Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Levistus's_Leviathan" data-source="post: 8437237" data-attributes="member: 7023887">This is the problem here. You're thinking of this as "Pro-Gary" versus "Pro-Williams". That's not what's going on here. That's not the argument/discussion. The discussion is "did Lorraine Williams get unfair treatment, based on this new evidence that we have, and the fact that sexism was very present in the earlier eras of D&D?"And to me, the facts quite explicitly say "yes, she was unfairly treated". However, neither I, nor [USER=7023840]@Snarf Zagyg[/USER], nor [USER=15700]@Sacrosanct[/USER], nor anyone else that agrees with the premise of the thread are saying that Lorraine Williams was some kind of saint. She was human, she made mistakes, and was in charge of TSR when it went under and was bought by Wizards of the Coast. The point is that she also did good things. She does not deserve the complete vilification that she has received from this community for decades. She did help the hobby, was in charge of it when some of the most popular settings of the game were developed, and successfully ran TSR for over a decade. She even pushed Gary Gygax out of the hobby, even though he is commonly heralded as the creator of D&D, and it was because of how he was mismanaging the company. It was entirely necessary and was for the good of TSR and D&D overall. The problem here is that a ton of people in the D&D hobby (especially older gamers) idolize and venerate Gary Gygax. This is a problem, which I outlined in this post:[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.enworld.org/threads/game-wizards-the-epic-battle-for-dungeons-dragons.683310/#post-8427417[/URL]You shouldn't be "Pro-Gary", because this isn't a contest. This isn't "who was worse/better for the hobby?", it's "why was Lorraine Williams treated as poorly as she was, when Gary Gygax did many of the same things that she's criticized for doing, and even more?" I'm not "Pro-Lorraine Williams". I'm not "Anti-Gary". I'm glad that Gary Gygax created the hobby and thankful towards him for that. However, I don't idolize him. I don't see him as some sort of D&D God or perfect individual because he did one good thing and revolutionized gaming. I don't think that it's bad to criticize him, and actually think it's healthy for us as a community to do so. We should be aware of the flaws of the creators of D&D, not willingly blind and ignorant of them. They weren't perfect. They shouldn't be idolized, because they're not gods. Gary was flawed, did some harmful and detrimental things to the hobby and community, and was/is just as human as Lorraine Williams. We should treat them as humans and expect them to act like the people that they were, not hold Lorraine to a higher standard than we do the creator of D&D, especially if one of the reasons why we do that is due to the sexism that was rampant in gaming back then. That's the problem. That's why people are unfairly treating Lorraine Williams, ignoring her contributions to the game and TSR, and why people place Gygax on a pedestal. Sexism, the idolizing of Gygax, and hearsay. People wanted someone to blame, and so they jumped at the first thing offered up. And like most things in this universe, it's frankly more complicated and nuanced than that. That's what this thread is about. Not "Gygax was the Devil, not Lorraine!", or trying to idolize Lorraine Williams instead of Gary Gygax. It's to admit that they were both human and treat them as we would any other person. To stop idolizing and demonizing the early creators and leaders of D&D, because they don't deserve either of those. That's the point.</blockquote>

Verification