When Dungeons & Dragons Cast Its Spell on 1980s America

The seminal role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) began, fittingly, in a basement: a modest, wood-paneled rec room in the Wisconsin home where Gary Gygax lived with his wife and three kids. There, Gygax and his friend Dave Arneson bonded over a shared interest in tabletop war games and J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings." In 1974, they went on to create one of the most influential and controversial pastimes of the late 20^th century.

Though D&D sprang from what was once considered a nerdy subculture—like the game-obsessed heroes of the Netflix series “Stranger Things”—it grew into a mainstream phenomenon. Its rise, however, unleashed both fandom and fear in 1980s America.

“In the old war games first developed by the Prussian army during the Napoleonic Wars, you were the general of an army and you were moving entire legions around,” explains David M. Ewalt, author of the D&D history Of Dice and Men.

In D&D, Gygax and Arneson introduced elements of fantasy fiction—wizards, barbarians, elves and more—but also centered the action on individuals rather than entire armies. “You are controlling one person and you’re changing where that character goes next and growing their skills and abilities over time," Ewalt explains.

Unlike previous war games that reenacted real battles, D&D was built on open-ended gameplay without a clear winner or end point. Instead, players collaborate in a collective adventure under the watchful eye of a “dungeon master,” who serves as both lead storyteller and referee. These innovations helped establish modern gaming’s emphasis on character progression and “leveling up,” a concept that now appears in everything from “Grand Theft Auto” to “Candy Crush.”

In its early years, the complicated nature of Dungeons & Dragons limited its growth. The first printing arrived as a plain brown box that contained polyhedron dice of unusual shapes and three typo-filled booklets detailing the game's complex rules.

“For a long time, it was only popular with this subset of male college student gamers who were interested in military history,” says Joseph Laycock, an associate professor of religious studies at Texas State University and author of Dangerous Games. “There was a lot of math in it.”

But the game’s reach slowly expanded. By the early 1980s, D&D gained a toehold in the zeitgeist; Steven Spielberg’s 1982 blockbuster E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial featured young Elliott trying to persuade his older brother to let him join a game.

That mainstream attention was not always positive. In 1979, 16-year-old college student James Dallas Egbert III disappeared into campus steam tunnels after leaving a suicide note. A private investigator hired by his family fixated on the boy’s occasional D&D games as the root cause of his troubles. Egbert resurfaced but died by suicide the following year.

Laycock says the investigator had overlooked other factors that may have led to his death. “[Egbert] started college when he was 16, he was manufacturing his own PCP or angel dust, he was gay and from a conservative Texas family,” Laycock says. “If there was any connection to D&D at all, it was that he was drawn to anything escapist because he had a lot he wanted to escape from.”

Public concern following his death inspired the alarmist 1982 TV movie “Mazes and Monsters,” starring a young Tom Hanks. Subsequent deaths involving D&D players further fueled panic among parents and conservative Christian groups. They seized on the inclusion of wizards and demons as evidence the game promoted witchcraft or even Satanism.

“If you look at some of the old D&D books, the covers are really scary. They’ve got big red demons on them,” Laycock says. “If you try to open up a rule book, it doesn’t make any sense. It’s a bunch of incomprehensible rules and tables. A lot of parents had an attitude of ‘better safe than sorry.’”

One parent took matters further. Patricia Pulling founded a group called Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons (BADD) after the 1982 death of her son, Irving. He had played the game a few times in his high school honors English class.

Her crusade gained traction, including a segment on “60 Minutes" in 1985. Many of her assertions, however, were easily debunked. (She claimed that 8 percent of the population of Richmond, Virginia, were Satanists.) But Pulling was part of a wider movement of parents expressing fears about latent Satanism and depravity in entertainment aimed at kids in the 1980s. Heavy metal bands like Black Sabbath and AC/DC also came under fire (and brimstone) for their influence on youth culture. Tipper Gore, then wife of future Vice President Al Gore, appeared at congressional hearings in the mid-‘80s and led a successful campaign to add advisory labels on music featuring explicit lyrics.

“D&D became a meme, a scapegoat,” Ewalt says. “If you review the literature from the time, anytime anybody was involved in a crime and they played D&D it’s cited as a likely influence.” Eventually, researchers debunked any link between playing the game and real-world violence.

Ironically, the bad press boosted the game's popularity and curiosity. “If you’re a 13-year-old boy and you hear this game might be Satanic, that can be a big draw to check it out,” Ewalt explains. Sales jumped from thousands annually into the millions.

Gygax’s company also made a concerted effort to broaden D&D’s appeal with a Saturday morning cartoon (1983-85) on CBS, novels set in the game’s fantasy realm and an updated rule book that simplified the math and (temporarily) removed demons and devils as characters.

Over time, the moral panic over Dungeons & Dragons died down. It joined video games, comic books and fantasy fiction as a pursuit embraced by outsiders and cool kids alike. Today, many creative figures credit the game with shaping their imaginations. Iron Man director Jon Favreau says his years as a dungeon master informed his storytelling approach; writer Ta-Nehisi Coates recalled how “hip-hop and Dungeons & Dragons” showed him that words could be beautiful; and the Duffer Brothers wrote "Stranger Things" centered around the game's monsters, rituals and nerd culture.

The barrier to entry for newcomers has also become less daunting. The web series “Critical Role,” featuring Hollywood voice actors in extended D&D campaigns, has garnered over 1 billion views and provides a live-action tutorial. Since Dungeons & Dragons' debut, more than 50 million people have played the game, estimates Wizards of the Coast, the Hasbro division that now owns the franchise.

If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or self-harming behaviors, call or text 988 to get help from the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.