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.”

​

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.

 

[lynnfredricks]

That's a bold assertion without much actual proof. Given that we can no longer give proof in the thread, I suggest you probably move off this whole idea it was commonplace and move on to a separate argument.

Yes, I've hit the limits of what is allowed here, so I am stepping away from this thread. Have a great rest of your week!

 

[Gradine]

Pretty much. The situation went:

History Book. "Gary Gygax wasn't perfect and occasionally did an overt sexism. He also did all this other stuff."

Fans. "Nuh huh! That wasn't sexism! Also sexism was more common in the 70s! So it doesn't count! Stop tarnishing his legacy!"

Historian. "No, no. It was overt sexism, here's context and example."

Fans. "Nooooooo that's not sexism! I know he -called- himself a sexist, but that's not what happened!"

The story spreads. More people try to "Put into context" the sexism of the Era in order to deflect responsibility, or undermine the arguments that he did or said sexist stuff, etc. People respond. More deflections. People respond. More deflections.

Repeat ad nauseum as new people pop into the thread 50, 60, 70, 80 pages on and toss out the same justifications and excuses that were cut apart in the previous 50, 60, 70, 80 pages.

Actually, before even the "fans" got involved, no less than an authority than Rob Kuntz decided to call the historians in question liars for daring to... <checks notes> republish Gygax's own misogynistic words verbatim.

This topic didn't just spring forth fully-formed from the forehead of Zeus to disparage the great Gygax out of nowhere. It happened because a pair of historians wrote a book that included some of the more troubling aspects of Gygax's words and design and one of the founding members of the game publicly called out their honesty and integrity over it. Ben Riggs wasn't even involved at all until that happened.

So for those who've been just asking questions about why we're talking about this now, and not about somebody or anybody else? That's why.

 

[MGibster]

Sometimes it's difficult to examine the lives of individuals without taking into account the cultural mileu in which they were raised. To understand Gary Gygax, Martin Luther King, Jr. H.P. Lovecraft, Muhammad Ali, etc., etc. you have to understand the environment they were raised in. Not to excuse or justify their actions, but simply to put them in context. I think that's why the conversation sometimes drifts a bit too far off topic.

 

[jayoungr]

and I am struggling to see how it can be seen as anything but excusing it…

If it is not meant as an excuse, why bring it up at all

I accept that the two things seem inseparable to you, but they seem very separate and distinct to me. As for "Why bring it up?"--well, I think the difference in impact with regard to the norms of the time is interesting in its own right. I didn't expect that idea to be so foreign to so many people.

It doesn’t help to bring up that sexism existed in the 70s when one is discussing one particular person’s sexism. Mentioning its existence is so obvious that it has the effect of appearing to rationalize or excuse the behavior because there is no greater point being made. Unless more information relevant to Gygax is going to be forthcoming from these comments being written in the 70s, that fact in and of itself, is immaterial. It only serves to lessen the words he wrote.

And I'm looking at it from the exact opposite angle: mentioning that sexism is sexism is so obvious that there's no greater point being made by doing that. Talking about how those statements might have sounded to an audience fifty years ago versus today doesn't change what the actual statements were, so it can't possibly lessen them.

Because it’s such an obvious statement that the only effect is to excuse it.

I actually don't feel that "the cultural context was different in the 1970s" is an obvious statement to everyone. I think "these statements are sexist" is the obvious statement, personally, and I am confused at how adding context comes across to you as excusing. I accept that you read it that way, but I don't understand why you can't separate the two things.

If a history teacher was teaching about sexism in the 20th century and simply kept saying how prevalent it was at the time without any further information being revealed while discussing the individual acts of sexism, it would have the same effect.

To your ears, maybe. To me, it would just be a statement of fact. I don't know whether there is a way to bridge this gap.

I know you said it was easier to organize your thoughts by snipping quotes, but maybe the rest of mine was important to the point.

because it doesn't matter what we follow it with, they will then demand to know why it isn't okay now and why they are being canceled and suppressed for only having an opinion that you said was acceptable.

