Every year the American Library Association likes to remind us that it can happen here and that many books are challenged at, or banned or removed from, school and public libraries. So, American librarians celebrate Banned books week this year Sept. 24-Oct. 1. (Some of the featured books were alsobanned in other countries.)
The list of the most challenged books usually includes mostly childrens’ and young adult books, as parents and busybodies attempt to protect young folks from things like penguin homosexuality, or learning witchcraft via the tales of Roald Dahl. But it’s not just And Tango makes threeor The witches … a large number of adult fantasy and science fiction books are challenged too. Here are some lists:
Banned fantasy & sci-fi at Powell’s Books
Worlds without ends’ list of banned books
I’m trying to come up with al ist of challenged or banned RPG-related books but I can’t really think of any. Although I know D&D books were challenged a bit back during the ‘satanic panic’, I don’t think they are currently on anyone’s radar, and I think that RPG books in general are too small a niche to attract attention from censors any more. If I lower the threshhold a little to include merely ‘controversial’ RPG books, I can think of:
- The censored first printing of Palace of the Silver Princess
- Outrage over Geoffrey McKinney’s Carcosa “supplement” for D&D
- The (almost) universally reviled games F.A.T.A.L. and Racial Holy War
- The small pockets of outrage over the LotFP Grindhouse Edition
In all these cases, the outrage and controversy is all within the RPG ‘community.’ Has any RPG actually been banned, censored, or challenged from without? I guess there was the case of Steve Jackson Games’ GURPS Cyberpunk being seized by the federales…that made Time magazine back in the late 1990s. What else am I missing?
It’s not an official challenge, but one of our consortium libraries has been adding D&D books to their collection and more than one staff member thinks that someone or a group of people have been making off with them because of Satanic messages. Checked a few library listservs and I didn’t see anything about it.
Could be! But D&D books also tend to get stolen by miscreant players too.