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Source: https://www.enworld.org/threads/d-d-historian-benn-riggs-on-gary-gygax-sexism.705192/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

D&D Historian Benn Riggs On Gary Gygax & Sexism

Thread starter Morrus Start date Yesterday at 11:42 PM

D&D historian Ben Riggs delved into the facts.

The recent book The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons 1970-1977
talks about the early years of D&D. In the book, authors Jon Peterson
and Jason Tondro talk about the way the game, and its writers,
approached certain issues. Not surprisingly, this revelation received aggressive "pushback" on social media because, well, that sort of thing does--in fact, one designer who worked with Gygax at the time labelled
it "slanderous".

D&D historian Ben Riggs--author of Slaying the Dragon--delved into the
facts. Note that the below was posted on Twitter, in that format, not as
an article.

D&D Co-Creator Gary Gygax was Sexist. Talking About it is Key to
Preserving his Legacy.

The internet has been rending its clothes and gnashing its teeth over
the introduction to an instant classic of TTRPG history, The Making of Original D&D 1970-1977. Published by Wizards of the Coast, it details
the earliest days of D&DrCOs creation using amazing primary source materials.

Why then has the response been outrage from various corners of the
internet? Well authors Jon Peterson and Jason Tondro mention that early
D&D made light of slavery, disparaged women, and gave Hindu deities hit points. They also repeated WizardrCOs disclaimer for legacy content which states:"These depictions were wrong then and are wrong today. This
content is presented as it was originally created, because to do
otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed."

In response to this, an army of grognards swarmed social media to bite
their shields and bellow. Early D&D author Rob Kuntz described Peterson
and TondrorCOs work as rCLslanderous.rCY On his Castle Oldskull blog, Kent David Kelly called it rCLdisparagement.rCY These critics are accusing
Peterson and Tondro of dishonesty. Lying, not to put too fine a point on it.So, are they lying? Are they making stuff up about Gary Gygax and
early D&D?

Well, let's look at a specific example of what Peterson and Tondro
describe as rCLmisogyny rCL from 1975's Greyhawk. Greyhawk was the first supplement ever produced for D&D. Written by Gary Gygax and Rob Kuntz,
the same Rob Kuntz who claimed slander above, it was a crucial text in
the history of the game. For example, it debuted the thief character
class. It also gave the game new dragons, among them the King of Lawful Dragons and the Queen of Chaotic Dragons. The male dragon is good, and
female dragon is evil. (See Appendix 1 below for more.)

GR9iKUjWsAAete8.jpeg

rCi
It is a repetition of the old trope that male power is inherently good,
and female power is inherently evil. (Consider the connotations of the
words witch and wizard, with witches being evil by definition, for
another example.)

Now so-called defenders of Gygax and Kuntz will say that my reading of
the above text makes me a fool who wouldnrCOt know dragonrCOs breath from a virtue signal. I am ruining D&D with my woke wokeness. Gygax and Kuntz
were just building a fun game, and decades later, Peterson and Tondro
come along to crap on their work by screeching about misogyny.

(I would also point out that as we are all white men of a certain age
talking about misogyny, the worst we can expect is to be flamed online.
Women often doing the same thing get rape or death threats.)

Critics of their work would say that Peterson and Tondro are reading
politics into D&D. Except that when we return to the Greyhawk text, we
see that it was actually Gygax and Kuntz who put rCLpoliticsrCY into D&D.

The text itself comments on the fact that the lawful dragon is male, and
the chaotic one is female. Gygax and Kuntz wrote: rCLWomenrCOs lib may make whatever they wish from the foregoing.rCY


GR9iGsAW0AAmAOw.jpeg

rCi
The intent is clear. The female is a realm of chaos and evil, so of
course they made their chaotic evil dragon a queen.

Yes, Gygax and Kuntz are making a game, but it is a game whose
co-creator explicitly wrote into the rules that feminine powerrCoperhaps
even female equalityrCois by nature evil. There is little room for any
other interpretation.

The so-called defenders of Gygax may now say that he was a man of his
time, he didnrCOt know better, or some such. If only someone had told him women were people too in 1975! Well, Gygax was criticized for this fact
of D&D at the time. And he left us his response.

