Agreed. Always hate all these whiners that complain about Gygax and/or Arneson. Gygax and Arneson were giants. We would not have D&D with them. They are the greatest!! We owe so much to them!
I rolled my 1st OD&D PC the afternoon of 18 October 1975. I still have my White Box set with the original supplements. My wife rolled her 1st OD&D PC 4 March 1978. We also started playing Traveller that month. I still have my 1977 Little Black Books and supplements. We were Cadets at Norwich, the military college in Vermont. Men, women and multiple ethnicities were club members. BTW, Anita is an MSEE who is an aircraft Test/Evaluation Engineer, and I have made a career of following her career. Have recently struck up an online acquaintance with Rob Kuntz.
Less compare random comments with context to a statement where a 1970s man openly proclaimed "I am a misogynist." And built absolutely ridiculous gender limitations on stats and classes into their game that was almost bullseye targeted at LGBTQ+ communities.
The one module that people regularly point to as sexist is Palace of the Silver Princess. The encounter that caused such a stir was designed by a woman 😂
Tiamat is so badass! So what if she is evil? Darth Vader is a male. Sauron is a male. Vecna is a male. Azalin is Male. Strahd is male. And don't get me started with the gods. It's good old fashion bulls**t to complain about these things. Here is a far out thought; there was never anything problematic about DnD. Never. It is a fantasy world. FANTASY.
Lets flip the script. WotC CEOs said they weren't fleecing their costumers enough at their investor meeting. They honestly have NO ground to stand on in trying to disparage the old guard. (Ben is an idiot. The "King" and "Queen" of dragons were from Mesopotamia myth... their gender decided long ago. Tiamat WAS a goddess of chaos ffs. Fun fact. One of the monsters she created, ended up begin reformed and set to guard people from toilet demons!)
My opinion on all of this is that it's not really about all the popular social labels people like to throw around nowadays to sow division. It's a calculated business move to get everyone onboard Hasbro's "new and improved" D&D and reject the 50 years of already-existing material that can often be obtained and played for free. They want people to feel like the old D&D is tainted, not because they have any sincere belief that it is, but because they think it will allow them to make more money. They're exploiting the current unhealthy climate for their own gain, and like any other soulless corporate creature, their only real principle is the bottom line.
To top it off, they are readily shifting D&D to a digital platform so they can 'milk' the posers who only started playing because famous people endorsed it. Frankly, a fool is soon separated from his money. Very few long term D&D fans are going to fall for this nonsense. I really wish people remembered you didn't use to need bells and whistle to have a good D&D game. :|
And lying by omission to boot. Like he had to have read the full quote, knew it's actual point, and choose to remove the context on purpose.... Pretty much the same tactic the media uses on Trump.
The first D&D novel "Quag Keep" was set in Greyhawk and written by a woman, Andre Norton. The story I've heard is, Gary invited her to play a session at his home (you know, things you do when you believe women don't belong in the hobby) and she enjoyed the experience so much, she wrote an entire book. What's the old saying? "Do not speak ill of the dead"?
It’s funny because I got banned from a chat because I defended Gygax and bashed Ben Riggs for his lame quote. To say Gygax was a sexist because the DMG had a prostitution table is absurd. I don’t know why WOTC has to knock down Gygax in that way. Gygax has plenty of faults. He is no saint. I just don’t want to read a book bashing the founder of the game I love
@@kvltovpersonality6290 I don’t want to start a flame war but it was a well known chat. I am not against anyone having fun. Everyone is welcome at my tables. I just don’t appreciate WOTC going out of their way to knock down Gygax and perpetuate a stereotype that women can’t play D&D because all men are creeps and cannot get a date. It’s a worn out stereotype that I find highly offensive. No person at my tables picks on anyone based upon their appearance, ethnicity, gender or orientation. If they do they get a warning. If they continue either they are gone or I am gone.
Ok, I'll rant one more time. In world mythology, Chaos represents the creative energy of the universe. It can be good creation, or it can be bad creation. Women generate life within them, and this represents the good aspect of the creation mystery. Acts of nature, disasters, disease, random threats, etc, are the bad aspects of chaos. Tiamat is a Sumerian mythological dragon figure who was killed by Marduk, who made the world out of her body, like the Norse gods who built the world out of the giants' bodies they defeated in primordial times. Out of chaos (random, potentially harmful creative force), humans tamed this and made order, which enables civilization to flourish. Since men traditionally take an active role in imposing order on the world, this is ascribed to men, making nature into a walled garden, where there's shelter from the storm.
There isn't a single real player (rather than some tourist), male or female, that didn't think Tiamat wasn't an awesome villain. Ben Riggs is knowledgeable enough about D&D and its history, that he's being deliberately disingenuous. I can't believe that Ben didn't at least have a passing knowledge about Tiamat's origins in mythology. This is a choice to smear him.
