When I was a teen the D&D satanic panic was in full swing.
I often had game books with me, and got the obvious response for it.
Most of it was yelling or being told I'm going to hell, but this was adults yelling and screaming in a 14 or 15 year old's face.
I only got attacked - I think three times. Once throwing rocks and a baseball bat, once an adult punching me at a Waffle House (got told I was always welcome by the staff though), and my pastor hitting me and kicking me out of church.
@mason @Kalshann the Satanic Panic started, at least visibly, in California and then spread through basically the world through the 80s, 90s, and early 00s.
It *technically* never ended, it just got a lot quieter as the vast majority of accusations and cases, and the pseudoscience behind a lot of it, were disproven.
@TheSunnyOne @Kalshann Oh, I'm aware of it, and I've enjoyed the Chick Tracts take on Dungeons and Dragons. I just never encountered that in Massachusetts. There was even a Dungeons and Dragons Club somewhere in either middle school or junior high. It was pretty well accepted where I was, and I never caught any grief for playing it, starting in the late 70s.
If anyone missed out:
https://www.chick.com/products/tract?stk=0046
You can't really blame them. Check out what they do for roleplaying themselves and you'll see why they're easily spooked. From Estus Pirkle:
@mason @TheSunnyOne
The whole thing was national - new reports, hell I remember being voluntold to attend a 'intervention' by southern baptists that had people doing confessionals about their D&D experiences (and straight up lying about 'feeling the devil' as they fought gobilns or whatever).
It probably missed the more secular or even less right-wing religious areas, honestly. It occasionally gets a minor revival when some mega-church remembers it'll let them abuse kids.
Kalshann
Mason Loring Bliss
lez-anya