Honestly, I don't think it mattered to some of the more extreme anti-FRGPers. The extreme anti-Satanism crowd literally tried to make the argument that anything other than focusing one's conscious devotion to God 24/7 was sin. They were laughable and a tiny minority, yet still organized and taken seriously for years. The early 80's were crazy.
Some were offended only by the "black magic", demons, and devils; others thought that fantasy and pretending were evil. Probably the majority of opponents could tolerate the pretending, as long as there were absolute lines drawn and zero moral ambiguity, and definitely would had more ammunition to freak out about if players were allowed to play "evil bad guy" races in the official rules. Some were opposed to all the violence. Most of them tried to tie together comic books, D&D, and heavy metal to drugs and suicide and satan worship and the occult.
The baatezo and tanar'ri stuff happened later, in 2e, as an act of further appeasement on TSR's part, after most of the insane objections to D&D were soundly refuted, and was TSR basically saying to the remaining extremists, "Look, if we just remove the words Devil and Demon from our books, will you PLEASE GO AWAY?"
Some were offended only by the "black magic", demons, and devils; others thought that fantasy and pretending were evil. Probably the majority of opponents could tolerate the pretending, as long as there were absolute lines drawn and zero moral ambiguity, and definitely would had more ammunition to freak out about if players were allowed to play "evil bad guy" races in the official rules. Some were opposed to all the violence. Most of them tried to tie together comic books, D&D, and heavy metal to drugs and suicide and satan worship and the occult.
The baatezo and tanar'ri stuff happened later, in 2e, as an act of further appeasement on TSR's part, after most of the insane objections to D&D were soundly refuted, and was TSR basically saying to the remaining extremists, "Look, if we just remove the words Devil and Demon from our books, will you PLEASE GO AWAY?"
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