Apparently the 1980s were a hell of a time, back when video games and rock and roll were responsible for warping the mind of an entire generation. As if Ozzy Osbourne and KISS weren’t bad enough, parents also had be on the lookout for dangerous games like Dungeons and Dragons. Although D&D has somehow gotten a lot more popular in recent years, almost to the point where it’s considered mainstream, back in the day a lot of people actually thought that role-playing games might be secretly luring kids over to the dark side.
These types of sensational news articles didn’t escape the notice of Rona Jaffe, a New York author who started her career writing articles for Cosmopolitan magazine in the 1950s and 60s. In 1981, Jaffe published the book “Mazes and Monsters”, a cautionary story about the role-playing games of that era. In the book, a group of college students become bored with the basic table-top game, and decide to increase the realism by taking their quests to a nearby cave network. One of the students, already suffering from a schizophrenia-like personality disorder, starts to devote an inordinate amount of time to the game. Eventually, as his condition progresses, he loses the ability to distinguish between reality and the fantasy world.
It’s thought that this book was based (at least loosely) on the story of James Dallas Egbert III, a Michigan State University student who disappeared from his dormitory in 1979. Egbert was suffering from a number of personal and psychological problems at the time, and entered the university’s steam tunnels with a plan to commit suicide. In the days following his disappearance it was revealed that Egbert was an avid Dungeons and Dragons player, a fact not lost on local media outlets. In the weeks that followed, Egbert’s family went so far as to hire a private investigator, William Dear. Dear would later write about the sad case and its connection to D&D in a book of his own, called “The Dungeon Master.”
Thankfully, calmer heads have since prevailed. Role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons are now more popular than ever, no doubt thanks to endorsements from celebrities like Vin Diesel and Wil Wheaton (now I ask you, would those two guys ever lead you astray?). But even though Ms. Jaffe may have been way off base with her plot in “Mazes and Monsters”, it’s still a terrifying adventure story that’s a lot of fun to read. Back in 1982, the book was so popular that it was even turned into a made-for-TV movie. And you know what’s even more terrifying than the deepest dungeon or the scariest monster?
