“I played D&D for the CIA”

In the process of researching my book, I came across myriad stories, some of them completely believable, a few of them verifiable, many of them outlandish. One of the strangest stories that I found believable was from a man who claimed that, in the early to mid 80s, he had been involved in a CIA plot to infiltrate a Dungeons and Dragons campaign at Cal Tech.

This was back in the old days, long before the idea of “geek chic” had crossed the minds of marketers and scriptwriters. Playing D&D meant sitting in a basement or a dorm room full of almost exclusively male nerdlings, driven by the will to power, sexual frustration and Jolt! Cola by the gallon. This was also when rumors started to circulate about “waves of D&D related suicides” and about people who became convinced they really *were* their characters and murdered people or went to live in the sewers brandishing wooden swords and insisting poker chips were gold pieces. (Note: As far as I can tell, there was exactly one D&D related suicide, which was committed by a boy named Dallas Egbert who had way more problems than his spellcaster failing to advance a level. )

The CIA was aware of these rumors and they wanted to know what was going on. Anything that seemed so effective at causing people to dissociate or take on new identities was of interest. So they sent an asset to infiltrate a game at Cal Tech, one of the hotbeds of nerd activity.

This poor agent spent three months playing a human ranger with (almost exclusively male) physics and chem students in some dude’s dorm room. The reports he filed made extensive use of such phrases as “hapless” “inept” “pointless” and “bizarrely obsessive”. Though he witnessed several slapfights, a number of 19 and 20 year old men crying and innumerable dodecahderal dice flying through the air all in the names of dungeonmaster unfairness or rules violations, he saw nothing of real value to conditioing or dissociating personalities.

The story was, to me, amusing. I enjoy the fact that the CIA was involved in a conspiracy to infiltrate and subvert a D&D campaign. It’s also illustrative of the power that urban myths (the waves of D&D suicides, promulgated at that time by parent groups, Christian fundamentalists and Jack Chick) have even over the intelligence community.


Authorship: “peabody; a member of AboveTopSecret.com”

Title: “I played D&D for the CIA”

URL: http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread300668/pg1#pid3482985.

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