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.

 

[Lanefan]

I get that a second character is a "solution" but it is also a deep problem, because you can't role-play two characters at once, so you have the main group who interacts with each other.. and then these silent shadow characters who only do anything when one of the main cast is gone. It has very poor at-the-table functionality for a group that has a lot of inter-character interactions.

Believe me, when I'm playing two or more characters none of them is a "silent shadow".

The one trick is to keep one's characters separate and not have them always support each other unless there's a good in-game reason e.g. they're a pair of brothers. Many's the time I've had one of my characters insult or argue with the other; just because they're both my characters doesn't mean they're going to get along.

And, no, having input into what the rest of the party does isn't a conflict of interest. Heck, it isn't even a thing we worry about. We've had party members split off in social scenes all the time, interact without the rest of the party being there all the time, and the worst that happens is a player reminding another player about something they forgot. Which is FINE.

And your players never ever abuse that metagame knowledge? They must be saints!

I can see playing that sort of game, but at that point it feels bizarre to me. Nothing wrong with what your group likes, but it feels like if in the Hobbit they had an entire mini novel of how the dwarves cousins came to rescue them from the elves or the goblin king instead of them rescuing themselves. I don't understand making an entire adventure, with entirely different characters who didn't have stats before (I know your game they likely do, but we don't run multiple characters) for the sole purpose of rescuing the main cast.... instead of just making an adventure where the main cast can rescue themselves.

Situation from my current campaign: a PC got captured by mind flayers during an adventure where nothing went right and a party of 8 ended up as 4 when all was said and done. What was left of the party went home, recruited some friends and associates (including another PC of the captive's player) and put together a rather involved rescue mission. That rescue mission became their next adventure.

I did that, played a rando NPC for an adventure... it was boring as heck. I mostly got to watch the rest of the party disrespect and mock my character's corpse. And nothing that character did mattered, I don't even know if the DM bothered to remember that character's name because they were never important again.

Around here they all get remembered, if for no other reason than we maintain character logs and game logs that anyone can access; and sure Sviorr the Dwarf* was a low-level one-hit wonder back in 2008 but if someone ever wants to look up who he was and what he did the information is there.

* - an actual character from early in my current campaign who came in in one session and died, courtesy of some most unwelcoming zombies, in the next.

No, actually it really isn't preferable. You are basically being told that you are required to waste some of your game time sitting around, being a burden on your team, with no way to do anything at all to affect the outcome. If I sit down to DnD and I would be better spending my time watching youtube videos on my phone, then something has gone wrong.

To me, there being times when one is standing by rather than actively playing is an expected and acceptable fact of life in an RPG. And this can and does happen for a variety of reasons:
--- my character(s) is-are dead, captured, paralyzed, unconscious, or for some other reason currently unplayable
--- my character(s) are not involved in whatever is being played through at the moment e.g. the scouts have gone scouting and I'm back guarding the horses
--- the party has not yet found my character(s)
--- my character(s) have intentionally or otherwise become separated from the party and are on hold.

There is a difference between not trusting an NPC and not trusting a Player Character.

Where to me they are, and ideally should be treated, exactly the same. People in the setting don't have "PC" or "NPC" stickers on their foreheads.

Everyone knows the result of the Player Character trying to join the party, unless you are one of those groups that would kill a new PC and force a player to roll up a new one on their first session, because they were "too suspicious". It ends up being a waste of everyone's time and straining the suspension of disbelief. You have no reason in character to treat this person differently, but you absolutely know they are the new member of the party.

And if you're role-playing true to your character, the bolded has to take precedence. Also, who's to say a player hasn't decided to play a character who is out to undermine or work against the party from within?

I don't know how to explain it to you. Because you don't see the characters as mattering. But at the same time, essentially being told consistently "you don't matter, your goals don't matter, your opinions don't matter, your past doesn't matter, your future doesn't matter..." well why the heck should I care about that experience? If I don't matter, then I can just leave and do something else. I know that sounds selfish, I get that it sounds selfish, but if I could bring a rollodex and play a different character every session and it doesn't matter... then why am I bothering?

Ideally, because the story of the party still matters even though your own PCs might be dropping like flies.

Why should I bother learning anything about the NPCs, the world, the plot, the villains? The other characters don't matter, the NPCs don't matter, the treasure doesn't matter...

And that's the sort of thinking that dooms you in a game that has any degree of lethality or true in-character danger; because in the end it ALL matters.

But the two are linked. You can't care about a villain if the villain is just a generic faceless bad guy. Do you have particularly strong feelings about defeating "The Hell Knight" a black-armored knight that has a sword and kills people who enter the dungeon?

Once he's tried to bend my nose into my face a few times, hell yeah I've got strong feelings about wanting to defeat him!

