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\title{Dungeons and Dragons: \\ Cause of Suicide or Parental Scapegoat?}
\author{\copyright1991 John G. Schroeder}
\date{conslt01@zeus.unomaha.edu}
\maketitle
\setcounter{page}{2}

{\noindent \Large
D}ungeons and Dragons was created in 1974 by Gary Gygax, an avid
medieval, fantasy, and romance fan (Weathers 109).  The game consists
of rule books, guide books, manuals, modules, dice, maps, figurines,
and reference books and has branched out to fill in more than eight
worlds.  The publisher, TSR, has become a major publisher in the
fantasy and science fiction genre.  In the seventeen years that
Dungeons and Dragons has been on the market, more than eight million
copies have been sold to three to four million people in the United
States alone (Brooke D1).

     According to Diane Weathers in Newsweek, college students are
the biggest fans of this game (109).  Even with the increasing
popularity of the game, there are those who oppose the sale of this
harmless game.  These people argue that Dungeons and Dragons, along
with all other similar games, lead to suicide and Satanism among
teenagers.  I've been playing the game for over ten years and have
played with many assorted individuals, and have never once been
around anyone who could not differentiate between reality and
fantasy.  Although role-playing games do create an intense
atmosphere, there is no documented evidence that Dungeons and Dragons
(D\&D) or any other role-playing game leads to suicide among
teenagers.

     John Eric Holmes, a staff physician at Los Angeles County
Hospital and associate professor of neurology at the University of
Southern California School of Medicine, writes in Confessions of a
Dungeon Master that one of his players, another doctor, invented a
character called Grog.  One day the doctor brought his girlfriend to
a game, and when Grog went into action, the other players said to
her, ``That's Grog.  You've probably never seen Grog before."  She
replied, ``Oh yes.  I think I've been in bed with Grog several times." 
This shows that players do not live out totally separate lives in
fantasy or take the fantasy home with them, but include a part of
themselves into each of their characters (87-88).

     Dr. Holmes' current gaming sessions started after he edited a
rule book for Dungeons and Dragons and his coworkers at the hospital
found his interest in the game and asked him to be their dungeon
master.  He has not always refereed for adults, though.  In his
earlier years, the doctor refereed a group of teenagers.  He said of
them that there was seldom a problem that could not be solved by
blowing the enemy to bits.  After the teenagers started to mature,
though, they started to get less into the pure bloodthirstiness and
more into the other aspects of the game such as romance and heroism. 
But the teenagers enjoyed the game for several reasons.  One of which
is that the universe of Dungeons and Dragons is ``produced by its
social reality."  It is something that teaches people how to act
together and not how to act alone.  It is something that teens enjoy
also, because it is something that is new to explore.  Dr. Holmes
said it best when he said ``You always wanted a world of magic and
mystery to explore, and now a group of your friends gathers every two
or three weeks to explore it with you.  For a few hours, everyone
agrees to accept that world, to accept your pretense that you are a
magician who can throw exploding balls of fire from one hand.  The
fantasy has become a reality, a sort of giant folie a deux, or shared
insanity."

     Gaming session can be very intense as problems pile up on the
players.  As more and more actions are taken by the players, the
Dungeon Master, or the person who controls the game, must keep track
of every single move and remember what will happen at a given point
down the road.  Even though the DM has trouble keeping things
straight, the players never erupt into bloodshed (even if tempers are
short at the time), only the characters do, and that is very
frequently.  The game is also a great stress reliever, because ``In
real life, you can't cleave the IRS man with your broadsword."
(Holmes 87)

     The Brotherhood Against D\&D (B.A.D.D.) disagrees with the
argument that role playing is a healthy outlet for violence, anger
and imagination.  They site several suicides that, according to
preliminary investigations, were caused solely by the game of
Dungeons and Dragons.  They argue that if even one suicide is caused
by Dungeons and Dragons, that the game should be removed from the
shelves.  B.A.D.D. has even sent propaganda to police departments
citing the link between suicide and Dungeons and Dragons and asked
the departments to find the link if it looks like Satanism is present
in a teen suicide case.

     B.A.D.D. was established by the mother of a suicide victim who,
at the time of his suicide, had been a player of Dungeons and Dragons
(Shuster 64).  The founder, Pat Pulling, said that the game manuals
give ``detailed descriptions of killing, satanic human sacrifice,
assassination, sadism, premeditated murder, and curses of insanity." 
The National Coalition on Television Violence, accompanying B.A.D.D.
in it's efforts to get the game banned, has petitioned the Federal
Trade Commission and the Consumer Protection Agency to require TSR
Inc. to put labels on all items sold relating to D\&D and to put
warnings on the cartoon ``Dungeons and Dragons" aired all over the
country on Saturday mornings (Shuster 64).