I'm glad that I found your channel; finally people willing to stand up for things. Too many YT folks failing to speak up so they won't lose out on "review copy" freebies,though this is more in the area of minis reviews. I never found Gary Gygax to be offensive. Times and attitudes change,I get that,this is simply a smear campaign to virtue signal to the current tides. As a kid,I remember hearing the counter-culture with the slogans of "Don't trust anyone under 30,man!" and Leary's "Tune in,turn on,drop out, right on!" Well, those came and went, and wokeness will too. Kudos for standing up for Gary, who isn't here to defend himself. Take a fine tooth comb to anyone's life,and none being perfect, something will be found. "Show me the man,and I'll show you the crime."
Unless something else pops up we have one more video planned on this. This time with a few more ladies to comment. I have more to share about Gary that shows he is a solid dude, even for the 70s and 80s.
@@thepickleddragon8590 People also forget Gygax and Arneson made up in the 1980s. Gygax asked him to do some great work at TSR before Gygax got ousted from TSR. Gygax and Arneson were the best -- yeah -- I always dislike all these people looking at the 70s and 80s from their higher-than-though moral lenses. What a waste of time! Without Gygax and Arneson we would not have D&D.
In the first and second edition D&D every character has a role to play as a healer, fighter, wizard, thief. The new balanced classes are all the same, the wizard that's dedicated to the study of magic exclusively casts the same level of spells that the musician bard class casts. When everyone is super, no one is.
Cherry Picking old "tweets" to make Ad Hominem attacks on dead people who can't defend themselves is cowardly. Making blanket assumptions about someone, or large groups of people based on individual quotes is ignorant, and prejudiced. Everything this guy is accusing Gygax of being, HE is doing.
@@dracoyaminiatures5143 Perhaps. Honestly, is stinks more of useless people trying to prove their utility by pointing at non-problems they themselves created...
Eve from Adam and Eve who committed the original sin. It's not hard to find the parallel. Funny enough, they changed everything the opposite way in pathfinder and later D&D. If a class or race is being talked about in a good light, it will use female connotations, if it's evil it will be male connotations.
Just subscribed. Great video!! Yes, I get so tired of some of the current WoTC wannabees that after Gary and Dave Arneson have passed away start trying to throw them under the bus. Yeah - these WoTC no-namers will never accomplish a 10th of what Gygax and Arneson accomplished. We owe so much to Gygax and Arneson -- without Dave and Gary we would not have D&D - or at least D&D as we know it. I for one am thankful for what they did! Yeah, and Ben Riggs book, Slaying the Dragon is one of the worst books about the history of D&D. I can recommend better and less biased books like "Of Dice and Men" by David Ewalt or "Empire of the Imagination" by Michael Witwer. Don't buy Ben Rigg's Slaying the Dragon -- just biased nonsense. He clearly hates Gygax.
@@quantus5875 Thank you so much for the recommendations and welcome to the family. If you have any other books or modules, please let us know and we would be happy to give it a review.
@@dracoyaminiatures5143 Thank you for what you're doing -- honoring the legends - instead of spitting on them -- for shame what people like Ben Riggs are doing. I've read almost every history book on TTRPGs out there (and there are a lot) -- and have plenty of recommendations. All of Jon Peterson's stuff is fantastic -- and I'm pretty sure he had zero to do with all this anti-Gygax and anti-Arneson nonsense. His seminal "Playing at the World" book is really neutral IMO -- for shame on Riggs being so slimy now that these two giants: Arneson and Gygax have passed away. What a sleeze.
@@quantus5875 "All of Jon Peterson's stuff is fantastic -- and I'm pretty sure he had zero to do with all this anti-Gygax and anti-Arneson nonsense." The foreword in the book everyone keeps complaining about is from him (two authors really, he is one of them). There is no anti-Gygax nonsense in it, just a standard disclaimer that some stuff reflects Gygax's outdated views. Boilerplate stuff, the whole thing is being blown out of proportion by the perpetually aggrieved
@@Blink-cx8eh I don't have the book. Did Jon Peterson sign his name to the "forward"? I have seen the full text of the forward from a different web site -- it's actually pretty "nasty". Cultural misappropriation etc. -- You can understand why Kuntz was up in arms about it. Again, I don't have the book but another web site claims that it was some loser by the name of Jason or John Tondro (some guy that works at WoTC) that wrote the forward.
