounted to respond to this threat. 5
In 1997, Dr. Thomas Radedki had pulled out of NCTV, after allegedly having lost his license to practice medicine. Also that year, Ms. Pulling died of cancer. B.A.D.D. is currently inactive.
All of the opposition to RPGs in books, magazines, TV or radio that we have observed appear to be from conservative Christians. Many of their books on Satanism and the Occult still attack the games:
"God is able to deliver those who seek Him. Victory is ours. But first, we must receive God's power...We have been discussing the problems of satanic involvement. Whether we become deceived by use of the Ouija Board, music, divination or by Dungeons and Dragons, the end result is the same occult bondage." 10
However, as noted above, many Christian ministries ignore RPGs. Many individual Christians play the games and find them challenging and entertaining.
On 1997-APR-7 and 8, the Adventures in Odyssey program of Focus on the Family broadcast two episodes which attacked what they call "role-playing Fantasy Games" [sic]. 12 Odyssey is a radio play about pre-teens and teens in an American town. In both episodes, Dr. James Dobson presented a short talk directed to the children and youth listening to the program and their parents. He attacked RPGs, because he feels that its players actually become the pretend characters that they have selected. To play the game properly, he said that the players need to practice magic and mysticism. His choice of the terms "magic" and "mysticism" is unfortunate, because both words have multiple, conflicting meanings. In the APR-7 episode, he said that some gamers have reported involvement with demons and Satan worship.
In the radio play, "Jimmy" is visited by a RPG playing cousin, "Len". Len's character in the game is known as "Luther the Magician." The latter introduces Jimmy to a game called Castles and Cauldrons"; he gives Jimmy's character the name of "John Dell, the Apprentice." They play the game together. A battle is fought with some evil enemies; both experience auditory hallucinations in which their plastic swords sound like real weapons. Some of the misconceptions mentioned in the play were:
"Whit" Whittaker, the owner of a local store comes across Len and Jimmy playing their game. He immediately destroys one of the tools of the game, called The Board of Talisman. Later, Whit casually mentions that he has stolen and destroyed all of Jimmies' gaming equipment. The implication is that a Christian is well within his rights to destroy another person's possessions if he feels that they are unchristian.
The overall effect of the Adventures in Odyssey program is:
If the program had simply been presented as a play, then it would have been an amusing piece of fiction - something like the "X-Files" or "Outer Limits" for kids. But the introduction by Dr. Dobson seems to imply that the activities described in the episode reflect the reality of role-playing games. They do not. The producers of the program are either completely misinformed, or intentionally deceptive about the nature of these games. The radio program promoted an hopelessly inaccurate version of fantasy role-playing games in which the players become involved with demons, Satanic worship, spells, curses, evil sorcery etc. The end result of the program is to create fear and insecurity in the minds of listeners in order to scare them away from playing this type of game.
There are still a few fundamentalist and other evangelical para-church organizations in the United States that are critical fantasy role-playing games. However, they appear to be much less vocal in recent years. See:
Copyright © 1996 to 2008 by Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance
Latest update: 2008-JUL-15
Author: B.A. Robinson
There are many anecdotal stories about youth who have become involved with RPGs, and have become totally obsessed with the game. They become emotionally linked to their pretend RPG character. They lose the capacity to separate fantasy from reality. Some stressor makes them snap. They either commit suicide or go on a murder rampage. These stories make excellent material for an "urban legend". Such stories are widely discussed throughout North America. Fortunately, RPGs simply do not work this way. A gamer who commits suicide after having lost his identity in a RPG is probably as rare as a person who goes into a deep depression and kills themselves because they went bankrupt playing a game of Monopoly. Pro-RPG groups have investigated each of the murder-suicides which are allegedly caused by gaming. No causal link has ever been found.
The claims by conservative Christian groups that gamers commit suicide or engage in criminal acts do not appear to hold water:
The answer is both yes and no, depending upon one's point of view. There are many religious terms like demonic possession, Neopaganism, Occult, Satan, and Satanism which have multiple meanings. Often conservative Christians use one definition, whereas others use another definition:
Evangelical Christian authors often view Satanism as being at the core of "the occult". Many believe that Satanism is a secret, underground, highly organized evil group that is international in scope and under the personal control of Satan. Some feel that Satanists are responsible for kidnapping, torturing, ritually killing and even eating infants and children. They look upon many diverse occultic activities as performing a recruitment function for Satanists; these include fantasy role-playing games, astrology, heavy metal rock music, the "Care Bears" and "Smurfs" on children's TV, a second religion Wicca - often called "white" Witchcraft. Some conservative Christians view all religions other than Christianity (e.g. Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam) as forms of Satanism.
