Justin Maxey: The canopy, the lanterns flicker slow. Three shadows seated where the darkling rivers flow, footprints in the mud, a question in the trees. We trade our secrets to the Idahoan breeze. The bottle breeds its fire, the amber spirit burns. Waiting for the moment that the wheel of mystery turns. Burbon legends. Over seasoned spirits we walk the jagged line, tracing every pattern, seeking every sign, From the mountains to the plains, whispers call our name with the amber nectar, we the ancient flame, to the legends we remain. Bourbon Legends. Welcome back to Bourbon Legends. For a lot of you, this would be the first time you've seen Bourbon Legends. This is actually being posted on my Dungeons and Dragons channel, Big Juicy Hog's Tom of Lore. I am Big Juicy Hog or Justin. I'm Jeff. And I'm Kevin. And we will be what we do every single week is we bring a delicious, sometimes not delicious, bourbon to you and we talk about something weird or fantastical or cryptids, conspiracies, all kinds of stuff. So Just stuff that kind of catches our fancy. Yeah. It's stuff we usually set around and all the time anyway. Yeah. Yep. We just decided to televise it for everybody else's and join it. Yes. And this one just f seemed fitting to have on the channel because it was the satanic panic from Dungeons and Dragons back in the nineteen eighties, which has been covered in other media besides just the news as well, which we'll get into. This has been bugging me since it's got a ball hole. This gargoyle has an ass crack. Very fine detailed pieces. It keeps catching my eye every time I turn to look over and like this I'm getting mooned by this gargoyle. So this week we're actually going to be doing a it's a whiskey rather than just a bourbon because it's infused. normally we're doing bourbons, but this time It just seemed fitting to have this for a Dungeons and Dragons episode. So it is. Jeff, would you like to take us into our whiskey of the week? Yeah. Tonight or Tonight. Today. Whatever. Whenever you're watching Whenever you're watching this proper time of the day, we have Von Payne Black. Blended whiskey infused with natural black currant. forty five percent alcohol by volume ninety proof. So this is sitting right in the sweet spot. Mm-hmm. Easily what we like. Yeah. we don't like to get trashed. We do enjoy tasting tasting it. Yeah. At most, getting a slight buzz and then Yeah. Not dealing the day after. Yeah. Yeah. We're too old to be messing around and getting snacks. It's rough. So blended whiskey infused with natural black currant. It's a seductive blend. For those that seek to expand the possibilities of the night. That's why the gargoyles. Yeah. For your pleasures. Can you see its ass on that? I can, yes. It's got cheeks and it's well defined. It is. but I'm getting ahead of myself. So I described it. It has a it is a very dark color. Yeah. I think it is. It d it does. However, the Brownish tone that you can see in it is a rich color as well. Yeah. Which from our previous experiences. It's usually good then. Yeah. It's usually better. Yeah. It better aged, it's more mellow, more refined taste. You don't get aftertaste. It's normally like boom, enjoy it, gone, done. Hit it again. Kevin, the aesthetics. Damn near The coolest bottle I've seen in a long time. I was just asking if I could literally empty the bottle, regardless if I like it or not, and put my blantings in it. Just cause the gargoyle has a pore spout, which is just amazing. yeah, even even like taking the stopper out of the equation, the bottle itself looks cool. Cool base, raised up, the shape of it's cool. It reminds me of like something you would find an old apothecary. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very unique. Little bridge on the side. I do think it's really cool. One of my favorites I I actually I will say it's my favorite bottle that we've ever done. Nice. You're gonna have to watch to see what other bottles he's rated. Right. And judge. Go to Bourbon Legends. Hey, this Bourbon Legends podcast. I'll have everything linked after the episode. I'll probably be you'd probably have seen a post by now as well before the episode just to let you know it's coming. But I think we should rate this on D ten. Yeah. One one to ten on a D ten? Yeah. As long as we're not rolling for it 'cause we should probably preface this too. That's how the three of us actually met and got together. Dung was playing Connections Internet. So it this all ties together. It it doesn't have a strong smell. No, it's kinda pretty Kevin's already deep in it. what the fuck? Wow. that's different. That is unique as very interesting. I I don't I don't dislike that at all. No, I You get the black currant in the front. It's got almost like once it's done, it's done. A walnutty. Yeah. Yeah, I was gonna say a very hazelnutty, walnutty that is a party in my mouth. Yeah. It's definitely Obviously it's not a bourbon. No. It's very different. Very smooth for a whisper. Yes. It goes down easy, no burn at all. That's if you can keep it in your mouth and taste all the flavors. And there's a lot going on there. Yeah. Second bitter, not really bitter, that sour taste. Second drink is