[Fanzine Focus XLII] Satanic Panic Zine #1

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed how another Dungeon Master and her group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. The Satanic Panic Zine sets out to do something different and that is to chronicle and examine some of more events of the satanic panic of the eighties and nineties and their effect upon roleplaying games and the roleplaying hobby. Alongside that it will provide some gaming content.

Satanic Panic Zine #1, subtitled, “Why parents in the 1980s lost their fuckin’ minds over D&D”, was published in December, 2025, following a successful Kickstarter campaign. Published by Bloat Games, this is a very American fanzine, which makes sense because all of the events it describes and the moral panic itself—for the most part—took place in the USA. It opens with a table of ‘d66 Reasons Your Mom Thinks You Are A Satanist’, with entries such as “Mazes and Monsters was the movie of the week – thanks Tom Hanks!” and “The preacher tells her playing D&D will make you burn in hell.” and “She read a Chick Track.” and “Newspaper article on video games and the occult.” Slightly tongue-in-cheek, it sets the tone for the issue. The historical content begins with the expose by The 700 Club on the Christian Broadcasting Network, titled ‘Rock Music, D&D, Cartoons’. in which Pat Robertson alleged that youth of America were being corrupted by organized and secrets cults working in league for Satan himself. Bloat provides detailed description of the programme before countering it with his own personal experiences as a youth of the time, persecuted for his way of dressing, reading comics, and of course, playing Dungeons & Dragons.

He then goes on to condemn Robertson as ‘Ratt Pobertson’, “…[A] weak-minded, feeble old fool. His forked tongue only spews lies and hate. While he tries to convince everyone that he is righteous, holy, and good, he is a liar and a con.” providing stats for him as a fiendish, lying goblin, of course, Chaotic Evil, with stats for both Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition and ShadowDark. There is even a table of “[T]otally bogus Ratt Pobertson rumors, completely made up for this author’s amusement”. The other gaming content is ‘Garzax (Demon) With Occultists’, this time for Old School Essentials and lastly the Satanic Cult Member and the Satanic Cult Leader Necromancer, both for Bloat games’ own Survive THIS!! line of compatible roleplaying games.

Bloat asks if ‘The Stanic Panic Started in Canada?’ This examines the novel Michelle Remembers which recounts of suppressed memories satanic ritualistic abuse suffered as a child unlocked via therapeutic treatment and whilst subsequently debunked, it was quickly adopted as proof by Christian conservatives. He also looks at ‘The Sad Tale of Dallas Egbert’, which recounts the events of his disappearance from Michigan State University in 1979 and William Dear’s subsequent investigation and self-aggrandisement. He also ties it into Mazes & Monsters, Rona Jaffe’s novel, clearly inspired by the disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III, and the subsequent adaptation of the novel as a television film in 1982.

It is all a bit obvious. It also not really balanced by the gaming content or the reflection. Of course, there may be readers who are unaware of either the Satanic panic or its effect upon gaming, but they are going to be few in number. After all, the primary audience for the fanzine is those who lived through this period or have an interest in the history of gaming. Then the gaming content is nothing to write home about either. There may be an amusing entry or three on the issue’s various tables, but barely a handful of monsters for multiple systems do not make for useful content and they certainly do not work as a means to explore the Satanic Panic and its effects through gaming. No scenario, no plot hooks, no guide to bringing the Satanic Panic to life in anyone’s game. Plus, the reflection goes no further than it having been bad for the author.

Physically, Satanic Panic Zine #1 is well laid out in a manner designed to evoke the look an feel of heavy metal of the time and liberally illustrated. The choice of font makes it challenging to read in places.

There is plenty of scope for a gamer and creator to recount the events of the Satanic Panic and examine how they affected both him and the hobby itself and then couple it with some gaming content. That scope remains because Satanic Panic Zine #1 does not really fulfil its remit. Whilst the key events of the Satanic Panic are highlighted, their consequences are not, whether personally by the author or gaming at large—especially the latter. They are, in fact, ignored. Similarly, there is gaming content, but not useful gaming content. It could have been better if there had been multiple voices recounting their experiences of the Satanic Panic, if there had been a scenario or just a plot hook or two or if the author had any interesting to say. Satanic Panic Zine #1 could have been something interesting or informative, but it just manages to be underwhelming and self-indulgent at the same time.