Writing in EUROPA, a European fanzine, Gygax said:rCLI have been accused
of being a nasty old sexist-male-Chauvinist-pig, for the wording in D&D isnrCOt what it should be. There should be more emphasis on the female
role, more non-gendered names, and so forth."

GR9iyo3XwAAQCtk.jpeg


"I thought perhaps these folks were right and considered adding women in
the rCyRaping and Pillaging[rCO] section, in the rCyWhores and Tavern WenchesrCO
chapter, the special magical part dealing with rCyHags and CronesrCO...and thought perhaps of adding an appendix on rCyMedieval Harems, Slave Girls,
and Going VikingrCO. Damn right I am sexist. It doesnrCOt matter to me if women get paid as much as men, get jobs traditionally male, and shower
in the menrCOs locker room."

"They can jolly well stay away from wargaming in droves for all I care.
IrCOve seen many a good wargame and wargamer spoiled thanks to the fair
sex. IrCOll detail that if anyone wishes.rCY

So just to summarize here, Gygax wrote misogyny into the D&D rules. When
this was raised with him as an issue at the time, his response was to
offer to put rules on rape and sex slavery into D&D.

The outrage online directed at Peterson and Tondro is not only entirely misplaced and disproportional, and perhaps even dishonest in certain
cases...

Part 2: D&D Co-Creator Gary Gygax was Sexist. Talking About it is Key to Preserving his Legacy....it is also directly harming the legacies of
Gygax, Arneson, Kuntz and the entire first generation of genius game
designers our online army of outraged grognards purport to defend.

How? Let me show you.The D&D player base is getting more diverse in
every measurable way, including age, gender, sexual orientation, and
race. To cite a few statistics, 81% of D&D players are Millenials or Gen
Z, and 39% are women. This diversity is incredible, and not because the diversity is some blessed goal unto itself. Rather, the increasing
diversity of D&D proves the vigor of the TTRPG medium. Like Japanese rap
music or Soviet science fiction, the transportation of a medium across cultures, nations, and genders proves that it is an important method for exploring the human condition. And while TTRPGs are a game, they are
also clearly an important method for exploring the human condition. The
fact the TTRPG fanbase is no longer solely middle-aged Midwestern cis
men of middle European descent...

...the fact that non-binary blerds and Indigenous trans women and fat Polish-American geeks like me and people from every bed of the human
vegetable garden ...

find meaning in a game created by two white guys from the Midwest is
proof that Gygax and Arneson were geniuses who heaved human civilization forward, even if only by a few feet.

So, as a community, how do we deal with the ugly prejudices of our
hobbyrCOs co-creator who also baked them into the game we love? We could pretend there is no problem at all, and say that anyone who mentions the problem is a liar. There is no misogyny to see. There is no **** and
there is no stink, and anyone who says there is naughty word on your
sneakers is lying and is just trying to embarrass you.

I wonder how that will go? Will all these new D&D fans decide that maybe
D&D isnrCOt for them? They know the stink of misogyny, just like they know **** when they smell it. To say it isnrCOt there is an insult to their intelligence. If they left the hobby over this, it would leave our
community smaller, poorer, and suggest that the great work of Gygax,
Arneson, Kuntz, and the other early luminaries on D&D was perhaps not so
great after allrCa

We could take the route of Disney and Song of the South. Wizards could
remove all the PDFs of early D&D from DriveThruRPG. They could refuse to
ever reprint this material again. Hide it. Bury it. Erase it all with copyright law and lawyers. Yet no matter how deeply you bury the past,
it always tends to come back up to the surface again. Heck, there are
whole podcast series about that. And what will all these new D&D fans
think when they realize that a corporation tried to hide its own
mistakes from them?

Again, maybe they decide D&D isnrCOt the game for them. Or maybe when
someone tells you there is **** on your shoe, you say thanks, clean it
off, and move on.

