Wired.com presents the Geeks Guide to the Galaxy.

And here is your host, David Barr Kurtly.

Hello, and welcome to episode 185 of Geeks Guide to the Galaxy.

Our guest today is Joseph Laycock, an assistant professor of religious studies at Texas State

University, and author of the non-fiction book's Spirit Possession Around the World and Vampires

Today.

And we'll be talking with him about his new book, Dangerous Games,

which explores the satanic panic that surrounded Dungeons and Dragons in the 1980s.

And for more on that, you might also want to check out our panel on the history of Dungeons

and Dragons in episode 170. And now here's our interview with Joseph Laycock.

All right, so we're here with Joseph Laycock.

Welcome to the show.

Thanks.

Glad to be here.

Okay, so first of all, just tell us a bit about your history as a Dungeons and Dragons player.

Well, I talk about this in the preface of the book.

I think I first learned about the concept of Dungeons and Dragons when I was pretty young. I mean, maybe

six or seven years old at a summer camp for gifted kids. But what we were doing was not actually

Dungeons and Dragons. It was sort of a, you know, more of a cops and robbers type of make-believe game.

It wasn't until later that I realized this is a real game played with dice and you actually have to do a lot of reading and a lot of study to learn how to play it. By high school,

I was a pretty big D&D nerd, and that continued on into college when I was involved in my

gaming group at Hampshire College. Sadly, I have not played D&D in a long time. I think the last time I was able in my gaming group at Hampshire College.

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