I'm all for people thinking critically about the world. It's ok to recognize that good people sometimes say bad things or do bad things, but excising the negative or contentious and wrapping it up in a story without full context is plain revisionism. Ben Riggs can hump a tree for all I care. Controversy is a currency in social media and social media is literally a currency that people make a living off of. HasBlow and WotC are just like any business and they don't give two sh*ts who they trample on to get their shareholders and their CEOs a big payday. They didn't create an entirely unique and magical gaming experience, they just bought it, repackaged it and use moral arguments to convince everyone why THEIR game is better and it's all disingenuous. Hey, I grew up on Scooby Doo and Looney Tunes and there's WAAAAAY more problematic material in those cartoons than anything Gygax and others did. It's ok to acknowledge the issues but it's way too easy to look back and condemn others and feel smugly righteous about it. And after all the crap WotC has delivered to the eager gamers and role-players I stopped supporting them and I ordered Shadowdark. Supporting grassroots publishers who are actually a part of the community and are accountable shouldn't be too hard for any of us to do. WotC doesn't care what we think and the only message they understand is $$$$.
They're right.. they shoudl never play D&D again. Its unsalvagable, they should quit working for them and stop playing RPG's forever since Gygax essentially invented the genre.
A key feature of the blame/cansel culture popular among adolescents is to accuse the chosen victim of all sins and then never look into it. They know their target audience. They know that this cult of the victim is driven by emotion, not logic. They also know that none of this calumny will have any consequences for them.
To remember the difference, simply remember the words of the great J. Jonah Jameson when he was accused of slandering Spider-Man: "It is not! I resent that! Slander is spoken. In print, it's libel."
I like the game. I still play the game and I help people to understand the AD&D from '78 on up. The rules of 1st edition AD&D DMG were written with a gender neutral vibe, as was the PHB. The Bible was written by a bunch of misogynists 2000 years ago, hasn't stopped people from reading it or working to it. 50 years ago is different to now. I wouldn't say 1%, but it was a low percentage of women that played back then, in my country our tournaments were filled with players and it was more like 1 in 6, maybe 1 in 8 women participants. Can we also throw a shout out to all those zealots that made us feel like crap because we played the game? The torment, ridicule, and abuse that we suffered by folks (who were emboldened to go after us nerds!). Just saying, perhaps if we didn't have 10 years of that, there would have been more women playing.
Ah, yes, one of the big reasons I stopped playing. The insufferable social justice warriors screeching like trapped voles and thrusting their politics on the game.
Feminism in the 70s was different than it was now. Feminism was still new. Radical feminists were a splinter faction of feminism at the time, and they would yell at men for doing things like holding a door open for them, for pulling out a chair at a restaurant, or (only sometimes), paying for a date. They would also complain about no women being at game conventions, but then say that playing D&D and wargames was fascist violence, and wouldn't ever go to these events. It was an exercise in passive aggressively complaining for the sake of complaining, intentionally causing a "battle of the sexes" conflict. Mainstream feminists at the time got frustrated by radical activists because they distracted from real issues like job discrimination and sexual harassment, by making hyperbolic scenes, picking fights over trivial things, and having too radical an agenda. It's one of the main reasons the Equal Rights Amendment failed in the 70s -- for example, radicals put riders on it that demanded things like making women participate in the draft with combat roles, and most women (including moderate feminists) balked at the idea. In the 90s, most of the major women's rights battles had been won, and many feminists "retired", leaving mostly extremists to run the activist groups--and they took the ball and ran with it. Feminists who were considered crazy in the 70s, became mainstream, which is where we are now.
I don't get why people think Gary Gygax had to have been a good person, or not a shitty one, in order to have been important in the creation of something nice, or even great. Fritz Haber was both Haber-Bosch and chemical warfare. As to the quote, besides what was the context, why would it be irrelevant written for Europa? It does by the way not continue better, but worse (not only today, but was in 1975, too -- which is why he wrote it, being confronted already at the time): “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.” - -Gary Gygax, EUROPA 10/11 August-September 1975 edit: okay, showed the whole later. Just "he probably..." No. He wrote that. He did not self-depricate in stand-up comedy. It is consistent with many other behaviors, much in writing, we have from Gygax. Separate the person from the work. He was a pretty shitty person (and as far as I can tell most people writing about it are not even going that far, but more trying to drive the learning curve) having played a major role in creating a game that was important for spawning a genre (did not create it but was very influential and became the one big success). Gygax continued with being a nice person for much of D&D's early history, not just about women, but also, and more relevant for the D&D history, in mistreating the other early creators. Going deep into the character and monster creation details, yeah that is more about ... details. But how one gets to a Gygax who need to be defended on a pedestal instead of critically discussing the game's history -- a natural thing to do at a 50 years aniversary -- is beyond me.
I know you’ve stated that you want your escapism to be set apart from politics, and I agree, however, these people who are in charge of Hasbro refuse to let us escape from cultural Marxism. We did not start this but like it or not, we are going to have to engage and push back against it. If we employ but half the courage we do with our PCs, will we not change the tide?
