Title: The Situation In Italy

Source: rec.games.rpg.advocacy, June 1996

NOTICE: The following material is copyrighted as indicated in the body of text.  It has been posted to this web page for archival purposes, and in doing so, no claim of authorship is expressed or implied, nor is a profit being made from the use of the material.

After the stories, you will find my personal rebuttal of them. Click on the link to jump forward to it, if you wish; however, much of the text of the original document has been deleted from the rebuttal to conserve space.

Here goes:

News on the Italian Television, Thursday June 6th 1996, 1:30 PM
TRANSCRIPTION BY PAOLO POLI

(close-up on the Lawyer L. Faraon)
Faraon: "There is nothing human in Role Playing Games. The fantastic is always in contrast with reality, even if we speak about Star Trek. There is the final killing weapon as a methodology. Among these weapons we have the twisting of the mind (Translator’s note: it sounds familiar :) ), the use of monstrous images that remain in the mind of the person that has been identifying himself, thus breaking a fundamental balance of life, that of sleep, dream and awakening."

La Stampa (Italian Newspaper) May 28th 1996
19 YEARS OLD COMMITS SUICIDE
HIS MIND TROUBLED BY A GAME

[Snip]

That is the dynamic of the suicide of this boy from Spinea, 19 years old, high school student. A normal guy, with some academic problems, since he was doing the same year of studying for the second time. Roberto C. Was afraid of not passing his courses again, this seems to be the cause of his act, at least according to his father. 

But there is a lawyer that starts looking at the issue from a totally different, alarming point of view: the hypothesis that the suicide could be connected with the new phenomenon of role-playing games, of which it seems that Roberto was an enthusiast. That is what is said by Luciano Faraon, national manager of the Gris and of the Aris (two associations, the first catholic, the other laic, which research information about sects).

Faraon presented a statement to the magistrate Carlo Nordio, in which he signals the need for an intervention of the legal authorities "in order to immediately confiscate magazines and cards related to the so-called role-playing games on the whole Italian territory".

[Snip]

According to Faraon these games "innocuous at first sight, actually involve a psychological deviance, mainly in young boys, leading them to extreme actions, such as suicide or homicide."

"It should be noted that the danger involved in the phenomenon - adds the lawyer - is given by the fact that, while in recitation the person recites a described role, in RPG’s the involved person has to impersonate totally the role of the character, which could be that of the killer or that of somebody sentenced to hanging.

This determines a block of the consciousness and a somatization to the level of mental deviance of the role to be played, which could lead to a situation of lost of control even of the basics elements of self-defense." The lawyer has asked to the Major of Spinea the revocation of the concession on the usage of public premises for the group of people that play role-playing games.

Venice, turning point in the investigation on the dead of the 19 year old boy: he could have been helped hanging himself.
The killers are Role-playing games
The Public Prosecutor: behind them a chain of suicides
FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT PIERAGELO SAPEGNO 

Roberto was a boy-scout, he used to go to the Mass and play Basketball, which is a game without fiction, before getting lost in his world. Roberto, as the first suspects suggest, died in a game that he was leading and he had lost, one of those American role playing games, in which the total identification with the character is mandatory. Maybe he died to be better even than loss itself. Better than Harry Williams of the Benetton Treviso (Translator’s note: an Italian Basketball team), who raises the hand and calls five, even if he has been beaten. 

Roberto gave his few things to his friends before leaving, because that is what is stated in the rules of the game he was playing: the one who loses leaves all his possessions to the others, as a tribute to the stronger one. And with him, maybe, there were his friends that afternoon, as if it was possible to share the same feeling, that brings us away from everything or that ends only a game; maybe for them it could have been the same thing. Roberto was 19 years old, an age of suffering and understanding. "He did not kill himself on his own" has been stated by the examination of the corpse and that is what has been said by the judge Carlo Nordio. It means, simply, that he could have been helped. The medical examiner, doctor Ferlin, tries to explain: "Usually there are breakings on the body of the hanged. The vertebras, or the carotid, or the cartilage. There is nothing here. He died of suffocation, without breakings." As if he had been lifted, helped in hanging to the tree. But if he did not kill himself on his own, there could be something else.