Since conservative Christians use a different definition for the term "occult" from others, it is not possible to harmonize these two beliefs.
Some conservative Christians have taken the position that since deities other than the Christian trinity are mentioned in some RPGs, that the games are Satanic. This is an logical consequence of their biblically-based belief that when a person worships a deity other than the Judeo-Christian God, they are either worshiping Satan himself, or one of his demons. On this basis, they claim that religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism are actually forms of Satanism. Their belief is not shared by most others who view conservative Christianity, liberal Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and hundreds of other faith groups as being very different from one another and unrelated to Satanism.
The link between RPGs and Satanism breaks down over one important point: players do not worship other deities when playing Dungeons and Dragons� and similar games. They do not even recognize their existence as living entities.
Occasionally, a player will select a character who has a relationship with a non-Christian God or Goddess. For example, one RPG enthusiast selected a paladin character -- a mixture of warrior and priest. She writes that her character's Goddess "is one of justice, righteousness and law, though not without mercy." That Goddess plays a very important role in the paladin's life. But the RPG player is a Christian in real life, and in no way worships the Goddess of her character.
Copyright © 1996 to 2008 by Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance
Latest update: 2008-JUL-15
Author: B.A. Robinson
Found archived version on : https://web.archive.org/web/20010512151537/http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~anthclub/studentwork/KynaFoster.htm
Archived here in case disappears again:
A paper presented at the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Western Social Sciences Association
April 26-29, 2000
By: Kyna Foster
Western Washington University
Bellingham, Washington
March 30, 2000
The purpose of this paper is to examine issues of gender within the subculture of fantasy role-playing. Data was collected in two ways: through participant-observation in a LARP (Live Action Role-Playing) on the campus of Western Washington University and from surveys and interviews. The surveys and interviews were conducted both at Western Washington University’s role playing group, SPRAL (Loosely Arranged Role-Playing Society), and at RustyCon, a science fiction and fantasy convention held from January 7-9, 2000 in Everett, WA. The gaming industry also provided data that is being used for comparative purposes. Though the results are preliminary, they do show a marked change in how gender is addressed within role-playing from the last time gaming was truly studied, by Gary Alan Fine from 1977-79.
Two main types of games and role-players were examined: the traditional tabletop varieties, exemplified by Dungeons and Dragons, and live action role-playing, which is more akin to improvisational acting. Besides being some of the most established and easily accessible gamers, these gamers are also the one most likely branded as “strange” by outsiders. This is exemplified in books such as The Truth About Dungeons and Dragons by Joan Hake Robie, which discusses how gaming (specifically Dungeons and Dragons) is linked with Satanism and is anti-Christian. I have not found this linkage which Robie champions to be at all apparent.
The newest variety of gaming, collectable card games (CCGs), such as “Magic the Gathering” and “Pokémon” have been excluded here for an important reason of categorization. CCGs are not role-playing games. They do not have players consciously take on the actions and persona of a character and are more akin to traditional card games, such as poker, than to role-playing games (RPGs). Collectable card games are often produced by the same companies as RPGs; there have been spin-offs from RPGs to CCGs and vice versa, but the players and the games themselves, are quite different.
Gaming is a world unto itself, with its own vocabulary, reference points, and history. The longer someone is involved in the hobby, the more knowledge of the world they acquire and the more prestige. Much of the knowledge is passed on orally, though everyday conversations. The books used for playing also help to distribute knowledge throughout the community and provide a shared knowledge base. This knowledge base includes an extensive vocabulary, which has found its way into this paper. To a gamer the statement: “she triple botched the roll and ended up a wraith”* makes perfect sense, while to outsiders it looks like a secret code. In order to assist in reading this paper a glossary has been included, explaining many common gaming terms.