     Opponents to Dungeons and Dragons have been trying to get the
game banned from school districts all over the country.  With some
help from the media, they succeeded in some communities.  One such
example is the Putnam School board in Putnam, Connecticut.

     After a student in the Putnam school district committed suicide,
his parents attempted to get the game banned from the local schools. 
A school board member, Raymond Leduc, responded by saying that ``There
are more important things on the agenda than Dungeons and Dragons ---
mathematics, reading or smoking, for example.  My daughter played D\&D
since she was 16, and she is now happily married.  There is no
evidence that links D\&D to suicides."    At this board meeting
and several others afterwards, the school board rejected the idea of
a ban.  After a petition finally went around the community, the board
had to accept the ban, but did not support it.  Before the ban went
into effect, the local reverend,  Robert O. Bakke, stated that ``You
have authorized Russian roulette." (Brooke D1)

     Investigations into whether the Putnam suicide was related to
Dungeons and Dragons may surprise you.  Although the parents
adamantly blame the game of Dungeons and Dragons, the boy's friends
blame the suicide on his use of drugs.  Erik Bergeson, one of the
victim's friends, said ``I'm sick of them saying that Roland killed
himself because it was D\&D --- it was drugs." (Brooke D1)  His
friends were not the only people to come to this conclusion.  The
police officer who conducted the investigation, Paul Roy, stated that
``Dungeons and Dragons [in] no way killed this kid."  He went on to
say that the kid had gotten involved with drugs and had fought with
his mother (Brooke D1).

     Several studies have been done to determine whether or not
people who play Dungeons and Dragons are mentally different than
``normal" people.  One of these studies, reported in Psychology in the
Schools, gave players a 16-point test at a convention to see if
gamers were ``normal" or not.  Results came back normal in all
respects (330).  In another study, players were administered three
tests to measure alienation and anomie.  They were specifically
tested to see if the following were distorted: alienation,
powerlessness, normlessness, estrangement from work, cultural
estrangement, and meaninglessness.  Cultural estrangement was taken
as watching television or some other nonproductive chore around the
house.  The results were staggering.  Seventeen percent of the
players had feelings of meaninglessness as opposed to forty-six
percent of non-players.  Forty-nine percent of players felt they
watched too much television, while only twenty-three percent of
non-players acknowledged that they might be culturally estranged.  No
other fields of study had any major differences (De Renard 1221).

     Still, with all these facts against the fact that suicide is
caused by Dungeons and Dragons, people still blame suicide on the
game.  Case in point happened in Las Cruces, New Mexico.  Two U.S.
marines held up a gun store, stole over \$900 cash, and killed one
person and seriously wounded another.  The marines had been friends
for quite a while and had been on shore leave when they committed
this ``senseless act."  The two nineteen year old marines were
arrested at one of the boys' mother's house.  What disturbed many
people from Las Cruces was the attitude of the marines.  They
appeared to be totally nonchalant.  The two were arrested on charges
of: first degree murder, attempted murder, and armed robbery.  The
defense for the murderers was originally built around the scenario
that the marines were entering the store much the way characters in
D\&D enter a dungeon.  The defense was dropped and the two plead
guilty not long into the trial.  After the trial, no one, not even
the authorities or psychologists blame the game as the cause of
Mieritz' diagnosed paranoid schizophrenia.  Both the Marine Corps and
Dungeons and Dragons further put the case behind them by further
impairing the two boy's judgments.  Said the psychologist who
evaluated both marines, ``They were the impetus that led to this
completely unintelligent heist."

     In another murder case, a man in Riverhead, L.I. was convicted
of shooting his parents.  During the case, the defense's lawyer
decided to take the stand that Daniel Kasten, 20 years old, had been
under the control of his character, a mind flayer, in Dungeons and
Dragons.  The jury disbelieved him, and found him guilty of murder. 
The defense's lawyer, William Nash, stated ``This case is about
psychoses, delusions and schizophrenia.  Dungeons and Dragons is the
game Mr. Kasten decided to make his own reality."

     In an interview with Dr. Jack Stark, a well renowned
psychologist, many reasons for suicides among teenagers were given,
but Dungeons and Dragons was not one of them.  The major reasons for
suicide among teenagers that need immediate attention are: that most
teens experience sex at an earlier age, about twenty percent of teens
are substance abusers, over ten percent of preschoolers have been
involved with some sort of child abuse, and that over half of all
kids born in the 1980's will live with only one parent.  Dungeons and
Dragons has no place being involved with suicides.  It is an excuse,
not a cause of the suicides.