Roberto, that was chasing the world, died in a game, called "Killer" and that pretends to make a movie. "It is just an hypothesis for the moment" says Nordio. In the meantime he has already opened a file against unknowns for "Instigation to the suicide". And promises as well that he will investigate on other cases of suicide, happened in the last year, of young people between fifteen and twenty-five years of age, since there could be others that have chased the game beyond its limits. Roberto participated in role-playing games, together with his friends and his younger brother, Davide. The most famous is Magic. The first is Dungeons & Dragons. The most transgressing is "Killer", which has a subtitle that says "There is nothing like the Rush given by killing a friend". In the US they have been invented in the sixties and have been imported in Italy since a short time. They are something like 400 in number, and can last for months, they put Good against evil and it does not matter what you are, if you are good or evil. Like Cowboys and Indians, but with something more. Strange : as if the fiction was applicable only to the role, not to the game. Roberto, with o group of friends, was member of a club, the Old Dragons, which gathers a group of boys and girls that meet in the library of Spinea to play these games : "They read Tolkien, Lovecraft, they Learn English, they stay together, they develop creativity". It’s a weird passion. Even at school, during the yearly trip, the students of the Fourth class of the Morin high school of Mestre enjoyed themselves with role-playing games all trip long. Roberto was the one that had the task of creating a new plot each time, and his friends say again that "He was the best one to create always new stories". Then, Roberto had gone on doing the Killer with his fellows at the club. Did he die because of this ? 

The mother has sore eyes and does not feel like speaking at all : "I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it. I knew all his friends too well. They always used to come to our place to play. It couldn’t have been one of them. I this was true, that he didn’t die on his own, then it must have been with unknown people". The judge, Carlo Nordio, for the moment avoids the questions. "How can we say anything ? we just started the investigation". But today the attorney Luciano Faraon is not alone anymore. Right after the suicide of Roberto, he was the first to spot and accuse this possible link between the games and that death. He said :"Killer is the worst one. It has even a card called Mind Twist, which is banned from sanctioned tournaments"

Killer takes the draft from the movie "The Tenth Victim" (Translator’s Note : The English title might be different), a 1965 film, starring Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress. Students of the University of Austin, Texas started playing it a year later. Each player has to kill the opponent without getting caught from another. Some rules are fixed, others are stated by the Game Master, the owner of the game. The role to be played by each one is that of the killer. The fiction does not end when the group goes home, but it goes on, even for months, until the game is over. 

"It’s like playing thieves and cops, cowboys and Indians", says Luca Giuliano, sociologist and RPG’s inventor. "All games involve a conflict, otherwise there would be no fun. But the methods to kill the opponent are just expedients of fantasy and creativity. These games teach how to stay together, to communicate, to come out of isolation." Who knows. The game is not always like the life, says Giuliano. True. And Fiction is not always falsehood. Maybe everything is much easier, maybe Gianna, Roberto’s mother, is right : "He played those games, but I wouldn’t say there was anything bad in it. God knows what he was thinking, God knows what all these boys are thinking, these boys that cannot see anything ahead".

THESE ARE THE RULES
Born in the USA as an evolution of war-games and of military simulation, role-playing games have their pioneer in "Dungeons & Dragons", marketed in 1974. Since then the versions have multiplied, from the most known, like "Magic" to the more transgressing like "killer". The scenarios range from the medieval Fantasy to Science Fiction, from Horror to TV programs.

They are all based on hostile relationships between the involved characters, on rules stated by the game master and on the identification of each player in a role that can last for months, till the end of the match.

Venice, he was an enthusiast of the new mania
Role-playing games : Suicide at 19
A friend of his just killed himself

A 19 years old student gets an F in chemistry and hangs himself. A friend of his, a few days before, threw himself under a train. A lawyer states : "They both belonged to a group dedicated to Role-playing games, those in which the identification with edge-situation is needed, identification with killers or suicides. They might have lost control", and he asks for the seizure of specialized magazines. But the student’s father disagrees.

