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.

 

[Steampunkette]

I am not saying there was no push back. There often was. My point isn’t even to defend what Gygax said, it is to warn against simplifying the past or paint a more optimistic picture of his things were at the time. The issue is, there would be push back, feminism was a thing, views were rapidly changing, but push back was all it amounted to. People could go on talk shows, write editorials and say things like that or worse and they were still able to be on those platforms. You will also see people on those platforms pushing back. Sean Connery said it is okay for men to hit their wives in interviews in the 60s and 70s. He even repeated the statement in 1987 talking to Barbara Walters (who pushed back). Lots of people didn’t like what he said, one of my Aunts used to bring it up all the time for example, but people still adored him, he still had a career, he remained most people’s favorite James Bond. Were an actor to say that today, I think the reaction would be quite different because times are drastically different. That is the point people are trying to make. Not that enlightened people didn’t exist then, or even that what was said reflected a majority viewpoint. Just that it was a viewpoint way more people could get away with having. It was the kind of thing you saw in media from time to time

I disagree that it was even the majority viewpoint. I would also point you to all the people in the modern era who were 'Cancelled' for their bigoted statements and then went on tour to complain about being cancelled in front of live audiences for millions of dollars, occasionally on news programs or with biopics on the way.

From Roseanne Barr to Dave Chappelle and onward. Pushback is pretty much all anyone ever gets for sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia...

So long as it follows the flow of power from the strong to the weak very little, if anything, is actually done other than pushback. It's when people talk back to power, like George Carlin, Sinead O'Connor, or the Dixie Chicks, that the opportunities dry up.

Has been. Continues to be.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I disagree that it was even the majority viewpoint.

I said it wasn't the majority viewpoint

 

[Bedrockgames]

I disagree that it was even the majority viewpoint. I would also point you to all the people in the modern era who were 'Cancelled' for their bigoted statements and then went on tour to complain about being cancelled in front of live audiences for millions of dollars, occasionally on news programs or with biopics on the way.

From Roseanne Barr to Dave Chappelle and onward. Pushback is pretty much all anyone ever gets for sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia...

So long as it follows the flow of power from the strong to the weak very little, if anything, is actually done other than pushback. It's when people talk back to power, like George Carlin, Sinead O'Connor, or the Dixie Chicks, that the opportunities dry up.

Has been. Continues to be.

Cancel culture is a whole separate debate. The point is you can't go on to a talk show today, say it's okay to hit women, and then be invited back to that show. Because times have changed considerably

 

[Vaalingrade]

Considering how the Attention Economy and the Age of Grift have done a fusion dance to become a giant hate tornado that consumed a massive section of social media, Today is 'The Times', and all those folks are excused / justified / ignored / explained / whatever we're using to justify these arguments as well, I guess.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Times very relevant. I'm not saying you have to agree with Gary's writings. He's a bit of a dick based on other stuff we know.
But.

1. You coukd publish that comment in a 1975 in a commercial product.

Doesn't matter. Gygax was still a sexist.

2. Random harlots table was in a commercial product until 1990. And it was the biggest selling edition for 30 years.

Doesn't matter. Gygax was still a sexist.

That's the difference between now and then not finding a contemporary account of someone complaining about it between 1975 to 1990.

You coukd nake a product like that now it's not illegal. It will create a huge poo storm abd maybe sell a few hundred copies vs 1.5 million. That's the actual historical context.

Which doesn't matter. Because he was still a sexist.

Another example Gary was a poster here and posted similar comments in 2005. I haven't read them for a while but I don't recall any moderator action against him for posting it.

I'm not defending his views I am pointing out it's extremely disingenuous to argue the difference in scale between the pushback in 1975 and 2024 woukd be different. The why is simply the difference in social views 50 years apart.

We aren't saying that there was a difference in pushback. But how other people reacted at the time doesn't determine whether or not what he was saying and doing was sexist.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Definitely not trying to be elitist (I am generally very wary of elitism). The point isn't to prevent people who aren't part of a history department from writing history, it is merely observing there is often an enormous difference, and the peer review process is a big part of that difference. Heck I have read books by historians who I like how normally write in the academic peer review system, who suddenly made a book from a non-university publisher, where it is still good but you can see a real difference because it isn't as vetted and they are able to be looser with their claims. To me this is more like, we don't call everyone who writes a book on science a scientist, there are some baseline educational credential and work expectations. And we draw distinctions between books that were put out by reliable presses and ones that are put out by popular presses. On peer review, true not every profession requires it, but it is a standard feature of publishing history books and papers. Like I said I myself have a history degree, but I wouldn't call myself a historian because I don't have a masters or PhD and I didn't do research in the peer review system (and normally I am railing here against excluding peoples opinions because they don't have masters degrees, but I do think it is okay to have a basic standards when we are going to refer to people with a title that confers 'expert' upon them.