A Cryptid Collection

The DARK PLACES & DEMOGORGONS Cryptid Manual is a cryptozoological bestiary for the Dark Places & Demogorgons, the roleplaying game of being students at high school in the nineteen eighties in a small town by mysterious attacks and disappearances. With the adults at a loss as to what to do and the local police department possessing no idea, let alone the local preacher whipping up another moral panic, it is invariably down to the teenagers to find out what is going on, where the victims have disappeared to, and who or what is responsible. With the DARK PLACES & DEMOGORGONS Cryptid Manual, the who or what responsible is drawn from the pseudoscience of cryptozoology. Creatures like Bigfoot, The Mothman, The Jersey Devil, The Pope Lick Monster, Chupacabra, Gremlins, and Lake Monsters, and more. Initially, this gives the DARK PLACES & DEMOGORGONS Cryptid Manual a distinctly North American focus with Cryptids native to Canada, Mexico, and the USA, but there are numerous creatures included too from around the world. On the plus side, this means that the players and their students are going to be challenged by something they will probably never have heard of and not know how to deal with, but on the downside, the Game Master will need to be creative in how she brings such creatures into the campaign.

The DARK PLACES & DEMOGORGONS Cryptid Manual is published by Bloat Games, and is supposedly a secret printing of a file taken from an evidence locker at Quantico. These are the Hope Excerpts, the collected notes and reports of an explorer, Joel Harrison Hope, who long searched for an ancient artefact known as the Staff of Bel, which had been used Sumerian priests to defeat monsters. Over time, heroes and priests from across the ancient world used the staff before it ended up in Rome and was broken and its pieces scattered during by a barbarian invasion. Fortunately, Hope was able to locate the staff and find notes and details of other ‘monsters’ and other artefacts. However, the Staff of Bel is not detailed in the supplement and Hope’s notes play little further role either, and for as potentially as an interesting set-up as that is, it is disappointing not to see this followed through.

The DARK PLACES & DEMOGORGONS Cryptid Manual contains some fifty or so different monsters that come from North America, Mexico, Africa, Europe, Asia, and Australia. They include seven types of the Bigfoot, with the Almasti being the Russian equivalent to the North American beast and the Yeren the Chinese, whilst the Grassman Bigfoot is the Ohio version, the Skunk Ape, the swamp dwelling from the South, the Yowie the Australian version, and the Sasquatch, the most well-known version from the Pacific Northwest, and the Yeti, the Asian version. The often-connected Wendigo is alongside as a spirit monster, whilst the Sheepsquatch is a newcomer to the fold, essentially a seven-foot tall ruminant known for its aggressive love of meth and other drugs, and rumoured to have been seen fighting the Mothman, which deserves a all of its very own. Similarly, there are five versions of the Extra-terrestrial, including ranging from the little-known Flatwoods Monster to the Greys and Little Green Men via the Nordic and Reptilian types. A campaign could easily mix these up for the students to get involved in the secret war between the Nordic and the Grey and the Reptilian Extra-terrestrials.

From Mexico and the America Southwest, there is the Chupacabra, and from the legends of the North Americans natives come the Mishipeshu and the Thunderbird. The African creatures include the Grootslang, a giant snake with the head of an elephant known to be wise and crafty, which resides in deep caverns, whilst the Mokele-Mbembe is a giant dinosaur occasionally spotted in the deepest jungles. The Bunyip is the only Australian entry. From Europe, the DARK PLACES & DEMOGORGONS Cryptid Manual includes the Dobhar-Chu—the Irish Otter King—which protect rivers and streams from pollution and overuse, and are considered lucky to see, and the Kelpie from Scottish myth, as well as a more generic fairy. The Shuck comes from English folklore and is a good stand in for any black dog, whilst Greek myth is the source of both Cerberus and Medusa. There are silly creatures too, such as the Crocoduck, which has the body of a duck and the head of a crocodile, and a penchant for bananas. Thankfully they are duck-sized, but do hunt in packs.

Each entry in the DARK PLACES & DEMOGORGONS Cryptid Manual is a given a one or two-page spread, with clear and easy to read stats and explanations of its powers. It is also accompanied by a heavy, black and white illustration, some of which are quite creepy, such as the Black-eyed Children and the Reptilian Extra-terrestrial, the latter a nice nod to the V television series. Notably, quite a lot of effort has gone into making the various types of Extra-terrestrial different from each other, though this is not necessarily the case with the Sasquatch. In places the descriptions of the creatures do feel underwritten, consisting of descriptions of their habits and physiologies, but the accompanying eyewitness statements, like that of the county dog catcher who thought a Psi-Rat might have been a dog or the drug addict and meth manufacturer who threatened the Sheepsquatch with the double-barreled shotgun add some decent flavour and detail.

