D&D Historian Benn Riggs On Gary Gygax & Sexism

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&D’s 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 Wizard’s 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 Tondro’s work as “slanderous.” On his Castle Oldskull blog, Kent David Kelly called it “disparagement.” 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 “misogyny “ 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.)

​

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 wouldn’t know dragon’s 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 “politics” 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: “Women’s lib may make whatever they wish from the foregoing.”

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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 power—perhaps even female equality—is 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 didn’t 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:“I have been accused of being a nasty old sexist-male-Chauvinist-pig, for the wording in D&D isn’t what it should be. There should be more emphasis on the female role, more non-gendered names, and so forth."

"I thought perhaps these folks were right and considered adding women in the ‘Raping and Pillaging[’] section, in the ‘Whores and Tavern Wenches’ chapter, the special magical part dealing with ‘Hags and Crones’...and thought perhaps of adding an appendix on ‘Medieval Harems, Slave Girls, and Going Viking’. Damn right I am sexist. It doesn’t matter to me if women get paid as much as men, get jobs traditionally male, and shower in the men’s locker room."

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

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 hobby’s 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 isn’t for them? They know the stink of misogyny, just like they know **** when they smell it. To say it isn’t 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 all…

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 isn’t 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...

“Hey reader, we see you in all your wondrous multiplicity of possibility, and if we were publishing this today, it wouldn’t contain messages and themes telling some of you that you are less than others. So we just want to warn you. That stuff’s in there.”

Y’know, 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&D’s 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 isn’t 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 “Character Alignment, Including Various Monsters and Creatures,” Evil High Priests are included under the “Chaos” heading, along with the undead. So I would put to you that Gygax did see a relationship between Evil and Chaos at the time.

Ben Riggs​

Look, folks, we know how a conversation like this goes on the internet. Because, internet. Read the rules you agreed to before replying. The banhammer will be used on those who don't do what they agreed to.

 

[Hussar]

I don’t find the best response to dealing with accusations of hypocrisy to be to essentially claim that others are wrong to point out hypocrisy. That to me comes across as a deflection much more than an accusation of hypocrisy that starts with ‘what about’.

Really? You don't see the hypocrisy and problems with dragging up entirely unrelated issues in an attempt to obfuscate the original issue? That the ONLY reason that people bring up "whatabout's" is because they know that they don't actually have any ground to stand on in challenging the original issue, so, they try to do an end run around things by dragging all sorts of completely unrelated crap which they can then challenge and make it look like they've actually got a point?

That it's actually worse to call out the hypocrisy of the whatabout than to bring up the whatabout in the first place?

Are you serious?

 

[lynnfredricks]

"Buy this $99 history book that upset your grandpa's friend from high school!"

Not everything is a conspiracy.

Sometimes it's just a history book that reprints something that people aren't comfortable being resurfaced.

There's a difference between conspiracy and controversy.

 

[FrogReaver]

Really? You don't see the hypocrisy and problems with dragging up entirely unrelated issues in an attempt to obfuscate the original issue?

While most anything can be used to most any end, generally pointing out hypocrisy isn’t to obfuscate the original criticism, but rather to test the original criticisms fairness.

That the ONLY reason that people bring up "whatabout's" is because they know that they don't actually have any ground to stand on in challenging the original issue, so, they try to do an end run around things by dragging all sorts of completely unrelated crap which they can then challenge and make it look like they've actually got a point?

The most common reason is actually to point out potential unfairness in the original criticism.

That it's actually worse to call out the hypocrisy of the whatabout than to bring up the whatabout in the first place?

I’m not sure I’m following you here.

Are you serious?

100%

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

There's a difference between conspiracy and controversy.

This is a deeply silly argument you're making.

The deep-pocketed folks who would shell out $99 for a coffee table version of the little brown booklets don't need controversy to pick up the book and people who might get interested in the book by some alleged controversy ("quick, pick up the book where Gygax says sexist stuff!") will be put off by the price tag.

 

[CandyLaser]

While most anything can be used to most any end, generally pointing out hypocrisy isn’t to obfuscate the original criticism, but rather to test the original criticisms fairness.

The most common reason is actually to point out potential unfairness in the original criticism.

In what way does bringing up unrelated issues serve to test the fairness of the original criticism? Consider the context. Peterson and Tondro put together a book, ably described by @MNblockhead here. The book is primarily a collection of reproductions of original documents from 1970 through 1977. Some of those documents provide clear evidence that Gygax held sexist attitudes, by both the standards of the day and now. Those documents were included in the book, with context. People got angry about these documents being included, because they paint Gygax in an unflattering light (to say the least). But they're real. Gygax did say those things. That's why their reproductions are in the book.