You keep saying that all the matters is the Party, the Team... but can you even name a team in fiction whose members weren't important to the continuation of the team? Would the Fellowship of the Ring be equally impactful if Legolas and Gimli were just two random human hunters they picked up in the forest?

The Fellowship was betrayed from within and shattered, remember? And in my view Boromir could have very much been a PC; the only true NPC in that group was Gandalf.

Further, when first introduced to the tale Legolas and Gimli might as well have been a couple of randos; we don't know anything about them until we get to know them through what they do in the story, just like we get to know a PC through what it does (or doesn't do) in the role-played game.

Yes, in war people die, and maybe that is how Gary thought of the game. But look at the inspirational material. How many protagonists died in Narnia? In the Fellowship of the Ring we only lose ONE character permanently, and it is not long after the fellowship is formed. Conan is a single protagonist who doesn't die, and I believe most of him companions don't die either.

It took Game of Thrones to finally get it right.

 

[Steampunkette]

Man. It really sucks that I'm not a game designer since I haven't got a PhD in it or peer-reviewed work or taught a class.

Sincerely: Trying to layer so much on the minimum to be considered a Historian is just insane to me. You do not need to be the top of your field to qualify as a member of that field.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Man. It really sucks that I'm not a game designer since I haven't got a PhD in it or peer-reviewed work or taught a class.

Sincerely: Trying to layer so much on the minimum to be considered a Historian is just insane to me. You do not need to be the top of your field to qualify as a member of that field.

I will drop this because I don't want to derail the thread further but this really isn't that crazy and I feel like I have taken a lot of effort to make clear this isn't about preventing people from writing histories. We do this all the time in discussions around topics involving expertise where distinctions are made between peer reviewed university books and popular books. It is about when that title matters in terms of expertise and the degree of trust we should be putting in sources. My point it is this a label I general reserve for academically vetted historical research. I don't think I am alone here in that. There is a difference between someone operating on their own as a history writer, with varying degrees of credentials and someone who is writing to the standards expected at a history department with full educational credentials and operating in the peer review system. Someone can still write a great history book outside of that system but I am going to approach it with more caution. Someone can write a history book outside of that and do so with the appropriate amount of rigor and methodology. But it does mean it hasn't been vetted in the same way, we should probably be more inclined to examine their sources, etc. I don't think this is that crazy of an idea

 

[TiQuinn]

I will drop this because I don't want to derail the thread further but this really isn't that crazy and I feel like I have taken a lot of effort to make clear this isn't about preventing people from writing histories. We do this all the time in discussions around topics involving expertise where distinctions are made between peer reviewed university books and popular books. It is about when that title matters in terms of expertise and the degree of trust we should be putting in sources. My point it is this a label I general reserve for academically vetted historical research. I don't think I am alone here in that. There is a difference between someone operating on their own as a history writer, with varying degrees of credentials and someone who is writing to the standards expected at a history department with full educational credentials and operating in the peer review system. Someone can still write a great history book outside of that system but I am going to approach it with more caution. Someone can write a history book outside of that and do so with the appropriate amount of rigor and methodology. But it does mean it hasn't been vetted in the same way, we should probably be more inclined to examine their sources, etc. I don't think this is that crazy of an idea

It seems to me that you need to do some looking into who Jon Peterson is then rather than ask others to do that work for you. He’s recognized by more people than those participating in this thread as an authority on the history of the game.

 

[increment]

Someone can still write a great history book outside of that system but I am going to approach it with more caution.

You're not wrong or crazy. "Making of" was not a peer-reviewed history book. That said, it's a book of facsimile sources, more of a reader with bare-minimum context than a historical narrative.

 

[Vaalingrade]

And now that Tiamat has failed, we've come full circle into attacking the creators of the book to deflect from the content of the book just like what prompted Riggs' post.

 

[Zardnaar]

Man. It really sucks that I'm not a game designer since I haven't got a PhD in it or peer-reviewed work or taught a class.

Sincerely: Trying to layer so much on the minimum to be considered a Historian is just insane to me. You do not need to be the top of your field to qualify as a member of that field.

Game designers doesn't have a formal qualification. There is one for a history degree and a PhD.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Since I do know this is off-topic, I will spoiler out of respect to the rest of the thread.

Spoiler: Lanefan

Believe me, when I'm playing two or more characters none of them is a "silent shadow".

The one trick is to keep one's characters separate and not have them always support each other unless there's a good in-game reason e.g. they're a pair of brothers. Many's the time I've had one of my characters insult or argue with the other; just because they're both my characters doesn't mean they're going to get along.

You are a DM, you know how difficult it is to role-play with yourself, especially if you need to react to someone else, and then roleplay two responses. That is far too much of a burden to expect any player to consistently deal with. And having two different characters reacting to four different characters, everyone with their own doubling of the RP? I'm not saying it is an impossible task, but the majority of the time, one of those characters is going to be treated like familiars are. Forgotten about unless directly addressed.

