If you're currently pooping and don't want your roommates to hear you watching news reports on the toilet, I'll summarize: According to the good Canadian reporters of the CBC, Dungeons & Dragons wasn't just fun and somewhat addictive; it was so detailed, so pants-shittingly real, that it captured and sucked in innocent children's minds, like some sort of giant gelatinous cube.
After all, they tell us, several boys had apparently committed suicide after rounds of Dungeons & Dragons, one after having a "suicide curse" put on his character by a friend. Even more disturbing is the 1984 murder of a young woman by two men, one of whom, Darren Molitor, was a hardcore D&D user. Molitor, according to his lawyer, had been influenced by the game to the extent that his demonic character had somehow taken him over and caused him to kill. And he must have been telling the truth, because what's the other option? That a murderer and his lawyer would just sit there and lie to us?
CBC
How could you not trust this man?
It's been over 30 years since the Canadians tried to warn us, and let's face it, Dungeons & Dragons hasn't quite lived up to the hype. Murders committed by young men dressed as paladins remain at relatively low levels, and despite the reality-bending realism of the game, players have failed to invent a single real dragon. In fact, now that media fears about Satanism have receded, the game has lost even the grudging respect that comes with fear. Back in the '80s, D&D players were seen as ticking time bombs, bound at any moment to explode and start clubbing people to death with a mace they'd made themselves out of Mountain Dew bottles and pointy dice. Today, they're more likely to be regarded as dorks so dorky that they are picked last for math tournaments.
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