D&D General On Early D&D and Problematic Faves: How to Grapple with the Sins of the Past

[Parmandur]

I think the kooky thing about the online controversy is...Jason Tondro and Jon Peterson achieved a balanced and nuanced presentation in the book published by a toy company, and still the True Fans feel the need to throw a fit.

I respect a lot of what Gygax did and wrote, and love the game...but he has to be seen in whole to appreciaye what he accomplished, and it was not all sunshine and roses.

Listening to Mary Jo Gygax interviews in the When We Wizards podcast ia bery, very rough, and trafic...but that ia the reality of the history.

 

[strawpberry]

A question I often ponder:

Does a topic being "problematic" (or other term you'd prefer to use) necessarily mean that including the same topic in a game makes the game "problematic"?

For example, let's use sexism, as that is related to the Gygax discussion.

I may be mistaken, but I feel confident in saying that most people would view sexism as a negative thing (even if there is disagreement concerning how it is categorized.)

Does it follow that including a sexist character or culture as part of a game means that the game itself is sexist?

My initial view is no. But I have also read and heard opinions that feel otherwise.

Bryan Lee O'Malley, when the new-ish Scott Pilgrim Netflix series was coming out, discussed how perception of the title character had changed since the books' original publication in 2004-2010 and the movie in 2010. Basically, the character of Scott has always been kind of a bum, not a villain but definitely somebody who makes lazy choices even when it hurts the people around him. Those stories (especially the books) are prone to simply presenting Scott's actions and trusting the audience to interpret him as the flawed character he was intended to be. O'Malley seems to perceive modern audiences, by contrast, as expecting an actively negative presentation of negative character traits, because a neutral presentation will be interpreted as tacit approval rather than tacit condemnation.

I suspect including problematic characters needs to be done with care and clarity. There are a lot of people out there who will get called sexist (or racist, or a Nazi) and will thank you for the compliment - so if you're including those themes, you need to be very explicit about the context, or risk people thinking you're writing for the problematic audience, not just about them.

 

[MerricB]

I don't know if Harry Potter can do this. Rowling has done irreparable damage to her brand, especially harming the fans who found meaning in her work (be who you are meant to be) is exactly what she rails against. Perhaps if she stepped back and let others grow her vision, that magic (pun intended) would return. But she has a death grip on Potterverse and has squandered much good will that it may end up unsalvageable.

The #1 selling video game of 2023 in the US was Hogwarts Legacy.

It's the first time in fifteen years that the best-selling game wasn't a Call of Duty or Rockstar (Grand Theft Auto) game.

 

[Zardnaar]

Basically I put it in the who cares basket. Product of its time. You have to go digging to find it. Gary was gone 1985 I didn't start playing until 93.

Flown on an Airbus lately? Some famous names involved there. Heinkel, Dornier, Junkers and Messerschmitt. So no real point getting upset about past events one had no control over.

 

[Milieu]

Any work that employs satire, irony, or sarcasm in a proper and correct fashion requires that some portion of the audience be confused, or even hurt, by the work. Because ambiguity is not a bug, but the central feature of any work that plays with or invokes satire and irony. Simply put, the possibility that the audience can misunderstand the message is necessary to the proper conveyance of the message. This ambiguity is not a bug - it is the distinguishing feature.

I would turn this around slightly: when writing a parody, you ought to keep Poe's Law in mind. It may be ambiguous at first, but by the end, you should make darn sure people know you aren't actually advocating for eating babies. You're probably right that achieving understanding by 100% of the audience is asking too much (You probably won't get that even if you include an explicit disclaimer.), but if the nazis think you're laughing with them and not at them, then your parody isn't very effective.

when people say that Gygax had some sexist attitudes, I recognize that this is a statement that isn't about me, and doesn't attack me as a person. I can still appreciate the things that I loved about those early D&D books while still understanding that they had issues.

If most people understood that criticizing a thing or a person who made a thing is not a personal attack on everyone who likes the thing, the Internet would have so many fewer arguments as to be completely unrecognizable.