And your players never ever abuse that metagame knowledge? They must be saints!

None of it is actionable metagame knowledge. The worse anyone ever attempts is to run off when another player is in trouble, but a simple "how do you know they are in trouble" usually stops them in their tracks.

I legitimately struggle to see what metagame knowledge they could gain and abuse by splitting into multiple groups. Unless I drop a specific clue that specifically points to another clue that a different group would have missed without that context... but why would I even do that? That requires some pretty bad DMing and planning on my part to even occur.

Situation from my current campaign: a PC got captured by mind flayers during an adventure where nothing went right and a party of 8 ended up as 4 when all was said and done. What was left of the party went home, recruited some friends and associates (including another PC of the captive's player) and put together a rather involved rescue mission. That rescue mission became their next adventure.

But, to confirm, you had 4 players, and everyone went in with a character. Again, that isn't the context of my games, because we don't all role-play two people simultaneously.

So, in our version, you would have 4 party members, reduced to say 3 when one of them was captured. Then one player would have to sit out the entire session, or play a no-name nobody, as they go to rescue their own character. Which, from personal experience, is not fun. So, instead, we would have 3 characters mounting the rescue operation, then the 4th RPing from the prison of the Mindflayers, working towards their own release or gathering intel to give to the party once they are rescued.

Around here they all get remembered, if for no other reason than we maintain character logs and game logs that anyone can access; and sure Sviorr the Dwarf* was a low-level one-hit wonder back in 2008 but if someone ever wants to look up who he was and what he did the information is there.

* - an actual character from early in my current campaign who came in in one session and died, courtesy of some most unwelcoming zombies, in the next.

None of that group even game together anymore. Heck, I haven't even talked to those people in four years or longer. I'm glad you have a singular stable group and decades of logs and records, but that isn't a universal experience in the slightest.

To me, there being times when one is standing by rather than actively playing is an expected and acceptable fact of life in an RPG. And this can and does happen for a variety of reasons:
--- my character(s) is-are dead, captured, paralyzed, unconscious, or for some other reason currently unplayable
--- my character(s) are not involved in whatever is being played through at the moment e.g. the scouts have gone scouting and I'm back guarding the horses
--- the party has not yet found my character(s)
--- my character(s) have intentionally or otherwise become separated from the party and are on hold.

#4 is acceptable as a temporary measure, but should not be on hold for more than 15 or twenty minutes before the DM checks in. #2 should be the same as #4. If someone is scouting then either the scouting mission shouldn't take longer than about twenty minutes, or they need to be bouncing back to the rest of the group. If you are guarding the horses, then something interesting or notable has to take place there, or at the very least, I need to check in and give you an opportunity to do something with your time.

#3 is unavoidable after a character death, but should be kept as short as possible. If I take longer than an hour to intro a new character to the party, then I've done something terribly wrong. Ideally, it should be within 5 minutes.

#1 is a mixed bag, because you threw a lot of things in there like they are similar. Again, you have to remember that this isn't 1e we are talking about. Paralyzed for example is a condition that the player can save against every turn, and likely is taking place in combat. So, you aren't able to act, but you are able to save and participate that way.

We try to avoid death, I've talked about capture, and being unconscious but stable is actively a problem for us, because there is not a good way to keep the player engaged. We've gone to rolling death saves for the 20 at a minimum once stable.

The key to all of this is the same principle. Life is busy. Meeting once a week for 4 hours is a heavy investment of time and attention. In person it is even more, as we have drive times and dinner to consider (none of us eat together currently, and in old groups where someone hosted, they would sometimes provide food). Asking someone to spend 25% of their time investment that night doing NOTHING except sitting there and staring at other people having fun is intolerable. Especially since, we struggle to even meet that often. My IRL group has had to miss two meetings, and so we have only met three times in the past two months. If you are losing a quarter of your MONTHLY play time, just for aesthetic reasons? There is no NEED for that, so why would I tolerate it?

Where to me they are, and ideally should be treated, exactly the same. People in the setting don't have "PC" or "NPC" stickers on their foreheads.

Nope, seen that in action. Made every game where we tried to act that way worse. Because we all knew they could be trusted, so it just kept them from playing the game until it was "reasonable" for them to be treated like an equal member of the group, which created sucky group dynamics.

And if you're role-playing true to your character, the bolded has to take precedence. Also, who's to say a player hasn't decided to play a character who is out to undermine or work against the party from within?

I, as the DM, say that, because that is a terrible way to play that isn't fun for anyone long-term. Someone wants to come in as a spy, then do a heel turn and join the party? I could be convinced. But actively working to sabotage the group just for giggles? Nope. We don't have the time for that kind of anti-social behavior. It is hard enough to get the group working together on the best of days without adding that into the mix.