I read that and understood it. I snipped it because moral judgment, setting examples, etc., were completely beside the point from my point of view.

Sexism exists today. Saying that we can't judge someone for being sexist because sexism used to be acceptable just gives current day people who are sexist a goal and an excuse.

But I never said we couldn't judge someone for being sexist. When people took that from my mentioning the historical context, I even explicitly said that wasn't what I meant. I am frustrated that you continue to accuse me of saying this.

You say it is for context, but we don't NEED the context.

You don't need context in order to make a moral judgment. I thought that went without saying. But there are other angles to examine the subject from, apart from moral judgment.

It doesn't matter that in Ancient Times people didn't understand biology and held women in low esteem, Plato saying that a horse is more valuable than a woman is not okay. And by continually insisting that we MUST give grace for the time period or country the person lived in...

I am frustrated that you keep reading "you can't judge" or "we MUST give grace" into a simple statement that times have changed. As I said above, I think the change in reception is interesting and worth noting in its own right, as a completely separate topic from the moral judgment.

you ARE giving Justification to those people who are currently Sexist. Because they don't hear "and people were wrong to think so" they hear "and someone changed society, turned it against you."

I don't get why you think that simply noting changes in outlook between different time periods must always be accompanied by a moral evaluation/judgment/lesson or that the absence of one is giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

If it neither explains nor exonerates, then in what way does it matter?

Historical context is interesting. In my opinion. Maybe it might lead people to appreciate the ways in which today is better. Or not.

More people try to "Put into context" the sexism of the Era in order to deflect responsibility, or undermine the arguments that he did or said sexist stuff, etc.

Since I am the main one who has been using the term "context," I would like to state for the record that if this is directed at me, it is not an accurate representation of my position.

 

[TiQuinn]

To your ears, maybe. To me, it would just be a statement of fact. I don't know whether there is a way to bridge this gap.

Then we have nothing to discuss further. I stand by my comments.

 

[Cadence]

Gygax specifically went "Whatever women's lib might think" in order to point out that he was specifically making the evil dragon deity a woman and going "What're you gonna do about it, Feminists?" in that moment.

Tangent about Tiamat and named dragons Gygax may have read about to follow up on previous myth posts:

From skimming some mythology books of the time, it looks like Tiamat might be the singular obvious choice for a dragon of chaos (or even lead chaotic monster) for someone who was into general audience mythology books. Once she was chosen, making a crack about how she was an evil woman feels like an obvious way for him to "get at the feminists" and make his point of view clear. And I would fully believe that those views made it so he would only have considered a male dragon for her opposite number after failing to find an obvious dragon of law or order.

Spoiler: Things from various myth books of the time....

It isn't clear which Myth books Gygax would have used. Moldvay Basic's recommended reading (put together with help from the late Barbara Davis at the Lake Geneva Public Library) includes Funk and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend as one of three nonfiction books recommended for adults. A 1972 edition is on Internet Archive.




Under Dragon:



Part of the entry:



There is nothing under law, the closest thing to order is "ordering of world, human life, institutions", and Bahamut doesn't appear - so this very well might not be where he got Tiamat, or he might have gone trolling for a name for the lawful one elsewhere.

Moldvay's references for adults also include:

Borges' "The Book of Imaginary Beasts". It has three sections on Dragons (Chinese, Eastern, and Western) but doesn't give individual names. It does mention that Agamemnon's shield had a blue three-head Dragon, and that in Ethiopia four or five Dragons would coil together to cross the Red Sea. It does not have Tiamat, but does have an entry for Bahamut as being from Arabia - starting as a hippo or elephant and then becoming a fish that the bull was on. It does have that this fish was "So immense and dazzling [...] that the eyes of man cannot bear its sight." and that "The idea of the crag resting on the bull, and the bull on Bahamut, and Bahamut on anything else, seems to be an illustration of the cosmological proof of the existence of God. This proof argues that every cause requires a prior cause, and so, in order to avoid proceeding into infinity, a first cause is necessary." This doesn't give a reason for naming the dragon of law Bahamut, but does seem like a reason a religious person might like the name.

