Original Geek Origins: D&D, Satanic Panic, and Growing Up Nerdy

In Episode 1 of Original Geek, Steve Scarfo and Jeff Shaw roll back time to explore the secret lives of Gen X geeks who survived the satanic panic, comic book bans, and parental paranoia—all for the love of Dungeons & Dragons.

🎲 Was D&D really satanic?
 📼 What was it like to roll dice in hiding?
 🧙‍♂️ Why did comic books and RPGs feel like contraband in the ‘80s?

From underground campaigns and Monster Manual shame to Dragon Magazine hacks and awkward multi-class geek identities—we go deep into what it meant to be an Original Geek.

Plus:

• The real story behind Mazes and Monsters
• The first time you rolled a 1 and lost a teammate
• How Critical Role, Stranger Things, and TikTok brought it all back

Whether you’re a lifelong DM or a recovering stealth geek, this episode is a celebration of resilience, imagination, and the roots of modern fandom.

🗣 Got a geek confession or D&D war story? Hit us up at OriginalGeekPodcast@gmail.com or visit OriginalGeekPodcast.com

#OriginalGeek  #DnDPodcast  #SatanicPanic  #GeekCulture  #GenXGeek  #DungeonsAndDragons  #DragonMagazine  #CriticalRole  #StrangerThings  #NerdHumor  #BasementTreasure  #RollForInitiative  #RetroRPG

Welcome to Original Geek—the podcast for anyone who rolled their first d20 on shag carpet, waited hours for a comic book JPEG to load on dial-up, and wore the label “geek” back when it got you mocked, not monetized.

Hosted by stand-up comic Steve Scarfo and Forever DM Jeff Shaw, we dive deep into what it meant to be a geek in the '70s and '80s—and how that underground culture became the mainstream multiverse we live in today.

🎙️ Subscribe for weekly episodes on Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars, comic book chaos, geek court debates, and critical hits from your childhood basement.

👾 Follow us @OriginalGeekPodcast on socials and visit OriginalGeekPodcast.com for merch, extras, and to send us your own geeky tales.

If you ever hid a Monster Manual like it was porn, you’re not alone. You’re an Original Geek. Welcome home.

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro Theme
• 0:19 Welcome to the Show
• 0:49 Todays Topic: Dungeons & Dragons & an Introduction
• 10:32 Geek Flashback
• 18:46 Geek Court
• 25:04 Basement Treasures
• 31:27 Geek Evolution
• 37:44 Geek Rant
• 42:30 Critical Hits & Epic Fails
• 48:43 Ask an O.G.
• 50:05 Outro

Transcript

Jeff (00:00)
Do it.

Nice.

Steve Scarfo (00:19)
All right.

Welcome to Original Geek, a podcast for anyone who rolled dice in a basement, waited hours to download comic covers on dial-up and proudly wore the label of geek back when it was a target and not a trend. We're going to dive deep into what it meant to be a geek in the 70s and 80s and how that compares to a mainstream world we live in today. We are two of the Gen X survivors who didn't just watch geek culture evolve. We lived through every awkward phase. Hi, I'm Steve Scarfo.

Jeff (00:49)
And I'm Jeff Shaw and we'll be your NPCs for today's adventure.

Steve Scarfo (00:53)
All right, we're coming out of the gate strong. ⁓ Dice, dragons, and demons, Jeff. D &D's Dark Years.

Jeff (01:01)
best.

Steve Scarfo (01:01)
So

yeah, it's going to be a deep dive here into some of ⁓ how D &D involved, ⁓ not involved, evolved. As you can see, we both have some D &D apparel on. You can kind of see the dragonies.

Jeff (01:13)
We've got the subtle

and symbol from the Dungeons and Dragons. He's throwing it out there.

Steve Scarfo (01:17)
Yeah, you went with the settle and percent.

was like, nope, no subtlety involved. ⁓

Jeff (01:24)
Yeah,

yes, Steve is more leaning into the part of our tagline proudly geek. ⁓ And, you know, I'm still, you know, I still bear in the scars. Got to disguise it a little bit.

Steve Scarfo (01:39)
Hey, Jeff still living a lie. I've leaned so far in I'm almost falling over at this point ⁓ And my kids love it and if that wasn't sarcastic enough, I'll try it again Because they are not a fan they buy me that they bought me this is a joke. They don't they don't understand I do wear it all the time ⁓ So just a quick, you know, we're kicking this thing off we're starting out a new thing a new trend for us ⁓ Here's what it is. We're

We're gonna come at you every week with different topics. We're gonna talk today about D &D. Next week is gonna be all about comic books. We're gonna dive into science fiction. And then, know, at some points in time, we'll drive into specific topics or specific movies and we'll dig in deep. We're gonna have different segments for every episode. ⁓ So join us for all of them. Pick out the ones you love, but come and hang out with us while we talk. Today, Dungeons & Dragons.

Jeff (02:32)
Yeah, I love this trip down quoting, I think it, wait, was Robin Williams when it said, amnesia lane instead of memory lane, stripped down amnesia lane. So there's so many things we probably forgot about. And that's what I love about this podcast and hanging out with my friend of decades now from the eighties, Steve. ⁓

Steve Scarfo (02:44)
Yes, a trip down Amnesia Lane.

decades. yeah?

Jeff (03:01)
is this trip down Amnesia Lane. So this is a nostalgic look. We are gonna talk a lot about that, but also comparing to today. So look at games today, movies today, comics today, how things are happening today as well. But ⁓ if you know anyone else who also wants to take a trip down Amnesia Lane, please recommend this podcast to them as well.