It’s not just dollars. We have to be willing to publicly stand against the oppressors of free thought. They are rewriting history in every area of culture including gaming. D&D just happened to be the biggest rpg out there so it became the largest target for the thought police to burn their new branding into. The leaders of GenCon and Origins are all down with this too and if you happen to enjoy your free thinking and you raise any concerns, well, you know the drill. You’re a bigot, or any kind of phobe they think to label you. We must be willing to put our mouth where our money is. I thank God that these two are willing to do so.
Our dollars are not going to be enough. We need to verbalize why we stand against the tyranny of the thought police and we need to do so on every social platform we all have. Look at all the dollars they have already lost yet Hasbro, Disney, Hollywood, etc keep pushing the rewriting of history down our throats. The thought police have an agenda and they targeted the number one rpg for a reason. They wish to burn their brand into it and their brand is cultural Marxism to the “enth” degree. You can take your dollars elsewhere but it’s not enough. Evil never stops of its own accord and make no mistake, this is evil. This is not a difference of opinion. This is an assault on any and every free thinking person out there. If the cultural Marxists say Gygax is a bigot, a sexist, and a homophobe, then that’s what you better fall in line with. This is all an Orwellian extension. Cultural Marxism is a total sum game. When they rewrite history and language, they leave no place for escapism.
what he said wasn't the best. maybe that was a quote... but how do we know if that was how he viewed women at any other time? it sounds like he was being flippant because i dont' think those parts are in the books he wrote... then again. soemone can prove me wrong.
The best aspects of D&D are the cosmology, the alignments, the monsters and spells. The rules mostly suck. Who ever came up with those aspects was a genius and much of this is Garys achievement. They will no be able to tarnish him.
It was BOTH Gary and Dave -- that unbeatable duo. Both Giants -- these current WotC wannabees will never accomplish even a 10th of what Gary and Dave accomplished. Basically they are just jealous because Gygax and Arneson will always be the "Fathers" of D&D.
So what if he even is sexist? I'm sexist, men are way better at almost all the crucial things in life. The most important thing is people are people and we all have to live with the hands we were dealt. Obviously women are on average better at some things than men are and men are on average better than women at some things. To me it looks like a simple difference of opinion on what things have the highest value, if you believe power and strength are the best traits then men are superior, if you believe that whatever it is that women are best at has the highest value then women are superior. Either way liberty is king and men and women are and should be equal under the law.
Eh, Gygax was sexist, he knew it and he admitted it. Plenty of material there for those who care to look. This is not really news. That does not mean he was not more than just a mysoginist, just like Washington was more than just a slave owner. Acknowledging that people are flawed should not be a problem when looking at someone’s legacy. People are not defined by their worst moment or flaw, just like they are not by their best. All this outrage over things Gary was already being called out for in the 70s and doubled down on in his responses is just willful ignorance. You can love D&D even if you have to acknowledge that its creator was flawed.
@@filip3620 Just because you have no idea what you are talking about does not mean that I am lying... Anyone who looks into Gary a little will invariably come across this, so to me there are only three options 1) you never cared to look into the guy 2) you are willfully ignoring it because you like him 3) you do not find it objectionable, which says more about you than him As to him never saying he is a sexist, Google helps... he said so after being called out in the 70s already (think about how sexist you must be to be called out in the 70s...) and he never changed his position. Here is a letter he wrote to a magazine at the time, I am quoting the second half, picture below "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." www.enworld.org/attachments/gr9iyo3xwaaqctk-jpeg.371500/ Plenty others if you would care to look
WotC: Gary Gygax was sexist. Pickled Dragon: No he wasn't! Gary Gygax: Damn right I'm a sexist! Pickled Dragon No you're not! Pathetic. Just admit when you're wrong. Gary Gygax invented my favorite hobby. And yes, he was a sexist. Just like Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft wrote some of my favorite fiction but that doesn't change the fact that they were openly and even viciously racist. You don't have to pretend someone was a saint to enjoy their works and celebrate their achievements. Quit being a knee-jerk cultist and face reality.
All I know is that without Gygax, there would be no D&D.
Agreed. Always hate all these whiners that complain about Gygax and/or Arneson. Gygax and Arneson were giants. We would not have D&D with them. They are the greatest!! We owe so much to them!
I absolutely agree
ok but is this true or not?
THIS
Libel is written, slander is spoken
You're the best! 😂
calumny gets the job done either way
but where is it libelous or slanderous? as much as i want to agree with you, you need PROOF.
@@VolkColopatrion Dude. Watch the video. 😆😆
I rolled my 1st OD&D PC the afternoon of 18 October 1975. I still have my White Box set with the original supplements.
My wife rolled her 1st OD&D PC 4 March 1978. We also started playing Traveller that month. I still have my 1977 Little Black Books and supplements.