From our correspondent Michele Sartori

VENICE. Roberto, 19 years old, doing for the second time the 4th class at the Morin High School of Mestre, Saturday got an F in chemistry. Coming out from school he said "Hello" to Andrea, a classmate, "in an absolutely normal way". He went back home to Spinea, told his parents about the bad grade and then went out again. The last one to see him was the shopkeeper that sold him the rope. After an anxious night his father found him, in the woods were he used to play when he was a kid. He had hanged himself to a tree.

The Bad Grades
A "normal" suicide, as there are many due to school failures (yesterday there has been another in Aiello, in Friuli, a fourteen years old hanged himself after an argument with the family about the problems he was having at the Galilei high school in Gorizia). It seemed. But a lawyer formulates heavy suspects : the mind of the boy could have been weakened because of his participating in the so-called "Role-playing games" and adds :"Another 20 years old friend of Roberto, belonging to the same group of game, recently committed suicide, throwing himself under a train in Vetrego di Mirano". The attorney’s name is Luciano Faraon, his office is in Spinea, he is a manager of the Gris and of the Aris, two research groups, one catholic and one laic. Yesterday he gave to the legal authorities a statement in which he asks for the seizure of all magazines publicizing "Role-playing Games" and the shut-down of all related shops.

Role-playing games
It is somewhat hard to explain what are these games that in the last months have been spreading in Italy, directly imported from the US. They are based on imaginary edge-situation, to be lived through the identification with roles, assigned to the players drawing cards from specific decks. The lawyer Faraon looks at issues of the Magazines "Excalibur", "Kaos". -, he underlines the passages, he explains : "There it is, Killer, you have to become an assassin, totally embodying the role. You draw the card "feral beast" and you transform : "I bite you !"...You draw the card of the power over the mind : "I make you go mad !". But it is not only recitation, they really have to identify themselves with the role.

Advertisement of "Killer" : There is no greater pleasure than killing a friend... in a game, obviously ! with Killer, the game of the assassin". There is also, Faraon goes on, "the game of the Hanged, the Game of the Monster, the game of Mental Deviance ... and others, of orgiastic or satanic kind". He, or them, as Gris and Aris, have been conducting a research on the Internet, with correspondents from the US, about the consequences of these games : "In the US there is a chain of homicides and suicides that can be related to the consequences of Role-playing games. We were waiting for a few data before making the results public, but having seen the events we are forced to warn everybody now".

Young people participating in these games might, in certain situation, lose the control of themselves, lose the basics elements of self-defense". Could it have happened to the two suicides too ? Who knows. Faraon has on his side the knowledge of the "gaming group" of Spinea : "About fifty boys and girls, under thirty years of age, mostly students and males, that have asked and obtained from the major the permission to use a room in the town library . The games are proposed from specialized magazines sold in newspaper stores, the cards can be bought from a specialized retailer in Mestre".

The group from Spinea had recently taken part in "National Role-playing Game Championship" in Modena, after having won the regional selections : "Roberto, the suicide, was a master, one of those so much involved in the game to be able to lead it, He had tried to introduce it among the boy-scout, to which he belonged, too, but they didn’t allow him to".

In the student’s home there is just a lot of skepticism. They knew that Roberto was fond of Role-playing games, and they approved it. The boy’s father, an engineer, defends them : "No, I do not have anything to accuse the game for, they have nothing to do with the final act of my son. I do not consider them dangerous at all, as far as they are not used maniacally it might actually be the opposite. They are not to be criminalized, seized... There are many other things on which we can focus nowadays to find the real causes".

Below, you will find my rebuttal, as it was posted to rec.games.frp.advocacy. I have italicized the quoted material to better separate it from my own comments.

Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Re: Italy to ban rpg's? (long, but please read)
From: horatio@magpage.com (Horatio)
Date: Mon, 08 Jul 1996 09:07:37 GMT
I had written a rather verbose reply to this, as there are several points that I feel need to be refuted, in the event that anyone who knows little or nothing about gaming may read it. However, Free Agent chose to eat my message and not give it back. Sigh. Oh well, here are my footnotes in a nutshell.