Does it follow that including a sexist character or culture as part of a game means that the game itself is sexist?

If done with care, not necessarily. Let's take as an example the sitcom All in the Family. The main character, Archie Bunker, is racist, sexist, antisemitic, and homophobic, and he's not shy about it. But the main point of the show is that he's wrong about those things: not an irredeemable monster, but clearly in the wrong nonetheless.

Some folks may hear enough of that nonsense in their own life that they don't enjoy watching such a character, no matter how often he gets his comeuppance, but it's hard to argue the show itself is racist, sexist, antisemitic, or homophobic.

 

[LordEntrails]

Nice essay. I actually got through this one completely.

I keep thinking that's how we might not end up like that. Folks like Gygax are not going to be able to live up to our standards, so we might reach a point where we can't acknowledge their contributions for fear of offending people who don't want to see them honored. Which I think is just has harmful as trying to pretend the bad things don't exist.

As for this, I think this is much more easily solved. In the example od D&D, if you want to honor it's creation, then make a statue of a dragon, or the ampersand, or a d20 or perhaps even something reminiscent of the 1E PHB cover. In that you are honoring D&D, what it was and perhaps what it is.
But when you make a statue of a person, you are honoring the person for who they are, not for one thing they created. So I would never support the creation of a statue of Gygax, but I would support a D&D statue to honor the game and All it's creators as creators, not for their complete individualness.

 

[Professor Murder]

I suspect including problematic characters needs to be done with care and clarity. There are a lot of people out there who will get called sexist (or racist, or a Nazi) and will thank you for the compliment - so if you're including those themes, you need to be very explicit about the context, or risk people thinking you're writing for the problematic audience, not just about them.

See WH40K and just about all geek satire. For some people, Judge Dredd is aspirational instead of cautionary.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I'd agree. Memetic Cthulhu is far more like Call of Cthulhu the RPG than it is Lovecraft's sank-after-hit-by-a-fishing-boat Cthulhu. And this is a reflection of the outsized influence RPGs that have you spend a long time exploring their setting wield.

Simple. When someone is an influential moral philosopher (regardless of their intent) recognising their moral and philosophical shortcomings is far more important than it is for other notable figures.

Just wondering, but do you believe that D&D's moral philosophy has a deep impact on those that have come across it?

 

[GrimCo]

Don't care, don't think about it.

I separate art from the artist and have been doing that for the very long time. Among other music, i like black metal and punk. There is some very good music made by artists with very problematic political views.

Same with Harry Potter. I grew up with that IP. I don't care for Rowling's babble on online septic tank known as X(twitter).

I worked for company with very shady past ( every German company older than 90 years has shady past). Past was left in the past. No one talks or cares about what happened when our grandparents were still kids. Companies today still do shady stuff all over the world, but we, as consumers, for most part, just don't care enough and still buy their products. If i don't care where and how is lithium mined for my laptops battery, so long as it's available and affordable, i care even less if some dead author was -ist (insert what you want). If their art is good, i'll buy it. Same for the living author. I don't engage in social media, don't care what kind of stuff they say online. I judge product based on it's own merit.

 

[Scott Christian]

When one focuses on the past too much, they ignore the present and fret about the future. The ideal is to follow the now, learn from the past, and smile at the future.

The analogy I like is floating down a river with rapids and calm flows. You just flipped in the first rapid and nearly drowned. You desperately don't want to flip again. But as you try to learn from the first rapid, each ripple in the present breaks your learning and makes you think other rapids are approaching. It takes a long stretch of nothing to actually look back and figure out how not to flip. The river says to pay attention to the present, so you understand when you have time to learn and when you need to prep for the next set of rapids. And the worst part of all this drowning is - we are all on different rivers.

Art and people can be flawed when placed in a different frame, or even their own frame. It's a struggle many of us go through as we learn history or about our heroes or about our favorite musicians or actors or scientists. At best, the art does not suffer as we learn more. At worst, it ruins the art and the artist. Sometimes there is a middle, an ostrich head-in-the-sand approach. Unfortunately, that sand is often underwater.