Did D&D and similar media actually increase interest in the occult?
score:2
Accepted answer
It occurs to me there may actually be a way to measure this, if I take the question quite literally. Here's the Google ngram graphs for the words "occult" and "magic"
It looks like there was in fact an inflection point to an upturn in "occult" and "magic" references around the time Advanced D&D was released by TSR (1977-1980 for the core rulebooks). The timing is, if not related, incredibly coincidental. However, I have a few caveats that should be added.
- The previous "occult" trajectory when those same complainers were young adults (in the 1966-1972 years) was far steeper without benefit from TTRPGs.
- Correlation is not causation. Its quite possible the new gaming system took off in part because of an uptick in occult interest.
- There's certainly no evidence I can see in the graph that the anti-D&D campaigns of the mid 80's had any noticeable affect on the curve.
- A correlation (rather than a causation) jibes much better with my personal experience.
- Take that shooting up of "magic" after about 1993 as completely unrelated. That was the release date of the card game Magic the Gathering, which had a unique game system that proved incredibly addictive, and made it the best selling card game of all time. Nearly all hits from about 2000 forward are likely for that one card game.
"Personal experience" is anecdotal of course. But I was into D&D at the time myself, had a lot of friends who were as well, and I also knew several Wiccans (and a couple of dabblers). I've met exactly one person who was into both. Otherwise, it was a completely disjoint set.
In general Wiccans didn't think occult forces were something to toy with, and the dabblers were your right-brained dreamer types.
D&D players tended to be left-brained mathy types who didn't believe in much of anything supernatural. That version of the game was heavily math reliant, so if you didn't like spending a lot of type playing with numbers and stats and adding things up, it really wouldn't have appealed to you.
Part of what made the whole BADD thing so annoying for us was that clearly they believed in magic and demons way more than any of us did. If anyone was out there promoting that stuff as real, it was the anti-D&D people.
More post
- 📝 When did the nobles of Europe revert to being "ordinary" citizens?
- 📝 Did American colonist soldiers learn guerrilla fighting tactics from the Native Americans?
- 📝 What advantages did Catholic missionaries to the Indians have over Protestant missionaries in old Oregon Country?
- 📝 What is the exact meaning of England vs. Britain before/during/after the formation of the Kingdom of England in the Middle Ages?
- 📝 History of the 1793 revision of the constitution of Vermont
- 📝 In Britain, what was the "Junior Service" in 1913?
- 📝 Is there anything to back up Mearsheimer's claims that Roosevelt pushed the Japanese to attack the United States and tried to get the US into WW2?
- 📝 How much of an impact did the Roman emperors' civil wars have on their decision to debase the coinage?
- 📝 How would Eastern European emigres have traveled across Eastern Europe to Warsaw in the early 20thC?
- 📝 Published History of Harvard
- 📝 Why did Sun Tzu believe you shouldn't wait beside a river when eager to fight?
- 📝 Why did the introduction of European firearms have such an impact on warfare in Africa and the Americas?
- 📝 Why did armies meet on the battlefield, and how often did they? (medieval times)
- 📝 Were Trojans the ancestors of the Romans?
- 📝 What was the origin and purpose of the "Montes"?
- 📝 Did the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki contribute to Japan's surrender?
- 📝 Moving day in Paris, France in the 19th century
- 📝 How would prospective members join a medieval European guild?
- 📝 Who were the founders/owners of the Société Anonyme de Recherches et d’Exploitations Minière en Côte d’Ivoire (SAREMCI)?
- 📝 What was Wilhelm II's "book about the causes of the war"?
- 📝 How British was Barry Melbourne Hussey, Argentine Navy translator, at the Argentine surrender in the Falklands War?
- 📝 What was the income tax rate in the UK during WWI and WWII?
- 📝 Virginia's ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment
- 📝 Why is there a Herakles/Hercules sarcophagus?
- 📝 How heavily were the British taxing their American colonies?
- 📝 Where, when and why did the practice of proxy marriage originate?
- 📝 Intuitive misconceptions
- 📝 Was there any influence between the Gracchus reforms and the end of the republic?
- 📝 Where and why did the colourful houses of Bristol start?
- 📝 Have the Pyramid Texts been translated into German?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Did D&D and similar media actually increase interest in the occult?
- 📝 What is the 'rank switching' done by Roman Legionnaires in HBO's 'Rome' called, and did it actually happen?
- 📝 Did Roosevelt's New Deal lift the U.S. out of the depression or did it actually prolong the Depression and cripple American capitalism?
- 📝 How did the increase in the birthrate and marriage impact on US homefront during WW2 (1939-1945)?
- 📝 Did the cost ineffectiveness the V2 and V1 rocket program actually matter to the Nazis?
- 📝 How and when did the word "nuclear" replace the word "atomic"?
- 📝 Why did Britain and France not declare war against the Soviet Union when it invaded Poland in WW2?
- 📝 How did the USSR manage to innovate in an environment characterized by government censorship and high bureaucracy?
- 📝 Why did LBJ, a staunch segregationist, champion and sign the 1964 Civil Rights Bill?
- 📝 When and how did the USA and the UK become allies?
- 📝 When did the practice of formally "declaring war" cease and why?
- 📝 Why did the population of Anchorage, Alaska, increase by so much in the 1970s?
- 📝 Did the Pope's crossbow and archery bans have any effect?
- 📝 Why did Bayer lose aspirin and heroin trademarks under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles?
- 📝 Why did only the English adopt, evolve and use the longbow en masse in war?
- 📝 When and why did the use of the lifespans of royalty to limit clauses in contracts come about?
- 📝 Where did the “vikings wear helmets with horn” stereotype come from and why?
- 📝 Why did Italy abandon its alliance with Germany in WW1 and join the Allied side?
- 📝 How did the ruling class in the Muslim world react to the discovery and colonization of the Americas?
- 📝 Did the U.S. and Soviet Union have a submarine battle in 1968?
- 📝 Did Churchill and Roosevelt know about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, or the following secret pacts between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union?
- 📝 Why did the Soviet Union close its borders and restrict travel abroad?
- 📝 During the Great Depression, did the US Army do a study involving paying people to dig a hole and fill it back up?
- 📝 When did the Hebrews stop speaking Hebrew and start speaking Aramaic?
- 📝 Why did Stalin and the Soviet leadership have Leon Trotsky assassinated?
- 📝 Did the Soviet Union or its satellite states have any broadcast propaganda media for an international audience?
- 📝 Did Louis XIV actually say "The State? I am the State."? Could he have said it?
- 📝 When did the round house fall out of vernacular use throughout Britain and Ireland?
- 📝 Did they actually have "mushroom cloud tourist attraction" to Nevada Test Site in the 1950s?
- 📝 When and how did the Han ethnic group become by far the biggest ethnic group in China?
