Don the materials contain real magic rituals?
Critics often claim that Dungeons & Dragons in particular contains authentic magical rituals. They do not cite any. Some have gone so far as to claim that they themselves were once witches or Satanists, and so are familiar with such ritual; but they don’t seem to know anything at all about the games. Many who have been formerly involved in witchcraft and Satanism who have seen D&D materials laugh at these assertions; there is nothing in them remotely like what they knew. But perhaps if we present a few examples of the sort of “spells” suggested in D&D it will clear this up. One such spell recorded in the original Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook (©1978) is called “Spider Climb”; it enables the caster or the target to crawl on the walls and ceilings as a spider. Nobody involved in magic claims to be able to do anything like this. But the instructions for how to do it say that you must say something, do something, and use something. What you are to say isn’t mentioned at all;