Rounding out the DARK PLACES & DEMOGORGONS Cryptid Manual is set of templates which can be applied to any of the entries in the book. These include Dire, rabid, radioactive, vampiric, and zombie, plus options to enhance or weaken them. Along with the rules for morale, and explanations of both game terms and updated game terms, there is a lot of flexibility built into the supplement, allowing the Game Master to modify and adjust the various cryptids with little difficulty.

If there is a downside to the DARK PLACES & DEMOGORGONS Cryptid Manual, it is that its various monsters and creatures could have benefited from more background and detailing of their origins, as otherwise, it leaves the Game Master with a fair bit of research and investigation to do of her own. Nevertheless, there are nice little details of each to be found, especially in each entry’s flavour text. The DARK PLACES & DEMOGORGONS Cryptid Manual pleasingly brings the strange and the weird and the modern into the small-town life of DARK PLACES & DEMOGORGONS, as well as the Old School Renaissance itself, with a varied and interesting collection of cryptozoological critters.

Unstrange Things

From Tales from the Loop to Kids of Bikes, the genre du jour for roleplaying games is that of kids in peril, investigating mysteries that adults cannot see or do not want to investigate, and facing unknown horrors. Specifically set in the early 1980s and in general, inspired by the Netflix series, Stranger Things. Published by Bloat Games following a successful Kickstarter campaign, Dark Places & Demogorgons: The Roleplaying Game is a Old School Rennaisence roleplaying game, which as its title suggests and as its tag line—‘In the 1980s STRANGE THINGS happened everywhere!’—suggests is heavily influenced by Stranger Things. It is a roleplaying game in which you roleplay teenagers in a small town where strange things are happening. The adults are concerned, but unsure as to what to do; the local sheriff is out of his depth and wants everyone to remain calm; and Reverend Phillips calls for the real culprits to be banned—drugs and delinquency, punk and heavy metal, and of course, roleplaying games like Dark Places & Demogorgons!

Dark Places & Demogorgons is a Class and Level roleplaying game. It provides just five Levels and five Classes, although within each Class there are three subclasses, all of them highschool archetypes. The five Classes and their subclasses are The Brain (Kid Scientist, The Nerd, and The Geek), The Athlete (The Jock, Extreme Athlete, and The Karate Kid), The Outsider (Break Dancer, Goth, and Metal Head), The Popular Kid (Preppy, The Princess, and Teen Heartthrob), and The Rebel (Bully, The Hood, and Punk Rocker). Actually, this is erroneous, since there are in fact, fifteen Classes divided equally between five categories. This is simply because all of the aspects that a Class are provided by the subclass whereas the so-called Classes—The Brain, The Athlete, The Outsider, The Popular Kid, and The Rebel—contribute nothing towards character design or creation, let alone game play. Each Class provides some beginning skills, some attribute modifiers, a single ability, and some possessions and money. For example, The Kid Scientist provides Computer, Mathematics, and Mechanics & Science as skills; deducts one from the character’s Strength and Constitution, but adds one to Intelligence; and gets a +2 bonus with one of his beginning skills. He starts the game with a home computer, home chemistry set, a library card, access to the school computer lab and chemistry lab (the teacher trusts him), a bicycle, 4D6 dollars, a sack of illegal fireworks, a flashlight, and Devo’s new album. Higher Levels will add various skill bonuses and attribute bonuses.

To create a character, a player rolls three six-sided dice seven times and —Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, Charisma, and Survival—and assigns them to seven attributes in any order. A character has five Saving Throws—Courage, Critical, Death, Mental, and Poison—which are each rolled on four four-sided dice and modified by a character’s Constitution bonus, even the ones which are not physical, such as Courage and Mental. The question is, why are all of the Saving Throws based on the one attribute? Just two six-sided dice are rolled for Hit Points and once a player has selected a Class and subclass, he also gets to pick four more skills other than the beginning skills listed for his Class and subclass. No more than a single point can be assigned to any skill rank, which itself cannot be higher than a character’s Level. Any bonus from the associated attribute is of course applied to this. Fighting skills—Brawling, Martial Arts, and Wrestling—are also available. They provide set bonuses and only need to be purchased once as they do not advance in Rank.