very sweet. Mm-hmm. Is it? Yeah. It's just hold it on your tongue. Yep. Ooh. It's you know, it's I li I think it's good. It is it's delicious. It's it's not what we're used to with bourbons. No, that's fair. you can't compare this to No, I think this would be very good on a piece of ice. And I think that the I would agree. Yeah. Yeah. And I think I don't think you'd have to do a lot to it. No. No, it's like it's good. It almost feels like a mixed drink already. Yeah, it's got a lot of different flavor profiles that you would not get in a regular bourbon like at all. Look at you adding water to it like a boss. Yeah, I don't hate it. I definitely for me it's a sipping drink. I would not want to down this whole thing at once. It'd be too too strong. You're not gonna be I mean, we're not twenty one anymore then. Shot, shot, shot, shot, butt chugging it. But I think that compared to, you know, a lot of whiskies, I think when you pull it into your mouth, it's very smooth. Hmm. Just a little bit of water. Flick some water in that. I don't like to I don't like to finger my drinks like you do. I'll do Just just a tiny bit, just a s just a little splash just the barest amount. That took it to another level and it was delicious. It's very good. It's delicious. You know, it almost tastes like it could be some kind of strange uncarbonated soda. Yeah. A little bit. It it really does. Yeah. I agree though. I think cold with ice would hit real hard. Yeah. It's very smooth. There's no burn going down really. You can feel like a little tiny mellow mell the most mellow of warmth. Yeah. You know, it almost reminds me of that mind flare drink that we made out of the D and D book. yeah. And again, maybe that's that sweetness of like the cranberry and stuff in there. It doesn't have a berry flavor, but it does taste very It has that sweetness to it. It's got sweetness and a tang and a little bit of nuttiness. Yeah. But I like it. I think I mean we don't really we normally are rating bourbons, and this is obviously I've said multiple times this is a whiskey. But I think on our scale, on a D I could say like a a six and a half. Out of a ten? Yeah. I don't know how you can roll a six and a half, but maybe with a modifier. If if it's cocked. Yeah. If the dice is cocked. Yeah, I was gonna I was gonna say about a seven. Yeah. Again, as much as I now get on on a whiskey scale, I would agree it's definitely higher. Yes. Because I'm not a fan of just regular straight whiskey. I like bourbon that's been aged and but it's definitely higher on a whiskey scale. Jeff's gone higher. Uh-huh. I am Yeah. I am going. I felt that like as soon as you said six point five, he said, What the fuck are you doing? Kind of. Well, I'm going off comparing to bourbons. I I would say if I'm comparing this to other whiskeys, this is definitely like in the eight range. so okay. And that's what that I guess, yeah. If we circle the wagons on that, 'cause that's what I was doing too. Just doing it too. I was leaning towards the eight. Yeah. Yeah. 'Cause that's delicious. It's really good. It's it's But again, sipping. Yeah, yeah. Like if we're just at the table and you all can't see it off camera, I'm motioning to the D and D table that we have that Yes. It's got the removable top, it's got the TV underneath to display everything and the mats around it. And closer to us is the Warhammer forty K people that's got a bunch of models that need to be painted and things. This is the nerd done. It is Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised off of that. We're just going straight off whiskeys 'cause you I mean you can't compare apples and oranges, but I think the more I think that's one of the better whiskies I've ever had. The more sips you take of it, the better it gets. It's really good. Yeah. It's it's actually ninety poor. Yeah, it's yeah. look at that. Very cool. It's quite dangerous. It is because it is so smooth. Yeah, it doesn't taste like alcohol really at all. Like it it Like you said, it tastes like a a a good mix trick out of the bottle. Or you'd be like, what kind of juice is this? This has fucked you up. Yes. It is. If it's purple, I'd say it was a purple dragon. Purple dragon. It it it could pass as a juice. My purple drink had way more than that. I think I think that it's pretty good. And I think it fit perfectly thematically with an episode that had to do with Dungeons and Dragons. I'm quite happy. It mellowed out the not that it had rough edges, but it it did. It finished smoothing it a little Yeah. The first drink is y you're not expecting it and you're like, no, that was a slap in the mouth. Let me try it. that's pretty good. But I'm glad the flavor matched the bottle because I would have been really upset if the bottle was that beautiful and tasted like trash. It's like Napoleon Dynamite. First time you watch it, you're like, Yeah. And then afterward the second time you watch it, you're like, Hey, that's pretty funny. Then every time after that it's hilarious. Some I have to watch it at least three times? You don't have to. Some people get it the first time. I thought it was hilarious. Another one that was exactly like that was Tropic Thunder for