Dark Dungeons

News this week that some guy has made a movie about kids playing Dungeons & Dragons, and being led into the occult. And you know what’s most appalling about it? The bloke has totally plagiarized my life-story without paying me a single cent for it!

Yes, some thirty years ago now, when I was a young lad at school, I went along to a lunch-time meeting of the Christian Union, in which a guest speaker, some priest or other, made the extraordinary claim that Dungeons & Dragons leads to devil worship. His argument was that D&D leads on to Ouija boards, then Ouija boards onto the occult in general, and thence onto Faustian pacts with the Prince of Darkness himself.

After leaving that meeting, I resolved to start playing Dungeons & Dragons as soon as possible.

A couple of years later, on my own initiative, I got into “Call of Cthulhu,” so I could be the gamesmaster (actually the “Keeper”) for a change. As it happens, this was how I really got into the occult, because it was through two Cthulhu supplements – Cthulhu By Gaslight and Green and Pleasant Land – that I first found detailed information about the Golden Dawn and Aleister Crowley.

I find it incredibly ironic that Kenneth Grant so admirably fitted the role of a mad cultist from Call of Cthulhu RPG. One only has to attempt to read “Nightside of Eden” to realise that Grant must have seriously failed his SAN roll on several occasions. Mind you, I seem to remember that The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage – which I have read – was rated as a -1D3 SAN / +3% Mythos tome, so presumably even I haven’t escaped unscathed. (Grant’s books themselves are probably more potent).

6 responses to “Dark Dungeons”

Karen Macene

May 22, 2014 at 8:36 pm

You would have ended up where you did with out Dungeons & Dragons, the game just made the journey more fun. 🙂

- alexsumner
  
  May 23, 2014 at 9:52 am
  
  🙂
  
Morgan S

May 23, 2014 at 2:40 pm

In my case, the journey had a twist. The movie “Dark Dungeons” is based on a religious tract of the same name, published by Jack Chick. I was given this tract when I was a kid. Instead of scaring me away from the occult, it piqued my interest. Why go to boring old church when you could summon demons?

- alexsumner
  
  May 23, 2014 at 2:54 pm
  
  But did you bother with the RPGs first?
  
  - Morgan S
    
    May 25, 2014 at 6:35 am
    
    I did. My first exposure to Cthulu was from “Deities and Demigods”. Shortly after that I found a paperback version of the Necronomicon,
Tony Fuller

May 24, 2014 at 11:56 pm

An amusing post – I think you are correct about Kenneth Grant’s writings being more potent. Although I adhere to a different tradition from that of KG I particularly enjoy his books which strike me as exactly the sort of thing Paul Foster Case would write after ingesting large quantities of LSD. We corresponded for a short while on a matter of mutual interest. In my view Grant was one of the greatest occultists of the 20th century although his path is not one I personally follow.