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.)

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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.

 

[FrogReaver]

I'd say the reason to put out books covering that era specifically, as opposed to post-WotC buyout, has more to do with the fact people who were there, boots on the ground, are sadly more and more being put INTO the ground due to old age.

I'm 49. I run into gamers that don't know what a Real Thing the Satanic Panic was during the 1980s, and not just with D&D and gaming.

Yea probably. My point is less about the particular why and more whether that’s a valid question to ask around this topic.

 

[payn]

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.

Calling someone a whale is an insult. Period. It’s the same as calling them a sucker, a mark, etc. Unless you are referring to their weight. Which is a different insult.

I can't find any instances of whale being an insult. Everything I find indicates customer with deepest pockets and no qualms about spending. I know in mobster movies they often try and trick whales into spending as much as possible, but I dont think its implied they are stupid. Perhaps you are inferring from the film depictions the whales are "marks" and/or "rubes" which certainly are insults?

 

[mamba]

And this remark sums up the problem some old folks have with trigger warnings and other stuff griping about old D&D.

the reaction wasn’t ‘we know already, no need to bring it up again’ however, it was ‘how dare you besmirch the memory of the Great Gygax’

 

[Chaosmancer]

The sexism displayed isn't from Mesopotamian religion (although there was that there as well), but just the depiction of her within D&D. The issue is not Mesopotamian religion, it's the interpertation GG gave it.

Yeah. I also want to add, I watched a video on the lore of Tiamat and some of the things she gets up to in Avernus. I don't know which book the youtubers were pulling from, I don't know who wrote the original lore that inspired those books. But they were deeply uncomfortable presenting the information and with very good reason.

I know we like Tiamat as a powerful foe, but some people added in a lot of depravity to her that is just wrong, and thankfully has been largely excised from the current lore.

 

[GothmogIV]

How many of you on this thread are planning to spend $100 on this book?

 

[Cadence]

Not to a person trying to discuss why Gygax’s flaws are being focused on but not wotc’s.

RE: "Focused on". In terms of the book it was a few paragraphs in the introduction, and somewhat like the disclaimer on cartoon DVDs with an example given?

It strikes me as strange to try read into a company celebrating an anniversary by wanting to focus on the start of the game - especially when they want to include full historical documents and when they recently had an art book celebrating the entire history of the game.

(It feels like it would be 2026 and someone puts out a book celebrating 1776 that starts in the early-to-mid 1700s and goes to the end of the revolution, and mentions in the intro that some icky things show up in a few documents reproduced. And then getting complaints it left out Columbus, the Constitution, War of 1812, Civil War, Reconstruction, and later political parties that didn't exist at the time).

 

[mamba]

But there was a choice to make a book covering only that time period. Could that choice have something to do with wotc?

yes, it is their book after all. The reason was not to hide WotC’s flaws however, why end at 77 for that…

The book was made because of the 50th anniversary and it focuses on the original edition for the same reason

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

And this remark sums up the problem some old folks have with trigger warnings and other stuff griping about old D&D.
5E player, "DID YOU KNOW 1E had evil racism, misogyny, etc?"
1E player, " NO beep. Um No Otyugh I was there!"
5E player, " I can list the ways."
1E player, "No Otyugh I was there!"
5E player, "Don't you need to acknowledge the EVIL of what you played!"
1E player, "I am busy enjoying 5e. Move on. We did."

Problem is, the disclaimer isnt for the situation you are depicting. As we can see from the reaction to a proven, documented fact, the situation from a segment of the fans is:

5E player, "DID YOU KNOW 1E had evil racism, misogyny, etc?"

1E player, " NO. Its wasnt misogyny, it was acceptable back then, this is libel (sic)"

5E player, " I can list the ways."

1E player, "No Otyugh I was there!"

5E player, "Don't you need to acknowledge the EVIL of what you played!"

1E player, "I am busy figthing for the return of the good old days. We are the target of hateful propaganda!"

Now, this is the situation where the disclaimer is needed. NOT for those who moved on, for those longing for the warts of the past over the respect of fellow human being, because having a game of pretend elves reflecting the hidden vile ideals is way more important than basic decency.

 

[Cadence]

How many of you on this thread are planning to spend $100 on this book?

I preordered mine (there was a part refund from Amazon later, so it was only about $90, which is what I think they are charging for it now). Given the size, it feels like it compares very well price wise to both ttrpg books and comic reprint books.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Not to a person trying to discuss why Gygax’s flaws are being focused on but not wotc’s.

Why would a person being trying to discuss WoTC's flaws in a thread about Gygax, talking about a book about Gygax?

But there was a choice to make a book covering only that time period. Could that choice have something to do with wotc? *Note I don’t have the answer (the likely answer is probably a no), but seems like a valid question to me.

It isn't a valid question. The answer is self evident in the title of the book. The Making of the Original Dungeons and Dragons. Unless you can point to some evidence that WoTC was involved in the creation of the Original Dungeons and Dragons, 20 years before they existed as a company and 27 years before they purchased the well-established brand of DnD, then your "just asking questions" to bring the very idea of a history book covering the origin of DnD into question. You may as well ask why they decided to write a DnD history book for the 50th anniversary of DnD instead of focusing on the United States Constitution or the History of Rubber.