We honor the old books, but when they tell a reader they are a lesser
human being, we should acknowledge that is not the D&D of 2024.
Something like...

rCLHey reader, we see you in all your wondrous multiplicity of
possibility, and if we were publishing this today, it wouldnrCOt contain messages and themes telling some of you that you are less than others.
So we just want to warn you. That stuffrCOs in there.rCY

YrCOknow, something like that legacy content warning they put on all those
old PDFs on DriveThruRPG. And when we see something bigoted in old D&D,
we talk about it. It lets the new, broad, and deep tribe of D&D know
that we do not want bigotry in D&D today. Talking about it welcomes the
entire human family into the hobby.To do anything less is to damn D&D to darkness. It hobbles its growth, gates its community, denies the world
the joy of the game, and denies its creators their due. D&DrCOs creators
were visionary game designers. They were also people, and people are
kinda ****** up. So a necessary step in making D&D the sort of cultural
pillar that it deserves to be is to name its bigotries and prejudices
when you see them. Failure to do so hurts the game by shrinking our
community and therefore shrinking the legacy of its creators.

Appendix 1: Yeah, I know Chaos isnrCOt the same as Evil in OD&D.

But I would also point out as nerdily as possible that on pg. 9 of Book
1 of OD&D, under rCLCharacter Alignment, Including Various Monsters and Creatures,rCY Evil High Priests are included under the rCLChaosrCY heading, along with the undead. So I would put to you that Gygax did see a
relationship between Evil and Chaos at the time.
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On Tue, 9 Jul 2024 10:52:48 +0200, kyonshi <gmkeros@gmail.com> wrote:

Source: >https://www.enworld.org/threads/d-d-historian-benn-riggs-on-gary-gygax-sexism.705192/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

D&D Historian Benn Riggs On Gary Gygax & Sexism

Thread starter Morrus Start date Yesterday at 11:42 PM

D&D historian Ben Riggs delved into the facts.

The recent book The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons 1970-1977
talks about the early years of D&D. In the book, authors Jon Peterson
and Jason Tondro talk about the way the game, and its writers,
approached certain issues. Not surprisingly, this revelation received >aggressive "pushback" on social media because, well, that sort of thing >does--in fact, one designer who worked with Gygax at the time labelled
it "slanderous".

D&D historian Ben Riggs--author of Slaying the Dragon--delved into the >facts. Note that the below was posted on Twitter, in that format, not as
an article.

D&D Co-Creator Gary Gygax was Sexist. Talking About it is Key to
Preserving his Legacy.

As an off-the-top-of-my-head response, I think part of the problem is
that -for his time- Gygax wasn't particularly misogynistic. His
behavior was just the generally accepted attitude; it's only today
that he looks particularly horrific. But Gygax was born in the 1930s;
his opinions on women as being frailer, less intelligent, and
generally less capable were accepted truths, and even in the '60s and
'70s claiming otherwise was controversial (just look at how long it
took women to be accepted into combat roles in the US military, where
opponents to the concept used these arguments well into the 2000s!).
If you're taught that the Earth is flat from childhood, are you being
stupid if you repeat these facts years later or have you just not kept
up with the newly accepted changes?

So I think a lot of these arguments about Gygax's misogyny are talking
across one another; is it misogyny if it's just reflecting the then
accepted view of what women can and can't (or should and shouldn't)
do? That's more 'sexism', innit?

And the sad truth is, sexism /was/ rampant in tabletop gaming.
Especially after the game became popular with teenage boys. Even when
girls weren't outright chased away from the table, the general
attitude was often horrific. I'm pretty sure any gamer from that era
can remember some instances they personally witnessed that would be
rightly condemned today. But the game --and the media in general--
were RIFE with it. Whether game or TV or movie, women were treasures
to be won, or threats to be chased away, or side-characters to be
taken advantage of (and LGBTQ characters got far, far worse
treatment). I mean, you only have to look at the artwork featured in
pretty much any TSR product to see evidence of that. There were
exceptions but they were just that... exceptions.

I don't think Gygax was particular misogynistic except by modern
attitudes. I do think he was undeniably sexist and he occasionally
strayed a bit farther down that line than was generally prudent and he definitely should be called on those instances. I think you could
equally well find examples of Gygax trying (in his old-school,
Boomer-taught way) of trying to empower females as often -if not more-
than his attempt to chase them away. Those attitudes are unforgivable
today, and I get why some people want to call him on it, and why calls
of misogyny are bandied about. But ignoring the attitudes of the time
-wrong as they might be- only makes the critics look strident and
extreme.