Before role-play comes table cohesion. Because playing at a table with people who are angry and frustrated with each other is a terrible expeirence. Even when everyone has such divergent goals that they rarely communicate, it is a horrid experience.

Ideally, because the story of the party still matters even though your own PCs might be dropping like flies.

And that's the sort of thinking that dooms you in a game that has any degree of lethality or true in-character danger; because in the end it ALL matters.

But it doesn't end up mattering. In every game I've played where the players are treated like interchangeable pieces, where it is only the party that ends up mattering... there is no reason for US to go after the villain, except that is the plot and we agreed to go with the plot. The NPCs don't interact with us as individuals, they react to the party, and it is like pulling teeth to get any traction with any sort of sub-plots or personal connections with NPCs, the setting is generic and could be anywhere, our missions come to us just because we directed to the correct area to get the missions, usually because the opening scene forced us into an area where we are now dealing with some threat. The larger world barely exists if it does at all, and we are completely cut off from it if it does exist.

One campaign in particular I am thinking of, we had a city destroying threat peering over the horizon... and the DM wanted us to care about putting points on a scoreboard at the local adventurer's guild, because that was the only way we would gain access to the supplies needed to help that guild fight back against the threat. Because our reasons to fight didn't matter, any connections we had to anyone didn't matter, so the DM crafted a scenario with the concept that none of us mattered and no one cared about us or our opinions... so my character who was a protector and guardian, who wanted to save the city, was constantly being treated like a loon, because I was talking about unifying against the common threat, instead of being a no-name nobody that no one would listen to and needed to prove himself first.

And sure, you can call it bad DMing, but when it happens consistently enough with a specific style... you start to look askance at the style that seems to encourage that sort of attitude.

Once he's tried to bend my nose into my face a few times, hell yeah I've got strong feelings about wanting to defeat him!

Why are you assuming you will face him more than once? The party faced him at his introduction, and now they aren't going to see him again until the final fight. So, you've never had your nose bent by him, unlike everyone else in the party who has. They were given a motivation, which you now lack. Unless I change plans to have him show up continously and keep hitting them just so you can gain the motivation they have.

The Fellowship was betrayed from within and shattered, remember? And in my view Boromir could have very much been a PC; the only true NPC in that group was Gandalf.

Further, when first introduced to the tale Legolas and Gimli might as well have been a couple of randos; we don't know anything about them until we get to know them through what they do in the story, just like we get to know a PC through what it does (or doesn't do) in the role-played game.

Boromir was possessed by the Ring and died. After that, how many of the fellowship died and stayed dead? And even Boromir's death mattered by the 3rd book. Meanwhile, sure, Gimli was just "the dwarf" who had no connection to anything... except his family member who had adventured with Bilbo all those years ago. And Legolas was no one... except that we knew that he was a wood elf and connected to the Elf King who was a major antagonist back when Bilbo got the ring, and his entire reason for being at the council was to speak of the escape of Gollum, the former holder of the Ring...

And clearly their backstories didn't matter.... except we did have that entire scene in Moria revolving around Gimli's backstory and connection to his family. Finding the journal detailing the end of his family in those mines. But Legolas didn't... except it was only because of him and where he came from that they were allowed into Lothlórien after the mines of Moria....

So, would Bill and Ted the Hunter's have the same impact on the story? Just two random humans from a random town?

It took Game of Thrones to finally get it right.

No. Because many people point out that they can't get invested in a Song of Ice and Fire, because any character they care about dies, and most of them are terrible people not worth caring about to begin with. The luster is fading on that series, and a lot of people are becoming far more critical of its flaws than they are praising its virtues... which are mostly "but he is willing to kill anyone at any time no matter what that does to the plot!"

 

[Chaosmancer]

Game designers doesn't have a formal qualification. There is one for a history degree and a PhD.

There are bachelor degrees in Game Design. Not a PHD, but I don't think a doctorate is required for someone to take you seriously in a field.

I also note that there aren't a lot of formal qualifications for a lot of jobs. Not a lot of Electricians or PLumbers who have degrees in those fields either. Even while Culinary school is a thing, a lot of chefs who never went to culinary school, a lot of highly respected chefs at that

 

[Zardnaar]

There are bachelor degrees in Game Design. Not a PHD, but I don't think a doctorate is required for someone to take you seriously in a field.

I also note that there aren't a lot of formal qualifications for a lot of jobs. Not a lot of Electricians or PLumbers who have degrees in those fields either. Even while Culinary school is a thing, a lot of chefs who never went to culinary school, a lot of highly respected chefs at that

Here electricians and plumbers are a tertiary level qualification.