A popular concept rose up in the late 80's that Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) was used to recruit unaware youth into the occult. This idea was propagated by many Christian organizations. I can particularly remember the song "A Witch's Invitation" by Christian musical artist Carmen and he explored this concept.
Dungeons and Dragons is what is known as a role playing game and is very technical. There are no spells, curses, hexes or rituals involved in any of its text books. Basically, the books outline the physics, artificial history and cultures of a fantasy world.
There are two main reasons that many Christians believe that D&D is "Satanic" and thus leads to witchcraft, neither of which hold any factual truth. First, they associate Dragons with a representation of Lucifer as he is sometimes depicted as the beast or a great dragon in biblical scripture. Wiccans do not believe in Satan and Dragons have existed in the myths and legends of many cultures including those that predate the Judeo-Christian belief system. Secondly, a player can choose to become a Wizard in the game and use magic. Real world Wizards, or Magicians, do not associate themselves or their magic with the worship of divinity.
It is however true that people who are interested in a spiritual path involving magic are inclined to be drawn to play games like D&D because the fantasy aspects of using magic is something they feel drawn to. But saying that all people that play D&D are drawn to witchcraft is like saying people that watch movies about serial killers are drawn to being serial killers themselves.
The biggest threat that comes from playing a game like Dungeons and Dragons is that it opens the player's imagination to think outside the box, be creative and imaginative. The game is very logical when played within the "physical limitations" of the imaginary world. So in a way, it teaches people to begin to think for themselves and become more rational, so old arguments involving spirituality that do not hold their foundations under scrutiny become vulnerable to loss of belief.
As far as D&D being used as a recruitment tool by witches and pagans, this is absolutely untrue. Most pagans believe that each person is here to learn their own life lessons and to choose their own paths. Conversion is not in our belief system. We, pagans, only want the freedom to practice our beliefs without outside interference.
I do recommend that if someone is really interested in learning to use magic to play any role playing game (not pc games) to train their visualization skills.
Reference: healing-magic.blogspot.com
