Report – University of Alabama shooter was a tabletop gamer

By Stephany Nunneley

University of Alabama neurobiology professor Amy Bishop, who last Friday went on a shooting rampage during a faculty meeting and killed three people, has been described as not a psychotic or a woman who just snapped  – but an “isolated” D&D player.

Hearkening back to the early 1980s when playing Dungeons and Dragons was considered something akin to devil worship, reports surfacing today (via GamePolitics) from the Boston Herald are just a bit ludicrous in an attempt at “news”.

Like most overly zealous media outlets looking for an sensationalist reason to cite a person’s hobbies as a catalyst for multiple murders – since Bishop was not an avid shooter game fan, the sources have suggested that it can partially be blamed on rolling a d20 on the weekends.

According to the Herald, a source claims that Bishop met her husband James Anderson at Northeastern University through an on-campus D&D club where Bishop and her husband “even acted this crap out”; however, Anderson claims the hobby was nothing more than a “passing interest” between the two.

“It was a social thing more than anything else,” he said. “It’s not the crazy group people think they are.”

The Herald cites certain “expert reports” that claim violent crimes can be a direct result of playing D&D, while other experts say it is “just a game”.

Other reports on Bishop mention her irrational behavior on many other counts, with one incident happening at an International House of Pancakes where she allegedly “punched another woman in the face for taking the restaurant’s last child booster seat”.

She was even once questioned over a bombing attempt of the Harvard medical doctor who evaluated her doctorate work.

So, once again, the media has started scouring the trash looking for a “gaming” reason to pin a person’s erratic and murderous behavior on a hobby, instead of just accepting the fact that they were bonkers to being with.

Next time we play D&D on a Sunday afternoon, we’ll be sure to notify our next of kin and police beforehand, just in case the Pyramid of Shadows campaign makes us want to go out and gun down a bunch of people in a psychotic, Cheetos-induced D&D frenzy.

If it happens, we’ll blame it on the Head of Vyrellis, because she talks too damn much.