Heading West and the Satanic Panic

Hello!

It has been a busy summer. Despite being incredibly inconsistent with writing newsletters, I’ve been working hard on the podcast behind the scenes, including traveling both sides of the US to research and report.

In June, I spent 10 days out west, interviewing ttrpg folks in Seattle and LA. I was home for a bit in July and then at the end of the month, drove to DC to hear a family’s story about playing D&D during the Satanic Panic. Somewhere in there I was a guest on the Ludology podcast - episode coming out soon! - and got to play my first session of Mothership. I really enjoyed playing a budget android named CRA-PX (or Cira for short).

August is going to be a month of regrouping and starting to piece together the stories from my summer of reporting. Each episode of this podcast is like a mini documentary in itself, which takes a lot of narrative planning.

Speaking of episodes - I’m currently looking to talk to more people who played D&D during the Satanic Panic! If you have an interesting story about what that time was like (did your parents burn your books? did you have to hide your dice in a hole in the yard? or were you perhaps someone who crusaded against D&D?), I’d love to hear from you! Respond to this email or email me at [email protected].

I started my summer trip with four days in Seattle, Washington, where I BBQ’d with Paizo and Monte Cook folks, met Seattle’s second most-popular bubble artist, toured Pokemon International (I met Charizard), took a lot of public transport that I wish Pittsburgh had, and theorized about what’s going on at Darrington Press.

I got to meet D&D 4th edition designer Rob Heinsoo’s dogs, and they liked me. I learned what a mimeograph was (which probably sounds to earlier generations like Gen Z learning about what a cassette player was sounds to me). I had a boisterous conversation with Ryan Dancey about the original Open Gaming License. I chatted with historian Hadeel Jeanne about online communities looking for analog connection. What a whirlwind. And my trip wasn’t even halfway over.

With six days to go, I landed in Los Angeles around 9pm and immediately - before we got to the Airbnb - headed to In ‘N Out for my first time. How can a burger that cheap also be good? I’m sure you’ll be shocked to hear that all the food in LA was better than the food in Pittsburgh.

I made the trip with friend and game designer Banana Chan, who ran a session of her game The Revenant Society for me and a few friends. We toured the largest board game store I’ve ever seen - Geeky Teas in Burbank, where we hung out in the spooky Candela Obscura-themed room and Banana ran a session of her solo journaling game, Forgery.

Under the category of petting more dogs, I got to meet and pet journalist Lin Codega’s dog Zigzag - who loves watermelon - and I had a fascinating conversation with Lin about their reporting in 2023 on Wizards of the Coast’s attempt to revoke the Open Gaming License. Lin currently writes for Rascal News - a great outlet to subscribe to for more independent games journalism.

The best part of the trip was meeting a giant of TTRPG history - founder and editor of Alarums & Excursions, Lee Gold.

If you haven’t heard of Lee, she started the first APA (Amateur Press Association) on Dungeons & Dragons back in 1975. An APA is like a collection of zines - lots of people would contribute to these zines, many of whom would later go on to design influential games, and over the years it became a collection of rpg history. Lee ran Alarums & Excursions every single month for fifty years, only missing a total of four months in that time span.

A&E ended this spring, so I met Lee and her husband Barry at their house to talk about her legacy, how rpgs have changed since she started playing in the 70s, and what she thinks is really the first ttrpg (hint: it’s not D&D).

This is a photo of her office closet where she keeps every single printed version of A&E ever made.

I still can’t believe how fulfilling and exciting this trip was. I saw new places, made new friends, and had incredible conversations about the ttrpg industry. My favorite part of making this podcast has been meeting the people who built this hobby and hearing their stories.

After making it back to Pittsburgh, a few weeks later I drove east for a bit of a tonal shift in interview…

Where better to travel for an interview on the Satanic Panic than the hotbed of all satanic activity…Maryland. I took the four-hour journey from Pittsburgh to talk to a family about growing up during the Satanic Panic and the tension the church created in their lives. I’ll save the details for the podcast.

Gen Con was also happening this weekend, and in a timely convergence of events, I saw Twogether Studios posted about the Critical Role live show on Instagram:

My trip east wasn’t all work, though, because my DC-area-based cousin took us to see the Twenty-Sided Tavern production at the Kennedy Center. It was a fun show, though definitely geared towards those who have never played D&D. It’s amazing to see ttrpgs on a stage like this - our show was a packed house for a Saturday matinee.

I’m finally back in Pittsburgh to regroup for awhile. What’s next on the research agenda? A friend and player in my Magnus Archives/Cypher System campaign ominously handed me this business card yesterday:

So that’s my next rabbit hole! Will I dig too deep and accidentally become a Satanist, abandoning this podcast forever? Who knows!

Quick housekeeping: if you were previously subscribed to my Substack, you may have noticed I switched to Beehiiv. If you’d rather not stay on the newsletter list on the new platform, no worries! You can unsubscribe at the bottom of this email.

If you made it this far, thank you so much for reading! I can’t wait to continue sharing the behind-the-scenes of this process as it unfolds.

Kristin