THE CONTROVERSY SURROUNDING ROLEPLAYING GAMES

  Concerns about Violence 

The Beginning of the Strife

      The most pressing and insidious concern about roleplaying games is that they somehow influence players to commit violent acts against themselves and others. As far as I am aware, roleplaying games were first linked to dangerous activities during the disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III in 1979. Egbert vanished for about a month and investigators searched tunnels beneath his school, with the idea that Egbert and his friends played D&D in them. Egbert was eventually found but the investigator who found him, William Dear, advised Egbert's parents to keep the details quiet. They did not release information on where their son had been found or why he had run away until Egbert fatally shot himself in August of 1980. After Egbert's death, it was finally revealed that the teen had run away to New Orleans in a very troubled state that had nothing to do with roleplaying games, and he botched an attempt to kill himself there. Egbert's parents also revealed that Dear had asked them to keep quiet in hopes of making a movie deal. William Dear published a book called The Dungeon Master: The Disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III in 1984. Rona Jaffe based her novel Mazes and Monsters on accounts of Egbert's disappearance, and this novel was later turned into a film starring Tom Hanks.

      The belief that D&D was responsible for Egbert's disappearance continued after his death, and the game was also implicated in the suicide of Irving "Bink" Pulling in June of 1982. Irving's mother, Patricia Ann Pulling, became convinced that her son's involvement with the game led to his decision to kill himself, so she created BADD, Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons. This organization, as far as I have been able to ascertain, was most concerned with occult influence on the nation, as well as crimes related to occult religious beliefs and organizations. 

      BADD was only one organization that took entertainment to task during the 1980s and indeed, there was a much larger trend going on that can easily be classified as a moral panic. People were terrified by the number of murders and suicides committed by young people and splashed across the news, and they were desperately looking for answers. Much of the media at that time was notably different from previous kinds of entertainment, like heavy metal music, the level of violence in movies, and roleplaying games. People began to blame these things for violent crimes; some people believed that such entertainment was only an influence, while others seemed to feel that the newer media were entirely to blame. Some thought that roleplaying games shouldn't be sold to minors, others called for bans in schools and recreation centers, while others suggested placing warning labels on the products to highlight their dangers, much like what we see on cigarettes. A number of people linked D&D and other media to cults, Satanism, and a great conspiracy of evil across the country. 

      What's more, perpetrators of some violent crimes began to use what can be called the "D&D made me do it" defense, saying that playing D&D pushed them to commit their crimes. This defense failed a vast majority of the time but the sheer mention of it was enough to validate the beliefs of some and to make others worry.

A Case in Point

      The links made between D&D and violent crimes have tended to be problematic at best and transparently misplaced at worst. The trouble is that once blame is broadcast, it can be difficult to effectively combat the public's initial impression. As a case in point, I would like to touch on the case of Ronald Lampasi, who admitted that he murdered his adoptive father and was present at the shooting of his adoptive mother in 1983. Just ten days after the couple was discovered shot in their home, the Los Angeles Times gave an initial report of the crime (June 14, 1983). Ronald Lampasi was only 16 at the time and spent his 17th birthday incarcerated. The boy's attorney admitted that he didn't yet know what had been going on to make Lampasi kill, but he did say the boy had "emotional problems." 

      The paper traced the family's recent troubles - John Lampasi, Ronald's adoptive father, had been arrested in 1980 as a child molester. Ronald's natural sisters, who had been adopted alongside him, both told police they had been molested by their adoptive father and were taken into protective custody. The girls told the police that both parents were abusive in physical and emotional terms but that their brother hadn't been abused. John Lampasi pled guilty to one count of child molestation and spent five months in jail. Ronald's sisters ran away from their next foster home and fell off the radar but Ronald remained in the Lampasi's custody. This led the police to discount the possibility that Ronald could have been abused and/or molested, either before the girls were removed or in the three years after. 