Steve Scarfo (03:25)
Yeah. All right, let's dive in. So we're going to start for at least this episode with a little bit of what is the word geek? Where did that come from? I mean, I think everybody knows there's really, I saw this cool Venn diagram. And of course, I think you have to be a geek to think any Venn diagram is cool. But it was a crossover between geek, nerd, and dork. And the crossover in the middle, I think, is kind of where we live right now. We're a little bit geeky. All right, we're a lot geeky.

I don't think we fall more dorky when we tend to wash and we definitely nerd out over some stuff and try to learn as much as we can. If you fall dorky, I'm sorry, that's just a stereotype. It's not my deal. Just telling you how it is. We're Gen X. We do not care. You'll be fine. Brush it off.

Jeff (04:09)
You need to post,

if you haven't done it already, that Venn diagram on the website for Original Geek, because people need to see that. It's a great Venn diagram. And the thing is, I think part of it too is ⁓ one of the ways to get over an insult is to start to gain ownership of the term. So I feel like that's part of it, is that the geek was an insult. then as you've about those word origins of it.

Steve Scarfo (04:17)
Yeah.

Jeff (04:40)
you know, being, you meaning a freak. ⁓ And then, you know, kind of, you know, to where it is today where you can be called a geek. And that's why we're in the golden age of being a geek. Like this is, this is the time. Embrace it.

Steve Scarfo (04:53)
Yeah.

Well, mean, in late 1800s, early 1900s, a geek was something you saw. It was a circus freak. They called them the geeks. These were the guys who put knives and, not knives, but like ⁓ big, huge pins through their cheeks and they cut themselves and they did these crazy things. They were oddities. They were things to be like awed at, but at a distance. then the geek became kind of more of a freak.

like the, you know, we talk about revenge of the nerds, like, ⁓ look at those guys. They were definitely othered. Geeks and nerds were definitely othered ⁓ as this subculture of, you know, and forget it, if you were given a second title, like a band geek, you were like double, double nerded. ⁓ And then something happened when the internet age hit and geeks became billionaires because they

had this knowledge that was very niche, know, computer programming. I remember the old computers in the school library, ⁓ you know, 10 print, go F yourself, because I was 15, 20 go to 10 and 30 run. And that would make the screen just fill up with go F yourself. And it was hysterical to me. And I never got further than that, let's be honest. But those are the guys that were sitting next to us that started companies like Apple and then Geeks started to become chic.

They started having the money, they started doing all the fun stuff, and they threw these lavish parties, and then they became more mainstream. And then, of course, all of the great content that we're gonna start talking about with Dungeons and Dragons. ⁓ So Geek started out crazy, but we are definitely in the golden age. ⁓ Geek, sheeky geeky. ⁓

Jeff (06:20)
Yeah.

Yeah. Geek chic. It's chic to be geek.

Steve Scarfo (06:47)
If I went dark a little bit, you notice that, one of my lights just died on me. So we'll see what it looks like as we go. Yes. But yeah. my goodness. It was crazy. ⁓ So.

Jeff (06:52)
Well, it goes with our dark years D &D's dark years theme so

The Satanic Panic.

But it kind

of makes sense when you think about it because they always, and we do it today, the older generation wants to know what is wrong with these kids today. And they always wanna blame whatever maybe the new thing is, because that's gotta be the thing that caused the problem. Next week we're talking comic books and... ⁓

Steve Scarfo (07:28)
yeah.

Jeff (07:34)
you know, that comic books became big in the 30s and 40s and they didn't exist before that. So they're brand new thing. And then, ⁓ so they blamed the comics and that's when the Comics Authority Code, which is no longer a thing, but we can talk about that in a future episode, you know.

Steve Scarfo (07:53)
But it was like

an age rating or a content rating like they have for movies today, right? It was a, this safe for your kid?

Jeff (07:57)
Right,

right. so, you know, comics were blamed. And then, you know, you know, I'm sure it was, you know, movies because like teenage movies didn't exist until like the 50s or 60s were aimed at a teenage audience. And then you've got D &D coming in the 80s and.

Steve Scarfo (08:20)
⁓

1974, first release of Dungeons and Dragons.

Jeff (08:24)
Yeah. So, yeah. So seventies eighties, like is a new thing and started to build in popularity. And it became something that, you know, if someone had problems or issues. well, it's got to be this D & D stuff. We'd never seen that before. It looks weird. And then we get like, but today, you know, blaming, grand theft auto or, you know, video games or what, you know, Tik Tok

Whatever they want to blame, that's the problem. It's whatever the new thing is, that's gonna be the problem. So during those dark years, the Satanic Panic was because it was new, it was weird, and there was, we're gonna talk about this more in later segment, but there was demons and devils. They were the bad guys, you're supposed to defeat them, good versus evil, but I mean, the imagery was there.

Steve Scarfo (09:22)
Yeah, and that panic too, it happened around a time when, know, historically in our country, there was other stuff going on, right? There were tensions around the world. And so everyone was sort of freaked out. ⁓ There were a lot ⁓ of folks, especially the church. You you talk about the demons and the dragons and that was a major part of it. ⁓ And this is from Gary Gygax, the creator. He said, we had parents convinced rolling dice.

meant their kids were summoning demons. Like they thought it was a real thing. There were times when people would look at these books and I talk about it. ⁓ You can follow me on the SteveScarfo.com I'm also a stand-up comic, but I talk about it on stage. ⁓ something that people thought you were sacrificing chickens, right? This is what they thought. Like, ⁓ there's a demon or a devil or a dragon on the front. They must actually be worshiping Satan.

