Some of you may be too young to remember, but this is basically the shit a lot of gamers had to deal with growing up. Before there was an xBox in every frat house so bros could snipe and teabag each other in real-time, parents were Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons (B.A.D.D.). One person in particular had the limelight: Patricia Pulling, founder of B.A.D.D., a private investigator and expert witness in several criminal cases involving gaming.Mrs. Pulling’s career as an occult investigator began with the unfortunate death of her son, Irving Lee “Bink” Pulling. On 9 June 1982, Bink shot himself in the chest with a handgun, “hours after a D&D® curse was placed on him during a game conducted at his local high school.”
In 1990, science fiction author, skeptic, and roleplaying game designer Michael A. Stackpole ripped the shit out of her with thePulling Report.
If you're a gamer, this is one of the sourcebooks for your life. This is your heritage. More importantly, it's so dated that some of the rebuttals are as hilarious as the material they're intended to rebut.
The Pulling Report is basically Stackpole putting a face on a movement, and then tearing it down. Patricia Pulling's son committed suicide, and she blamed D&D, which she linked with Satanism (it helped this was during the bloody stupid Satanic Ritual Abuse moral panic; thank you Geraldo). To this end she foisted useless material to police like this questionnaire:
THE WHO WHAT WHEN WHERE AND HOW OF TEEN SATANISM
WHO
1. Adolescents from all walks of life.
2. Many from middle to upper middle class families
3. Intelligent
Over or Under Achievers
Creative/Curious
Some are Rebellious
Some have low self esteem and are loners
Some children have been abused (physically or sexually)
WHEN does this occur?
It appears the ages most vulnerable are 11-17
WHERE?
1. Public places such as rock concerts, game clubs in communities or at school.
2. Private parties at a friend’s home.
HOW?
1. Through Black Heavy Metal Music
2. Through fantasy role playing games like Dungeons & Dragons (R)
3. Obsession with movies, videos, which have occult themes
4. Collecting and reading/researching occult books
5. Involvement with “Satanic Cults”, [sic] through recruitment
6. Some are born into families who pratice [sic] “satanic cult rituals”
TWO BASIC PRINCIPLES APPLY HERE “Law of Attraction” and the “Law of Invitation”
WHAT can be expected?
1. Obsession with occult entertainment
2. Minor to major behavior disorders
3. Committing crimes and status offenses such as:
A. Running away
B. Graverobbing (such as bones)
C. Breaking and entering to steal religious artifacts or sometimes stealing small items to prove loyalty to the group
D. Defacing public or private property using “Satanic Graffetti [sic]” or related Graffetti [sic]
E. Threatening to kill (self or others, self mutilation is very common)
F. Aggression directed towards family, teachers and authority figures
G. Contempt for organized religion
H. Supremist attitudes
I. Kidnapping or assistance in kidnapping
J. Murder
K. Suicide pacts among members of the group
WHAT can we do?
1. Document all information relating to occult involvement (even if it does not appear relevant at the time)
2. Keep an open mind
3. Stay objective
4. Never assume that an individual is acting along [sic] until all other information surrounding the case and individual has been fully investigated.
5. If individual is involved in “satanic activity,” he/she will deny a great deal to protect other members of the group as well as the “satanic philosophy”.[sic]
6. Have a team approach, work with a therapist, a clergymen and other helping professionals.
7. Educate the community so that potential tragedies might be avoided.
It is very important to understand that not all players of fantasy role playing games over identify with the game and or their player/characters. However, it appears that a significant amount of youngsters are having difficulty with separating fantasy from reality. Or in other instances, their role playing has modified their behavior to the extent that they react in real life situations in the same fashion that they would react in a gaming situation. This is not always obvious or apparent to the suspect. The personality change is so subtle that in some cases the role player is unaware of any behavior or personality changes.
Stackpole likes to point out just how insane Pulling's questions are. Let's look at some of the questions! (Stackpole's comments are in italics)
I admit it, imagining games circa 1990 as "mature" makes me snicker. It was the dawn of Shadowrun, White Wolf was cranking up the splatbook engine, and TSR was losing their goddamned minds...and that's without looking at all the indie clutter...and this new card game was making big noises...1. Since it is necessary to have a Dungeon Master or game master/leader and two or more player characters, it is important to ask the suspect, who is the Dungeon Master. [sic] (At this point you may get double talk about several people being the Dungeon Master or the suspect may say “no one in particular. [sic] This is not typically standard. Generally there is one person who assumes the continuous lead of Dungeon Master.)