me. Now that one Tropic Thunder was a one and done for me. First time I watched it, I was like, meh, it's okay. Then I watched it again, I was like, man, this is pretty hilarious. And third, I was this is genius. So I think this is kind of the same. Each drink gets better. Highly recommend. I agree. If you're if you're into whiskey, I bought mine online. they had a deal If you buy two of shipping was free and they're like they're like seventy dollar bottles. Which isn't awful. It's in the grand scheme. I mean some especially savor bottle too. You can use right. Like like I'm Like I'd spend twenty or thirty dollars on the bottle. And we love the blantons bottles, but like you said, pour the blantons into this and have it for D Co. Sally getting ideas. Well, let's get into the episode itself. We think we spent a good amount of time on the whiskey because it was so interesting. But anyone who knows about Dungeons and Dragons, especially all those old heads, know about the satanic panic of the eighties. It's the devil's game. It the devil did it. Yeah. It's little about satanic worship and everything else 'cause there's deities and demons. The the c that's the craziest thing to me is if you look at some of the things in the world now and you're like, and you thought Dungeons drag me on it. I mean, for all of you that may not be old enough to remember it from back then, just if you've seen stranger things, yeah kind of follows that idea too. Yes. Except for with actual monsters. Well true. I mean, yeah, let's not get into that. But the idea of when they and I'm forgetting the guy's name. Eddie. Eddie. Yeah. Eddie. Yeah. That whole bit is exactly what we're talking about. Yes. So the satanic panic didn't emerge from nothing. The late seventies and early eighties saw a confluence of cultural anxieties, decline of the nuclear family, which is still continued to decline, rapidly shifting social values, the rise of the moral majority under Jerry Falwell, and a string of genuinely alarming news events that made parents feel children were under threat. And the funny is If you go to our channel, you'll already see this episode. But the Tylna Murders in October of 82 is kind of related to this panic. Created national mood of product paranoia and fear of the invisible. We just did an episode on that, which should be out on the Bourbon Legends channel if you want to check that out. So there was the McMartin preschool case from 83 to 90, a daycare operator in Manhattan Beach, California accused of running satanic ritual abuse of the children in her care. no convictions ever happened, and the case is now considered one of the most damaging examples of moral panic and suggestive interrogation in American legal history. Like this was like a so I did a paper on this in college and this was this was a big deal. Like the FBI was involved with this along with a lot of other things. Like they were doing raids on people's houses. I didn't have anything to their They were taking all of like their character sheets and like session notes and everything else. Like they were taking all their stuff. Yeah. And going through it they had a cult specialist that came in and titled like, Yeah, this kinda does, it kinda doesn't, like this doesn't match a lot of the other stuff that's like mainstream. Yeah. It it's very weird to put it, you know, plain. So there's another and Michelle Remembers in nineteen eighty was written by Canadian psychologist Lawrence Padzer and his patient, Michelle Smith. Describe recovered memories of satanic ritual abuse. So a book coming out around that same time about satanic rituals and abuse. And then Jack Chick's Christian comic tracks, particularly Dark Dungeons in nineteen eighty four, reached millions of homes through churches and eva evangelical networks. Dark Dungeons depicts DD as a gateway to genuine witchcraft, showing a character being taught real spells by her dungeon master. Which is hilarious, but I mean, at least to my knowledge, granted I haven't like dug into like is it Wiccans and everything else, like witch modern day witches. Yes, there are aspects of that, but you don't mix things up in a in a cauldron. So like most of the time you have like a focus object or like an item component or anything else. Ninety percent of this is fear mongering. That's a hundred percent what it is. I didn't do that as I'm I was a kid. That seems trash to me, so I'm gonna say it's bullshit. Yeah, and that's what it feeds off. Bring me my cigarettes. Yeah. That's it's been proven to be completely healthy. Nine out of ten doctors agree on this. Now, and the thing is too, is like when we were our teenage years, we're obviously quite a bit after this. Right. But every guy in high school knew the girl who was I'm into Wiccan or I'm into this. Were they really into witchcraft? No. They had some little doodads and some little Incense. And they might have dressed in a little bit of black. Might have had a Ouija board. Yeah. And they're like, ooh, look how But they weren't how edgy I am. Yes, exactly. But they weren't worshipping Satan. I mean, usually we're just like, yeah, that kid's weird. Yeah. And if it was a girl, we're like, that