So, have you noticed any claims in their work, this book in particular or their other work in the past, which would make the disclaimer that DnD in 1975 contained material that was sexist, racist and otherwise insensitive to modern audiences suspect? Do you think they are incorrect that early DnD contained sexist content at all?

Because that was the extent of their claims. That is how loose they were. That in the notes and early drafts and published material from 1970 to 1977 that material exists, it was wrong then, and it is wrong now, but that it is too important to the history in question to bury or hide. Does any of that strike you as incorrect and would have been removed in a peer-reviewed context?

 

[Bedrockgames]

So, have you noticed any claims in their work, this book in particular or their other work in the past, which would make the disclaimer that DnD in 1975 contained material that was sexist, racist and otherwise insensitive to modern audiences suspect? Do you think they are incorrect that early DnD contained sexist content at all?

Like I said, I am not making a critique of the books at all. I am simply talking about how we are throwing around the term historian in these discussions. I mentioned several pages back I probably should have raised it in another thread where D&D historians come up because this one is so contentious and my point is not particularly related to that

 

[Maxperson]

Aaand we're turning the corner on the circle again. Back to 'the times' as a fig leaf.

How long until Tiamat again?

Once for each head?

 

[Chaosmancer]

Spoiler: Lanefan

That's just it: IME it doesn't stop them in their tracks at all, it just prompts them to come up with more and more ridiculous rationalizations.

Nope, it pretty much stops them.

How so? I'd almost say that's good DMing - but only if you can keep player and character knowledge aligned and not have the non-clued players learn the clue before the other group tells it to them.

Why's that? Well, the other group that got the clue might simply forget to mention it (I've seen this oh so many a time), or the other group might put a different spin on it, intentionally or otherwise. Or the other group might want to keep that knowledge to themselves.

Because it would mean I set things up so that the only way to find Clue B, was to first find Clue A. Whenever the group separates, it is because they have multiple viable paths forward. For one of those paths to require information from another means they were not viable. That's bad DMing. They should be able to find Clue B regardless of whether or not they were looking for Clue A first.

4 players running (have to look it up, it's been nine years) 8 PCs (two each) at the start. Character turnover during the adventure: two left early on for some time then returned, one of those two then got captured, the party picked up an adventuring NPC, two characters died, then another one died and the remnants of the party had to flee. What came home were four PCs and the adventuring NPC; the three dead were revived post-adventure and the captive was rescued as another adventure later.

Or have another character out there in the setting (or roll one up) and play that one for the rescue mission.

Well, in this case any RP-ing from the prison of the mind-flayers was a non-started as the 'flayers had made her their psionically-dominated mind-slave within minutes of capture and she was happily telling them every shred of information she knew...fortunately for all, perhaps, the party (and other parties) were only just starting to dimly realize that a whole lot of seemingly-disconnected things in their collective adventuring past were in fact caused by mind flayers working behind the scenes, meaning she didn't really have all that much useful info to give them.

See, we wouldn't do that last part. We wouldn't off-screen have the character be made a mind-slave without any resistance and tell them everything they knew. We would make the struggle to keep her mind and keep her secrets what she was doing while they raced to rescue her. Because that is something interesting to RP, rather than just say "you've been mind-slaved, you share everything, moving on".

As long as you don't contrive something that wouldn't have happened had I/we not been there; as that's always obvious and IMO cheapens the whole thing.

Cheapens standing around watching the horses and not doing anything?

Sometimes a new character can be brought in nigh-immediately once it's ready to rock, other times in-game circumstances can make it take a while. I'll bend my no-metagaming stance for this one purpose only, but there's still limits: for the adventure my group just finished, for example, I told them up front to bring two characters each as there would be no viable means of introducing any replacements mid-adventure (they didn't know it at the time but the adventure was set at the north pole, and quite possibly they were the only people within 500 miles of the place).

5 minutes, however, is a pipe dream: even in the most stripped-down of systems it takes longer than that to roll one up.

They make the character before the session. That's why it can be 5 minutes.

And I know you will say that working to not kill off characters in a situation where it isn't viable to introduce new PCs will degenerate play... but I really think this is a problem with your old-school group, not a universal one. Because it never causes the issues you insist it will for my groups. And I've been running the same way, for dozens of groups, for a decade.

Yes it is, at least on my part.

Then you are going to struggle to understand my answers.

That's just it: it's the player's choice at that point whether to remain engaged in the party's story or to zone out for a while or to re-write a character sheet or to paint a mini or to, if required, roll up a new character. My only ask is that they not interfere with ongoing play via non-game chatter or other distractions.

IfI wasn't sitting at the DM's house doing nothing I'd be sitting at home probably also doing nothing. Far better to sit with friends and share a beer and a laugh even if my character's pushing up daisies and in my role of player I've little or nothing to do.