Confession: I do a little bit of nitpicking, only because I feel that minor details (such as the belief that Magic: The Gathering is an RPG) are the easiest for reporters to research, and if they haven't done their homework, someone has to. ALSO: I have snipped the original message to a fraction of it's size, not to aid in "proving my point" Pat Pulling-style, but to reduce the length of the whole shebang to a more digestible size. Besides, most of the people reading this have already read the original message, anyway.

Here we go:

La Stampa (Italian Newspaper) May 28th 1996 
19 YEARS OLD COMMITS SUICIDE 
HIS MIND TROUBLED BY A GAME 
[Snip] 

According to Faraon these games "innocuous at first sight, actually involve a psychological deviance, mainly in young boys, leading them to extreme actions, such as suicide or homicide."

1. Roleplay is not a "psychological deviance," and is used by many people as a tool in education and therapy. Both lawyers and psychoanalyists use roleplay in their regular line of work; since Faraon claims to be both, he should know this.

"It should be noted that the danger involved in the phenomenon - adds the lawyer - is given by the fact that, while in recitation the person recites a described role, in RPG’s the involved person has to impersonate totally the role of the character, which could be that of the killer or that of somebody sentenced to hanging.

2. Faraon is being unusually negative here, using two examples of characters that have to do with directly with death; it is just as easy to become involved in an RPG in which you portray a good samaritan or a paladin.

This determines a block of the consciousness and a somatization to the level of mental deviance of the role to be played, which could lead to a situation of lost of control even of the basics elements of self-defense." 

3. Contrary to this, after an extensive amount of research on the subject, America's CDC (Center for Disease Control) found no conclusive evidence between RPGs and suicide. The concept that Faraon puts forth here seems to have eluded them somehow... either that, or they have completely disproven it. I'm opting for the latter.

[SNIP] 

Venice, turning point in the investigation on the dead of the 19 year old boy: he could have been helped hanging himself.
The killers are Role-playing games
The Public Prosecutor: behind them a chain of suicides
FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT PIERAGELO SAPEGNO

[SNIP] "He was a loner, he was fleeing into fantasy and was finding comfort in an unreal world". Words are like stones, when you are not playing.

4. This is an interesting little tidbit that seems to turn up in lots of anti-game stories. The fact is, RPGs are social activities. For the most part, you need a minimum of two people to play one; many of them recommend more than two. Solo games, while available, have become rare as of late, possibly due to lack of customer interest; the best games are played with other people. So it is unlikely that Roberto was both a loner and a gamer; one of them has got to be false.

Roberto was a boy-scout, he used to go to the Mass and play Basketball, which is a game without fiction, before getting lost in his world. 

5. In America, basketball is far from a game without fiction, especially when you see sports stars cavorting with cartoon characters in commercials, and advertisements that lead young people to believe that certain sneakers, breakfast cereals, and sports drinks will make them play as well as their favorite pro. I personally believe that it is just as possible for someone to become as obssessed with any sport as it is for a gamer to become hooked on RPGs or card games. I personally know much more people who fall into the former category than do the latter.

Without getting into one of my infamous sports rants, I would also like to add one more point; that of fan riots. In certain cities, when a team wins a game, or a playoff, or whatever, very often the fans will become so enthralled that they will begin looting and destroying their own city. A couple of years ago, a soccer player was shot to death for scoring a goal for the opposing team. If these aren't examples of someone taking something too far, I'm not sure what is.

Roberto, as the first suspects suggest, died in a game that he was leading and he had lost, one of those American role playing games, in which the total identification with the character is mandatory. 

6. One of the most common misconceptions about RPGs is that there are winners and losers; the bottom line is, there aren't, and to suggest that the referee of the game is the one who loses is evidence that some basic research was not done. Does the umpire at a baseball game score any points? If not, does he "lose?"

[SNIP]
Roberto gave his few things to his friends before leaving, because that is what is stated in the rules of the game he was playing: the one who loses leaves all his possessions to the others, as a tribute to the stronger one.

7. The giving away of personal items is something that is common among people who are about to committ suicide; it is not something that is unique to gamers, or the games they play. Also, a character's possessions in a game are imaginary, as is the character and the world he lives in. To suggest that Roberto was giving his personal effects away because of the rules of the game is to confuse player with character, which is possibly the biggest misconception about RPGs that exists. Oh yeah... did I mention lack of research?