chick's weird, but she's alright. That was my wife. Yeah. It's by the past. It's my wife. She was heavy in an incense. And now she's still weird. Yeah. And you still love her. Exactly. Not once has devil come out of her mouth. So one of the more famous ones was the Egbert case and the first wave in nineteen seventy and nineteen eighty, which was before any of us were born. a couple years before Kevin and I were born about a decade before you Dec I don't know how we keep making that reference. Like a couple of years and a long ass time before you were born. You little baby. By that time they already had this. They you were summoned. Yeah. I was being summoned, that's right. So James Dallas Eggbert the third was a sixteen year old prodigy at Michigan State University who disappeared on August fifteenth, nineteen seventy nine. Private investigator William Deere was hired to find him and propose the theory without evidence that Egbert had gotten lost during a live action D game in the university's steam tunnel system. They were LARP. Yeah. They are adjacent, but at least their own and I love Nerd Life and all that stuff. But LARPing is Closest I'll ever get to LARPing is dressing up for a rent fair. Cosplay for a rent fair, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. But like I'm not you know, have you ever seen role models? Yes. No. They they were doing like LARPing and live actual. It was hilarious. You have to watch the movie. It's got McLovin and it's got Stifler and it's got Paul Rudd. I'll check it out. It's it's really good. It's from the era of We don't care. We're gonna say whatever and it's gonna be funny. Yeah, we're gonna make fun of everybody regardless of Ruined. We can't make anybody offended. Yeah. And I don't care. I mean, that's the point of comedy is to offend people. If you get offended, you just don't have a good sense of humor. That's right. So Deer's tunnel theory was wrong, obviously. Eggbert had gone to a friend's home in Louisiana after a suicide attempt, when Egbert was found and it became clear that D D angle was false. Deer suppressed the true story to protect Egbert's privacy, which is nice. But the s the steam tunnel DD rumor entered circulation as established fact. And so coming up in a time before internet was really a big thing, right? Internet was everything getting big when we were like around high school. Yeah, ninety school. Yep. But how things get around is really like actually interesting because Every one of us I'm sure had like the rumors that went around like Marilyn Manson had a rib removed so he could suck his own wiener. Yeah. Right. I heard that one. Do you remember that one? I do. In high school. He was trying to blanket out, deny it, but he's like, He went to a high school in the same town as me. Yeah, it was it was shared. But he went to high school years later, all the way on the other side of the country. Years later. declaration. Decades later. It's like seven years at most. So while we were in high school, he was still shitting my pants. Was not. Maybe white in the bed. When he was in high school, he was also still shitting his pants, so depends on what the cafeteria had that day. Sometimes in the night you shit your pants. You throw your underwear away and you carry off the jacket. That's right. Turn it inside out, rinse it out in the sink. So that Eggbert ended up dying by suicide in August of nineteen eighty and the false connection between D and his death had already spread widely. Well, I mean it's probably because he'd been accused of all manner of stuff after all this got out. You're a demon. Yeah, and it's not like they were gonna reprint or not reprint, but print retractions. Yeah. Back then. It's not like it is today. Like it wasn't the It wasn't like there was the same level of accountability. No. Yeah. Granted To be fair, back then you would think there was more journalistic integrity overall. Yeah. Now now it's these days it's become let's put this out there and then we'll we'll say oops a daisy when we're wrong. But it they they're so concerned with internet made it so everything's needs to be now. Yeah. So if we don't put this out now, someone else will. So we'll be wrong, we'll eat shit if it is wrong. But if not, we got it out first. Yeah, and they got all the views from it. So even if they're wrong, it doesn't matter. They're supposed to get the revenue and everything. Yep. So the episode was fictionalized as the novel Mazes and Monsters in nineteen eighty one by Rona Jaffe, in which a student becomes dangerously confused between the game and reality. The book was adapted into a nineteen eighty two T V film starring Tom Hanks in one of his earliest roles, which aired nationally and embedded the D and D drives you to madness narrative. So it was like a combination of things. Yeah. There was I think what happened is and I can't say the boomers, because to be fair, the the boomers I mean, maybe the boomers were young adults. Yeah. At this time. At that point. Mm-hmm. So they're like and then the older generations, the silent generation, all those. Well, there was a big gap between school of thought with boomers and before in our generation, I