charlesatan
Explorer
"Why Elon Musk Needs Dungeons & Dragons to be Racist" by Adam Serwer from The Atlantic.
Some execerpts:
"Today, we can see their influence on right-wing populists in business and politics all over the world.The billionaire Peter Thiel named his software company, Palantir, after the crystal ball in The Lord of the Rings, while his AI company, Anduril, is named for the sword of the human hero Aragorn. Joe Lonsdale, an investor in Anduril and Palantir, founded a crypto-focused bank called Erebor, after the dwarfs’ mountain fortress. Vice President J. D. Vance named his venture-capital firm Narya, after Gandalf’s magic ring. Giorgia Meloni, the far-right prime minister of Italy, and defender of “Italianity” against what she sees as the dilution of immigration, is a Tolkien obsessive who sees in hobbits, dwarfs, and elves the “value of specificity.” When Peter Jackson’s Oscar-winning adaptation of the Lord of the Rings trilogy came out in the 2000s, conservative writers embraced the films as a metaphor for George W. Bush’s war in Iraq."
...
"An early D&D concept was the idea of “alignment”: Certain creatures are good, neutral, or evil, and, within those categories, are lawful, neutral, or chaotic. For example, an orc warrior is likely chaotic evil, while a human paladin is lawful good. In a 2005 forum post, Gygax wrote that it was fine for a lawful-good character to kill an evil character who had surrendered, because “the old adage of nits making lice applies”—intentionally or not quoting Colonel John Chivington, who led the 1864 massacre of Cheyenne and Arapaho people at the Sand Creek reservation. A congressional committee at the time referred to the slaughter as a “cowardly act” that gratified the “worst passions that ever cursed the heart of man.” You might say 1860s lawmakers did not see it as lawful good."
...
"Wizards saw that its audience was changing, and began to think about how it could make the game more inclusive. This was a major attitudinal shift: Back in 1975, when prodded about gender stereotypes in D&D, Gygax had written that he’d considered “adding women” to sections of the rule book, including “Raping and Pillaging,” “Whores and Tavern Wenches,” and “Hags and Crones,” as well as “adding an appendix on ‘Medieval Harems, Slave Girls, and Going Viking.’” The stereotype of the reactionary geek whose hatred for women manifests in imagining them as the victims of sexual violence is, let’s say, historically rooted."
...
"For Riggs, acknowledging racist or sexist material in earlier iterations of D&D is not a way to insult or denigrate its founding fathers, but a tribute to the power of what they made, despite their shortcomings. “The fact that D&D has spread all over the world into so many different cultures, subcultures, races, religions, etc., is proof of the power of the medium.” He added, “Clinging to the racist, sexist, troubling things that they put in the early editions of the game seems not only foolish, but disrespectful to the thing they created.”"
Some execerpts:
"Today, we can see their influence on right-wing populists in business and politics all over the world.The billionaire Peter Thiel named his software company, Palantir, after the crystal ball in The Lord of the Rings, while his AI company, Anduril, is named for the sword of the human hero Aragorn. Joe Lonsdale, an investor in Anduril and Palantir, founded a crypto-focused bank called Erebor, after the dwarfs’ mountain fortress. Vice President J. D. Vance named his venture-capital firm Narya, after Gandalf’s magic ring. Giorgia Meloni, the far-right prime minister of Italy, and defender of “Italianity” against what she sees as the dilution of immigration, is a Tolkien obsessive who sees in hobbits, dwarfs, and elves the “value of specificity.” When Peter Jackson’s Oscar-winning adaptation of the Lord of the Rings trilogy came out in the 2000s, conservative writers embraced the films as a metaphor for George W. Bush’s war in Iraq."
...
"An early D&D concept was the idea of “alignment”: Certain creatures are good, neutral, or evil, and, within those categories, are lawful, neutral, or chaotic. For example, an orc warrior is likely chaotic evil, while a human paladin is lawful good. In a 2005 forum post, Gygax wrote that it was fine for a lawful-good character to kill an evil character who had surrendered, because “the old adage of nits making lice applies”—intentionally or not quoting Colonel John Chivington, who led the 1864 massacre of Cheyenne and Arapaho people at the Sand Creek reservation. A congressional committee at the time referred to the slaughter as a “cowardly act” that gratified the “worst passions that ever cursed the heart of man.” You might say 1860s lawmakers did not see it as lawful good."
...
"Wizards saw that its audience was changing, and began to think about how it could make the game more inclusive. This was a major attitudinal shift: Back in 1975, when prodded about gender stereotypes in D&D, Gygax had written that he’d considered “adding women” to sections of the rule book, including “Raping and Pillaging,” “Whores and Tavern Wenches,” and “Hags and Crones,” as well as “adding an appendix on ‘Medieval Harems, Slave Girls, and Going Viking.’” The stereotype of the reactionary geek whose hatred for women manifests in imagining them as the victims of sexual violence is, let’s say, historically rooted."
...
"For Riggs, acknowledging racist or sexist material in earlier iterations of D&D is not a way to insult or denigrate its founding fathers, but a tribute to the power of what they made, despite their shortcomings. “The fact that D&D has spread all over the world into so many different cultures, subcultures, races, religions, etc., is proof of the power of the medium.” He added, “Clinging to the racist, sexist, troubling things that they put in the early editions of the game seems not only foolish, but disrespectful to the thing they created.”"