In a role-playing game a player creates a character within a given fantasy world. A group of players is then led on some type of adventure through this world. They are guided by the person running the game, known variously as the Dungeon Master (DM), the Storyteller, the Game Master (GM), or one of several other terms used in different gaming systems. The specifics of a given game depend not only on what system and type of game is being played, but also on the people playing and running the game.
The exact origin of role-playing games is at best foggy. In Essence what are now know as role-playing games developed from miniature war games, in which participants recreated historical battles with miniature soldiers. The first mass marketed role-playing game (sometimes also referred to as a fantasy role-playing game) was Dungeons and Dragons, which first had wide distribution in 1974 (TSR Website 2000). D&D, as it is referred to has taken countless forms over the years from novels and comics to a Saturday morning TV show and a movie which is currently in production. In 1992 White Wolf Game Studios introduced their game “Vampire: The Masquerade”. The game focused on a darker, more gothic theme and was more character and story-centered than the traditional D&D campaign and thus captured the imaginations of many gamers and helped to expand the customer base for the gaming companies.
How to explain gamers? Role-playing games as a group have been virtually ignored since their heyday during the late 70’s/early 80’s. Gary Alan Fine’s book, Shared Fantasy: Role-Playing Games as Social Worlds was published in 1983, and researched from 1977 to 1979. It is the only scholarly work on this group, and it’s almost 20 years out of date. Under the heading of gender, Fine has two things to say. First, there are very few women role-playing, between 5% and 10% of the total gaming population. Secondly, most of these females are drawn in by boyfriends /husbands and are thus not really as involved in the games as they are in the relationships.
Times have changed. Wizards of the Coast (WOTC), the largest gaming company in the country with properties ranging from Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) to Pokémon reports that 1/5 (20%) of the gaming population is female (Dancey 2000, 6). WOTC’s report, composed by their VP and brand manager for D&D, Ryan Dancey, is biased in that it only examined people between the ages of 12 and 35. I believe it still gives a relatively accurate picture of the gaming community has a whole, since that age range covers the vast majority of gamers. Out of the people I talked to, 37.5% of them were female. This is a higher percentage than the national average, but one it reflects the arenas in which I talked with gamers. The higher percentage also gives a clearer voice to the females who game and helps to give a wider picture of their views on gaming.
Not only are there more women gaming than ever, but they are getting involved in more varied ways. Almost every female at WWU became involved through friends, rather than boyfriends, though that had also happened. The same was true at RustyCon. A few common scenarios included a brother who needed more people to play D&D with, a friend who thought that gaming was fun and wanted to share their new hobby, or at least wanted some company among a group of near-strangers.
The games themselves have become more of a draw. One of the main comments I received in answer to the question “what differences you see between male and female gamers?” was that females are more interested in character development and plot than in so-called “hack-and-slash” and “power gaming”. Females will talk and think their way through problems, while male players will simply try to slash their way through a situation.
This dimorphism is not simply due to gender. Age seems to also be a major factor. The women in my sample began gaming at an average age of 15.65 years, while the males began at an average of 12.31 years, a difference of 3.34 years. These 3 years allow a lot of “growing up time,” which could also contribute to the perceived differences in gaming styles, at least for the first few years. This is something noticed by gamers themselves. They will often comment of younger or more inexperienced gamers, that they “have grown” or “ are growing up nicely.” This was especially apparent at WWU, where 52% of the players were ages 14-20, and there is a real feeling of looking out for the younger players. A prime example of this was during the aftermath of the tragedy at Columbine High School. Many of the players at SPRAL wear black trenchcoats, and with the evening news pronouncing in dire tones about the possible involvement of a “trenchcoat brigade” a phone alert went out from the house of some of the older (college age) gamers. The telephone calls were made to any player who was in high school, asking that they “lay off the black” and to not wear their trenchcoats for a few days. This request was not only out of respect for the victims, but also as protection for the younger gamers who had already had to deal with harassment at school for being too “different.” The older gamers (or at least some of them) saw it as their responsibility to make sure that the younger gamers would be OK.
Hence, it seems that beyond gender the factor of age also comes into play. Females initially tend to be more into the character/plot elements of the games and, in a more female mode will talk out problems instead of hacking through them. Males will often (though not always) come around to a similar style of play. This may be in part, due to what games are being played.