      This same article says that the police were investigating any part that D&D might have played in the attack, though Lampasi never claimed that D&D made him do it. The terms in the article are quite vague, since they had no idea what sort of link there might be. A law enforcement source said that "Dungeons and Dragons or various forms of devil worship would 'hold as much merit' as linking the crime to past family problems." In this way, we can see that some people were perfectly willing and able to sidestep Ronald Lampasi's experiences in order to attach blame to some other source. From an outside, later perspective, we have to pose the questions: can a roleplaying game really have more emotional effect than a person's life experiences? And should a person's life experiences be entirely discounted because they liked to play a game?

      Initially, prosecutor Mike Maguire simply said that D&D might have had something to do with the shootings. Maguire went so far as to bring in witnesses to testify to the fact that Lampasi liked and played D&D. Maguire made the argument that Lampasi had never been molested, but had killed his parents while trying to act out a game of Dungeons and Dragons. Maguire also argued that Lampasi was involved in devil worship. The judge allowed the D&D argument in Lampasi's case, but the judge for Lampasi's friend, David Christianson, found the line of inquiry irrelevant. At Lampasi's sentencing in October of 1985, the Superior Court Judge James Cook openly questioned the relevance of the D&D argument and the concerns about demon worship. Cook did not excuse Lampasi for his crimes and neither should anyone else, but he did uphold the value of Lampasi's experience over any tenuous connections to gaming or devilry.

The Absence of Causation

      Many arguments that link D&D to violent crimes point to the perpetrator's participation in roleplaying games as though it is a major cause of their violent behavior. Any reference to roleplaying games is construed as evidence that roleplaying games are responsible. William Schnoebelen, for instance, gives a list of people who committed violent crimes in his argument against D&D. Vernon Butts, Schnoebelen claims, "was an avid D&D player." A 14 year old boy, whose name was withheld due to age, killed himself by hanging - and he was a D&D player. Tom Sullivan Jr. fatally stabbed his mother in a ritualistic manner and he also happened to be a D&D player. Danny Remeta supposedly mentioned D&D himself in one interview but none of the articles I've been able to find have implicated roleplaying games in his crimes. 

      Out of a list of twelve violent crimes, most committed by young people, not one proves that D&D causes violent behavior. The simple fact that a perpetrator has played D&D (or any other roleplaying game) is not enough to prove that D&D is responsible, in part or in whole, for their behavior. To say that D&D is the primary cause is to say that a roleplaying game is the primary concern in a person's life, to the exclusion of all of the other major issues that are likely to cause emotional disturbance. To say that D&D is the primary cause of an episode of violence is to ignore the other facets of a person's life, to devalue those facets, and to completely disregard the complexity of human choice. Religious*Tolerance.org has a list of studies and sources that have found no viable link between roleplaying games and crimes. As of this date I have seen no sound statistical data to show even a correlation between roleplaying games and violence - and I have certainly seen no reliable data to prove that roleplaying games cause violence of any kind, against oneself or others.

So Where Does This Leave Us?

      The hysteria surrounding roleplaying games ebbed as the 1980s drew to a close but reports of roleplayers committing crimes has continued, albeit at a much slower rate. It appears that less and less crimes have been blamed on roleplaying games since the mid-1990s but I have no way to be sure. My search of newspaper archives has reaped more information from the 1980s than the years following that decade, by far. For the most part, many people have abandoned the belief that roleplaying games cause violence - there are simply too many players now and not nearly enough crimes to account for such a belief. We are still left with the hard questions - why do young people kill, why do they commit suicide - and no easy answers. 