Jeff (10:11)
Yep.

Steve Scarfo (10:18)
And we were just using our imaginations and immersing ourselves in literacy, of all things. I know it's hard to think of getting into a book in that way, but that's all we were doing. ⁓

Jeff (10:32)
I think that actually

leads us nicely into our geek flashback.

Steve Scarfo (10:36)
Yeah, yeah, had, yeah, I was gonna go in the other direction, but that's a good call there, we're gonna get into the evolution in a little bit. ⁓

Jeff (10:47)
Yeah, because the

is and this kind of goes to ⁓ those who don't know Steve is also a stand-up comic and he has a bit he does on stage, which really helped launch this podcast. The idea being the original geek and having like like playing in secret. Right. I mean, wasn't that part of part of that joke? I mean.

Steve Scarfo (11:13)
yeah, I mean

the whole idea was, and we just talked a lot about it, if you were a geek in the 80s, you were ostracized. ⁓ Whether it was directly openly to your face and pushed around by tough kids like they did in the movies, which I never truly experienced that, it's bad. ⁓ Or people just sort of made fun of you for liking D &D or for liking something that was so subculture. you know, we lived through all of that. You had to be tough.

You had to be an OG, which of course everybody thinks of gangsta. But to me, it's just being an original geek, you had to be tough. And I know it's weird to think of geekiness and toughness at the same time, but ⁓ maybe toughness in the resilience sense, right? We had to make it through. If we didn't deal with all that crap growing up in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 70s and 80s for us, ⁓ know, geek culture wouldn't have gotten kind of where it is today.

You know, and I don't mean you and I specifically are gonna try to take credit of for any of that for anybody who's freaking out. I'm talking our generation of people who are now emerging. And you talked TikTok earlier. I don't know. I get on TikTok probably more than I should as a 56 year old. But there is a huge culture of DMs and players and cosplayers and like D &D is just flooding the market. Now, maybe the algorithms have read my.

geekiness and are showing me more than it is out there, but there's a ton. ⁓ Maybe in future episodes we'll talk about different people that we can recommend you follow ⁓ and check out. ⁓ But then into our flashback, so ⁓ again, we're gonna segment this thing down and we're gonna talk geeky flashbacks. So ⁓ D &D was, it was probably worse than being a drug dealer.

We had friends who partook, ⁓ mostly just in smoking weed, right? But ⁓ I think they would have been found cooler for that than they were for sitting with us with a book open rolling dice.

Jeff (13:22)
yeah, mean, it's so funny that like we had to keep this a secret for two things. One, that kind of badass satanic thing, right? So someone could think you're practicing witchcraft. So you got to keep that hidden. And then also the geek aspect when it was not cool whatsoever to be a geek. And you had to keep that hidden because our friend group that played D &D in high school, we were very diverse. So we had...

And back in the 80s, it was very much like the Breakfast Club where you had your jocks, you had your, you know, your nerds, you had your burnouts, you had your preps, you had your outcasts, like, and there's very distinct, like it's not as distinct as today, but D &D that because all, and we had representation across that, like, so any D &D.

Steve Scarfo (14:10)
But the movie wasn't far off. That was pretty close.

Jeff (14:20)
outing with our friends looked like the Breakfast Club. We had our jock. We had the burnouts. We had, you know, the geeks. We like, it was, we had the Breakfast Club at our D &D group. And we... ⁓

Steve Scarfo (14:24)
Yes.

Do

you want to call name for name and class for class? Or you want to call people? I think Kevin was probably the jock, right? He was the wrestler.

Jeff (14:36)
Well, yes. Yeah, so Kevin,

Kevin was a wrestler. Wrestler was huge at the we we we all went to Wells High School in Wells, Maine. ⁓ And we yeah. And we I still remember we were in the in the parking lot in a gun quit beach in Maine. And we had the the D &D books were in the back of Kevin's car. And

Steve Scarfo (14:49)
Shout out to the Warriors.

Jeff (15:06)
Kevin saw some of his wrestling friends and he like takes off his, whips off his jacket, like cover up those books, cover up the books. Like we don't want anyone to see the D &D stuff. So yeah, so we had to, had to, you know, disguise it, you know, hide it. And then we had our burnout friends, Bill Dunbar and ⁓ Jim Hutchinson, also known as Dune in that time period.

Steve Scarfo (15:14)
Dune

Jeff (15:36)
And then ⁓ we had the more nerdy guys, but we were kind of also in disguise. My disguise was I wore like skateboard or surfer shirts. ⁓ That was my disguise, but I was really nerdy. then ⁓ Steve, you kind of drifted around. You played sports and you had your own disguises. ⁓ Our only true geek.

Steve Scarfo (15:37)
Do

You

did some sports, we did some... I was a multi-class ⁓

geek.

Jeff (16:05)
Yeah, you and our friends, Boyd Tufts and Bill Ponder's were also that multi-class geek. And then we had one friend who did embrace it a bit more, ⁓ Dave Tufts, who, so.