The variety of role-playing games available boggles the imagination. Everything from the classics, such as Dungeons and Dragons, Call of Cthulhu based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft, to cartoons such as Sailor Moon and everything in between is available. If a gaming company has not thought of it, there are systems such as GURPs (Generic Universal Role Playing System), from Steve Jackson Games, in which it is possible to create your own worlds, playing whatever type of character you desire. Game playing systems vary greatly between individual companies and individual games from the same company. At one end of the spectrum are systems where everything is decided by dice rolls, such as in certain versions of Dungeons & Dragons. How much the dice are used is, of course, dependent on the Dungeon Master/Storyteller, but no matter what, dice play an important in these games. On the other end are games such as Amber, based on the books of Roger Zelazny that uses no dice or other chance-inducing devices/ploys. Everything is left to the storyteller and the players, who compare their character’s statistics.
Most common though, seem to be the middle-of the road systems, such as White Wolf’s “World of Darkness” series. Once, again how much a storyteller uses the dice is up to him/her, but the system itself was designed to use fewer dice rolls than in “traditional” gaming systems (such as D&D) allowing for more role-playing. The goal in White Wolf games is to “use the rules only as much - or preferably as little - as you need to tell thrilling stories of terror, action and romance” (Achilli, Bates, Burcato, et al. 1998, 21). To use your imagination to explore a character you have developed, rather than seeing a character on TV or reading about one in a novel or even depending on the rules to tell you what to do next.
The variety of games available means that some seem to appeal more to a male sensibility than a female sensibility and vice versa. When talking with a WOTC employee about developments in the gaming industry, he talked about how there are more female game designers than ever. Thus he said more games, such as the recently released 7th Sea from Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG), seem to appeal to women. The appeal does not seem to be based on subject matter alone. 7th Sea is about swashbuckling pirates, which is not an interest traditionally associated with females in Western culture. By playing non-traditional characters females may be able to step out of their culturally defined roles, but that does not completely explain the draw of 7th Sea and other games. Playing system and type of game are also a factor in gendered game preference. In her paper “Perils of the Princess: Gender and Genre in Video Games” Sharon R. Sherman says that “females who do play [video games] prefer games like Tetris which requires the solving of a puzzle, rather than the completion of a quest.” (Sherman 1997, 256) Sherman’s statement seems to also hold true for role-playing. Females prefer games that allow them to problem solve and explore their characters rather than simply seeing how many monsters can be defeated.
Over the years, not only has a greater variety of games with a greater variety of themes become available, but the topics of play also seem to have changed. Fine dedicates several pages of his discussion on gender to the prevalence of rape in game. He comments that “players consider inhibitions which prevent them from engaging in fantasy rape to be a problem...Groups vary in the actions permissible within the fantasy context; fantasy rape is not legitimate in every male group” (Fine 1983, 69).
In the games I have observed, rape by characters, simply for the sake of doing something is not permissible. NPCs may rape characters, if it fits in with the story line and actions of the characters, but rape for the sake of rape would generally not be tolerated. Consensual sex is permissible, so there is not a moratorium on sexual interaction. I believe that this difference is not only due to the group that I was observing, which is largely liberal college students, but also due to changes in society at large. Over the last 10 to 15 years the view of rape within American society has changed dramatically. The idea of blaming rape victims, though it still exists, is very much out of vogue. Awareness of rape, especially on college campuses, is extremely high. Hence, the games reflect how society has changed, even when the game settings themselves, in particular D&D, with its medieval-inspired society, have not changed. There are plenty of opportunities in D&D for rape, etc., but I believe you would find fewer rape scenes in a present-day D&D game then when Fine was doing his research.
The above illustrates an important point about gaming: the games are shaped by the players and thus by the dominant culture. Though the game world is constructed as an independent world, and though the players like to think of themselves as different and somehow separate from the mainstream, which they might be, the effect of the surrounding culture cannot be denied. To the point, the gaming world is shaped by the players, who are shaped by the dominant culture of that time and place. Within their fantasy worlds players discover themselves in some way. They are allowed to be the people they are not in daily life. Instead of being a college student, you are a knight, a magician, or a vampire. There is release in being something other than you. Many SPRAL members talk about using game as a chance to de-stress. At RustyCon, one of the discussions I had was with a women named Cat, who talked about how, though she prefers character development to “shoot-em-up” in games, the shoot-em-up is extremely helpful for stress relief. She talked about how if you’ve had a really bad day at work, you can come home, go to game and ask your DM to name an ogre, after a stressor, in order to release your frustrations. The release of tension is what draws some people into gaming and keeps others playing.