Actually, sharing the Gamemaster duties in a group is quite common. For example, one gaming group in Phoenix had a half-dozen Gamemasters working within the same world-setting in a superhero game. Switching off Gamemastering duties, especially between game systems, is very common and gives everyone a chance to experience both sides of the game. This tendency to share Gamemastering duties is by no means just a recent development, but it has become far more prevalent as games matured in the latter half of the 1980s.
There's a direct correllation between games ceasing to be D&D clones and "going classless," but to say that "virtually no game has come out with character classes" since 1983 was...probably wishfull thinking on Stackpole's part.2. What is the character of your suspect in the game?
They will be as follows: Thief, Magic User, Fighter, Cleric. In the aforementioned character classes they may be sub-classes that the individual will refer to such as Thief-Assassin, etc.
These are most often known as character classes in gaming. They were very common in early RPGs, but often went by other names, like Rogue, Wizard, Shaman, etc. Since 1983 or so, virtually no game has come out with character classes because they are restrictive to play. It would be very easy for a player to deny having a Thief or Magic User or Fighter or Cleric – without lying about it in any way.
I'm with Mike on this one, I'm not even sure what the question is. It sounds a little dirty, actually. "Yeah, you ran that Paladin of Horus/Lightbringer did you? Did you run his mount too? Huh? Didja? Little slut."3. Also, ask the individual if he “ran” multiple characters such as a Fighter/Magic-user.
The same comment as above applies – denying knowledge of how to answer this question would not be uncommon among gamers, nor would it be an attempt to hide cult involvement.
It's okay Mike, you can pimp Renegade Legion here. No-one will blame you. Seriously though, can you see a trial where the cops submit your character sheet as evidence? "Your honor, as you can see here the defendent had an 18/50 Strength. That's 6-6-6 - proof of her glorious allegiance to Satan!"4. Each character will have certain abilities or attributes such as Strength, Wisdom, Intelligence, Charisma, Constitution and Dexterity.
These abilities are obtained by rolling 3 6-sided dice. Therefore, the ability score of each category will range from 3 to 18. You should find out what the [attributes are for their current game characters].
Two problems here. Many games have attributes with different names, like Agility, Speed, Comeliness, Presence, Essence and Body. Some game groups, as they find it necessary, make up their own attributes and add them to their games. Any list given to a police officer in the course of an investigation would likely include attributes not listed above.
Furthermore only in D&D are scores restricted to 3-18. In Tunnels & Trolls, for example, scores have no upper limit. In Traveller they went from 1 to F and in ShadowRun they go from 1-7. In a game the author finished designing in July 1989, (the Renegade Legion Role Playing Game, slated for summer 1990 release from FASA Corp.) attributes run from 2-20 initially and are determined by point allocation or the roll of 2 ten sided dice.
As above, perfectly correct and truthful answers to these questions can be given that do not coincide with Pulling’s suggested answers without cult involvement.
This is written back when there were SF games worth talking about. And things like psionics in SF weren't even blinked at and of course weren't magic because it was science fiction.5. How long has the individual been playing this role playing game?
There is no clue given on a proper answer and the relevance of this question is doubtful. With over 300 role playing games in existence, and players constantly shifting from one to another as they get bored or the Gamemastering duties shift, length of time involved with one game is irrelevant. A long-time player could have been playing a particular game for only the month since it appeared on the market, for example.
Another important point is that the popularity of certain games has shifted. Fantasy is no longer as popular as it once was and Science Fiction games have really picked up in numbers of players. Many of the SF games feature no magic and no religion, hence clearly lack the diabolical lures Mrs. Pulling and others find in Dungeons & Dragons.
I keep my dead character's sheets in a black three-ring binder called "The Graveyard."6. How long has he/she been playing the particular character that he is currently playing?
Again, no clue as to a right answer is provided. While it is true that players will become attached to characters, that attachment is no more sinister than a golfer’s attachment to his set of clubs. And, as with a golfer and a broken club, a dead character is exchanged for another character.