Steve Scarfo (16:22)
You know, we give Dave a lot of crap

⁓ to his face for the record, so we're not talking out of school here, we do. And Dave, you know, we love Dave. Dave has been a part of us and will be forever, but Dave embraced it. He was all in from the get. He lived his truth, whatever you wanna say. Like, Dave did not shy away from being who he was. ⁓ And looking back, that's pretty damn admirable for a time when the rest of us were like, shit, hide our books. You know what I mean?

Jeff (16:37)
Yeah.

Yep, true that.

I

like I have this subtle D &D shirt on now. He had like the largest Batman t-shirt I've ever seen.

Steve Scarfo (16:56)
he had all of the shirts.

Yeah, like this is a new thing for me. Couple years ago I started wearing these. So even in my 50s, there's still a part of me that I have to think, are my kids gonna freak out if I wear this shirt in public? Am I gonna embarrass them because, ⁓ you know, I have a different one. ⁓ Jeff's seen it before. says rolling dice builds character, which isn't any less subtle to me, but it doesn't actually say Dungeons and Dragons on it. does have the big ampersand in the middle of a 20-sided dice. ⁓

Jeff (17:09)
Yeah.

Steve Scarfo (17:25)
So it's not exactly hidden but but sometimes I have to think even now can I do that? don't know

Jeff (17:33)
Yeah. Yeah. And I had ⁓ later, I worked with a guy at a restaurant in Wells, it's still there today, Litchfield's restaurant. ⁓ He had to really hide because his parents were evangelical Christian. He had to really hide his love of D &D. JP. We actually went to, we've dropped, like, you know, friends come and go and he's one that's gone. ⁓

Steve Scarfo (17:35)
All right.

Who was that?

I remember JP, yeah.

Jeff (18:02)
He's still alive, I assume, we went to his wedding. He was actually in our friend group, but more in the 90s. So later, friend, he was younger than us. ⁓ And yeah, and he, his parents caught him with a monster manual or whatever, hidden under the bed, like a porno magazine.

Steve Scarfo (18:10)
younger than us by about five or six years, right?

my God, which has got to be the worst possible book too. The Monster Manual. It's not like he was talking

Player's Handbook or the Wishes book. It was the Monster Manual.

Jeff (18:30)
Yeah, so

he went like chased down the street like, ⁓ because, you know, introducing that was introducing the devil, which I think ⁓ could lead us into our next segment pretty well of geek court.

Steve Scarfo (18:48)
Geek Court dun dun. All right. So every week we're going to pick a topic and we're going to ⁓ talk about both sides of it. And you can love it. You can hate it. You can join one side or the other. You can tell us why we're both full of crap. ⁓ Jeff mentioned the website that's in the construction, OriginalGeekPodcast.com. But it's ⁓ OriginalGeekPodcast at Gmail.com for any emails you want to send us.

join this fight. this week we're going to talk the Satanic Panic. Was it the media's fault or was it the game's branding?

Jeff (19:25)
It was the media's fault. ⁓ you know, like I said earlier, they always look for the boogeyman. What's the problem with today's youth? And in that, this case D and D was to blame. ⁓ they, there was, ⁓ there was a case that 60 minutes looked into and did a segment on, then never correction. They never corrected what they said. And, ⁓ this purely unscientific conclusion that.

There was a kid that he was 15 years old. He's like this boy genius he went to. He ended up in college and he disappeared. And they had this investigation where this kid go, where'd he go? And they went into his dorm room and found all these D & D books. And they found a map that matched a map of tunnels at the college.

And so they looked in the tunnels, like, where is he in the tunnels? And sadly, and not due to D &D, did like, he was just having some probably real troubles as a 15 year old geek, which wasn't cool at that time, in college. And he was probably getting bullied. He eventually committed suicide and they wanted to blame D &D. And then there were like,

Steve Scarfo (20:48)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff (20:51)
if there was ever a case maybe someone, you know, committed any kind of crime and they looked, wait, he had D &D books. Like, there's no science in this, just like crime or issue, teenager, young adults, kid, books, D &D books, that's the problem, D &D. And so the media made it sound.

Far worse. Well, actually there was no, there was no, there was, there is no scientific proof that D & D did anything to influence any of these crimes, any of these suicides, any of these issues. Um, but that was, um, you know, so the media blew this way out of proportion. Um, and I know you're about to take the opposing viewpoint, but I do want to say it actually worked in D & D's favor because sales quadrupled.

Steve Scarfo (21:20)
Yeah, there was no connection at all.

Jeff (21:45)
They went up 400 % during the satanic panic. So they like, hey, they made some serious money off of the satanic panic and maybe helped it gain popularity in a way that it might not have without that satanic panic. But you're taking the opposing viewpoint that D &D does bear some blame.

Steve Scarfo (22:01)
Hmm.

Well, they do say...

Yeah, of course. ⁓ You know, they say ⁓ no press is bad press, right? That's the old marketing strategy. Any press is good press. Anytime the game you created's name is mentioned in the news a hundred times, yeah, you're gonna get those folks who fall into the panic and you're gonna get the rest who come out. But I mean, let's be honest, I can't imagine that was their marketing strategy, right?

to have themselves blamed for all of this stuff. we're going to get into our in our next segment. I'm going to talk about a movie that I think falls into this category. But. They branded every book as boldly as they could. You know, the original Monster Manual was this big red demon. The player's handbook had a red dragon. That red dragon image was on the basic set. The picture you have at the very front. Those are that was the original

Jeff (23:03)
Yep.