I mentioned before how Fine discusses that women were brought into gaming by boyfriends/husbands while men brought other friends into their games. This seems to be true across the boards now. Most respondents (72.7%) said that friends were somehow involved in bringing them into gaming. The survey did not delineate how good these friends were, but it is clear that not all of these people were (or ever would be) dating each other. The theory that women are simply brought in as potential mates is very much a stereotype, which may have been true at one point, but which no longer holds water. Women actually seem to draw other women in. At the SPRAL game there are definite cliques, mostly based on age and experience. One of these is formed of lower-age high school girls who, in game and out primarily interact with only members of their group. Their behavior is understandable, given that they are all very new players and they knew each other before joining the game. At first, it was one or two of them, who knew one girl (a sister of an older player); they steadily have begun bringing more players in, thus expanding the number of females at the game. I can easily see this pattern being repeated. One female begins gaming and draws in other females, much as males generally draw in other males, a pattern that relates to the gender interaction and segregation of children. Eleanor E. Maccoby, in her book The Two Sexes: Growing Up Apart, Coming Together presents evidence that shows how “there is a powerful tendency for children to segregate themselves by gender” (Maccoby 1998, 29). Both girls and boys “overwhelmingly make same-sex choices” (Maccoby 1998, 29) when it comes to friendship. So when introducing friends to gaming women will be more likely to bring in other women and vice-versa, given the friendship patterns which exist.
Gaming has truly developed into a much stronger, better-developed segment of Western society. Fine concludes his first chapter by saying that gaming is “an urban leisure subsociety with its own distinctive subculture” (Fine 1983, 38). This has only become truer over the intervening years. The networks of communication which Fine cites as necessary for a subculture have become even stronger. A major part of this is due to in astounding growth in the use of personal computers, e-mail, and the Internet. It has allowed gamers from all over the world to connect not only through websites, but also through on-line role-playing. That is a topic in and of itself. Another factor to this strengthening is the emergence of societies, such as White-Wolf’s official live action club, the Camarilla. The Cam, as it is known, began in 1992, shortly after White Wolf released its extremely popular game, Vampire: The Masquerade. There is a branch of the Cam in every major city in the U.S., not to mention in “ten countries on five continents” (Camarilla 2000, 1). These groups give not only a game with a overarching story-line in every city, but also a way for gamers new to a city to quickly and easily connect up with others. Gaming is most certainly a group activity. Though you can play with just one or two people, most games work best with between 4 and 10 people, depending on the game. Live-action games tend to run to at least 15 people, as the game is more dependent on player-to-player interaction and thus necessitates a larger group. From 88 respondents only 18%, or 16 people, said that they did not have a regular gaming group. The data is skewed by the fact that anyone interviewed at SPRAL is obviously part of a group. A clear picture exists; even if you remove the SPRAL players, 63% of the other respondents said that they had a regular gaming group. The group and its dynamics (including gender) are extremely important in gaming.
Some people I talked with emphasized this as being the main thing that gender affects in gaming. Too many men tended to make games uninteresting in many people’s eyes, while too many women was never brought up as a problem. This probably has to do with the fact that while all male games are still not too difficult to find all female games are exceptionally. While 22.2% of my male respondents reported only sometimes or hardly ever gaming with females, no females stated this. In fact only 12.5% of females said that they “often” gamed with males, as opposed to playing with males “most of the time”. By far the most popular response for both genders was that they gamed with the opposite gender “most of the time”. 54.4% of the 55 male responses, and 84.8% of the 33 female respondents choose this option. The group is one of the most important parts of a game and the most common type of small gaming group seems to contain at least one or two females. This is desirable in the eyes of most gamers, as opposed to the comments made by Fine, where he quotes informants as saying that they become “more slowed or inhibited with them [women] playing” (Fine 1983, 69). As more women have begun gaming, they have become a more positive, desirable force around a table or at a LARP.