would say. Like there was a big change there that I think is a little relevant to this too. The previous generations were much more similar. Boomers are their own thing. And then I think like Gen X and Millennials are very similar. And I think each every two has more similarities to the next. You know, like Gen Alpha and Gen Z are going to be somewhat similar, but they're gonna have sprinkles of millennial and Gen Z. Yeah. It's you know, it's just a little a dab of this, a dab of that. But I think that boomers are like no generation. Yeah. They You know, as they say, they're the generation that pulled the ladder up behind Where they had everything laid out in the front of them by the previous generations. They took full advantage of everything that was laid out for Mm-hmm. And now you know, millennials and and after are like, I guess I'm working till I'm seventy. Yep. If you're lucky. They're like You guys just need to pull yourself up by the bootstraps. I got a job making seven twenty five an hour in nineteen seventy. I bought a house, I went to college, your mom stayed at home, we had two cars and went on vacations every year. How much was your house? Well I paid twenty five hundred dollars for it. Mm-hmm. So a month's rent? Yeah. Like cool, I had to sell my bootstraps to get groceries. Exactly. I can't pull myself up by after they're gone. Not to go on too much of a line here. It's just you know, talking about the different generations. But so back to the satanic panic, there was also bad and Patricia Pulling from eighty two to ninety seven, which was a an a big era of that. So on June 9th, nineteen eighty two, Irving Pulling, the sixteen year old son of Patricia Pulling of Richmond, Virginia, shot himself in the chest. He'd been playing D D. Sorry. Yeah. That's but that's that's inconsequential. What did he have for dinner? It was the dominoes. It was probably the dominoes. He had indigestion, like I'm gonna blow it away. Yeah. Heartburn, get out of here, heartburn. Yeah, don't need it. Like that's just a piece of information about okay, but what did it have to do with it? Of course his mom concluded the D had caused her son's death through a curse placed on this character by the dungeon master. That's just 100% a need for somebody to blame some. She filed a wrongful death lawsuit against her son's high school principal and later against TSR, the game's publisher. It's probably his mom's bitching that made him do it. Like I can't listen to this. The original Karen. my god. Karen Prime. Patricia. My name is Karen Prime. I want to speak to your manager. Q the end credits with Yeah. In nineteen eighty three, Patricia Pulling founded BAD. Bothered about Dungeons and Dragons. I mean Bad Acronym Bad with a double D at some way. over the following years Bad produced D. Yeah. She she definitely didn't get two D's. No, just one. Produ they produced pamphlets, press releases, and media appearances arguing the D was a genuine occult training system that led players to Satanism, suicide, and violence. Now, obviously that was dumb. But you also have to think about during that time who was playing Dungeons and Dragons. It was mostly it was mostly the people in the fringe. Yeah, that weren't accepted in the grand scheme of what normal might be. Yeah, exactly. And I think especially with our generation, being a nerd became a lot more acceptable. Absolutely. Like like no one cared. They're like, that's cool, Warhammer, that's sweet. D like D D. I've always wanted to try D and D. A lot of people are like that. And there's not the stigma of back there being like, look at this dork. Yeah, bring bring it to current times like critical role. Like Travis Willingham was a complete jock. It like, this is kinda dumb, but we'll do it okay and then had Obviously what they've done is a whole nother ballgame, but that's a hundred percent still an example. But it's acceptable now when it wasn't before. And here's another thing. Like we already identified these were the people on the fringe of what was considered normal society at the time. Not to mention in that day and age, like admitting that you had some kind of mental health issues or anything else was like just never do it. You don't do it. I'm depressed. Well, stop being depressed. Yeah. Like, Walt that's a novel what it write some nerd on it, get back in the game. So I mean And you know that if you're already getting shit on by everybody else in your town and school or everything else. Now they're trying to take away your only outlet. Yeah, like this is well one thing in time where I can get together with people who are like me, we can have a conversation about things, we can laugh, we can joke, I actually enjoy myself, and now you're taking it away from me. And if you think about it before the g like with games we have now, that's an escape, right? Absolutely. You become this character. You become Geralt of Rivia. You become Kratos, right? You become the hell diver spreading manage democracy. Exactly. Like it's been a shitty day of work. I'm gonna go murder some bugs. But back then that was the that was the similar thing. Yeah. They didn't have the outlet that we had. I might be a dork in real life, but I'm I'm a badass barbarian in the game and I saved my team from you know being killed. Yeah. You know, you became a hero in your little group. Or even like, I helped out this town. Like we came across this orphan kid and I had some money and I gave him some gold pieces. Which is why it's great to see D and D nowadays actually being used as a therapy tool. Like not just a fun, but a therapy tool that was another paper I wrote too. That's a great segue. man going off on a little side tangent here. I wrote that paper and everything else, right? 