Yes, we did just get a Roll vs. Role argument. Can you tell Stackpole is an OG?7. What is his level of his character/characters? Be specific.
No clue for an answer here, but Mrs. Pulling must see this as an important question because it appears again as question 12. There she explains that level reflects how much power a character has. This is only true in games where they have levels. Like character classes, levels have become somewhat passé in more recent games.
Curiously, the “power level” concept of gaming runs counter to the “role playing” aspects that Mrs. Pulling sees as dangerous in games. In a gaming group where role-playing predominates, power level and combat are downplayed because that interferes with the role playing. (Imagine an improvisational play in which the cast has to spend two minutes out of every five rolling dice. It would be decidedly boring, as it is in gaming. “Role-playing versus roll-playing” has long been a dichotomy in gaming and the two do not mix well together.)
Bit of truth in advertising here, but it needs to be said: alignments are not fun.8. What is his/her alignment?
The following are a list of categories for alignment: Chaotic Evil, Chaotic Good, Chaotic Neutral, Lawful Evil, Lawful Good, Lawful Neutral, Neutral Evil, Neutral Good and Neutral.
...Observations indicate that in the past a significant number of adolescents will [sic] choose an evil alignment. The reasons that young players give for choosing an evil alignment is they feel that there are less restrictions on the player/characters therefore, they can do more, get by with more and stay alive longer in the game.
In reality, most players do whatever they have to do and don’t worry about alignment. Alignments are generally viewed with distaste among players and are not featured in many games outside the D&D family. (The author once postulated an alignment system for a game that consisted of one axis running from Naughty to Nice and the other from Sloppy to Neat, but it never caught on.) Alignments are basically silly and impede play, so are most often ignored.
(Pulling continues in this section by noting “There was a young boy who was fourteen years old in Orlando, Florida who stated that he has a Thief with a Lawful Good Alignment. In reality thieves are not thought of in society as Good, therefore the confusion over proper attitudes about more qualities become confused. Right and Wrong are situational. The author would like to point out that Robin Hood or the patriots who held the Boston Tea Party could have been tagged with the label of Good Thieves. )
9. Has the individual has [sic] any curses placed on his/her character? If yes, what kind and get him to discuss the procedure, type of curse.
Mrs. Pulling’s concern over curses stems from her belief that having a curse placed on his character is what drove her son to kill himself. That belief is pure nonsense and is based, as will be shown, in a willful ignorance of the circumstances surrounding Bink Pulling’s suicide. To suggest that an event in a game could cause an otherwise normal child to kill himself means that one would have to accept the idea that a player who goes bankrupt in Monopoly could be driven to kill himself because of it. Because Monopoly is an old standard, no one would ever believe that sort of allegation, but because role-playing games are so new and poorly understood, that sort of illogical charge goes unquestioned.
10. What was the individual’s character name/names?
Mrs. Pulling places a great deal of weight on the name of characters, especially if they can be found in occult works, such as the dreaded Necronomicon! She also notes Darren Molitor used the names Demun and Sammy Sager for his characters. After he confessed to the FBI, he signed his confession in those names as well as his own.
The choice of a name for a character, at the very worst, is a form of wish fulfillment. It is directly analogous to a person making a selection of a costume for a masquerade party. Choosing to go as Zorro, for example, is not because the person in the costume sees himself as Zorro, but because it’s fun, for a short time, to adopt that role.
More commonly the choice of a name for a character is the result of a joke in the gaming group or a matter of pure expediency. In a fantasy game the author once named a character ‘Waring-blender’because he was in the kitchen when filling out the character sheet. The similarity between Darren Molitor’s Sammy Sager and the popular musician Sammy Hagar suggests a similar origin there. Another player of the author’s acquaintance, because his friends claim he always plays himself, no matter what game is going on, names many of his characters with some variation of his own name.
The significance of a character’s name, as can be seen from the examples, is highly subjective and can easily vary from character to character depending upon the game and the circumstances under which the character was named. To attempt to generalize about the import of character names is as foolish as attempting to generalize about the nature of the names of cats and dogs.
"I am Urist McKittensquasher of Clan Kittensquasher, which was founded to fight against the great Catspolsion of 1055."