This is by no means the final word on either gaming, or the role of women in gaming. A larger, more diverse sample would be necessary to fully explore the role of gender within RPGs. What has been shown through, is that many of the stereotypes, held by gamers and by those outside of gaming, are no longer true. Women game in large enough numbers to make an impact on how games are designed and written. Though there is by no means an equal number of female participants, the world of RPGs is not a specifically male subculture. Nor are there simply a few random females in gaming groups, there is a network of them formed when one woman begins gaming and introduces female friends to the hobby.
As the gaming market expands, with the use of computers and the growth of CCGs, more people will be exposed to the subculture (and its variants) the role of women will expand as well. More games cater to a female style of play and the popularity of this style of play with both genders has yet to be fully realized. Gaming, with its roots in the 1970’s, has integrated females much as the workplace was integrated in the 70s and 80s (and continues to be in some areas). A common comment from the younger generation of gamers was that they saw “no difference” between male and female gamers. Perhaps this lack of delineation between the sexes is where gaming, as well as society as a whole is headed. In a world where your character can be anything you want it to be, that change may come sooner rather than later.
Kyna Foster
March 30, 2000
Achilli, Justin, Andrew Bates, Phil Brucato, Richard E. Dansky, Ed Hall, Robert Hatch, Michael B. Lee, Ian Lemke, Jim Moore, Ethan Skemp, and Cynthia Summers
1998 Vampire the Masquerade: A Storytelling Game of Personal Horror. 3rd edition. Clarkston, GA: White Wolf Publishing.
Camarilla
2000 What is the Camarilla?. Electronic document. http://dppw.tamu.edu/camarilla/frames/venues.html.
Dancey, Ryan
2000 Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0. Wizards of the Coast.
Fine, Gary Alan
1983 Shared Fantasy: Role-Playing Games as Social Worlds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hake Robie, Joan
1991 The Truth About Dungeons and Dragons. Lancaster, PA: Starburst Publishing.
Maccoby, Eleanor E.
1998 The Two Sexes: Growing Up Apart, Coming Together. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Sherman, Sharon R.
1997 Perils of the Princess: Gender and Genre in Video Games. Western Folklore 56:243-58.
TSR Inc.
2000 Dungeons and Dragons FAQ. Electronic document. http://www.wizards.com/dnd/DnDArchives.asp
See also Power Gaming
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* Translation: she made a dice role that failed 3 times over and ended up having to play a ghost, since her character was dead, due to the failed actions
PsychologicalReports, 1998, 82, 182. Psychological Reports 1998PERSONALITIES OF PLAYERS
OF DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS 'ROBERT CARTER AND DAVID LESTER Center for the Study of Suicide
20 men who played Dungeons and Dragons did not differ in mean scores on depression, suicidal ideation, psychoticism, extraversion, or neuroticism from unselected undergraduates.
Previous research has shown that players of fantasy role-playing games are less empathetic and more introverted than control groups (Douse & Mc-Manus, 1993). To explore this further 20 men who played the Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game (60% college students) were given the 48-
item Eysenck Personality Inventory (Eysenck, Eysenck, & Barrett, 1965) and the 21-item Beck Depression Inventory (Beck, Ward, Mendelson, Mock, &
Erbaugh, 1961). Their scores were compared with those of control groups of male undergraduates enrolled in college courses.
For the Beck Depression Inventory, the 20 players' mean scores did not differ from those of 76 controls (Mag,=23.7 and 21.9, SDs =5.43 and 2.88)
on the Beck Depression Lnventory (Ms=6.70 and 6.15, SDs=4.59 and 7.36;t = 0.32) or for current suicidal ideation on Item 9 (Ms = 0.35 and 0.18, SDs =
0.49 and 0.39; t = 1.63).
On the Eysenck scales, the 20 players' mean scores did not differ from those of 21 controls (Mag,=23.8 and 20.5, SDs =5.4 and l.6), on Psychoticism (Ms =3.80 and 3.05, SDs= 1.67 and 1.53; t = 1.501, Extraversion (Ms =6.90 and 8.62, SDs=2.65 and 3.48; t = 1.77). Neuroticism (Ms=3.65 and 4.76, SDs=2.16 and 3.79; t=1.15), or Lie (Ms=3.95 and 3.14, SDs=2.46 and 2.67; t = 1.01). Thus, scores of Dungeon and Dragons players on personality scales appeared to resemble those of the unselected undergraduates in the present study.