'Cause it's being done some here by some major universities and everything else, but it's been done big time several different countries in Europe. Huge success. Yeah. With helping people to identify especially people who have trouble identifying feelings and others, empathy. Yeah. They are able to role play as this and then they're like, that's what that means. Connecting things now. It's it's beneficial. I got a hundred percent on that paper. Yeah. That's awesome because now we're gonna talk about more caring shit. So Bad's methodology was documented later dismantled, obviously. Stupid. Michael Stack polls, the pulling apart in nineteen ninety systematically went through Bad's data and claimed that found that pulling had taken statistics out of context. Misrepresented studies, invented figures. She claimed that 125 children had committed suicide due to D and D in a single year. The actual figure she appeared to be drawing from was a national total for all suicides in a particular age range, not D and D related cases. The scope you want to look at or the lens you want to look through is all it is. But now to your point, it's like after something like that, the damage is done. yeah. Because then parents start believing it's a thing and then Yeah. And then back then, like we talked about, there was no fast information highway. Nope. There was the the Nine the ten o'clock news, do you know where your children are? They didn't. No, they didn't. We were wherever we were. Yeah. and the newspapers. Well, and word of mouth. But the word of mouth was the most damaging because there's no time and date stamps on that. Yeah. Right. So then you get conflicting information, people are automatically going to trend toward the worst. Yeah, just exactly like the Marilyn Manson thing. Yeah. About you did like that's that rumor went on forever. Mm-hmm. And I'm sure that he And I don't think he really said or did anything to like dispute it. No, I think I it was getting his name out there. Exactly. Well, right. I mean and the thing is if you look at Merrill Manson, I don't think he'd have to remove a rib to be able to do that. He's skinny enough. It's true. So the American Association of Suicidology, the CDC and Health and the Welfare Canada all conducted independent research and found no causal link between DD and suicide. Whoa. No, you don't say. The research further found the D players had lower than average suicide rates compared to non players in the same demographic. Probably because they found their people, were able to talk, they had a way to had an outlet. Have a healthy outlet because, I have these frustrations. My character is gonna vent them. I'm gonna be my character. I can vent it through this. I'm done. And and it was always it was always something to look forward to. Mm-hmm. Right? yeah. So every you know, they have their their session every single week. You know, this week's been shitty, but at least on Friday night I get to hang out with the boys and D D D. Yeah. And you just wait 'til I find them cobalt. Yeah. Three cobalds in a trench coat, I'm gonna trip a shit out of. Yeah, those goblins don't stand a chance. Not a chance. So Patricia Pooling died on September eighteenth, ninety seven, at forty nine. Bad dissolved with her death. By then the scientific consensus had fully discredited her claims. What's crazy is she went on with it till nineteen ninety seven, the whole thing. Mm-hmm. Obsessed with it. Sure. And then where we've been talking about mental health? Yeah. That that was Because it's easier to blame something than to accept responsibility for I for what I've organized this thing with my kid. Yep. And it led to this. Yep. It but a lot of people ca have trouble taking accountability. Yeah. But I mean you kinda touched on it earlier in your research and everything. I was like breakdown of the nuclear family. yeah. When does a dad mentioned in the that was a hundred percent a single mom. Yeah, yeah. If if she was Karen Prime, we could probably understand why, but again, there's not a single mention of a dad in this. Yeah, because he he was Megatron. He was like, get out of here. So there was a lot of things that it ended up obviously affecting D and D directly. Mm-hmm. TSR published the first edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragon Manual in seventy seven. The first edition books contained explicit references to demons and devils by name. Detailed description of their abilities and hierarchy, information on spells with overtly occult names, and artwork that depicted them in a manner that, in the context of the panic, was easy to describe as promotional s of Satanism. Which is crazy because that's how you tell the story. You have to have details. Yeah, you have to have bad books. Yeah. Like how do you have a conflict without something to have a conflict over? It's not like I mean, you could if you wanted, like obviously warlock patrons and whatnot. Mm-hmm. But for the most part, devils and demons are the bad guys. They're they're not like, you know, this this Biawza Bub, he's really got something. I think I'm gonna worship him in real life. Yeah. I don't I've never heard of anyone who looked at the D D book and was like I like the way that sounds. