1980s Dungeons & Dragons panic revisited

"Satanic Panic over Dungeons & Dragons" is one of my favorite genres of journalism, and Eric Grundhauser's article about it is a goodun, with all the right YouTube clips.

By 1984, fantasy roleplaying had evolved from thretening the innocent minds of America's youth to threatening their eternal salvation. Religious mini-comic author Jack Chick published one of his "Chick Tracts"-those extreme religious comic book pamphlets you find on the bus-about the issue, tying fantasy roleplaying directly to the occult. Called Dark Dungeons, the thin pamphlet tells the story of Debbie, a young woman who gets seduced by a witchy dungeon master who teaches her to embrace evil through the game. Through the course of the story, Debbie uses a "mind bondage" spell on her father to get spending money and finds the body of a friend who committed suicide after losing her game character.

They're still going on about it, too.