As much as I hate to agree with Hasbro/WoTC, I think they have it
right: "this is what D&D was. We think its wrong. We're trying to do
better now. But we're not ignoring it."


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gmkeros@gmail.com wrote:

Source: https://www.enworld.org/threads/d-d-historian-benn-riggs-on-gary-gygax-sexism.705192

Well, let's look at a specific example of what Peterson and Tondro
describe as rCLmisogyny rCL from 1975's Greyhawk. Greyhawk was the first supplement ever produced for D&D. Written by Gary Gygax and Rob Kuntz,
the same Rob Kuntz who claimed slander above, it was a crucial text in
the history of the game. For example, it debuted the thief character
class. It also gave the game new dragons, among them the King of Lawful Dragons and the Queen of Chaotic Dragons. The male dragon is good, and female dragon is evil. (See Appendix 1 below for more.)

I quit reading at this point because the author clearly hasn't a clue about Babylonian mythology and therefore isn't credible.

--
Let's go Brandon!

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On Tue, 9 Jul 2024 10:52:48 +0200, kyonshi <gmkeros@gmail.com> wrote:

Why then has the response been outrage from various corners of the
internet?

Because those are the only people who posted: the perpetually outraged.

It is a huge sample bias. Most people are fine with it. Those who are
mildly bothered aren't posting.

But even a thousand people can make credible noise on the Internet. If
you get to 50,000 or a million, then it feels incontrovertible. A quick
Google says 50 million people play D&D. Even a million people is a 2%
sliver of the community, and it's usually down to much, much fewer. You
have to use scientific notation to record the 1,000 people. 50,000
people, which is more than enough volume to seem credible, is easy math:
0.1% of the community. Wow. BFD.

In short, there is a cadre of people who live on the Internet and will
run there and complain about literally anything, because they have little
power in their lives to effect any change that matters around them. So
they cast their line deep and far and go pissing in every fishing pond
they can find. I know. I used to be one of them. It helps you cope when
times are rough.

Facts: Gygax was a dude in the 70s. It's been 54 years. Any "dude from
the 70s" is going to look racist and sexist by today's standards. Of
course he was sexist. So was Malcolm X.

Result: Now we don't have "Ki" points anymore, we have "Martial
Discipline" points, which is flavorless and dull and a mouthful. But God
forbid Hasbro get dinged for cultural appropriation by the self-appointed thought police.

It's high time we stopped taking any of them seriously.

---

My 2 cents about Gygax.

Gygax was a racist, a narcissist, and a sexist. He took all the credit
for D&D when it was Arneson who wrote Chainmail, and the community that
grew and wrote the game. He compiled a slew of community notes into a
messy book and called it Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Then he took
credit for it. He was an *editor*, but the book says "by Gary Gygax" on
the cover. I posit that he was a *bad* editor. Have you seen the
pummeling and grappling tables in the 1e DMs guide?

Play-wise, he had a reputation for being mercilessly unfair to his
players and his style of DMing, adopted by many, was the impetus for a
legion of rules lawyers. That eventually got us to 3rd edition where
there is a rule for almost everything. D&D became a game for rules
lawyers. Skip 4th. 5th ed finally got it back to a sane game where the
rules facilitate play, not dictate play.

But who cares? It's a great hobby and Gygax was instrumental in its
creation and promotion. He almost sunk TSR by 1990, but his earnest (see
what I did there?) contributions should be enough for anyone. There's no earthly reason to judge him or the work by such standards.
--
Zag

No one ever said on their deathbed, 'Gee, I wish I had
spent more time alone with my computer.' ~Dan(i) Bunten
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On 09/07/2024 18:40, Zaghadka wrote:

On Tue, 9 Jul 2024 10:52:48 +0200, kyonshi <gmkeros@gmail.com> wrote:

Why then has the response been outrage from various corners of the
internet?

Because those are the only people who posted: the perpetually outraged.

It is a huge sample bias. Most people are fine with it. Those who are
mildly bothered aren't posting.