We were Cadets at Norwich, the military college in Vermont. Men, women and multiple ethnicities were club members.
BTW, Anita is an MSEE who is an aircraft Test/Evaluation Engineer, and I have made a career of following her career.
Have recently struck up an online acquaintance with Rob Kuntz.
Good Times! My first character was the fall of 1979. I largely played AD&D but mixed in a fair amount of Boot Hill, Star Frontiers, and Top Secret.
Someone should go through the writers' tweets and blog posts from years ago and cherry-pick quotes.
Less compare random comments with context to a statement where a 1970s man openly proclaimed "I am a misogynist." And built absolutely ridiculous gender limitations on stats and classes into their game that was almost bullseye targeted at LGBTQ+ communities.
The one module that people regularly point to as sexist is Palace of the Silver Princess. The encounter that caused such a stir was designed by a woman 😂
😂😂 That is funny. I'm going to look into this
Tiamat is so badass! So what if she is evil? Darth Vader is a male. Sauron is a male. Vecna is a male. Azalin is Male. Strahd is male. And don't get me started with the gods. It's good old fashion bulls**t to complain about these things. Here is a far out thought; there was never anything problematic about DnD. Never. It is a fantasy world. FANTASY.
Freaking, THANK YOU!!! Our point exactly
Tiamat is a female from 4000 years ago. Why should she be gender swapped to fit some modern narrative?
@@solowolf7418 I could not agree more. The entire argument makes my eyes roll.
the dnd community has survived every moral panic that tried to wipe it out and it'll survive this one too.
💪🏻 damn straight
Lets flip the script.
WotC CEOs said they weren't fleecing their costumers enough at their investor meeting.
They honestly have NO ground to stand on in trying to disparage the old guard.
(Ben is an idiot. The "King" and "Queen" of dragons were from Mesopotamia myth... their gender decided long ago. Tiamat WAS a goddess of chaos ffs. Fun fact. One of the monsters she created, ended up begin reformed and set to guard people from toilet demons!)
I love your response. Yes, the entire thing is clearly a stretch
My opinion on all of this is that it's not really about all the popular social labels people like to throw around nowadays to sow division. It's a calculated business move to get everyone onboard Hasbro's "new and improved" D&D and reject the 50 years of already-existing material that can often be obtained and played for free. They want people to feel like the old D&D is tainted, not because they have any sincere belief that it is, but because they think it will allow them to make more money. They're exploiting the current unhealthy climate for their own gain, and like any other soulless corporate creature, their only real principle is the bottom line.
You're right, that's exactly what they're doing as a business strategy. It's just immoral and we are NOT ok with the false narrative
To top it off, they are readily shifting D&D to a digital platform so they can 'milk' the posers who only started playing because famous people endorsed it.
Frankly, a fool is soon separated from his money. Very few long term D&D fans are going to fall for this nonsense. I really wish people remembered you didn't use to need bells and whistle to have a good D&D game. :|
@@TryssemTavern Like the good old days when you had to use dice as physical tokens for your enemy. 😅 I get you.
Nice, attacking a dead man.
Stay classy WizBro.
@@anon-yw4wd 😆😆😆 on point
And lying by omission to boot. Like he had to have read the full quote, knew it's actual point, and choose to remove the context on purpose.... Pretty much the same tactic the media uses on Trump.
The first D&D novel "Quag Keep" was set in Greyhawk and written by a woman, Andre Norton. The story I've heard is, Gary invited her to play a session at his home (you know, things you do when you believe women don't belong in the hobby) and she enjoyed the experience so much, she wrote an entire book.
What's the old saying? "Do not speak ill of the dead"?
The more I hear of Ben the more I don't like him. WOTC plain and simple is E V I L! Great video!!! CHEERS!
And his book is biased garbage.
@AgranakStudios He's acting like someone jealous who wants to bring others down to build himself up
@@AgranakStudios Cheers!!!!! 🍻
@@dracoyaminiatures5143 nailed it!
@@dracoyaminiatures5143 cheers! 🍻
It’s funny because I got banned from a chat because I defended Gygax and bashed Ben Riggs for his lame quote. To say Gygax was a sexist because the DMG had a prostitution table is absurd. I don’t know why WOTC has to knock down Gygax in that way. Gygax has plenty of faults. He is no saint. I just don’t want to read a book bashing the founder of the game I love
Thank you for helping us fight the good fight! It's unfortunate that so many people are buying into this gaslighting narrative about him. 😢
What chat?
@@kvltovpersonality6290 I don’t want to start a flame war but it was a well known chat. I am not against anyone having fun. Everyone is welcome at my tables. I just don’t appreciate WOTC going out of their way to knock down Gygax and perpetuate a stereotype that women can’t play D&D because all men are creeps and cannot get a date. It’s a worn out stereotype that I find highly offensive. No person at my tables picks on anyone based upon their appearance, ethnicity, gender or orientation. If they do they get a warning. If they continue either they are gone or I am gone.