Steve Scarfo (23:07)
D &D cover, a huge red dragon, a creature from mythology. ⁓ And I get it, they were appealing to those folks who were reading Tolkien and who were enamored with these stories, because there were no TV shows or movies at that time. ⁓ But they didn't help themselves with that branding. They could have easily done some nice artwork on the front, Dungeons and Dragons. ⁓

and then some cool catch line afterwards, know, an adventure for your life. no, they put, go ahead, show it. They put these kind of pictures up of, yeah, that was the monster manual. Look at the, that's not a thing that in the 70s and 80s, the parents wanted their kids looking at. A, he's naked. ⁓ But B, he's a big red demon with silver flares coming out of his back. ⁓ I hear what you're saying. I don't think it was a...

Just the media, I ⁓ think the folks over at, I think the original group was TSR, ⁓ they didn't pull back at the very minimum. When things started going sour and sideways, maybe they were riding that wave like you were talking about, ⁓ that no press is bad press. But I think they have to take some responsibility for some of their own negative press.

They could have easily come out and said, no, it's not that, but they didn't. They just let it fly. mean, 400 % jump in sales is a it's a pretty compelling argument to stay where you're at. ⁓ I do think that drops us.

Jeff (24:43)
Yeah, I mean, just think,

⁓ if like, hey wait, my life's not so good, apparently I can really cast spells. So let's get that book, because I got some spells I wanna cast. How disappointed were they when that did not.

Steve Scarfo (24:55)
Yes.

goodness. Very. I have firsthand knowledge. ⁓ So I think that drops us into the next segment we were just I was kind of alluding to segment we call basement treasures. What are some things from back in the day that you remember that ⁓ that were great and that, you know, and this one is kind of great for a bad reason almost because it played into that. I almost wonder now that you tell that story, I wonder if this was based on that real story.

Jeff (25:03)
Ha

Dig up.

Steve Scarfo (25:30)
because this was a movie with Tom Hanks, of all people, everybody's favorite Uncle Tom. ⁓ He's America's uncle, right? ⁓ It was a movie called Mazes and Monsters, and it told the story. think of it, it was definitely a student, I think it was a college student, who in the movie, I think he was schizophrenic because from his point of view, they always showed, as he was walking through the hallways, I think of the dorm, if I'm remembering correctly.

Like they would show us the real world of just his friends and in his mind's eye it was these monsters and creatures and he freaked out and they very much portrayed it as the fault of the books, the fault of the game. And while I don't like the message, it was probably one of the first times I saw D &D represented on screen. Now again, maybe you played into that 400 % bump in sales but.

Not the greatest message, but it's cool to see it on screen. Odd, good.

Jeff (26:29)
Yeah, so easy enough today's internet age to dig up an old movie, Maces and Monsters, a young Tom Hanks is in it. So dig it up. For me, my basement treasure is Dragon Magazine. Now know magazines aren't even much of a thing anymore.

Steve Scarfo (26:39)
Gotta be on YouTube.

If you're less than 25, it's what you used to print stuff out and send it to people.

Jeff (26:56)
but love Dragon Magazine, had lots of great ideas. ⁓ Pre-internet, there wasn't a lot of ways to get content. ⁓ There was those really expensive books that we got from D &D. Every now and again, you could find a module, ⁓ but every month you could get Dragon Magazine. It had a lot of ideas. And specifically, and I did look this up, I didn't memorize this. Dragon Magazine 39.

Steve Scarfo (27:10)
Mm-hmm.

They had adventures in every book.

Jeff (27:26)
had this was game changing for our campaign, especially for your character, Gru Holden, because it was critical misses, good hits and critical misses or something like that was that the article and it had the, it was a variety of horrible things. Yeah, these tables that I attached to my screens came from which, because before a critical miss was just.

Steve Scarfo (27:45)
Or was that where the table came from?

Jeff (27:54)
You automatically miss you're all the one you missed didn't matter if all of your bonuses you would have hit you miss and But there wasn't a huge negative consequence. You just missed and then critical hit like was double damage ⁓ That was the standard and it wouldn't matter if you couldn't really hit this thing you rolled a 20 you hit you got to hit it it didn't matter so ⁓ so the

Steve Scarfo (28:16)
Yeah, miracle shot.

Jeff (28:20)
But what these tables did is it provided a lot of different horrible effects from a critical miss and awesome effects from critical hits. And ⁓ man, it was a game changer because you rolled that natural 20 and you didn't just do double damage. You chopped off someone's head. You know, it was amazing. And then.

Steve Scarfo (28:40)
Yeah, decapitation. Before you

get to the next part, let me just throw this little piece of context in. ⁓ My character, Gruul Holden, was a fighter, pretty standard, ⁓ early class for Dungeons and Dragons, and I think I have a record, it's gotta be a worldwide record, for the most ones rolled in any combat, doesn't matter when there was a combat, at least once or twice in every combat situation we were in, my character would roll a one.

With friends nearby so this is this is your critical context No puns are pretty much all puns intended So Jeff can tell the rest of the story

Jeff (29:23)
Yeah, so ⁓ Steve was responsible for the loss of Bill Dunbar's character's ⁓ fingers. And then he was fell more five fingers because he lost his fingers and the only ⁓ ring of regeneration that the team had at that time was ⁓ mongrel regeneration, which was also from Dragon magazine.

Steve Scarfo (29:32)
He was Falmar first.

Jeff (29:50)
got to roll this dice and see what kind of regeneration you got, and he had ogre fingers at one point. ⁓ And then...