A follow-on to this:
This being 1990, I wonder if Pulling was referring to the Hays Necronomicon or the Simon Necronomicon...probably the latter. No, the Necronomicon will not turn you to the dark side of gaming.Mrs. Pulling adds another set of questions to the thirteen she asked the police to use above. The first is : “Has he read the Necronomicon or is he familiar with it?” In her explanation of this general section she notes, “This will help determine if the individual has a working knowledge of the occult, and if his gaming abilities lean more to the dark side which could give cause or reason for bizarre behavior.”
Nor will turning to the dark side actually improve your gaming abilities. Stackpole goes on to note:
I don't think the Necromicon FAQ went up until '93, but I'd have to check on that.A moment’s research into the Necronomicon would have revealed its less than blue-ribbon pedigree, but Mrs. Pulling has not apparently put that much study into this tome.
I still wish Tolkien had made the plural of dwarf to be dwarrow instead of dwarves.11. What was his/her racial class in the game?
This only becomes important with the fact that many youngsters will try try to “get over” on you when you ask what is their character and they will tell you that they are an elf. An elf in the game is a racial class, not a character class, therefore most people feel that elves are innocuous, innocent creature and pass over any involvement with negative thoughts. The Racial classes are as follows: Dwarven, Elven, Gnome, Half-Elven, Halfling (Hobbit), Half-Orc and Human.
In other games there are other racial/alien types. The advantage of playing a different race comes in added strength for Dwarves, or night vision for Elves, etc. People play other races to escape, which is what relaxation and hobbies are all about. The choice of racial type has little significance in the gaming world, but Mrs. Pulling clearly sees it in another way. Because Elves and Dwarves and Hobbits and the rest are not mentioned in the Bible, they must be creations of the devil. As such, playing a non-human character carries with it all sorts of evil baggage.
This was at the beginning of the ADHD era, when they'd just hand out speed like candy, so maybe she honestly thought they needed to repeat a couple of the questions. Ritalin powers, activate!12. What is his/her level in the game?
See question seven.
I think having a crucifix on the wall is a bit weirder than having an altar to Cthulhu for the minis game set up on the table in the basement. But maybe that's just me.13. What god or gods did the individual serve in the game?
Because most games do not deal with religion, the answer to this question could be “Huh?” very easily – once again without an intention to deceive on the suspect’s part.
Moreover, there is an equating here with game actions and real actions. To suggest that “worshiping” an imaginary god in a game is the same as worshiping that god in real life is to suggest that any actor who’s donned a Nazi uniform and saluted a portrait of Hitler is a Nazi. Because the Bible forbids having “false gods” before God, even offering a sacrifice in a game to a god the Gamemaster has made up becomes an act of idolatry, and idolatry is of the devil. Therefore, clearly, a game in which this happens is Satanic and is quite capable of luring a child to the devil.
This sort of crippled logic can be used to show almost anything is Satanic.
Okay, so recap: Pulling thought all RPGs were D&D, and even then she obviously hadn't played any D&D past the basic set because she doesn't include any of the different character class or race options. Then again, the Complete Psioncis Handbook wouldn't come out until '91, so maybe we can forgive her a little.
Also, it's fairly clear that Pulling thinks D&D is a cover for Satanic cults, and it's clear Stackpole thinks this is all just a fucking dodge because she can't accept her son's suicide.
Stackpole goes on to pull apart some of the newspaper articles about teenage suicides that Pulling had lifted (without permission) and edited (again without permission) in an effort to make a damning indictment of gaming. He did this by the black magic of tracing back her sources and asking the original authors questions. This leads directly into a discussion of her son's suicide, the lamentably nicknamed Bink Pulling.
What are you supposed to say when someone asks you that? Stackpole goes on to show that Pulling presented two different versions of her son's death, one in which she was completely unaware of his troubles and another where:We did not understand [his death]. And we found – of course the police found a lot of the writings and letters. And the first thing they asked us that night, before they removed his body was – they took my husband and I aside and they said, “Mrs. Pulling, are you a devil worshiper?” And I said, “No.” I said, “You can look through my house. I don’t” – you know, we were Jewish. And I said, “We don’t have anything like that in my house.” And they took my husband aside. They obviously thought it was coming from the family.