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I r I really I really identify with these Batizu. Yes. So under pressure from the panic and from toy retailers who were threatening to pull the games, TSR made direct changes to the game's content. In eighty five, TSR removed demons and devils from the game entirely for the revised monster manual, replacing them with Tanari and Batizu. Batizus. New names for the same creatures that sounded less overly satanic to concerned parents. The line systems language was also softened in some presentations. Gary Gygax, D's co creator, was frustrated by these concessions and was publicly critical of the direction TSR was taking under new management. He was eventually outed from the T the company in nineteen eighty five over these creative disagreements. The satanic pennant was a direct contributing factor to the internet. or the internal conflict that removed his the creator from his own pro company. So everyone's basically standing his ground and the company decided is the, you know, the the grandfather the f the father of D and D, him and Dave Arneson. And i the he created the game and if you look at his history, all the things he went through, you know, from tabletop gaming with, you know, war gaming into D and D, all the the money issues, everything. Just to be kicked out in eighty five when it was starting to kind of ramp up. Yep. Well if he could see it today. No kidding. yeah. the demons and devils were eventually restored to D in later editions once the panic subsided. The returned in second edition supplements and fully in third edition. The renamed Tanarian Batizo terminology was retained as lore consistent terminology alongside the original name. So it was just kind of like an extra name, like instead of Yeah, Tanari and Batizu, Demons and Devils. It was kind of interchangeable. TSR also faced distribution problems. Some toy retailers refused to stock the game, and at least one major chain pulled it from shelves during the height of the panic. This contributed to the financial pressures that would eventually result in TSR's sale to Wizards of the Coast in ninety seven. And I guess it depends on the person you talk to. Not hasn't turned out the best. Obviously Dungeons and Dragons has grown exponentially. Absolutely has. But if you talk to a lot of the people that played before, they were very upset. yeah. The old Dragonlance. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Yes. I have a lot of it. I haven't opened it. I have a perfect box set, the pink one. Mm-hmm. It's got the old dice that you know. I haven't so this is the official game adventure Dragon Magic by Rick Swan. but it is compatible with advanced D D or A D and the second edition. So this is second edition D. I have a lot of second edition D D in two point five as well. Yep. So this obviously the backfire effect, which ended up being free advertising for the panic. Mm-hmm. So one of the genuine historical ironies of the satanic panic's relationship with D and D is that it increased sales. Academic research and contemporary industry reporting both confirmed that the controversy drove curious teenagers to the game in large numbers. As a teenager, you know. Yeah. Mom and dad said no, I'm doing it. the academic paper Demons and Devils at Kansas University notes that TSR sales increased through the nineteen eighties despite and partly because of the controversy. If parents, church leaders, and network television were all warning that D D was dangerous, adolescents treated it as an advertisement. Yep. Why do you think anyone drink four locos? Because parents told us not to. Yeah, right. This well not our parents. We were adults. Well I mean to me you were still not a decade behind, yeah. Not a decade. But I was underage, yeah. Yes, but but you know what I mean, like Like you didn't like you didn't go and look at the store and be I'm gonna try this for Loca. You heard people like I drank one of these and I was messed up. So Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it. It's terrible. I love it. It's also a dollar fifty. I can afford it. Yeah, I can have it. TSR's best commercial years by unit sales were during the height of the panic in eighty two to eighty five. The panic was what's supposed to destroy the game, instead gave it a reputation for being edgy, dangerous, and transgressive. Exactly the qualities that made it appealing to the demographic most likely to become its core audience. Like we said, the fringe. Yes. The gaming community that formed around the shared experience of being