Lastly, a player has the option to roll on the background table twice to add some interest to his character. There are a hundred entries, which might give a character an interest in Marvel comics, make him an exchange student, have a missing sibling, and so on. Some provide extra bonuses, others do not. Overall, the creation process is quick with relatively few decisions to be made.

Our sample character is Heather Robinson, a rich, preppy girl whose parents recently moved from California to small town America, her father a lawyer to set up a small practice having made his money in Los Angeles and his mother to become the weather girl on the local television affiliate. Heather did not want to come, but her parents promised her a new car on her sixteenth birthday if she did. Of course, the real reason her parents moved to the ‘middle of nowhere’ is to survive the coming apocalypse...

Name: Heather Robinson
Alignment: Neutral
Languages: English
Class: Popular (Preppy) Level: 1 XP: 0
Hit Points: 13 Armour Class: 10 Attack Bonus: +0/+1
Background: Mom is the the local weather girl (everyone thinks she is hot); your parents are Doomsday Preppers

ATTRIBUTES
Strength: 09 (+0), Intelligence: 14 (+1), Wisdom: 09 (+0),
Dexterity: 12 (+0), Constitution: 13 (+1), Charisma: 18 (+3)
Survival: 14

SAVING THROWS
Courage: 16 Critical: 13 Death: 14 Mental: 7 Poison: 9

CLASS ABILITIES
Daddy’s Money

SKILLS
Art & Music 1 (+2), Basic Athletics 1 (+1), Driving 1 (+1), First Aid 1 (+1), Intimidation 1 (+4), Outdoorsmanship 1 (+0/+2), Persuasion 1 (+4), Ranged Attacks 1 (+1) 

POSSESSIONS
Golf GTI, very nice clothes, $5,000

For the most part, Dark Places & Demogorgons: The Roleplaying Game plays as a standard retroclone, but there are some changes to the rules. The first is the addition of Survival, which although rolled the same as the standard six attributes, is not an attribute. Rather, it is a pool of points which a player can use to re-roll any dice roll. This costs one Survival per re-roll and any failed dice roll can only be re-rolled once and the effects have to be applied. Although there is no limit on the number of Survival Points which can be spent during a gaming session, they can only be recovered at a rate of one per session. This sets up a tight economy of what are essentially ‘luck points’, which does not favour the players and their characters. This is partly exacerbated by the Difficulty Checks set for using skills—ten for Easy, fifteen for Medium, twenty for Difficult, and twenty-five for Near Impossible. Few player characters are going to have more than a +2 or +3 in their skills, so any skill beyond Easy is going to be a challenge. That said, the player characters are high school teenagers and they are not meant to be necessarily competent.

Where skill rolls are rolled equal to or over the Difficulty Check, those for Saving Throws are rolled equal to or under. The mechanics for horror and fear in Dark Places & Demogorgons are split between two different mechanics. In the face of a non-supernatural opponent or dangerous situation, a Courage Saving Throw and if failed, a character receives a +1 penalty on all rolls against similar situations in the future. In the face of a supernatural opponent or dangerous situation, a player must roll a Terror Check, this being made to roll equal to or over the monster or situation’s Terror value, typically eleven or more, depending on the monster. Essentially, this Terror value works as a Difficulty Check. If either the Courage Saving Throw or the Terror Check is failed, the player also needs to roll on the Failed Courage/Terror Effect table. If either roll is successful, a character does not have to roll for either again—he has conquered his fears. There is no explanation as to why the two different mechanics are used, why there are no bonuses to either roll, and so on. It certainly would not have been all that difficult to get the two mechanics to work the same way rather than confuse the issue.

Another change is in how and why Experience Points are awarded as well as a scaling down of the number that a player character needs to acquire a new Level. Five means of rewarding Experience Points are given in Dark Places & Demogorgons. These are Session Survival, Encounter XP, Exceptional Roleplaying, Discretionary, and HERO XP. The first is for simply for completing or ‘surviving’ a game session; the second for being involved in a combat situation; the third for good roleplaying; the fourth at the the Game Master’s discretion for solving puzzles, overcoming the odds, or being exceptionally lucky; and the fifth for being particularly heroic. Each session, a player character can earn a maximum of one Experience Point for Session Survival, Exceptional Roleplaying, and HERO XP, but two as Discretionary rewards, and three as Encounter XP. Which in the case of the latter, is three combat scenes per session. This is at odds with the intended aim of the roleplaying game’s “...leveling system which takes the focus off combat…” and that, “...Dark Places should not be in a combat heavy game.”