Ok, I'll rant one more time. In world mythology, Chaos represents the creative energy of the universe. It can be good creation, or it can be bad creation. Women generate life within them, and this represents the good aspect of the creation mystery. Acts of nature, disasters, disease, random threats, etc, are the bad aspects of chaos. Tiamat is a Sumerian mythological dragon figure who was killed by Marduk, who made the world out of her body, like the Norse gods who built the world out of the giants' bodies they defeated in primordial times. Out of chaos (random, potentially harmful creative force), humans tamed this and made order, which enables civilization to flourish. Since men traditionally take an active role in imposing order on the world, this is ascribed to men, making nature into a walled garden, where there's shelter from the storm.
This is so cool! Thank you so much for telling us this!
There isn't a single real player (rather than some tourist), male or female, that didn't think Tiamat wasn't an awesome villain. Ben Riggs is knowledgeable enough about D&D and its history, that he's being deliberately disingenuous. I can't believe that Ben didn't at least have a passing knowledge about Tiamat's origins in mythology. This is a choice to smear him.
Sad that he is trying to build himself up by trampling on the dead bodies of others.
I'm glad that I found your channel; finally people willing to stand up for things. Too many YT folks failing to speak up so they won't lose out on "review copy" freebies,though this is more in the area of minis reviews. I never found Gary Gygax to be offensive. Times and attitudes change,I get that,this is simply a smear campaign to virtue signal to the current tides. As a kid,I remember hearing the counter-culture with the slogans of "Don't trust anyone under 30,man!" and Leary's "Tune in,turn on,drop out, right on!" Well, those came and went, and wokeness will too. Kudos for standing up for Gary, who isn't here to defend himself. Take a fine tooth comb to anyone's life,and none being perfect, something will be found. "Show me the man,and I'll show you the crime."
Unless something else pops up we have one more video planned on this. This time with a few more ladies to comment. I have more to share about Gary that shows he is a solid dude, even for the 70s and 80s.
@@thepickleddragon8590 People also forget Gygax and Arneson made up in the 1980s. Gygax asked him to do some great work at TSR before Gygax got ousted from TSR. Gygax and Arneson were the best -- yeah -- I always dislike all these people looking at the 70s and 80s from their higher-than-though moral lenses. What a waste of time! Without Gygax and Arneson we would not have D&D.
In the first and second edition D&D every character has a role to play as a healer, fighter, wizard, thief. The new balanced classes are all the same, the wizard that's dedicated to the study of magic exclusively casts the same level of spells that the musician bard class casts. When everyone is super, no one is.
Cherry Picking old "tweets" to make Ad Hominem attacks on dead people who can't defend themselves is cowardly. Making blanket assumptions about someone, or large groups of people based on individual quotes is ignorant, and prejudiced. Everything this guy is accusing Gygax of being, HE is doing.
Absolutely right
We live in a day and age where people crawl up on the shoulders of giants just so they can better take a dump on them.
Yea. Maybe it's jealousy
@@dracoyaminiatures5143 Perhaps. Honestly, is stinks more of useless people trying to prove their utility by pointing at non-problems they themselves created...
Eve from Adam and Eve who committed the original sin. It's not hard to find the parallel. Funny enough, they changed everything the opposite way in pathfinder and later D&D. If a class or race is being talked about in a good light, it will use female connotations, if it's evil it will be male connotations.
Subscribed to support common sense. Gary had 3 daughters & they miss him very much.
Cognac? I love you already! 😁 great video guys, keep it up.
@@mlfetlesjdrenbref1306 😆 Thank you for the support! 💜
Some people just want to feel special through their hate.
It's been my experience that everyone is some flavor of bastard or another.
Yep. Talk about people who need therapy. haha
Just subscribed. Great video!! Yes, I get so tired of some of the current WoTC wannabees that after Gary and Dave Arneson have passed away start trying to throw them under the bus. Yeah - these WoTC no-namers will never accomplish a 10th of what Gygax and Arneson accomplished. We owe so much to Gygax and Arneson -- without Dave and Gary we would not have D&D - or at least D&D as we know it. I for one am thankful for what they did!
Yeah, and Ben Riggs book, Slaying the Dragon is one of the worst books about the history of D&D. I can recommend better and less biased books like "Of Dice and Men" by David Ewalt or "Empire of the Imagination" by Michael Witwer. Don't buy Ben Rigg's Slaying the Dragon -- just biased nonsense. He clearly hates Gygax.
@@quantus5875 Thank you so much for the recommendations and welcome to the family. If you have any other books or modules, please let us know and we would be happy to give it a review.