So, now, let's return to my question. How does talking about WotC's failures when it comes to inclusivity (which have been several and significant) bear on the topic of Gygax's behavior and beliefs in 1975? Peterson and Tondro's is, again, primarily a collection of reproductions of original documents. A discussion of the present-day rights-holders policies would be wildly out of place in such a collection. Peterson and Tondro weren't writing a comparison of Gygax's views and the policies of WotC. And as for Riggs, he was writing a defense of Peterson and Tondro. The people who got angry about the original documents highlighting Gygax's misogyny accused Peterson and Tondro of lying. Riggs is presenting the original documents that show that they are not. That's it. WotC again doesn't enter into the frame at all. So how does bringing it up serve as a test of fairness in any way?

Along those lines, are you actually saying that Peterson, Tondro, or Riggs are being unfair to Gygax? What topics that are material to the discussion of Gygax, his views, and his actions, do you think they've overlooked, if any?

 

[Hussar]

The most common reason is actually to point out potential unfairness in the original criticism.

That's just flat out wrong.

The most common reason of using "whatabouts" is an attempt to derail conversation to prop up indefensible positions. X is true. "But, whatabout Y?" "We're not discussing Y, we're discussing X" "See, you're a hypocrite, you won't talk about Y. You are applying a double standard!!!"

It's classic trolling behaviour.

 

[Clint_L]

This is a deeply silly argument you're making.

The whales who would shell out $99 for a coffee table version of the little brown booklets don't need controversy to pick up the book and people who might get interested in the book by some alleged controversy ("quick, pick up the book where Gygax says sexist stuff!") will be put off by the price tag.

As someone who bought the book, I am resentful of being called a “whale” for doing so. Whale is a derogatory term that comes from gambling and has since migrated to other media, and specifically refers to suckers who lack self-control and are thus easy marks.

So are you calling me, specifically, a whale, or are you just being casually insulting?

Personally, I consider a hundred bucks a good deal on a book of this size, quality, and scholarship. Perhaps you are unaware of how much it costs to produce such texts, and what they normally sell for. I can assure you that my comparable collection of Chaucer was considerably more, and purchased decades ago.

Scholarly tomes of this quality are treasures. If you can’t afford it or don’t think they are worth it, that’s your business. How I spend my money is mine. I can assure you that anyone who knows books knows this price is not out of line; if anything, it’s a bargain.

 

[Clint_L]

As for the OP, again, this is a work of historical scholarship. It’s not the author’s jobs to whitewash the material or be shills for Gygax, TSR, or WotC. Acknowledging material that is problematic in a forward is standard, especially when dealing with a non-specialist audience as this book will likely attract.

If folks wanna get upset over standard scholarly practices, then that’s their right. I think it comes off as kind of uninformed.

 

[FrogReaver]

In what way does bringing up unrelated issues serve to test the fairness of the original criticism?

A lot seems to hinge on what precisely you mean by unrelated issue. It’s certainly not a term I used. Can you please define what precisely you mean by that?

Consider the context. Peterson and Tondro put together a book, ably described by @MNblockhead here. The book is primarily a collection of reproductions of original documents from 1970 through 1977. Some of those documents provide clear evidence that Gygax held sexist attitudes, by both the standards of the day and now. Those documents were included in the book, with context. People got angry about these documents being included, because they paint Gygax in an unflattering light (to say the least). But they're real. Gygax did say those things. That's why their reproductions are in the book.

No major disagreements here.

So, now, let's return to my question. How does talking about WotC's failures when it comes to inclusivity (which have been several and significant) bear on the topic of Gygax's behavior and beliefs in 1975?

On that specific topic it doesn’t. And just to be clear I agreed that the worst of those comments made Gygax a sexist troll.

But if the framed question was, why are you singling out gygax when Wotc has just as bad of a track record (what about wotc). I think the hypocrisy and fairness questions apply there. There’s probably some very fine answers to that as well. Maybe Gygax was worse or, I’m talking about Gygax because there was recently a book about his misdeeds. Etc.

What I’m saying is that any good answer to that question is much better than simply telling the person they shouldn’t ask it.

Along those lines, are you actually saying that Peterson, Tondro, or Riggs are being unfair to Gygax?

If one is reporting on d&d history and reports on all the bad things one guy does but never any from the other that might be unfair, not sure that’s happening here given the scope of the work in question and this single instance but it could be, only time will tell.

What topics that are material to the discussion of Gygax, his views, and his actions, do you think they've overlooked, if any?

No idea, I’m certainly no expert in gygax. I think they gathered enough to show his sexism even if some of the ‘evidence’ presented was fairly weak. Some was really compelling.

*funny story: everytime I write gygax my autocorrect tries to fix it with ‘hugs’.

 

[Hussar]

But if the framed question was, why are you singling out gygax when Wotc has just as bad of a track record (what about wotc). I think the hypocrisy and fairness questions apply there. There’s probably some very fine answers to that as well. Maybe Gygax was worse or, I’m talking about Gygax because there was recently a book about his misdeeds. Etc.

No. It's disingenuous. And virtually always done in bad faith. I mean, good grief, it's DEFINED as arguing in bad faith. That's why people call it out. Using "whatabout" arguements are a bad faith attempt to confuse the topic and attack those whose position on a topic are too strong to be directly countered.