Accepted December 26, 1997 'Address enquiries to David Lester, Center for the Study of Suicide, RR41, 5 Stonegate Court, Blackwood, NJ 08012-5356.
References
Beck, A. T...Ward, C. H., Mendeuon, M., Mock, J., & Erbauch, J. An inventory for measuring depression. Archives of General Psychiatry, 1961, 4 , 561-571.
Douse. N. A., & Mcmanus, I. C. The personality of fantasy game players. British Journal of Psychology, 1993, 84, 505-509.
Eysenck, S. B. G., Eysenck, H. I., & Barreit, P. A revised version of the psychoticism scale. Personality and Individual Differences, 1965, 6 , 21-29.
PsychologicalReports, 1998, 82, 182. Psychological Reports 1998PERSONALITIES OF PLAYERS
OF DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS 'ROBERT CARTER AND DAVID LESTER Center for the Study of Suicide
20 men who played Dungeons and Dragons did not differ in mean scores on depression, suicidal ideation, psychoticism, extraversion, or neuroticism from unselected undergraduates.
Previous research has shown that players of fantasy role-playing games are less empathetic and more introverted than control groups (Douse & Mc-Manus, 1993). To explore this further 20 men who played the Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game (60% college students) were given the 48-
item Eysenck Personality Inventory (Eysenck, Eysenck, & Barrett, 1965) and the 21-item Beck Depression Inventory (Beck, Ward, Mendelson, Mock, &
Erbaugh, 1961). Their scores were compared with those of control groups of male undergraduates enrolled in college courses.
For the Beck Depression Inventory, the 20 players' mean scores did not differ from those of 76 controls (Mag,=23.7 and 21.9, SDs =5.43 and 2.88)
on the Beck Depression Lnventory (Ms=6.70 and 6.15, SDs=4.59 and 7.36;t = 0.32) or for current suicidal ideation on Item 9 (Ms = 0.35 and 0.18, SDs =
0.49 and 0.39; t = 1.63).
On the Eysenck scales, the 20 players' mean scores did not differ from those of 21 controls (Mag,=23.8 and 20.5, SDs =5.4 and l.6), on Psychoticism (Ms =3.80 and 3.05, SDs= 1.67 and 1.53; t = 1.501, Extraversion (Ms =6.90 and 8.62, SDs=2.65 and 3.48; t = 1.77). Neuroticism (Ms=3.65 and 4.76, SDs=2.16 and 3.79; t=1.15), or Lie (Ms=3.95 and 3.14, SDs=2.46 and 2.67; t = 1.01). Thus, scores of Dungeon and Dragons players on personality scales appeared to resemble those of the unselected undergraduates in the present study.
Accepted December 26, 1997 'Address enquiries to David Lester, Center for the Study of Suicide, RR41, 5 Stonegate Court, Blackwood, NJ 08012-5356.
References
Beck, A. T...Ward, C. H., Mendeuon, M., Mock, J., & Erbauch, J. An inventory for measuring depression. Archives of General Psychiatry, 1961, 4 , 561-571.
Douse. N. A., & Mcmanus, I. C. The personality of fantasy game players. British Journal of Psychology, 1993, 84, 505-509.
Eysenck, S. B. G., Eysenck, H. I., & Barreit, P. A revised version of the psychoticism scale. Personality and Individual Differences, 1965, 6 , 21-29.
Examination of stereotypes about gamers versus reality: positive stereotypes are true, negative ones are either untrue or greatly exaggerated. 31 pages.
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Below is a combined listing about the project and the project founder Hawke Robinson, including: panel sessions, Q&A sessions, interviews, articles, essays, presentations on the effects of role-playing games, rpg therapy program plans, rpg education, research and examples from using role-playing games to achieve therapeutic and educational goals for many populations including Autism spectrum (ASD/PDD/Asperger's), ADHD, brain injury (TBI, stroke, etc.), spinal cord injury (SCI), at-risk youth, incarcerated youth and adults, the Deaf and hard of hearing, Muscular Dystrophy (MD), Cerebral Palsy (CP), and others.
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There are now some fake and/or questionable articles floating around that claim to cite the efforts of W.A. Hawkes-Robinson (aka Hawke Robinson). While I hate to perpetuate their showing up in searches, some may be worth comment/correction.