@@dracoyaminiatures5143 Thank you for what you're doing -- honoring the legends - instead of spitting on them -- for shame what people like Ben Riggs are doing. I've read almost every history book on TTRPGs out there (and there are a lot) -- and have plenty of recommendations. All of Jon Peterson's stuff is fantastic -- and I'm pretty sure he had zero to do with all this anti-Gygax and anti-Arneson nonsense. His seminal "Playing at the World" book is really neutral IMO -- for shame on Riggs being so slimy now that these two giants: Arneson and Gygax have passed away. What a sleeze.
@@quantus5875 "All of Jon Peterson's stuff is fantastic -- and I'm pretty sure he had zero to do with all this anti-Gygax and anti-Arneson nonsense."
The foreword in the book everyone keeps complaining about is from him (two authors really, he is one of them). There is no anti-Gygax nonsense in it, just a standard disclaimer that some stuff reflects Gygax's outdated views. Boilerplate stuff, the whole thing is being blown out of proportion by the perpetually aggrieved
@@Blink-cx8eh I don't have the book. Did Jon Peterson sign his name to the "forward"? I have seen the full text of the forward from a different web site -- it's actually pretty "nasty". Cultural misappropriation etc. -- You can understand why Kuntz was up in arms about it. Again, I don't have the book but another web site claims that it was some loser by the name of Jason or John Tondro (some guy that works at WoTC) that wrote the forward.
I'm all for people thinking critically about the world. It's ok to recognize that good people sometimes say bad things or do bad things, but excising the negative or contentious and wrapping it up in a story without full context is plain revisionism. Ben Riggs can hump a tree for all I care. Controversy is a currency in social media and social media is literally a currency that people make a living off of. HasBlow and WotC are just like any business and they don't give two sh*ts who they trample on to get their shareholders and their CEOs a big payday. They didn't create an entirely unique and magical gaming experience, they just bought it, repackaged it and use moral arguments to convince everyone why THEIR game is better and it's all disingenuous. Hey, I grew up on Scooby Doo and Looney Tunes and there's WAAAAAY more problematic material in those cartoons than anything Gygax and others did. It's ok to acknowledge the issues but it's way too easy to look back and condemn others and feel smugly righteous about it. And after all the crap WotC has delivered to the eager gamers and role-players I stopped supporting them and I ordered Shadowdark. Supporting grassroots publishers who are actually a part of the community and are accountable shouldn't be too hard for any of us to do. WotC doesn't care what we think and the only message they understand is $$$$.
I'm only familiar with bird law, and other such lawyerings ;)
I like birds, WOTC writings and books are good for the bottom of bird cages.
When people got nothing better to do.
They're right.. they shoudl never play D&D again. Its unsalvagable, they should quit working for them and stop playing RPG's forever since Gygax essentially invented the genre.
the word is: calumny
A key feature of the blame/cansel culture popular among adolescents is to accuse the chosen victim of all sins and then never look into it. They know their target audience. They know that this cult of the victim is driven by emotion, not logic. They also know that none of this calumny will have any consequences for them.
To remember the difference, simply remember the words of the great J. Jonah Jameson when he was accused of slandering Spider-Man:
"It is not! I resent that! Slander is spoken. In print, it's libel."
I like the game.
I still play the game and I help people to understand the AD&D from '78 on up.
The rules of 1st edition AD&D DMG were written with a gender neutral vibe, as was the PHB.
The Bible was written by a bunch of misogynists 2000 years ago, hasn't stopped people from reading it or working to it.
50 years ago is different to now.
I wouldn't say 1%, but it was a low percentage of women that played back then, in my country our tournaments were filled with players and it was more like 1 in 6, maybe 1 in 8 women participants.
Can we also throw a shout out to all those zealots that made us feel like crap because we played the game? The torment, ridicule, and abuse that we suffered by folks (who were emboldened to go after us nerds!). Just saying, perhaps if we didn't have 10 years of that, there would have been more women playing.
Libel is in Print
@@marca81 😆 thank you for helping out the drunk people.
great video! thx
Ah, yes, one of the big reasons I stopped playing. The insufferable social justice warriors screeching like trapped voles and thrusting their politics on the game.
I cover this story as well (ruclips.net/video/PCILY5vCzJU/видео.html) WOTC keeps trying to push the false narative
Already subscribe to your channel. Yes, great coverage on this fool Riggs. Man -- what a wannabee.
Is this supposed to make me like Gary Gygax less?
Feminism in the 70s was different than it was now. Feminism was still new. Radical feminists were a splinter faction of feminism at the time, and they would yell at men for doing things like holding a door open for them, for pulling out a chair at a restaurant, or (only sometimes), paying for a date. They would also complain about no women being at game conventions, but then say that playing D&D and wargames was fascist violence, and wouldn't ever go to these events. It was an exercise in passive aggressively complaining for the sake of complaining, intentionally causing a "battle of the sexes" conflict.
