Wednesday, June 02, 2004
Still holding a grudge after all these years...
Religious organizations are probably the seed for most ignorance about Dungeons & Dragons and related roleplaying games, and it's unfortunate that such a small vocal minority is able to affect public institutions, such as schools.
Perhaps my worst encounter with anti-D&D sentiments had to do with the formation of a D&D club back in 1992. During my Grade 11 year, I met a guy named Chris Chesher at Pine Ridge Secondary School. Chesher was a major social outcast, but he got along well enough with those on the fringes that he made a few friends. One of them was me, although a couple of years later, we'd gone our separate ways and generally regarded each other in negative manners.
I remember first being introduced to Chesher by Harley Preston in the Pine Ridge library. Harley knew I was a D&D player, and he had met Chesher in one of his classes (obviously one of the few Harley attended regularly *grin*). Since Chesher was a gamer, he connected the two of us, and an instant friendship was struck. Chesher and I soon set to work to put together a D&D club where we would host a game during lunch hour once a week. Chesher volunteered to dungeon master the campaign, and we quickly put together a group -- Harley, the trio of "Scott, Scott and Not-Scott" (Not-Scott turned out to be another Chris, actually, but we didn't learn that for months), Steve Campbell and yours truly.
This was sometime during the second semester of the year, and we simply asked the librarian -- Mrs. Cotter, as I recall -- if we could use one of the study rooms every Tuesday at lunch for D&D. Although the game kind of sucked and players came and went, we played more or less regularly during that semester. We had a good reputation, weren't too loud and were generally polite. The summer came and the group stopped.
In the fall of that year, as Grade 12 got going, we approached Cotter to ask if we could once again use one of the study rooms for a D&D club. The answer was no. We were quite shocked and asked for an explanation. Cotter was nice enough to give us one, but we were outraged at the answer. Apparently the faculty of the school had caught wind of the club's existence and it came up at a staff meeting. Several teachers had voiced concerns because of the various beliefs that D&D was evil and a corrupting influence on youths. I don't know if anybody stood up for the group, and I don't even know which teachers were against us, but the decision was made to put the D&D club down like a mangey dog.
We tried once or twice to play in the hallway outside of the library just to spite whichever staff members had ruled against our harmless gathering, but the constant comings and goings of staff members and students made it a less-than-ideal setting to run a game. The D&D club folded.
Perhaps my worst encounter with anti-D&D sentiments had to do with the formation of a D&D club back in 1992. During my Grade 11 year, I met a guy named Chris Chesher at Pine Ridge Secondary School. Chesher was a major social outcast, but he got along well enough with those on the fringes that he made a few friends. One of them was me, although a couple of years later, we'd gone our separate ways and generally regarded each other in negative manners.
I remember first being introduced to Chesher by Harley Preston in the Pine Ridge library. Harley knew I was a D&D player, and he had met Chesher in one of his classes (obviously one of the few Harley attended regularly *grin*). Since Chesher was a gamer, he connected the two of us, and an instant friendship was struck. Chesher and I soon set to work to put together a D&D club where we would host a game during lunch hour once a week. Chesher volunteered to dungeon master the campaign, and we quickly put together a group -- Harley, the trio of "Scott, Scott and Not-Scott" (Not-Scott turned out to be another Chris, actually, but we didn't learn that for months), Steve Campbell and yours truly.
This was sometime during the second semester of the year, and we simply asked the librarian -- Mrs. Cotter, as I recall -- if we could use one of the study rooms every Tuesday at lunch for D&D. Although the game kind of sucked and players came and went, we played more or less regularly during that semester. We had a good reputation, weren't too loud and were generally polite. The summer came and the group stopped.
In the fall of that year, as Grade 12 got going, we approached Cotter to ask if we could once again use one of the study rooms for a D&D club. The answer was no. We were quite shocked and asked for an explanation. Cotter was nice enough to give us one, but we were outraged at the answer. Apparently the faculty of the school had caught wind of the club's existence and it came up at a staff meeting. Several teachers had voiced concerns because of the various beliefs that D&D was evil and a corrupting influence on youths. I don't know if anybody stood up for the group, and I don't even know which teachers were against us, but the decision was made to put the D&D club down like a mangey dog.
We tried once or twice to play in the hallway outside of the library just to spite whichever staff members had ruled against our harmless gathering, but the constant comings and goings of staff members and students made it a less-than-ideal setting to run a game. The D&D club folded.
// posted by Chris @ 3:41 PM 
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