Steve Scarfo (29:57)
If you haven't

caught on by now, Jeff loved to mess with us in any way that he could. But as the constant DM, looking back, I gotta give him that because he always came up with unique ways for things to go south for us.

Jeff (30:00)
yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. And then ⁓ our other friend that we talked about earlier, Dave Tufts, he was the red shirt, for those who knew of Star Trek, the expendable crew member. Steve, critical miss, decapitated, killed him so much. He died a lot in other ways. But yeah, so there's, yeah.

Steve Scarfo (30:30)
Technically, I only decapitated him once. There was one time my sword went right through his chest, but that was a different

death.

Jeff (30:39)
Yeah, so yeah, it was good time. So Dragon Magazine was a great basement treasure. And the great thing now is actually through, because of the internet, you can dig up those old issues, including that critical miss and hits table. So if you, those of you who are playing right now and you want to jazz up your critical hits and misses, you can dig that table up and use that in your next campaign.

Steve Scarfo (30:57)
What did you say, ⁓

What'd you say? Issue 39? Is that what it was? All right, Dragon Magazine, issue 39. Go find it. And for you DMs out there, mess with some players, man. Give them a ring of Mongrel regeneration. Don't make it easy.

Jeff (31:10)
Issue 39.

Throw it in.

Steve Scarfo (31:22)
All right, well, I think that rolls us into the next segment, right? Geeks evolution. So I don't know why I did that voice, but I felt good. ⁓ So we're in the D &D world. How did D &D rise from the ashes? Because ⁓ we started by talking about the satanic panic and how everybody thought it was evil. ⁓

Jeff (31:24)
All right.

Yes.

Steve Scarfo (31:50)
You know, we talk about churches ostracized us. We didn't get to it. ⁓ I think we talked about it in a different conversation, but you know, we had to find corners. We had to play literally in basements or in Dave's mom's case, the darkened dance studio over the weekend because it was the only place we were allowed to stay to a thing today where they fill stadiums.

Jeff (32:10)
Yes.

She didn't, and Dave's mom did not ⁓ make us feel like we were worshiping Satan, but she did make us feel like geeks in the worst sense. Because even though she let us use her dance studio to play D &D, she mocked and ridiculed us for not hanging out with girls at that time.

Steve Scarfo (32:24)
You

We, you know, and it's funny at that time, like it was an option. Like we could have just said, hey, come hang out with us. You know what I mean? And girls would have just shown up. ⁓ Besides being awkward teenagers, all of us, guess maybe Boyd and Bill and maybe you all had a little bit more Riz than the rest of us. Yeah, I know it's a new state, a new thing. I'm going to say Riz, okay? Relax. But they had...

It wasn't like I could just walk up to a girl and say, we're gonna hang out and play D &D all weekend. You wanna come hang out? This, wasn't a thing that girls were doing. Like, not to our knowledge, no.

Jeff (33:07)
Back in the 80s,

talk about evolution. That's one thing that's, I think, one of the greatest things is that it's not gender specific anymore, like liking fantasy, liking comic books. And not that it wasn't happening then, but because we're all hiding who we were. ⁓ And I think as much as we would be mocked and ridiculed as a boy, I think it must have been even worse.

as a girl that, ⁓ not only is that geeky, but you're doing something that boys do. Boys like comic books. Boys like D &D.

Steve Scarfo (33:45)
You know, that's

a great point. I never thought about that the girls might have had it worse than we did.

Jeff (33:50)
It's just a theory, because I know Kristen, my wife, who I knew I was going to marry her because on our first date, we were talking about books we were reading and she said she read Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. And I was like, OK, this is it. I found the one. then we went to see 12 Monkeys, so sci-fi.

Steve Scarfo (34:09)
Hmm.

Jeff (34:14)
Tara Gilliam from Monty Python fame. like, this is meant to be. ⁓ But she wanted to play D &D growing up and no one, she knew no one who was gonna play it. So she wanted to, she just couldn't find anyone. And of course you couldn't post it in school, like, we're gonna have a D &D club like you can today. Like nothing, there was no outlet, there's no way.

Steve Scarfo (34:19)
Yeah.

That's.

no.

Well,

and I mean, let's be honest, I don't remember when Facebook started, but really the idea of posting on the internet, right? I remember being in college and there were IRC rooms, internet relay chats, that were like the original chat rooms, but there was no graphics. It was literally like a CRT screen. You had to type a bunch of commands to find the room. There were no mice. Do know what I mean? But now you can go on these apps, like I talked about it before, TikTok, Instagram.

Jeff (34:47)
yeah.

Steve Scarfo (35:11)
⁓ Goodness, ⁓ check me out at Steve Scarfo on TikTok and look at all the people I follow. There's probably 35 or 40 D &D pages and I think I've barely cracked the tip of the iceberg, right? There are tons of D &D ⁓ content creators that are specific to D &D. Some of them are specific to story ideas or mini adventure ideas. Some just ⁓ talk about artwork and stuff like that, but.

with this evolution that we're talking about. ⁓ I'm trying to decide where it started. So one of the notes I have is about Stranger Things, which really came out about maybe 10 years ago now it started. I know there's been a huge hiatus from season one to now. Obviously they went through first five seasons and they took a few years off. But do think it really was a Stranger Things kickoff? ⁓

Jeff (36:04)
I think

it was a combo, was Stranger Things. It was ⁓ Big Bang Theory ⁓ because they were playing it and they weren't, well, mean, maybe Penny or whatever would maybe mock them, but by and large, that wasn't full of mock and ridicule. The TV show community had them playing ⁓ D &D and there was a bit more of that kind of mockery, silliness, but still.