persecuted for their hobby became more tightly knit and identity driven as a result. The panic paradoxically strengthened the D community it was intended to destroy. So TSR getting bought out by Wizards of the Coast aside. Obviously, I think that that was the thing that really Shot it to the moon in some ways. No, absolutely. Obviously it it caused a lot of internal conflict for the people working there, Gary Gygax, all those people, because they were dealing with it at the time, but the sales ended up going through the roof. Even though they had to deal with, you know, being pulled and all that stuff. Yeah, and you're always gonna have some of those stores in fronts that didn't carry it, but obviously And if we remember originally D and D wasn't even available at stores. It was, you know, through mail in orders from like You know, something like Dragon magazine. Cut this out, sign this out, here's my check with it, boom, they send you back a box. Six to eight weeks, I'll put it in the mail. So the satanic panic was obviously a big load of crap. But it definitely I think brought D and D to a higher level. It did. Absolutely. It's like a national level, if you even want to say it that way. And then even in the eighties he started getting the video games. If you look the old gold box video games, you know, there was a lot of if you look at them now, they'd be very hard to play. Mm-hmm. But that led into stuff like Baldur's Gate, you know, Diablo. Diablo. Yeah, like yeah, that one's literally about to die. Yeah. And guess what? There was no satanic pen. Doom. Doom's another one kind of like that. But but just like D D All of those games, you're fighting the devils. Yeah. Yeah. You're you're killing Diablo. You're killing You're not being enticed to destroying hell as the Doomslayer. Yeah. You know, you're not like, you know, I really side with these demons. They're trying to join them and murder people slaying people and Yeah. I think I think I'm gonna do that for a living. Yeah. That sounds nice. Yeah, there might have been some crazy people that did think that, but Just like anything else they're the crazy people. I don't know. I mean you get that with like mainstream religions and stuff like no, we're all about peace, like love your brother as yourself and all this stuff. Like Except for you who has a different yeah. I don't like you though. So I mean that's gonna be a constant because anytime people are involved, you're gonna get a mix. And there's definitely always a percentage of crazy, regardless of what it is. absolutely. And back in the eighties and seventies especially There was not as much awareness. No. People were like, that's just old crazy John. He, you know, shits in front of the in front of the McDonald's every Tuesday. There's just like a way of life. These people are crazy. We just deal with it. There's no no fixing it. let's put this dude in the in this institution. Yeah. Where did where did old John go? I don't know. Yeah, we put him put him in the institution. Put him in the homes. Yeah. We scraped The front part of his brain out through his nose and now he's alright. Yeah. He just stares at a wall all day. Yeah. And maybe please Dungeons and Reggins. Maybe he did it. Well, I think we can go ahead and wrap it up. obviously the satanic pandemic's a very interesting time in the history of D D. Now proven false multiple times. Yeah. And if you think about how good we have it now as D players and fans, where people get upset over Changes within the game rather than someone trying to snatch the game from the Yeah. Much different place. Yeah, it's it's just like you have to find problems, right? Yeah. And I think that fifth edition is a in a lot better place than like fourth edition, which changed a bajillion things and people generally seem to hate 'cause fifth edition brought back. But you know, it's all it's all Wizards of the Coast making money. Yeah. We talk about it with with Games Workshop all the time. Yeah, with Warhammer forty K. Hey, we took this away. we hate that. We brought it back. Yay. And we're changing the rules again. Here we go. Yay. It's a working model. It's just the same thing. It it makes you buy books. It makes you buy figures. It makes you buy whatever. Everything. It's all marketing. It's all money. So I think we go to wrap it up. we are on all podcasting platforms. obviously this is gonna be on the Big Juicy Hog's Tone of Lore channel, but Our normal channel for this kind of content is the Bourbon Legends Podcast. I'll I'll have a link for it for you guys if you're interested. no pressure, obviously. we're also on all podcasting networks. So Spotify. Apple Podcasts. Podcast Addict. Podcast Addict. I forget that one every single time. Something called Rumble. Rumble, yes. I I started putting the videos on Rumble as well just to have in another location if that's a preferred place for you to watch the videos. Yeah. and Yeah, any podcast place you can think of, we're probably on it. Yeah. So Thanks for joining us, and until next time, peace out. Seeking every sign. From the mountains to the plains, wisp call our name with the amber nectar we need to flame to the legends we remain.