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.

 

[Lanefan]

Okay.

And?

It means that even though the book itself doesn't cover the WotC era, WotC - because they are its publisher and copyright holder - still can't be completely ignored for purposes of this discussion.

 

[Umbran]

My position is that Gygax's sexist remarks are unacceptable.

My position is that Gygax's sexist remarks are unacceptable.

My position is that Gygax's sexist remarks are unacceptable.

My position is that Gygax's sexist remarks are unacceptable.

My position is that Gygax's sexist remarks are unacceptable.

Now, what positive change for the future do you feel will come of this?

 

[Krachek]

For me, I know D&D 1e has some sexist remarks in passing, some off stuff like women ability limits, and a "matriarchy" being "Evil", opposite "Good" that is patriarchies.

But it wasnt clear to me how "intentional" these sexists phenomena were, or if they were more accidental (or unconscious) in the context of brainstorming a "fun" game encounter.

In retrospect, the sexist stuff seems intentional.

What wonder me, is those creation driven by racism, sexism continue to evolve and eventually get over the initial intent of their creators.
Tiamat, Cthulhu and the Drows have too much symbolism in their roots to be restraint in their initial form. They will continue to evolve and we can forget the initial intents of their creator.

 

[Lanefan]

What wonder me, is those creation driven by racism, sexism continue to evolve and eventually get over the initial intent of their creators.
Tiamat, Cthulhu and the Drows have too much symbolism in their roots to be restraint in their initial form. They will continue to evolve and we can forget the initial intents of their creator.

Not sure 'bout anyone else here, but the idea of Cthulhu continuing to evolve doesn't make any of my characters feel any better.

 

[Umbran]

Not sure 'bout anyone else here, but the idea of Cthulhu continuing to evolve doesn't make any of my characters feel any better.

Funny. Ha ha.

But, to the point - Have you read or seen Lovecraft Country? Because that's Lovecraftian fiction evolving, whether the man would have accepted it or not.

 

[Justice and Rule]

I have already noted that I find flogging with the Trout of Righteousness to be a low-value activity. So, I am a poor choice of audience for your quibbles over how many flaws the man had.

Call it the "Trout of Righteousness", I just see it as knowing who someone was. I find it important to know these things when discussing what came before it because, given how often people appeal to the tradition and talk about how it was like things, it's good to know where it comes from.

With respect, you are making a tactical blunder Vizzini would liken to getting into a land war in Asia.

You blame the backlash on people thinking like fans. I would blame the backlash on folks failing to remember perhaps the most important rule of effective communication - "Know your audience."

You can't come to a site devoted to fandom and then blame those fans for being what they are! Might as well put yourself in the middle of a herd of rhinos, blow a horn, and blame the rhinos for you getting trampled. If you don't recognize and properly account for the nature of the audience, that's your fault, not theirs.

In approach, honestly, while you say "...we should probably...," the rhetorical positioning is more, "I have already done this, and I know what you should do as well." You are subtly positioned as separate from the "we" that you are claiming.

No, I completely disagree with this. You can be a fan and still think critically, and indeed plenty of people in this thread are doing so right now: fans of D&D who can look at Gary Gygax and give an honest appraisal without just resorting to reactionary defensiveness. I think that not only should be something we strive for, it should be the baseline standard of discussion that we expect. Lowering our standards to just simply accept this sort of reflexive response only encourages bad actors to abuse it.

I mean, I feel like the moderation of this site goes against the expectation you are giving, since if people were to give the same sort of reactive backlash I would expect you'd be handing out thread bans for it.

Now, what positive change for the future do you feel will come of this?

The same sort of thing that people want to achieve with making sure people understand the problems with HP Lovecraft: sunlight is the best disinfectant and that if something kind of feels bad, it might be because the writers had objectionable views. There are a bunch of people out there who like to appeal to tradition, and it's good to show why there are flaws with tradition, starting with who created it. That doesn't mean everything is tainted, but it's good see why certain things are problematic and why we've had problems with certain things for a long time within our community.

But really, I just think it's important to understand that creators are often flawed, simply because moving away from blind fandom as a general thing is a good idea. Too often does that sort of thing complicate and make difficult to show the problems (and sometimes pain, as recent events have show) the people we admire can cause.

 

[Kannik]

"I don't understand why people are making such a big deal out of this," is another classic deflection technique, said by those who made it a big deal. (See also "political".)

This is a 576 page book. Let's remove 16 pages of TOC, index, blank paper, adverts, whatever, to make it a nice round 560 pages. There are three paragraphs over both the preface and the forward that note, duly and rather unremarkably and in a matter of fact fashion, that certain elements in the historical documents being covered are sexist or otherwise appropriative or discriminatory. Let's also round that up to 1 page to make a nice round number and to include anywhere else where margin notes also duly note such types of material. That's 0.18% of the book.

Yet it brought decriers out of the woodwork to claim the book was either vindictive, slanderous, intended to make all sorts of people bad, and etc. They made it a big deal. They turned it into an event. They profited off their social media brouhaha. And then, as a continuation of their strategy, they pivot to DARVO and make it out like they are just defending themselves against some brouhahahaha mob (pretending that they did not start it -- that's part and parcel of DARVOing). That, once again, it was the book that was the real meanie for being all trout-y.

All along, the book, in plain view, still has the same 0.18% of text that provides simple context to the discriminatory aspects of the historical documents presented within, and by extension to the early versions of our hobby. 0.18%


(As an aside, I had never heard of the phrase Trout of Righteousness before this thread... and the only google hit is to this very thread. Did we just invent a new term/phrase? Go us!?!)

 

[Lanefan]

But, to the point - Have you read or seen Lovecraft Country? Because that's Lovecraftian fiction evolving, whether the man would have accepted it or not.

I've not read this, as per my tendency to avoid reading Lovecraftian fiction at every opportunity.

My DM is a big fan, however, and so our game sees a steady-to-the-point-of-joking-about-it diet of tentacled horrors and Lovecraft-adjacent references.

 

[AnotherGuy]

This thread reminds me of a comment I saw under one of those short YouTube clips

"Never meet your heroes unless it's Keanu."

 

[Staffan]

Random tables can be a godsend for GM inspiration. But we’re not talking a random table of city folk they might meet, of which harlot is one entry. It’s an entire random table of different names for sex workers.

In whatever fairness I can muster, that is precisely what it is. The 1e DMG has a whole bunch of random encounter tables, including one for cities and towns. On that table, a roll of 40-41 in daytime or 44-50 at night is a "harlot", and then you roll on a sub-table to see what particular type of harlot they are. Several of the other potential encounters also require more rolls for precision (how many, what level etc), but most don't have full-blown subtables. That's only for drunks and harlots.