     According to Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its
Consequences,  twenty eight teenagers (at the time this article was
written) who often played Dungeons and Dragons had committed suicide. 
While this may seem like a large number to die from a single cause,
two more facts should be taken into account.  First is the fact that
more than three million teenagers play the game.  The second fact is
that the rate for teenage suicide is approximately twelve teens per
hundred thousand.  These facts, when put together, suggest that the
rate for teenage suicide from Dungeons and Dragons should be over
three hundred sixty (Paulos 168-169).

     Critics claiming that Dungeons and Dragons causes teenager
suicide should first research the facts.  There has been no
documented evidence that suicide is caused by Dungeons and Dragons or
any other role playing game.  There has been no killing of any kind
directly linked to the game, except for the killing being done by TSR
and the bookstores that sell the game and all the accessories for
eighteen dollars a book.  Concerned parents should not ban their
children from participating in the game but should watch or join a
game with an open mind before making any final decisions.

Mrs. Pulling obviously feels otherwise.

\begin{center}
\parbox{2.5in}{\em
          You do not casually play this game, just like you do not
          casually take heroin\ldots This game captures youths totally. It
          stimulates their imagination, all right, but it's an 
          imagination of killing and horror (Witt 1;3).
}
\end{center}

I can agree only with part of what Mrs. Pulling said.  Dungeons and
Dragons does get very intense and is not for the casual player.  The
game also does stimulate the imagination, but not to the extent that
players would go out on a murder spree to kill off friends and foe. 
I agree with Gary Gygax.

\begin{center}
\parbox{2.5in}{\em
          The majority of fantasy games are cooperative.  Players work
          together to win.  They are not trying to kill each other\ldots
          Accusing the D\&D games as the reason for teen-age suicide
          is a cross between McCarthyism and the Salem witch hunts.  I
          have not seen one iota of clinical evidence linking role
          playing gaming with a teen-age suicide.  This is only a
          coincidence because, unfortunately, teen-age suicide is an
          epidemic in our country.\\

          Unfortunately, what we have is religious fanatics who object
          to the mentioning of mythological gods, demons and devils in
          the game.  From a game aspect, who else do the good guys
          fight? (Games C13).
}
\end{center}

     Due to the fact that there has been no hard evidence cited
against the role playing game of Dungeons and Dragons or any other
game,  there should be no question as to whether role playing games
cause suicide.  The players of the game play in an intense
atmosphere, but understand the limitations of the game as well as the
difference between characters and players.  As with any subject that
may arise, there will always be a person who will be an exception to
the rule.  As far as suicide and gaming are concerned, there should
be far more suicides and murders if the normal conventions are used. 
Those people who consider Dungeons and Dragons to be a threat to
society should sit in on a game with an open mind so that they could
find out the truth about what actually happens during the course of
a gaming session.  As there is no evidence that Dungeons and Dragons
causes suicide amongst teenagers, there should be no argument about
the game.\\


\begin{center}
{\Large Bibliography}
\end{center}

\begin{itemize}
\item ``At a Games Convention, Fun and Fantasy Reign." New York Times  26
     Aug. 1985: C13.
\item Brooke, James.  ``A Suicide Spurs Town to Debate Nature of a Game." 
     New York Times 22 Aug. 1985: D1.
\item De Renard, L.A., and Kline, L.M.  ``Alienation and the Game Dungeons
     and Dragons."  Psychological Reports 66 (1990): 1219-1222.
\item Holmes, John E.  ``Confessions of a Dungeon Master."  Psychology Today 
     Nov. 1980: 84-94.
\item Elshof, Phyllis T.  ``D \& D: A Fantasy Fad or Dabbling in the
     Demonic?"  Christianity Today 4 Sept. 1981: 56.
\item ``Murder Jury Rejects Fantasy-Game Claim."  New York Times  10 Sept.
     1985: B5.
\item Paulos, John A.  Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its
     Consequences.  New York 1988.  168-169.
\item Shuster, William G.  ``Critics Link a Fantasy Game to 29 Deaths." 
     Christianity Today  17 May, 1985: 64-66.
\item Simon, A.  ``Emotional Stability Pertaining to the Game of Dungeons
     and Dragons."  Psychology in the Schools 24 (1987): 329-332.
\item Smith, Toby.  ``The Mission: Two Marines, a Game and a Cold-Blooded
     Killing."  Albuquerque Journal Magazine  1 Sept. 1987: 4+.
\item Weathers, Diane and Foote, Donna M.  ``Beware the Harpies!"  Newsweek
     9 Sept. 1988: 109.  
\item Witt, Howard.  ``Fantasy Game Turns into Deadly Reality."  Chicago
     Tribune 27 Jan. 1988: 1;3.
\end{itemize}

\newpage
\ \\
\vspace{6in}

\begin{quote}
``I do not feel obliged to believe that same God who endowed us with sense,
reason, and intellect, had intended for us to forgo their use."