And with him, maybe, there were his friends that afternoon, as if it was possible to share the same feeling, that brings us away from everything or that ends only a game; maybe for them it could have been the same thing. Roberto was 19 years old, an age of suffering and understanding.

8. I was 19 once (really, I'm not kidding! :) ) At the time, I was unemployed, I couldn't get into college because of my grades, and my father, with whom I was very close, had just passed away. I was in a very similar situation to Roberto's, but I was strong enough to pull through. One of the things that helped me was my gaming group, who were all very supportive, and our weekly games helped me escape from my difficulties for a couple of hours. In a lot of ways, I wish I could have spoken to Roberto. Maybe it would have helped.

[SNIP]
Roberto participated in role-playing games, together with his friends and his younger brother, Davide. The most famous is Magic.

9. Just for the record, Magic is a card game, not a role-playing game. Some people try to play it as such, but for the most part, it is a strategy card game. Simple research.

The first is Dungeons & Dragons. The most transgressing is "Killer", which has a subtitle that says "There is nothing like the Rush given by killing a friend".

10. This quote is taken completely out of context, not unlike the old joke about the two quotes from the Bible: "Judas went and hanged himself," and "Go thou and do likewise." Although both of them are from different parts of the book, together they take on a new meaning. Your friends in Killer are "rubbed out" with dart guns, rubber snakes, or a "poison" sticker on the bottom of their drinking glass. Really, who wants to play a game in which you kill all of your friends? Aren't good ones hard enough to come by as it is?

In the US they have been invented in the sixties and have been imported in Italy since a short time.

11. Close; D&D first saw the light of day in 1974 or thereabouts.

They are something like 400 in number, and can last for months, they put Good against evil and it does not matter what you are, if you are good or evil.

12. If 400 is supposed to be the amount of different games that are currently on the market, then I'll buy that. It's as good a number as any. However, the remark about "good or evil" is misdirected; again, the confusion between player and character is made. Is an actor who plays a "bad guy" in a movie evil himself? If not, then why should a roleplayer receive that judgement? 

Like Cowboys and Indians, but with something more. Strange : as if the fiction was applicable only to the role, not to the game. Roberto, with o group of friends, was member of a club, the Old Dragons, which gathers a group of boys and girls that meet in the library of Spinea to play these games : "They read Tolkien, Lovecraft, they Learn English, they stay together, they develop creativity". It’s a weird passion.

13. I'm not sure who is being quoted in the second to last sentence, but I have to say that the "weird passion" statement will have me scratching my head for some time to come. What have we become when avid reading, the learning of a foreign language, and the exercise of creativity are collectively considered a "weird passion?" I guess the Renaissance really is over...

Even at school, during the yearly trip, the students of the Fourth class of the Morin high school of Mestre enjoyed themselves with role-playing games all trip long.

14. ...and somehow managed to survive the entire trip unscathed and without the desire to take their own lives.

Roberto was the one that had the task of creating a new plot each time, and his friends say again that "He was the best one to create always new stories". Then, Roberto had gone on doing the Killer with his fellows at the club. Did he die because of this ?

15. If I may answer a question that was obviously intended as a rhetorical one: Not likely. The evidence as it has been reported suggests that he either took his own life as a result of his poor grades and the loss of a friend, or (as the coroner's report suggests), someone strangled him and tried to make it look like a suicide. The fact that there is no reported suicide note seems to reinforce my second theory.

[SNIP]
But today the attorney Luciano Faraon is not alone anymore. Right after the suicide of Roberto, he was the first to spot and accuse this possible link between the games and that death. He said :"Killer is the worst one. It has even a card called Mind Twist, which is banned from sanctioned tournaments"

16. Killer? With _cards_? Faraon is confusing Killer with Magic: The Gathering, which is kind of like confusing Monopoly and Twister. The fact that the Mind Twist card is banned has nothing to with any "special power" that it has over an opponent; Magic cards get banned because they contain rules that conflict with those used in the tournament itself; either that, or they are too powerful and unbalancing to use in a tournament game. The exact function of the Mind Twist card (as far as the game is concerned) is lost to me at the moment, but I know why Faraon mentioned it; the title of the card reinforces his "mind control" theme.