Steve Scarfo (36:11)
Big Bang Theory for sure.

Jeff (36:32)
Like the more you see people playing this, and then I think in you referenced or ⁓ we're gonna talk about it later, all the celebrities that are playing D &D and talking about it openly. ⁓

Steve Scarfo (36:50)
Yeah,

yeah, it's funny. And maybe we do another segment at a different episode about the Big Bang Theory. We have to take a note about that because that show did a lot for just geeks in general, right? It brought heartwarming ⁓ lovability to these geeky characters. And the four main characters were so geeky in different ways. They really do embody ⁓

and probably five if you include Stuart who owned the comic book shop. But over a decade or more that show really brought geek culture into the mainstream in such a lovable funny way that I think people started to just accept that these are fun loving characters. And maybe it took some of the stank off of what it meant to be a geek.

Jeff (37:42)
Yeah,

it helps, that's for sure.

Steve Scarfo (37:45)
All right, so maybe that brings us into our, this is our mini rant. This is our message to you if you're under the Gen X age group. ⁓

Jeff (37:47)
Let's move to the message to the new generation, right?

Steve Scarfo (37:58)
So, ⁓ Jeff, you said you had one chambered.

Jeff (38:02)
Yeah, so this, and I have to admit, this is not necessarily just for the new generation. I think it's partially that, but it could be really any age. This is a message to those trolls. We're in a golden age of geekdom, and this is an amazing time. And some of you all are trolls and haters. And the fandom.

We really, we want to embrace and keep this going. And when we get great content, even if it might not be true to exactly what you think it should be, just try not to destroy it. Because I do believe that it's that kind of negative commentary, that kind of negative aspect that, you know, has caused

some really quality stuff to get derailed. that Dungeons and Dragons movie may not have been perfect, but man, it was so much better than Mazes and Monsters. was like, you know, and I would have loved to have gotten part two, but that's not gonna happen. And a lot of bad press. And unfortunately, some people will see that someone will post on and they'll use their platform for evil.

Steve Scarfo (39:11)
Mazes and monsters.

Jeff (39:30)
just to destroy things and don't do that. Of course, you know, cause we are part of one of our segments coming up is Epic Fails. So yeah, we're gonna be critical of some things, but we wanna keep it going. So you can do it, you can express your opinion, but try not to destroy. ⁓ That's my plea and my rant is don't destroy this great thing we've got going in the golden age of geekdom.

Steve Scarfo (39:47)
Yeah, we talked.

Yeah, we talk about this a lot offline just in our regular life. We'll go see movies and there be times we watch, you know, and again, a different topic for comic book movies since there was only one real D &D movie. But like there things we don't like about some of these movies. We'll talk about them. But we come up with alternatives. We'll go, well, you know what they should have done. Like if you have a strong opinion, put it out there. Like Jeff was saying, don't don't just tear it down. ⁓ I mean, look at the the the Wheel of Time show on

There was a lot wrong with that show. There was a lot wrong with that show. But we got this show of this epic and I find from what I understand they're not going to go past this last season, which I think was honestly one of their best seasons because it was most closely related to the content in the books. But we'll talk more about that when we get back to movies and D &D and this topic.

⁓ yeah, don't.

Jeff (40:52)
No, pay,

we vote with our dollar when it comes to these things. so yeah, so when someone says something negative and influences other people not to watch something, because in this case for Amazon, it would have just been their viewing numbers. So like, just watch it.

Steve Scarfo (41:12)
Mm-hmm. I can only

watch it so many times, Jeff. I don't think they count multiple viewings. ⁓ But yeah, don't mess around. So I'm gonna jump on the back of your face. I think I did that in the previous take of the last episode too, but yeah. It's just something that you can do. Just do it, be good, ⁓ make your opinion. Send new content if you got it. Write fan fiction, but try to keep it positive.

We talk about not having had any of this before and we didn't. So we have it today. Let's not just be frivolous with it. So this my little slant on this is don't burn it down just because you don't realize what it's like not to have it. When you don't have something, you know, someone gives you a cup of warm water and you go, oh, that's nasty. But when you haven't had a drink for about seven hours, you go, well, I'll take it. That's refreshing. And that's what it was like to be a geek in the 70s. We didn't have any of this.

We had the D &D cartoon in the 80s that was like a wonderfully campy, horrible cartoon, but then we got a real movie with real actors and real special effects and y'all were trashing it. And it was just the best view to me of what they could have done.

Jeff (42:27)
Yeah, it was fun.

Steve Scarfo (42:28)
All right,

⁓ second to last segment almost here. I think we got this one, one more. Critical hits, epic fails. We're gonna start with some critical hits. What do you think for D &D? What are some of the best things? This is a best and worst segment.

Jeff (42:45)
Yeah, so actually ⁓ I do think ⁓ that the new, the fifth edition, which we haven't played a ton of, because we're, we played ⁓ second edition, then third edition, fourth edition, well, fourth edition we'll talk about as an epic fail, but ⁓ one thing we are playing a lot of, or did play a lot of, was Baldur's Gate.

Steve Scarfo (43:03)
We've been dragging through 3.5 for decades.

Okay.

Jeff (43:13)
which is fifth edition rules, which gave me a much better understanding of what those are. And I feel like has really helped make things successful. And then that's the addition that the celebrities are doing and these, well, and what has become celebrity with critical role, right? I mean, so I think all this.