Bullfinch's Mythology doesn't mention Tiamat or Bahamut. It mentions Dragons a few times, but not named ones (like the one watching the fleece).

In the section on non-fiction for Children...

Barber's "A Companion to World Mythology" is on the archive from a 1980 edition with Baynes. The entry for Dragon mentions the "'corpse-tearer' Nidhogg." that tears at the root of the world-tree.

The index suggests looking up other Dragons at:

It doesn't have an entry for Chaos.

Tiamat occurs in the entry for "Apsu and Tiamat" as the mother of everything, parent of the gods, and able to send a swarm of monsters (but not a dragon).

The Beasts of Never by McHargue is on the archive in a 1988 version. It has a big chapter on Dragons, and in the part where it looks at "a few individual members of the clan", the first it gets to is:

It then has Vrtra (name meaning destruction) who is slain by Indra. It later has:

Bahamut isn't in it. Two of the three mentions of chaos in the book are above. The third is that the "the Griffin is playing the role of one of Tiamat's helpers in the great struggle between Chaos and the gods."

I didn't get to the ones that seemed about just certain parts of the world (Coolidge or Jacobs) or the one on Hero tales (Hazeltine).

I'm happy to check other myth books of the time folks think he might have used. If I find anything I guess I should start a thread just on that.

 

[Steampunkette]

Since I am the main one who has been using the term "context," I would like to state for the record that if this is directed at me, it is a misrepresentation of my position.

Okay. So let's look at the situation and you can explain how context provides anything except an attempt to excuse Gygax for being a sexist.

Gygax was a sexist in the 70s. He was a sexist all the way through to the 2000s. He outright stated he was a sexist, he did sexist things, he believed sexist thoughts, and even when the vast majority of other people in the 70s were trying to be less sexist he was a sexist who took the label up for himself and doubled down.

That's the actual, real world, no holds barred, situation we're dealing with.

Please use the time he lived in being sexist to show context in a way that doesn't seek to ameliorate his responsibility for being a sexist, or wherein it acts as a mitigating factor for his sexism, or otherwise excuses his actions and statements as a sexist.

The only one I can imagine would be "The 70s were way more sexist than they are now, but even by that standard Gary Gygax was a sexist."

Because it acknowledges the past's position on the matter while still holding him responsible for his positions. And that's not what has been said in the thread by the "Product of his time" side of the argument.

 

[Director59]

This is worth the read or a listen.

 

[Charlaquin]

And I'm looking at it from the exact opposite angle: mentioning that sexism is sexism is so obvious that there's no greater point being made by doing that. Talking about how those statements might have sounded to an audience fifty years ago versus today doesn't change what the actual statements were, so it can't possibly lessen them.

If it’s so obvious that sexism is sexism, why were the attitudes different then? The sexism itself didn’t change, and people weren’t less astute, so they should have been just as capable of spotting the obvious as we are today.

The answer is that it’s only obvious to us because we’ve been taught what it looks like. And history books like this one are an important part of that teaching process. Cultural norms are shaped in part by pointing to the ills of the past and saying “this is something we don’t want to repeat. Study carefully what it looks like so you can more easily recognize when it happens today, and take a stand against it.”

 

[jayoungr]

Please use the time he lived in being sexist to show context in a way that doesn't seek to ameliorate his responsibility for being a sexist, or wherein it acts as a mitigating factor for his sexism, or otherwise excuses his actions and statements as a sexist.

My focus is on the listeners, not the speaker.

The speaker said what he said, and the words are what they are. Nothing changes that. I think "These statements are sexist" is bleeding obvious, and not actually that interesting as a topic for discussion.

The changing perception of those words is, to me, the interesting part. How the exact same words are received in one decade versus another, and what people found acceptable then versus now. If anyone's being judged here, it's the people who gave those words a pass in the 1970s.