TSR Lorraine Williams, unfairly lambasted?

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Parmandur]

I like that he was SO OFFENDED, and that he clearly understood her SECRET DESIRES! Which involve S&M. And being at the mercy of MEN!

Also, that the REAL MEN couldn't get it cancelled because their wives played mahjong with her.

It's almost like a parody.

Literally the only narrator in that account who seems not to have a giant chip on his shoulder is Schick, who downplays the offensiveness of the original book.

 

[LordEntrails]

It 1979 their was no CNN. There was no Internet. Sure, it was "All over the News", But "All Over" doesn't mean what it means today. In 1979 & 1980 it meant across a few major cities in the South. It meant it touched on a few states. It's not until you get to one of the few US National news outlets that existed in that time period. It wasn't until a national movie (Mazes and Monsters) and a national news outlet (60 Minutes) until such info was "All Over the US". Those dates are 1982 and 1985. Well after it was published.

Now, that doesn't mean that Satanic Panic didn't start in 1979. It doesn't mean that TSR wasn't aware of it. But, most of society, and most of the D&D fan base, was not aware of it until years later.

Things are not like today. Today with social media, CNN and 24 hour news, events/fads/things can becaome worldwide in hours. In 1980 such things took years.

 

[Sacrosanct]

No, you don't. You have a bunch of people making post-hoc rationalizations, and that's just one of them.

I'm sure, "But sexy," and "but caricatures," sounds a LOT better than "At the time, we didn't think women should be allowed to write modules.

And look, we showed 'em, didn't we!"



I'm not the one doing the ignoring, hombre. Just out of curiosity, do you find that there is any irony between your original post regarding Lorraine Williams and this defense? Because gaming and the workforce was so much less sexist in 1980?

I never made any comments about the criticism towards Williams as being sexist. And I never made any comments about why B3 was removed as being sexist. So what irony are you trying to ascribe to me?

And even if I did make comments complaining about how criticism towards Williams had to do with sexism, they are two different people with two different scenarios. So unless you're trying to argue that any criticism towards a women is sexist, I'm not sure why you'd imply there is irony.

I'm not saying that misogyny didn't exist back then. Of course it did. But that doesn't make any and every criticism towards a woman sexist.

I don't care if it was a woman or a man who pushed the original B3. The facts are that Egberts case brought a lot of unwanted attention to TSR and people were making connections with D&D and witchcraft (this is obvious because we have plenty of footage and reports of it, not to mention the direct words from people involved). The facts are that TSR directive before B3 were to make the game more kid friendly and avoid these connections (a claim backed up by pretty much everyone who was on staff at the time, including this comment by Steven Sullivan, a close friend of Jean's: "Wells designed Palace of the Silver Princess to her tastes, and with no regard for TSR’s mandate to make the game more kid-friendly."). Jean directly ignored this mandate because she wanted what she wanted. her gender is irrelevant. What did she think was gonna happen? And if the people of TSR refused to "give a woman a chance" like you're inferring, then why did they re-release her module sans the offending images? Seems pretty clear that they were less trying to prevent women from creating modules, and more trying to avoid S&M torture depictions in their games when the satanic panic was beginning to gain full momentum.

 

[Sacrosanct]

It 1979 their was no CNN. There was no Internet. Sure, it was "All over the News", But "All Over" doesn't mean what it means today. In 1979 & 1980 it meant across a few major cities in the South. It meant it touched on a few states. It's not until you get to one of the few US National news outlets that existed in that time period. It wasn't until a national movie (Mazes and Monsters) and a national news outlet (60 Minutes) until such info was "All Over the US". Those dates are 1982 and 1985. Well after it was published.

Now, that doesn't mean that Satanic Panic didn't start in 1979. It doesn't mean that TSR wasn't aware of it. But, most of society, and most of the D&D fan base, was not aware of it until years later.

Things are not like today. Today with social media, CNN and 24 hour news, events/fads/things can becaome worldwide in hours. In 1980 such things took years.

Tim Kask's own words, as recently as a week ago, confirmed that the Egbert situation help spike D&D sales (because people wanted to know what the big to do was about). So clearly it was widespread enough that a lot of people knew about and it wasn't just limited to "a few major cities in the south" (Egert was in Michigan State--not in the south last time I checked. And his story was reported by nationwide sources including but not limited to the Washington Post) or "touched" only a few states. That's simply not true.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[darjr]

No, it's not, and never has, continued to be published. Not the original orange cover. Most people are familiar with the green cover, which has the offending images removed. It wasn't just nudity. It was the depiction of an S&M ritual torture scenario that everyone was worried about. You have to remember the context as well. This was literally only a few months after Egbert's case was all over the news, and Dear and the media were all saying how D&D led to rituals and witchcraft. Of course management didn't want that correlation and to give ammo to the critics.

I was talking about the DMG and MM.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

One thing I'd like to add is that one of the reasons it's easy to lay the blame at Lorraine Williams' feet, is that, as far as I'm aware, she's never been interviewed or spoken about her time at TSR. We're left with a one-sided narrative, which makes it easy to ascribe all sorts of faults to her.

 

[darjr]

Tim Kask's own words, as recently as a week ago, confirmed that the Egbert situation help spike D&D sales (because people wanted to know what the big to do was about). So clearly it was widespread enough that a lot of people knew about and it wasn't just limited to "a few major cities in the south" (Egert was in Michigan State--not in the south last time I checked. And his story was reported by nationwide sources including but not limited to the Washington Post) or "touched" only a few states. That's simply not true.

But was he talking about the events during the printing of that module or the whole of the panic. I think it’s clear he meant the latter. And is another point against this adventure being buried because of the of the panic.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I guess I was trying to "ascribe to you" a more moral position that the one that you have, apparently.

Nice. Inferring me of being immoral because I don't think that any and all criticism, if the person just happens to be a woman, is automatically sexist?

I'm looking at facts. Something you seem to be ignoring over and over just so you can accuse people of being sexist?

Wow, okay. I wish you hadn't said that. That wasn't my argument, and now it is clear where you are coming from.

I would have preferred that to not be clarified.



For your reference, she was not responsible for the illustrations. I thought everyone knew that ... but, you know. That was the most problematic aspect as everyone related; just as they stated that the illustrations were not actually that bad.

That you did not even notice that your own sources are dripping with the type of obnoxious and causal misogyny that is easily seen (and that I quoted) is disturbing to me. Apparently, you are more invested in winning an argument that in understanding the issues. You go on doing that, dude. I'm done.

Thanks! Bye.

One of my sources is this. Which happens to be written by a woman named Cecilia D'Anastasio. Are you now going to accuse her of being misogynist because parts of that source don't fit your narrative? Are you accusing Tim Kask of being a misogynist (another of my sources)?

Accusing people of being immoral or misogynistic because you disagree with them is pretty weak. To repeat, this has nothing to do with Jean being a woman, or any criticism of her being sexist. This has everything to do with:

• DND was in the national news for being tied to ritualism and witchcraft just prior to the module being written
• TSR management directing modules be more kid friendly because of that
• Jean ignoring that mandate

All of the above is backed by many sources, directly involved, including Jean's close friend (the second and third point) and Tim Kask ( indirectly the first point), not to mention the actual national news reports (the first point)

so yeah, if you're going to continue to ignore all of that and call me immoral, then probably it is better you don't continue.