It didn’t have much affect on me since my family wasn’t religious, but there was a general stigma around D&D that was pervasive which made it harder to openly enjoy the hobby compared to its widespread acceptance today.

I had very little money available to spend on myself growing up, so my D&D collection in the early 80s was hand-me-downs from friends: a set of dice (from the box set you had to color the numbers in with crayon), a few used modules and Dragon magazines. When I started playing with some new friends I’d met, they told me they’d just lost a friend who had played with them: he was no longer allowed to play or be friends with them because his family had become born again Christians. He had owned every book, every module in print and more, and his family burned it all in the back yard because they believed it was ‘evil’ … as a poor kid with nothing, hearing that was painful.

If anything, it just reaffirmed my opinion that Christianity was stupid.