Of course, combat is not an unexpected feature of Dark Places & Demogorgons’ horror genre, but the fact that the rules do not reduce the emphasis on combat as they suggest they should is disappointing. Unfortunately, this is exacerbated by the underwhelming advice on running the game and not running it as a combat game. For game that is supposed to be one of horror and investigation, a single page devoted to the subject and then in hardly any depth seems inadequate, especially when combat gets four pages of treatment.

The other mechanics are drawn from Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition and The Black Hack respectively. One is the use of Advantage and Disadvantage dice, the other is the use of the Usage dice for equipment.

That said, there is a lot of support for the Game Master. For the players there is a list of sample characters and a quick list comparing aspects of today’s culture with that of the 1980s, but for the Game Master, a good half of Dark Places & Demogorgons is dedicated to setting elements—monsters, villains, scenario seeds, and background on Jeffersontown, Kentucky. So the monsters cover cult leaders, soviet spies, and ninja as much as they do banshees, bigfoot, ghouls, golems, rodents of unusual size, and vampires. There are also table for creating your own villains and monsters. The scenario seeds also built around monsters, from Alien Life Form and Chupacabra in Love to Taylor’s Lake Monster and Teenage Werewolf in J’town. Their inspiration is obvious, but then much of the genre that the roleplaying game draws is equally as obvious.

Jeffersontown, Kentucky or ‘J’town’, and its major gangs and factions, are described in just a few pages. This is where Annie Crow disappeared, Stanley Parker jumped off Popelick Train Trestle, and more, perhaps due to the feared Popelick Monster, Satan, or… Unfortunately, more attention is paid to listing what is in each of the town’s four districts than to giving a good overview or a map, so getting an overall feel for Jeffersontown is somewhat challenging—especially if the Game Master has to then impart that information to her players and their characters.

What Dark Places & Demogorgons also provides is the optional Psion Class with its subclasses, Experiment X, the Pyro, and the Telekinetic. The second and third of these represent characters a la Firestarter and Carrie, so have normal backgrounds and skills, whereas the first is something akin to the character of Eleven from Stranger Things and so does not. The rules for Psionics require a roll on the Psionic Activation Table to determine if a Psion can use his abilities. His player then gets to make a roll to use the Psionic power.

Name: Example 019
Alignment: Neutral
Languages: English
Class: Experiment X Level: 1 XP: 0
Hit Points: 05 Armour Class: 10 Attack Bonus: -1/+0
Background: Unknown

ATTRIBUTES
Strength: 09 (+0), Intelligence: 17 (+2), Wisdom: 17 (+2),
Dexterity: 12 (+0), Constitution: 13 (+1), Charisma: 10 (+0)
Survival: 07

SAVING THROWS
Courage: 12 Critical: 10 Death: 14 Mental: 18 Poison: 9

CLASS ABILITIES
Psionic Attack (1d6 damage, communicate with the Otheride* for one minute)

SKILLS
None

POSSESSIONS
Dirty Medical Gown

* Whatever that is. Again, Dark Places & Demogorgons has little to say on the matter.

Physically, Dark Places & Demogorgons is decently presented and is nicely presented with a good range of art. The designers also include some high school photos from the period to add a little verisimilitude. 

Dark Places & Demogorgons is a game in which if you know your movies and you know its genre influences, then you can run it. If not, then Dark Places & Demogorgons may be a bit of challenge, since it is aimed squarely at the nostalgia market, for there is real no background detail given to the eighties other than listing a few differences. Similarly, the Game Master will be on her own in writing adventures as there is no advice of any substance to aid her in the process. Mechanically, it feels uninspiring and uneven, using too many different mechanics for too many different things for no real difference. Also the game is disingenuous in its use of its title, Dark Places & Demogorgons, not only because it does not include Demogorgon stats, but really it is not about running a game in the style of Stranger Things. It is more of an ‘80s teen horror’ roleplaying game, focusing solely upon the teenage protagonists and the monsters, and ignoring the world around them, which is not the point of its obvious inspiration.

If you are looking for game with which to run a Stranger Things style game and have some experience running your own adventures, then Dark Places & Demogorgons might be for you. After all, it provides you with all of the parts, if not the toolkit. If you are looking for a greater examination of the genre and helpful advice in running that style of game, then Dark Places & Demogorgons fails on all counts. There is good material in Dark Places & Demogorgons: The Roleplaying Game, but it completely fails to support it in terms of advice or genre, which comes down to just run ‘Monster of the Week’ and that is not good enough. Especially when it flags its inspiration so obviously.