Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons

A group started (and pretty much only consisting of) Patricia Pulling. She started the group after her son, Irving "Bink" Pulling, commited suicide in AD 1982 June. She became convinced that his death had been triggered by his involvement with Dungeons and Dragons and that the spells and such like described in the books were REAL.

She convinced many people (including Tipper Gore) and groups who didn’t know much about roleplaying games that they induced players to commit suicide and murder. Among other things she petitioned the Consumer Product Safety Commission to place warning labels on RPGs. (They turned her down.) Due to her activity many people America there have a somewhat negative view of roleplaying, especially Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christians.

When Mrs. Pulling died in AD 1997 her group went with her and so did almost the last of the hysteria over roleplaying.

Since the old anti-D&D hate organization is dead, let me present the current holders of this famed acronym (at least in RPG world):

Bothered About Disposable Dragons

None of this material has been taken from the official website (http://www.baddragon.org/) of this organization. I feel strongly enough about this issue that I'm perfectly able to make my own rants.

Maybe the role playing game companies are to be blamed - many examples they set, for example through the rule books and adventure modules, usually use dragons as the final "boss" or nemesis of the adventure. Or maybe not - the legends, where "noble" knights kill innocent, if slightly hungry dragons, are to be blamed - but the game companies purposefully make it "acceptable" to use dragons as the antagonists of the stories, without giving them any other purpose of their evilbeing in the adventure than the "dragon nature".

As a result, in countless adventures the dragons are nothing but simple monsters.

This is unacceptable.

...

While I doubt the Bothered About Disposable Dragons organization is all that serious, I feel they do make a very good and valid point: Dragons are more versatile creatures than what the adventures often show, and deserve better treatment among adventure makers!

Dragons are rare, extremely powerful and most of all intelligent creatures. The adventure makers use them often, make it reasonably easy for the players to defeat them, and often keep the dragons as "big dumb monsters" and give them no background or anything interesting to say!

I beg the DMs everywhere to not to abuse these majestic creatures further!


(Hmm, I should also write of Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons some day...)

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