David Given Schwarm

There is a Netflix documentary called Wild Wild Country about the conflict of an Indian Guru coming to Oregon. IMDB describes it with:

When the world’s most controversial guru builds a utopian city deep in the Oregon desert, conflict with the locals escalates into a national scandal. A true story.

During Episode Two there is discussion around how this relates to the Jim Jones’ Massacre in South America–mostly about how there was a strong anti-cult sentiment in the media. Here is a clip (I removed the sound & went with subtitles):

In any event, to demonstrate this “dangerous cult” point the filmmakers used images from the 1st Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide:

Both books were written by Gary Gygax and are considered classics. They have nothing to do with cults & everything to do with the creative gameplay–in fact, the DMG is still often cited as the greatest RPG book ever written.

There is absolutely no reason to include these images in a discussion of cults–in fact, it perpetuates a Satanic Panic response which still affects RPG’s.