But even a thousand people can make credible noise on the Internet. If
you get to 50,000 or a million, then it feels incontrovertible. A quick Google says 50 million people play D&D. Even a million people is a 2%
sliver of the community, and it's usually down to much, much fewer. You
have to use scientific notation to record the 1,000 people. 50,000
people, which is more than enough volume to seem credible, is easy math:
0.1% of the community. Wow. BFD.

In short, there is a cadre of people who live on the Internet and will
run there and complain about literally anything, because they have little power in their lives to effect any change that matters around them. So
they cast their line deep and far and go pissing in every fishing pond
they can find. I know. I used to be one of them. It helps you cope when
times are rough.

Facts: Gygax was a dude in the 70s. It's been 54 years. Any "dude from
the 70s" is going to look racist and sexist by today's standards. Of
course he was sexist. So was Malcolm X.

Result: Now we don't have "Ki" points anymore, we have "Martial
Discipline" points, which is flavorless and dull and a mouthful. But God forbid Hasbro get dinged for cultural appropriation by the self-appointed thought police.

It's high time we stopped taking any of them seriously.

---

My 2 cents about Gygax.

Gygax was a racist, a narcissist, and a sexist. He took all the credit
for D&D when it was Arneson who wrote Chainmail, and the community that
grew and wrote the game. He compiled a slew of community notes into a
messy book and called it Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Then he took
credit for it. He was an *editor*, but the book says "by Gary Gygax" on
the cover. I posit that he was a *bad* editor. Have you seen the
pummeling and grappling tables in the 1e DMs guide?

Play-wise, he had a reputation for being mercilessly unfair to his
players and his style of DMing, adopted by many, was the impetus for a
legion of rules lawyers. That eventually got us to 3rd edition where
there is a rule for almost everything. D&D became a game for rules
lawyers. Skip 4th. 5th ed finally got it back to a sane game where the
rules facilitate play, not dictate play.

But who cares? It's a great hobby and Gygax was instrumental in its
creation and promotion. He almost sunk TSR by 1990, but his earnest (see
what I did there?) contributions should be enough for anyone. There's no earthly reason to judge him or the work by such standards.

Arneson didn't write Chainmail, his name isn't in the cover. It was
written by Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren. Arneson did use Chainmail for his
own Blackmoor games. Arneson did write with Gygax the original D&D, not Chainmail. About Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Arneson in the same time
period did wrote the "First Fantasy Campaign" for Judges Guild, his
version of the game, and it was a lot worst than the AD&D books. A lot
more of obtuse rules, procedures and very bad writing.

And about the reputation of Gygax's games you are wrong. Most people
which did play with him says his games were very fair. Only in jokes
games like the original Tomb Of Horror he was unfair. Everyone who thing
the 5ed is the ruleset which bring sane game back is a moron. 5ed is
from marvel type superhero fantasy games with videogame logic. Happily
we have the OSR to counter act all of this
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On 7/9/2024 2:40 PM, Zaghadka wrote:

On Tue, 9 Jul 2024 10:52:48 +0200, kyonshi <gmkeros@gmail.com> wrote:

Why then has the response been outrage from various corners of the
internet?

Because those are the only people who posted: the perpetually outraged.

It is a huge sample bias. Most people are fine with it. Those who are
mildly bothered aren't posting.

Yes, I don't really get involved in outrage either. I was mildly
bothered by it in the early 80's, really just the female weak stats in
the 1e PHB. I had brought at couple girls into the game (before my, or
their awakening) but they didn't stick with it.

Of course I played a lot of Champions int the 1e days too, and never saw
a girl playing that either.

I didn't see a single woman playing D&D in other groups of AD&D ever,
even 2e which didn't seem to have the misogyny, at least until I brought another into it in the 2e days from playing M:tG (a small number there,
but more than AD&D)... and she became my GF (didn't work out.)

I saw a lot of girls & women playing Vtm when it was out in the AD&D
days. I was invited, but they seemed a bit TOO into it to the point of
most of them (and the few guys) dressing up as vampires all the time.

I saw a good number of girls & women in the 3e days (maybe 20% varying),
but from what I know all of them had been brought into it by their D&D
dads, or significant others as well.
--
-Justisaur

|+-|+
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
-|-4'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'

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