This was the centerpiece. Patricia Pulling, who founded BADD after her son's death, argued explicitly that D&D was responsible for a wave of youth suicides. She cited a figure of around 50 deaths directly attributable to the game and used it in public appearances, lobbying efforts, and media interviews.

Researchers investigated. Thomas Radecki, a psychiatrist who initially supported Pulling's claims and later became a critic, produced a list of deaths supposedly connected to D&D that, when examined, included no credible evidence of a causal link in any documented case. The supposed mechanism — that D&D caused players to lose the ability to distinguish fantasy from reality and then harm themselves — was never supported by a single clinical study.

What researchers did find: youth suicide rates in the population of D&D players were lower than in the general population of the same age group. This was examined by researchers, including Michael Stackpole, a game designer who produced a detailed analysis, "The Pulling Report," in 1990, systematically evaluating Pulling's claims and finding them unsupported.

The causal link between D&D and suicide that drove the most emotionally powerful part of the anti-gaming campaign did not exist in the evidence.

The argument, most clearly made in Jack Chick's "Dark Dungeons" tract, was that D&D did not merely reference magic and occult imagery. It actually taught it. Players who cast fictional spells were, the argument went, learning to cast real spells. Dungeon masters were, in some versions of this claim, functioning as genuine occult initiators.

This claim required the audience to believe that game mechanics for fictional magic somehow constituted instruction in actual supernatural practice, and that the fictional demons and dark gods of a role-playing game were connected to real spiritual entities.

There is no credible religious, academic, or scientific tradition that supports this. Theologians who examined the claims, including many within conservative religious communities, did not conclude that dice rolls and character sheets constituted occult initiation. The claim was not taken seriously by anyone with relevant expertise. It circulated because it was frightening, not because it was defensible.​

The "steam tunnels" narrative that emerged from the Egbert case became a template: D&D was so immersive that players could no longer distinguish between fiction and reality. The game blurred the boundary until players acted on their fictional beliefs in the real world.

Psychologists examined this. They found no evidence that role-playing games produced psychotic breaks, dissociative episodes, or an inability to distinguish fantasy from reality in otherwise healthy individuals. The American Psychiatric Association never produced a classification of D&D-related disorders. No diagnostic category for role-playing game-induced dissociation has ever existed in clinical literature.

What researchers observed instead was that players who showed signs of difficulty distinguishing fantasy from reality in gaming contexts typically had pre-existing mental health conditions. The game was not the cause. In some cases, it served as an early indicator of conditions that would have manifested in some other context.

The distinction matters enormously: a game that some people with pre-existing mental health conditions engage with in unusual ways is not a game that causes mental illness. The panic consistently confused correlation with causation and vulnerability with universality.​

The broadest claim was that D&D served as a deliberate recruitment mechanism for Satanic cults. The imagery, the fictional gods, the alignment system, the monster descriptions — all of it was framed as a calculated path designed to normalize Satanic beliefs and eventually draw players into actual cult membership.

No credible evidence of this pipeline was ever produced. Law enforcement agencies that investigated Satanic ritual abuse claims during the same period — a broader panic that produced wrongful convictions in cases like the McMartin preschool trial — found no evidence of organized Satanic cults conducting the kind of large-scale abuse and recruitment that the panic claimed. The FBI investigated and found no credible evidence of widespread Satanic cult activity.

D&D players were not becoming Satanists at elevated rates. They were doing what they have always done: sitting at tables with friends, arguing about rules, rolling dice, and telling stories.​