[SNIP] Each player has to kill the opponent without getting caught from another. Some rules are fixed, others are stated by the Game Master, the owner of the game. The role to be played by each one is that of the killer.

17. A kill, in this case of course, consists of hitting said friend with a rubber dart from a plastic toy gun. The Killer rules are laced with warnings and suggestions that encourage the safety of everyone involved; it is in the manufacturer's best interest that no one gets hurt while playing their game.

The fiction does not end when the group goes home, but it goes on, even for months, until the game is over.

18. This is untrue. A game can continue for quite some time, but it ends, or is suspended, when the players go home. I have a AD&D campaign that has been on hold for several months now, and none of my players are continuing to act in character in their everyday lives until we get back together and the game is finished. It's a ridiculous notion, but one easily made by someone who doesn't understand the subject matter.

[SNIP]
Born in the USA as an evolution of war-games and of military simulation, role-playing games have their pioneer in "Dungeons & Dragons", marketed in 1974. Since then the versions have multiplied, from the most known, like "Magic" to the more transgressing like "killer". The scenarios range from the medieval Fantasy to Science Fiction, from Horror to TV programs.

19. This is the second time they've used the word "transgress" to describe Killer. What exactly is being transgressed here? Does this word have another meaning in Italian?

They are all based on hostile relationships between the involved characters, on rules stated by the game master and on the identification of each player in a role that can last for months, till the end of the match.

20. Untrue. Not all relationships are "hostile," or else RPGs would be the tabletop equivalent of DOOM. This misconception possibly springs from the concept of other boardgames, in which the players are out to beat each other. However, much of RPGs involve interacting in many different manners to a variety of situations. A game based on nothing but hostile encounters would have little substance (certainly not the voluminous amount of material that AD&D has), and would be pretty boring.

Venice, he was an enthusiast of the new mania
Role-playing games : Suicide at 19
A friend of his just killed himself

From our correspondent Michele Sartori

21. More confusion between Magic and Killer, and player and character. It's unendingly ironic that it's the people who attack RPGs that actually have the problem separating fantasy and reality.

Advertisement of "Killer" : There is no greater pleasure than killing a friend... in a game, obviously ! with Killer, the game of the assassin". 

22. The same misquoted material. See 10, above.

There is also, Faraon goes on, "the game of the Hanged, the Game of the Monster, the game of Mental Deviance ... and others, of orgiastic or satanic kind". 

23. Here is where he loses me. Which games are he talking about? Are these commercially available games? Are they only available in Italy? Or is he making this all up? Until anyone tells me different, I'm going to believe the last one.

He, or them, as Gris and Aris, have been conducting a research on the Internet, with correspondents from the US, about the consequences of these games : "In the US there is a chain of homicides and suicides that can be related to the consequences of Role-playing games. We were waiting for a few data before making the results public, but having seen the events we are forced to warn everybody now".

24. Interesting strategy: Inform everyone before you get the facts straight! We do that in America, too!

[SNIP]
In the student’s home there is just a lot of skepticism. They knew that Roberto was fond of Role-playing games, and they approved it. The boy’s father, an engineer, defends them : "No, I do not have anything to accuse the game for, they have nothing to do with the final act of my son. I do not consider them dangerous at all, as far as they are not used maniacally it might actually be the opposite. They are not to be criminalized, seized... There are many other things on which we can focus nowadays to find the real causes".

25. I guess the only thing I can say here is that it is refreshing to see that Roberto's parents aren't looking for a scapegoat, as is what frequently happens in cases like this. At least this man can keep his wits about himself in the face of this tragedy.

Before I tie this up, I've just got to add a quick plug for the Committee for the Advancement of Role-Playing Games, a research and information network that works towards the common good of our games. For more information, or to become a member, write to: 

CAR-PGa
1127 Cedar
Bonham, TX 75418

Thanks for reading this far. Nighty night.
Wjw.