Bay of Fundie

I’m currently researching Chick Tracts. They’re so much fun, you’ll probably see more about them on this site in the future. (I also have a very brief section about them on my seldom-updated Kook Watch page.)

I came across a fun website that is pro-Chick, but from a detached perspective—that of art criticism. The Jack Chick Museum of Fine Art has extensive information about this under-rated American original.

There are so many great Chick Tracts, I wouldn’t know where to begin. One of the more notorious is “Dark Dungeons”, a baseless attack on the harmless but insipid game of Dungeons and Dragons.

“Hey, Sailor, I’ve Got a Dungeon for You to Master!”

Unless you’ve been living in a dungeon for the last 30 years, you’ve probably heard of Dungeons and Dragons. Since I like to make fun of things, I’ll pretend that you don’t know anything about it.

D&D is probably best described by Cecil Adams over at The Straight Dope. His article is a hoot; go check it out. For you lazy bastards who can’t even exert the energy required to click a link, I’ll excerpt some of the highlights. Cecil says:

I have some reservations about bestowing further publicity on this demented pastime, but a devotion to the noble principles of journalism demands that the facts be exposed, come what may.

D&D was invented in 1974 by one Gary Gygax, whose father was a violinist for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. (This strikes me as significant, somehow.) Gary moved at an early age to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, where he founded TSR Hobbies, the maker of D&D.

My devotion to the noble principles of journalism (and a long-standing grudge against Mr. Gygax that I harbor to this day) demands that I correct the above statement. Gary Gygax was merely the co-inventor of D&D. Dave Arneson was the other half of the team.

I managed to get my hands on a couple of those sacred rule books, and let me tell you, […] this game is weird.

The basic idea in your run-of-the-mill Go Fish-type game is to get all your opponent’s cards or all his checkers or some other readily grasped commodity. Not so with D&D.
[…]
To play D&D you need at least two acolytes, who play under the guidance of a vaguely Mansonesque personage called the Dungeon Master (DM).

By means of various murky protocols involving the use of charts and dice, each player establishes the persona of the “character” he or she will manipulate in the game, who typically ends up (if male) being an antisocial cutthroat of some sort, or (if female) possessed of large, grapefruit-like breasts.

There are two main problems: (1) there are one billion rules, and (2) the game requires nonstop mathematical finagling that would constipate Einstein.
[…]
The rule book is laden with such mystifying pronouncements as the following: “An ancient spell-using red dragon of huge size with 88 hit points has a BXPV of 1300, XP/HP total of 1408, SAXPB of 2800 (armor class plus special defense plus high intelligence plus saving throw bonus due to h.p./die), and an EAXPA of 2550 (major breath weapon plus spell use plus attack damage of 3-30/bite)—totaling 7758 h.p.”

Here we have a game that combines the charm of a Pentagon briefing with the excitement of double-entry bookkeeping. I don’t get it.

So that’s all you really need to know about D&D. Back in the 1980s, when it was popular, a lot of fundies got in a tizzy about this game. I remember watching Pat Robertson devote an entire hour of his TV show to explaining how D&D would bring down Western Civilization. I would have been happy if it had merely succeeded in bringing down Pat Robertson. Sadly, the game had absolutely no power to do either (or to entertain).

Jack Chick to the Rescue!

Despite the lack of a threat, Jack Chick felt compelled to produce a tract to defeat this menace (D&D, that is, not Pat Robertson.). The basic idea is that D&D leads to satanism. It’s a fun read. You can read the whole thing over at Jack’s official website. To whet your appetite, here are just three thrilling panels:

I can’t say much for the content, but you’ve got to admit—the guy is a pretty good artist!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007 at 2:04 am and is filed under Culture, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.