\ \ \ --- Galileo
\end{quote}

\end{document}


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                              Outline

Thesis:   Although role-playing games do create an intense
atmosphere, there is no documented evidence that Dungeons and Dragons
(D&D) or any other role-playing game leads to suicide among
teenagers.
I.   John Eric Holmes, wrote an article entitled Confessions of a   
      Dungeon Master. 
     A.   Doctor, invented a character called Grog.
          1.  Doctor brings girlfriend to a game.
          2.  Grog goes into action.
          3.  The other players said to her, "That's Grog.  You've
                probably never seen Grog before."
          4.  She replied, "Oh yes.  I think I've been in bed with
                Grog several times."  
     B.   Players do not live out totally separate lives in fantasy
            or take the fantasy home with them, but include a part of
            themselves into each of their characters.
     C.   Dr. Holmes' started after he edited a rule book for     
            Dungeons and Dragons and his coworkers at the         
            hospital found his interest in the game and asked him to
            be their dungeon master.
     D.   He has not always refereed for adults, though.  
          1.   In his earlier years, the doctor refereed a group of
                 teenagers.  
          2.   There was seldom a problem that could not be solved by
                blowing the enemy to bits.
II.  Gaming session can be very intense as problems pile up on the
       players.  
     A.   The DM, must keep track of every single move and remember
            what will happen at a given point down the road.  
     B.   Even though the DM has trouble keeping things straight, the
            players never erupt into bloodshed.
     C.   The game is also a great stress reliever.
III. The Brotherhood Against D&D (B.A.D.D.) disagrees with the    
       argument that role playing is a healthy outlet for violence,
       anger and imagination.
     A.   They cite several suicides.
     B.   If even one suicide is caused by Dungeons and Dragons, that
            the game should be removed from the shelves.
     C.   B.A.D.D. has even sent propaganda to police departments.
IV.  B.A.D.D. was established by the mother of a suicide victim.
     A.   Her son had been a player of Dungeons and Dragons.
     B.   "Detailed descriptions of killing, satanic human sacrifice,
            assassination, sadism, premeditated murder, and curses of
            insanity."
     C.   The National Coalition on Television Violence.
          1.   Petitioned the FTC and the CPA to require labels on
                 all items sold relating to D&D and the cartoon   
                 "Dungeons and Dragons."
V.   Opponents to Dungeons and Dragons have been trying to get the
       game banned from school districts all over the country.
     A.   Putnam school district suicide.
     B.   School board member's quote.
     C.   The school board rejected the idea of a ban. 
     D.   Petition and the acceptance of the ban.
     E.   "You have authorized Russian roulette."
VI.  Case studies give more insight to "problem".
     A.   Study1.
     B.   Study2.
VII. Murders linked and unlinked to D & D.
     A.   Marine murders in Alb.
     B.   Riverhead, L.I. shooting 
VIII.Dr. Jack Stark's interview gives new insights to suicide.
IX.  Innumeracy Data sheds new light on numbers of deaths.
X.   Mrs. Pulling speaks out against TSR and role playing games.
XI.  Gary Gygax defends Dungeons and Dragons and all role playing  
       games.
Conclusion:    Due to the fact that there has been no hard evidence
               cited against the role playing game of Dungeons and
               Dragons or any other game,  there should be no question
               as to whether role playing games cause suicide.  The
               players of the game play in an intense atmosphere, but
               understand the limitations of the game as well as the
               difference between characters and players.  As with any
               subject that may arise, there will always be a person
               who will be an exception to the rule.  As far as suicide
               and gaming are concerned, there should be far more
               suicides and murders if the normal conventions are used. 
               Those people who consider Dungeons and Dragons to be a
               threat to society should sit in on a game with an open
               mind so that they could find out the truth about what
               actually happens during the course of a gaming session. 
               As there is no evidence that Dungeons and Dragons causes
               suicide amongst teenagers, there should be no argument
               about the game.



