Heh. Something like this happened to me: to wit, like Tycho of Penny Arcade, in my house, growing up, AD&D was specifically banned.
… my mom gave me an incredible gift here that almost certainly informed my life. I think a lot of people go right to D&D, and that’s it. You can play Dungeons & Dragons your whole life, I’m not gonna tell you that would be bad. It is at least as good and probably better than a lot of the shit you get up to. But she didn’t let me start with it, and the reason doesn’t matter now. I was made to cast a wide net, and I hauled up treasure.
But, like Tycho… my mom just banned AD&D. MERP/Rolemaster? No problem. Car Wars? OK. GURPS? Sure, no worries. …Paranoia? Fine, although Orcbusters pushed my mom’s buttons. I suspect that a lot of gamers have that history; and the members of the gaming industry that aren’t working for Wizards of the Coast should be, frankly, properly grateful about it.
Moe Lane
I don’t think my parents outlawed D&D, but they were suspicious of it. We did get a copy of a Christian RPG system called Dragonraid, but the we never got past the character building phase. Too young to deal with all the paperwork and dice rolling so neither my brother or myself were terribly interested in RPGs. Video games were a much bigger draw, and the whole family loved adventure games like King’s Quest.
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I did get into Battletech in a small way in high school, but it didn’t last.
He-Man and Ghostbusters were banned as occult, as were DnD. Marvel Superheroes, however, was not. I still have the 2xd10 to prove it.
Same here, started with Top Secret and Car Wars. Wasn’t till college that I got my first copy of 2e AD&D. Oddly enough I was allowed to have the video game versions but not the full RPG, wasted many hours playing Intellivision version of AD&D.
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Moe: ever heard of Tunnels and Trolls? Saw a Kickstarter for it today but hadn’t heard of it before. Claim its been around since the 70s.
Not me. My mother actually defended RPGs when a girlfriend’s mother “expressed concern”.
You didn’t mention “Traveller” RPG which has to be one of my all time favorites.
Turned me from a D in math to an engineer.
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No, I’ve never forgiven them for that.
I didn’t have enough D&D-playing friends for long enough for my parents to worry about it, as it turned out. Didn’t keep them from flipping out about the Ray Stevens song _Sex Symbols_, though.
Man, Paranoia was one of those games that was funner to read the books rather then play.
I only ever read the books. Seems like I’m a bit too much of an anti-social loner to actually find a group and play the game.
One of those who started with D&D. It was YEARS before I realized that there were choices beyond D&D and Champions.
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Now a GURPS fanboy. Go figure.
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D&D bothers me. The system doesn’t enforce genre norms, and most D&D players haven’t ever been exposed to the Sword & Sorcery stories of Leiber and REH.
I have issues with the Ranger class in D&D. JRR got the word from somewhere, and the imitations of his usage are mostly not informed about where he got it from.
The mom of a friend of mine barred him from playing CALL OF CTHULHU, so we told her we were playing BASIC ROLEPLAYING instead.
But the best story is the one about Pro Family Forum and my dad, who was Chairman of the Oklahoma County Republican Party.
PFF called my dad to arrange a table to distribute literature at the county convention, and he asked what kind of literature they planned to have.
“We have pamphlets on the sin of abortion.”
“That’s fine.”
“We have some literature on school prayer.”
“That’s fine.”
“We have some flyers about how DUNGEONS & DRAGONS is Satanic.”
“I’ll need to run those past my son the Dungeon Master.”
They did, as it happens, bring the flyers to the convention, and I picked up a handful. Next game session, I distributed them to everyone, said “Now you can’t say you weren’t warned.”
Huh. Seems a small world.
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Some time back, I met a fellow who was out of that area. When I put two and two together I figured it might be a coincidence, but maybe not.