See, we are all busy. If I'm not playing DnD, I'm handling stuff for my writing, or getting things organized for another DnD game, or doing something. A lot of my players these days have young kids, so if they aren't gaming, they'd be home with their families and taking care of their kids. None of us are just like "well, I'd be doing nothing anyways, so it is fine to sit here quietly and do nothing instead of playing"

Which means you're telling people how they're allowed to play their characters. Nope. Non-starter. I'll play my character(s) as I bloody well like, thanks; and if that means there's maybe going to be some party infighting at some point then so be it (though if it gets to infighting either my character's made too many mistakes or I have).

They need to learn to keep the anger and frustration in-character and act on it there; to separate the characters' emotions and feelings from those of the player. Your PC just sold mine down the river, framed me as the spy, and got me run out of the party and town? In character I swear endless violent revenge against you and all your kin (and maybe sometime later act on that oath) while at the table I tip my hat and say "well played", probably followed by "I'm impressed - how the hell did you pull that off?", not really expecting an answer.

I agree that the anger and frustration should be kept separate, but we deeply invest in our characters and in the group. A betrayal like that isn't laughed off in our group, it is met with a "WTF, why would you even do that?" because it disrupts everything.

So yeah, I'll tell you that your character can't slit the throats of the rest of party while you are on watch to steal their things. You don't like it? Feel free to leave, because I'm not going to prioritize someone who gets their jollies off disrupting the group over the rest of the group. I very rarely tell people how to play their characters, I'm not even fully against PvP if everyone is on-board with the conflict. But those sort of betrayals and ruining someone else's character? No. That has too much potential to cause too much trouble, and then the group just devolves into back-stabbing, taking sides, and betraying each other. Get enough of that in real life, not bringing that to a game where we are supposed to relax and have fun.

I was talking about getting personally mad at him during the battle in which we defeat him. Doesn't matter if we've even heard of him before then: right now he's whaling on our faces and I'm gettin' a bit steamed about it.

But why would you go risk your life to get into that fight in the first place? You can't get motivated in the fight to fight him because you already chose to fight him. That's what I'm getting at.

They were able to bring their backstories into play during the role-played part of the game...er, story. Great.

But they did so only in service to the greater game as and when required. They didn't try to make their backstories the focus of the game, which it seems is what some want.

eh, yes and no. We don't want it to be the focus of the entire game, but we want it to come up and matter. It is fine if it comes up as part of what the larger game needs, because that is the part that matters, that it affects the larger game. Which also means that once that character disappears.... that connective tissue keeping the larger game together is damaged. That's the problem we have with constant character death, we end up having to have the characters not matter.

Gaome of Thrones is my model for what a great big sprawling D&D campaign should look like, only with more field adventures and maybe less politics and fewer mass battles. Things happening all over the place. Lots of different characters and parties meeting, parting, meeting again. Big stories and little ones, all interwoven. Side quests. Characters dying or retiring or otherwise leaving play. New characters emerging as the campaign goes along. And best of all: every single character has its own agenda that probably doesn't agree with that of anyone else, and is willing to do what's needed to fulfill that agenda.

Were the books/series an RPG, each player would have a stable of at least 5 characters in the setting and would cycle them in and out depending which region or group was in play at the time and-or who was still alive. (dibs on Bronn; he's very much like Lanefan, only not as loud)

I've never read it. The "everyone you end up liking dies" and the edgy topics that made it popular immediately turned me off the series once I heard about it. I've read plenty of stories with major character deaths. I have no problem with that in storytelling. When a story is SOLD on "we kill off characters" then it is telling me not to invest in anyone.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I am not saying there was no push back. There often was. My point isn’t even to defend what Gygax said, it is to warn against simplifying the past or paint a more optimistic picture of his things were at the time. The issue is, there would be push back, feminism was a thing, views were rapidly changing, but push back was all it amounted to. People could go on talk shows, write editorials and say things like that or worse and they were still able to be on those platforms. You will also see people on those platforms pushing back. Sean Connery said it is okay for men to hit their wives in interviews in the 60s and 70s. He even repeated the statement in 1987 talking to Barbara Walters (who pushed back). Lots of people didn’t like what he said, one of my Aunts used to bring it up all the time for example, but people still adored him, he still had a career, he remained most people’s favorite James Bond. Were an actor to say that today, I think the reaction would be quite different because times are drastically different. That is the point people are trying to make. Not that enlightened people didn’t exist then, or even that what was said reflected a majority viewpoint. Just that it was a viewpoint way more people could get away with having. It was the kind of thing you saw in media from time to time

So it wasn't acceptable back then but it was just something you saw from time to time?

Not like today when... it is something you just see from time to time on the news....

How long do you think it would take for me to find a currently famous person who has said horrible sexist stuff since 2016 and that still has a career and wealth? And if I could find that.... it still would mean Gygax was sexist, so it doesn't actually matter.