Paul Cardwell, Jr. Television productions, particularly made-for-TV movies, are a popular source of paranormal claims. These games are not only the favorite topics of TV movies. The Associated Press and United Press International, between and , carried stories mentioning role-playing games. These articles contained 51, words in 2, paragraphs. These paragraphs were divided into four categories: those favorable to gaming, those unfavorable to gaming, those neutral stating they excisted, describing them accurately, but without value judgements, etc.
Those in the last category were discarded. Based on the remaining paragraphs, each of the story was tabulated as having a majority of pro-game paragraphs, anti-game paragraphs, neutral paragraphs, or with no category having a majority.
Of the stories, 80 were anti-game, 19 had no majority, 9 were neutral, and only 3 were pro-game. Those three pro-game stories were all from UPI, which is a considerably smaller wire service than AP.
The game grew rapidly from a very small base, doubling sales each year primarily through word-of-mouth advertising Gygax This occured mostly on college campuses, which became its natural environment.
During the late s, several other role-playing games entered the market too. The campus police could not find him, and since all evidence indicated that he left the campus voluntarily, their jurisdiction was limited.