Mass rabbitcide. That's just not a good sign.[Bink Pulling] growled, screamed, walked on all fours, and clawed the ground. Nineteen rabbits raised by the Pullings were found torn to pieces in the last three weeks of his life, although stray dogs were never seen. A cat was found disemboweled with a knife. The internal torment which lead to his death was plain, yet he had been a normally-well-adjusted, gifted young man only a few months before.
And it gets better:
If referring people to a mentally ill prisoner on death row isn't bad enough, for his next trick Stackpole proves that Pulling lied to you...with statistics!In the back of her book, she lists resources for interested and troubled individuals. Starting on page 198, these resources include her own BADD organization and continue including explanations of who and what a few of the organizations listed actually are. One resource that comes without an explanation is “Radical Teens for Christ”.
Radical Teens for Christ is the “ministry” of Sean R. Sellers and the address is that at which he receives his mail on death row in the Oklahoma State Penitentiary at McAlester. Sean is a convicted triple murderer who murdered a convenience store clerk and, six months later, shot his parents to death while they slept. After his conviction, Sean became “born again” and is quite anxious to help other troubled children. His good intentions aside, it seems incredible that Mrs. Pulling would list a diagnosed sociopath as a “resource” without even a single line of explanation in her book.
What? That's...massive. I mean, Virginia is still the Deep South. How the hell did she arrive at that figure?In January of 1988 Pat Pulling stated, in a Style Weekly article, she “conservatively estimates that about 8 percent of the Richmond [VA]-area population is involved with Satanic worship at some level.” A Richmond News Leader article notes this would be roughly 56,000 people, “more than the number of United Methodists in the Richmond area and nearly the entire population of Hanover County.”
She went on to say that she had gotten the 8% figure by “estimating 4 percent of the area’s teenagers, and 4 percent of the adults, were involved. She added the figures.”
Morbo: "MATH DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!"
Stackpole points out how fallacious Pullman's arguments are regarding the Massive Satanic Conspiracy! by using the classic reducto ad molepeople argument:
More bad math follows:That same negative evidence can used to “prove” that molemen from beneath the surface of the earth have perpetrated these murders. The fact that the molemen have left no evidence behind proves how good they are at remaining hidden. That no sewer or road building projects have ever cut across their tunnels proves that politicians and engineers and other professionals are in league with the molemen. Just as obviously, anyone who denies the molemen exist is either in league with them, or is a fool who cannot see the end coming.
Don't try your fancy math with me, Stackpole!Below, in the section concerning Mrs. Pulling’s alleged expertise in role playing games, she objects because a role playing game, Tunnels and Trolls, requires the use of three six-sided dice in character generation, creating the possibility of the pattern 6, 6, 6. This is the famed “Number of the Beast” from Revelations, but in the game, triple sixes are treated as an 18 and is considered a great score. In other words, to the gamers, the pattern is not 6, 6, 6, but is 18 and is treated with no greater significance than that.
Symbolic manipulation can get nasty, however. The number 18 is obviously composed of 6+6+6. For this reason 18 can be seen as “shorthand” for “the number of the Beast.” In a similar vein, the number 29 can be seen as a pair of nines or two nines, which added together produces 18, which is, after all, 6,6,6. And so it goes.
Seriously, it's hard to separate the tragedy from the silliness here. Take a look at Stackpole attacking Pulling as an "Expert Witness":
Maybe the lawyers were trying to throw the case?In her book The Devil’s Web she says she has given testimony in a number of trials and cites three as standing out in her mind. “My role was that of jury education, explaining to the jury members the game of ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ and how it is played.” That she could be hired to give testimony in a court of law as an expert on games is quite chilling. The only solace to be found in this is that, at least in the three cases she cites, her client was convicted and sentenced to death or life without parole.
I know most of these, but a few seem fairly obscure...of course, Shadowrun and Vampire weren't out yet or just released when The Devil's Web was published in '89, but still, let's see what Stackpole says about these:Mrs. Pulling says in her book, “A number of other fantasy role-playing games exist, and most are imitations of ‘Dungeons & Dragons.’ Some of the most popular ones are ‘Tunnels & Trolls’, ‘The Arduin Grimoire’, ‘Runequest’, ‘Empire of the Petal Throne’, ‘Nuclear Escalation’, ‘Traveller’, ‘Boot Hill’, ‘Demons’, ‘The Court of Ardor’, ‘Melee & Wizard’, Metamorphosis Alpha’, and ‘Gamma World’."