Steve Scarfo (43:36)
Critical Role, yeah. Yeah, the Vox Machina

talking about Prime. Vox Machina show is the Critical Role, guys.

Jeff (43:43)
⁓ yeah.

Yeah, I mean, so it's so I think that this this latest edition of D &D and all the celebrity endorsements of Demons and Dragons has been a critical hit for us.

Steve Scarfo (43:59)
Yeah, we talked about this once before, from the Daredevil TV show, ⁓ there was an episode, I believe it's John Bernthal who played Punisher. It's his podcast, but Deborah Ann Woll and horribly, I don't remember her character's name in Daredevil. Karen, thank you. Yeah, so they're talking and she's a DM. People pay her to DM their games because they want to have her. ⁓

Jeff (44:16)
Karen.

Steve Scarfo (44:28)
and he had never played and she did this awesome thing. Check out his podcast. If I can find it, I'll put a link in the show notes. But there's a segment where she just starts talking him through a situation and he's in the woods and he's a ranger and she gives him choices and they don't have any dice. They have no books. It's just having a conversation. And he and at one point she just stops and goes, we're playing D &D. This is it. And it was like the most perfect example of what it is to do to play this game. It's imagination, it's choices, it's

two people having a choose your own adventure conversation. ⁓ She lays out the story, he makes a choice, she takes the story in whatever direction. That's what a dungeon master does. They create a world and environment. ⁓ If you're not a D &D geek, I'm not sure why you've been listening this long, but thanks for being here. And if you are, you know the deal, share it with your friends, man. I agree, that's been one of the best things that could have happened because it really has make it more okay.

When people see celebrities and famous people doing it, they go, well, okay, well, if they're doing it, then, know, although I think with the culture we have today, they don't need that permission as much as they used to, but it does help. Well, I'm gonna jump on the fail side of it. I think I gotta go back to the panic, the school bans ⁓ they made us burn, well, I don't think we ever actually burned books, but there were churches burning D &D books. ⁓

Jeff (45:39)
Yeah, do it.

Steve Scarfo (45:54)
You know, and I think that comes down to a prejudice in any case, right? I'm not gonna go all crazy. ⁓ But in this case, people had a viewpoint of what D &D was, didn't understand it, took it for the worst possible thing it could be, and then we end up with ⁓ kids getting kicked out of schools, bad movies and TV shows, and book burnings. ⁓ Horrible, horrible time.

Jeff (46:19)
Yeah, absolutely. And another epic fail ⁓ was fourth edition D &D. And although we never played it, what did happen is as a DM, and I was looking for material, and as soon as they'd have a new edition, all the new modules are only in the new edition. So I saw this fourth edition module. I wanted to play it.

And the rules were so different that I couldn't really understand how to adapt it easily. It was more work to adapt that fourth edition module to 3.5 rules than just to start from scratch and think of my own module and my own ideas. ⁓ And from what I read is they were trying to make it like a video game. That video games were the hot new thing.

Steve Scarfo (47:12)
So D &D 4th Edition.

Jeff (47:18)
and that they needed to make D &D relevant for the latest generation was to make it like a video game. So I love that they switched it back to 5e, which stayed more true to the old form of D &D. And what I love about these celebrity DMs and Deborah Anwalt's example that is in that episode is it's storytelling.

and not just about ⁓ hack and slash and rolling dice, which I know we do a lot of. That was our thing.

Steve Scarfo (47:43)
Hmm.

We were all hacking slash.

No, I was thinking that too. if ⁓ I admit to not being able to have the time to sit and watch an entire critical role episode there three or four hours long. But they they they do a video podcast of them actually playing sessions and the the the four seasons five whatever it was for the legend of Vox Machina came from them playing in the way they told their stories and they have six or seven players all.

playing distinct characters. Like we probably could have done this back in the 80s ⁓ had we had the technology at the time ⁓ and had we not taken copyrighted names and material. no one cares when you're in your basement. But yeah, the storytelling today is first. And the fantasy, the hack and slash of it all is second. All right. ⁓

Jeff (48:43)
Yeah, absolutely.

Steve Scarfo (48:48)
Thanks for joining us on this journey. It's episode one. We'll be back with more episodes like we talked about earlier. We're going to come back talk about comic books and history next time. ⁓ Hit us up on social medias. We have everything set up right now. Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok. ⁓ Originalgeekpodcast.com is the website. Originalgeekpodcast@gmail.com to send us information. And that's where we want you to Ask an OG. ⁓

Anything you ever wanted to know about how we play D &D? Did anyone ever try to stop you from playing D &D? Tell us your stories. I think at one time we'll probably read out one or two of these if we find some some fun ones to talk about. We're not looking for controversy. We just want to see if we can have some fun. If you have a strong opinion, if you think our rants or our geek court were horrible and the wrong things to talk about, tell us what you want to hear about. ⁓ And what is your?

I'm gonna put this in two or three different categories, right? What is your best memory from playing D &D? And when I say best, it could be funniest, craziest, most intense, most stupid. ⁓ Do you have a really distinct D &D memory that you wanna share with the world? Let us know. ⁓ We'd be happy to hear from you.

Jeff (50:04)
Absolutely. Can't wait to hear from

you and please do spread the news about our podcast and let's build this community and enjoy this golden age of geek.

Steve Scarfo (50:16)
All right, I'll see you guys next time.

This is why I don't dance.

We'll see you next time.