      In a way, it would be comforting if we could say that one thing, without a doubt, consistently caused people to kill - because at least then we would know and could take action. If roleplaying games could be proven to be the primary cause of a significant amount of violence, we could stop making them and expect to see a drastic drop in youth crime. Less kids would kill themselves. Less kids would kill others. Less families would suffer. It would be such an easy answer and would save people some of the worst pain we can feel. Except that I'm willing to wager most violent kids have never been exposed to roleplaying games and most kids who are exposed do not violently lash out. There are too many other factors to youth crime that take precedence: poverty, drugs, gangs, family abuse, and so on. And then there's the fact that, despite the giant, young market for roleplaying, trading card, and video games - all of which have been duly vilified - juvenile crime has been on the decline. The University of Virginia Youth Violence Project uses FBI data to show that juvenile arrests for homicide have been steadily dropping since the early 1990s and a further look at FBI crime data shows that juveniles are being arrested less across the board.

      In the end, there are no easy answers - but there are easy condemnations.

Newspaper Resources

      For those interested in reviewing the articles I have read for this section, please refer to the list below. Each link leads to a copy of the newspaper article in question, for review purposes. I am certain many other articles can also be found through your local library.

James Dallas Egbert III

Author Unknown. "'Dungeons' Mystery Boy Shoots Himself in the Head." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, CA. August 12, 1980: A2.

Krimm, Teri. "IT WAS A TRAGIC END FOR TEENAGE GENIUS." Boston Globe. Boston, MA. August 25, 1980: 1.

Robbins, William. "A Brilliant Student's Troubled Life and Early Death." New York Times (Late Edition (East Coast)) New York, NY. August 25, 1980: A.20.

Ronald Lampasi

Frank, George. "Parental Slaying: Past Troubles and Fantasy Game Explored." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, CA. June 14, 1983: OC_A1.

Hicks, Jerry. "Role-Playing Game May Have Played Role in Slaying, D.A. Says." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, CA. May 9, 1985: OC_A1.

-----. "Lampasi Convicted of Shooting Parents: Man Guilty of Murdering Father, Attempting to Kill Mother." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, CA. June 7, 1985: OC_A1.

-----. "Lampasi Gets 25 Years Plus for Shootings." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, CA. October 18, 1985: OC_A1.

Attempted Ban on D&D

Author Unknown. "Ban on 'Dragons' Reaffirmed." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, CA. June 26, 1981: C4.

Heffler, Robin. "Valiant Parents Fail in 'Dragon' Match." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, CA. March 7, 1982: WS5.

Taylor, Ronald B. "Fight Over Game: Play or Worship of Devil?" Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, CA. June 24, 1981: B3.

The D&D Defense

Maharaj, Davan. "Defense Based on Game Hasn't Won Many Juries." Newsday (Combined editions). Long Island, N.Y. Jun 16, 1988: 27.

Violence, the Occult, and D&D

Anonymous Author. "Those Demons!" Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, CA. June 25, 1981: F6.

Cooper, Lauren. "SOME SEE A DARK SIDE TO RPGS." Orlando Sentinel. Orlando, FLA. July 21, 2000: X2.

Jones, Tamara. "Slaying Rocks Close-Knit Town; Three Youths Held." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, CA. July 14, 1985: 2.

McVicar, D. Morgan. "A boy's death, a fantasy game, divide a town." Providence Journal. Providence, RI Sep 22, 1985: A-01

O'Connor, Phillip J. "Fantasy game's role in Colorado slayings probed." Chicago Sun - Times. Chicago, ILL. July 18, 1985: 8.

Toth, John. "Fantasy game leads to magic, monsters and controversy." Houston Chronicle. Houston, TX. July 8, 1985: 10.

Witt, Howard. "FANTASY GAME TURNS INTO DEADLY REALITY." Chicago Tribune. Chicago, ILL. January 27, 1985: 3

Miscellaneous

Barber, Mary. "The Bottom Lines: Brainy Boys Learn About Game of Life in a Game of Good and Evil." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, CA. December 6, 1984: SG2.

Buckman, Jenifer V. "ANTI-OCCULT CRUSADER DIES AT PATRICIA PULLING WAS FOUNDER OF BADD." Richmond Times - Dispatch. Richmond, VA. September 19, 1997: B3

Jaffe, Rona. "Drugs, Fantasy: Games Give Students Their Own World." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, CA. December 16, 1981: G23.