Tunnels & Trolls [...] Her main objection to T&T is that “In this game you obtain your character by rolling 3 six-sided dice (6,6,6)...”
There is still a following for Arduin, though I never got into it. I didn't know violence was an actual issue. Seems a bit tame compared to all the dogfucking slasher-film nonsense in Werewolf.The Arduin Grimoire is a set of unsanctioned D&D supplements written by Dave Hargraves. Hargraves’ company went under in the mid-1980s, but a publisher in Texas kept his work in print and brought out new books as he wrote them. Hargraves died in 1988 and recently a company in San Francisco has considered bringing his books back into print. Arduin’s highest point of distribution came in the early 80’s, but because of the violence depicted in the game, most shops don’t stock it and won’t sell it. At best 30,000 copies of the books were probably produced and the author knows of no translations.
Really? I swore it was Ghostbusters, but I guess that didn't come out until '86. I'm going to ping Shannon Appelcline (Designers & Dragons) about this at some point.Runequest is one of the most popular RPGs and was the first to break away from using “levels” to gauge character development. It has been translated into several languages, but annual sales have slipped since 1986 when the Avalon Hill Game Company took over publication from the Chaosium. Runequest likewise suffers, in Pulling’s opinion, from the use of 3 six-sided dice for rolling characters (6,6,6).
You have to wonder what Stackpole said when Tekumel came out again in the early 2000s.Empire of the Petal Throne was originally published by TSR. It went out of print in the early 80s, then reappeared from Gamescience in 1983. The game is virtually unknown in 1990 and difficult to find in gaming stores.
Nuclear Escalation is not a role-playing game at all. The author knows this because he helped develop this sequel to the Nuclear War card game. It is another card game. Pulling put it on the list in Primer on the basis of ad copy in an unspecified magazine. The text she has excerpted includes the phrase “Nuclear Escalation card game” in it. (Having written the ad originally, the author made sure the game was clearly seen as a card game.)
Ah, Flying Buffalo Games.
How the hell did she hear about Traveller?Traveller is a science fiction role-playing game published by Game Designers Workshop. The game has been changed and is now published under the title Megatraveller, with Traveller 2300 AD being another title in that line. This game has neither magic nor religion, though the occasional psionic ability (ESP, Telepathy, etc.) could be taken by some as demonic. It is a very popular game.
This was never directly rebooted (to my knowledge), though it did serve as the inspiration for Aces & Eights. Because gamers never throw anything out. Ever.Boot Hill was a wild west game published by TSR. It has been out of print since the mid 1980s.
Demons was a small board game from SPI, Inc. It appeared in 1980/81 and has been out of print since 1982. SPI was later absorbed by TSR and the game has not been reissued.
Ah, SPI, king of the little cardboard tokens. Looks fun!
I never, ever understood MERP. I understood the games that came out after the movies made all the money in the world, but not MERP.The Court of Ardor is not a role playing game, but an adventure for the Middle Earth Role Playing Game (a game based on the world of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings). (It cannot be used except in conjunction with the MERP rules or with another RPG after extensive revision.) Iron Crown Enterprises first published it in 1983 and it was the toughest/highest level adventure produced for that game system. It has been out of print for the last couple of years and there are no immediate plans to reprint it.
For some reason I thought this was about Wizards, Warriors, & You.Melee & Wizard is actually two games: Melee and Wizard. Melee was a man to man combat game and Wizard was a magic duel game. The two could be combined for larger battles. Designed by Steve Jackson, they were published by Metagaming. They have been out of print since Metagaming’s collapse in 1983.
Oh sweet dark gods, there are more?Metamorphosis Alpha and Gamma World were both TSR products released in the late 70s and early 80s. MA is out of print, though Gamma World had a revised edition in 1986. Gamma World has been revived as Gammarauders, but the two games have little more than concept in common.
Of the thirteen games on the Pulling list, we have:
5 out of print
5 in serious decline
2 that are not role playing games at all
1 is still popular, but goes under a different name
One for thirteen as a score for a self-acknowledged game “expert” is rather low.
Mrs. Pulling’s expertise with games apparently ends with 1983 because all of the products she lists in her 1989 book were printed before then, and none that have hit the market since are covered or even mentioned with the exception explained below.
