Satanic Panic!

It finally happened.  After twenty years of involvement in the tabletop role-playing hobby, I finally encountered someone who buys into the Dungeons & Dragons Satanic Panic!

It was earlier this week, I was chatting with a guy I knew vaguely and had bumped into again.  We were both just sitting and talking while we waited and we got onto our hobbies.  I mentioned I was currently creating a character for Wraith: the Oblivion and he asked if it was anything like Dungeons & Dragons, which he had played in the past.  Not wanting to debate the finer points of storytelling games with him I agreed but before either of us could say anything else we were interrupted by the crazy!

On the other side of the bench there was a woman who I hadn't paid any attention to upon arriving.  But as soon as D&D was mentioned she twisted around to face us and pronounced "There's black magic in those books!"

That stopped us both in our tracks.  I had never imagined I would run into this in England after the year 2000, assuming such opinions were held only be overly-religious fruit-loops in the sillier states of America back in the eighties.  But no, here I was, face-to-face with such stupidity quite speechless.

Initial surprise wearing off, I began to counter with something along the lines of "No, I'm pretty sure they're..." before being cut off with, I kid you not, "Dungeons Dragons makes you kill people and take drugs!"

Before any response could be mustered she just got up and walked off, clearly no longer interested in whatever she had been waiting for.

How sad is that?  I finally come into contact with someone head-the-balls enough to say this and I was so baffled I couldn't even put forward a good argument.  Typical.