This was basically pulled by Pulling from an even earlier infamous document called the Darren Molitor letter which was worryingly copied over to an electronic document by a group called "Computers for Christ."[The Dungeon Master’s] major responsibility is to create an adventure or dungeon for the characters. Books are available with prepared dungeons, but most DMs prefer to create the dungeons themselves. He must invent the scenery that the characters may encounter in the course of the adventure, the climate, the smells, the monsters and the treasure. This process can take from 36 to 48 hours of work. One woman has left her career to be a full-time DM; she is supported entirely by her D&D players.
Stackpole then goes on to give a generous opinion of Pulling's book The Devil's Web: Who is Stalking Your Children for Satan?:
That should be a five-star review on Amazon.Patricia Pulling’s book is a monument to illogical thinking and innuendo. It is not sourced, though a bibliography is provided. Countless cases are reported with vague detail and pseudonyms so that no verification is possible for the “facts” they present. Most of the material printed is loosely rewritten from a host of BADD documents, or involves reprints of newspaper clippings. If not for its value in presenting ample evidence of Pat Pulling’s incompetence, the book would less than worthless.
Stackpole's debunking has a lot of ground to cover, from cattle mutilations (remember those?) to the various people Pulling is affiliated with, most of whom are some flavor of insane. One particularly hilarious bit:
Oh man. I can't remember the last time I could walk into a Waldenbooks or B. Dalton's. Remember there was a bookstore in every mall in the country?The second part of the study reviewed book covers of popular paperback books randomly selected from the shelves of Waldenbooks and B. Dalton Books in Champaign, Illinois. The various categories of popular books were compared and the brief sketches on the book cover were presumed to be related to the contents of the books
None of these people are saints, but some of them are downright disturbing, and the methods and badwrong "evidence" they use to justify clamping down on roleplaying (and violent movies, video games, etc.) is just bizarre. Case in point:
In the conclusion, Mike stops short of calling Pulling an insane, guilt-ridden, profiteering asshole...but just:A 15-year old girl was reportedly raped in Angleton, Texas by Armando Simon, 33, a prison psychologist counseling inmates for sexual crimes. According to court testimony, the girl was enticed into sex through an extended D&D game in which she was given the role of “someone who would lose her powers after doing something wrong.” Simon played a character constantly interested in women and his wife would often play a lesbian. The wife encouraged the sex by showing the girl photos of Simon naked with other women. She told the girl, “He always wanted a virgin as a gift.” The psychologist and the girl first had sex after returning from a D&D convention in Houston (Houston Chronicle, 8 May 85)
In 1997, Patricia Pulling died of lung cancer. BADD effectively ceased to exist. But her legacy of bullshit lives on.Patricia Pulling, like any responsible adult, is concerned for the welfare and well-being of children in our society. A personal tragedy in her life galvanized her and started her off on a crusade to save children from the horror she saw as having taken her son. Her motivation, both at the beginning and now, is something we can only guess at, but clearly she believes she is fighting a war against diabolical forces poised to consume young Americans.
Just as clearly, somewhere in her career as an investigator, she lost her perspective. She has, willfully or negligently, manufactured reports concerning suicides and murders related to games and Satanism. She has promoted individuals who are, at the very least, in need of serious psychiatric help to deal with their emotional and psychological problems. She has repeatedly represented herself as an “expert witness” concerning games of which she knows little or nothing. She has perpetrated a deception concerning the circumstances surrounding the senseless death of her son.
Without a doubt, Mrs. Pulling started searching for a way to prevent other children from following in her son’s footsteps. Her efforts on behalf of his memory were obviously well intentioned, but as the anti-game hysteria bled over into a war against Satan, the ends began to justify the means. What became important was to sound a clarion-call concerning the dangers of Satanism, and any method that worked to get that message out was perfectly acceptable.
Pat Pulling and her allies regularly conduct “cult crime seminars” at locations across the country. They are offered for police and teachers at between $100 and $300 a head, not including lodging, transportation or meals. These seminars go beyond “the blind leading the blind” because the anti-Satanists profit greatly from giving the seminars. Moreover, taxpayers shell out for these dubious educational experiences, then have the disinformation and misinformation used against them when earnest cops try to utilize what they have learned and accepted in good faith.