Mainstream feminists at the time got frustrated by radical activists because they distracted from real issues like job discrimination and sexual harassment, by making hyperbolic scenes, picking fights over trivial things, and having too radical an agenda. It's one of the main reasons the Equal Rights Amendment failed in the 70s -- for example, radicals put riders on it that demanded things like making women participate in the draft with combat roles, and most women (including moderate feminists) balked at the idea. In the 90s, most of the major women's rights battles had been won, and many feminists "retired", leaving mostly extremists to run the activist groups--and they took the ball and ran with it. Feminists who were considered crazy in the 70s, became mainstream, which is where we are now.
Tiamat is literally a Dragon Goddess who Fought Marduk
The current WOTC people don't even understand the basic mythology
I don't get why people think Gary Gygax had to have been a good person, or not a shitty one, in order to have been important in the creation of something nice, or even great. Fritz Haber was both Haber-Bosch and chemical warfare.
As to the quote, besides what was the context, why would it be irrelevant written for Europa? It does by the way not continue better, but worse (not only today, but was in 1975, too -- which is why he wrote it, being confronted already at the time):
“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.”
- -Gary Gygax, EUROPA 10/11 August-September 1975
edit: okay, showed the whole later. Just "he probably..." No. He wrote that. He did not self-depricate in stand-up comedy. It is consistent with many other behaviors, much in writing, we have from Gygax. Separate the person from the work. He was a pretty shitty person (and as far as I can tell most people writing about it are not even going that far, but more trying to drive the learning curve) having played a major role in creating a game that was important for spawning a genre (did not create it but was very influential and became the one big success).
Gygax continued with being a nice person for much of D&D's early history, not just about women, but also, and more relevant for the D&D history, in mistreating the other early creators. Going deep into the character and monster creation details, yeah that is more about ... details. But how one gets to a Gygax who need to be defended on a pedestal instead of critically discussing the game's history -- a natural thing to do at a 50 years aniversary -- is beyond me.
E noi semo incazzati come papaveri. Aridatece D&D.
The Gods have Forsaken the World, All these Cultusts attack our Idols Freely now!
Not all great creators make excellent curators.
I know you’ve stated that you want your escapism to be set apart from politics, and I agree, however, these people who are in charge of Hasbro refuse to let us escape from cultural Marxism. We did not start this but like it or not, we are going to have to engage and push back against it. If we employ but half the courage we do with our PCs, will we not change the tide?
@@andrewthomas7202 we can only protest with our dollars...time will tell if enough people do so
It’s not just dollars. We have to be willing to publicly stand against the oppressors of free thought. They are rewriting history in every area of culture including gaming. D&D just happened to be the biggest rpg out there so it became the largest target for the thought police to burn their new branding into. The leaders of GenCon and Origins are all down with this too and if you happen to enjoy your free thinking and you raise any concerns, well, you know the drill. You’re a bigot, or any kind of phobe they think to label you.
We must be willing to put our mouth where our money is. I thank God that these two are willing to do so.
Our dollars are not going to be enough. We need to verbalize why we stand against the tyranny of the thought police and we need to do so on every social platform we all have. Look at all the dollars they have already lost yet Hasbro, Disney, Hollywood, etc keep pushing the rewriting of history down our throats. The thought police have an agenda and they targeted the number one rpg for a reason. They wish to burn their brand into it and their brand is cultural Marxism to the “enth” degree. You can take your dollars elsewhere but it’s not enough. Evil never stops of its own accord and make no mistake, this is evil. This is not a difference of opinion. This is an assault on any and every free thinking person out there. If the cultural Marxists say Gygax is a bigot, a sexist, and a homophobe, then that’s what you better fall in line with. This is all an Orwellian extension. Cultural Marxism is a total sum game. When they rewrite history and language, they leave no place for escapism.
what he said wasn't the best. maybe that was a quote... but how do we know if that was how he viewed women at any other time? it sounds like he was being flippant because i dont' think those parts are in the books he wrote... then again. soemone can prove me wrong.
The best aspects of D&D are the cosmology, the alignments, the monsters and spells. The rules mostly suck. Who ever came up with those aspects was a genius and much of this is Garys achievement. They will no be able to tarnish him.
It was BOTH Gary and Dave -- that unbeatable duo. Both Giants -- these current WotC wannabees will never accomplish even a 10th of what Gary and Dave accomplished. Basically they are just jealous because Gygax and Arneson will always be the "Fathers" of D&D.
Huzzah
So what if he even is sexist? I'm sexist, men are way better at almost all the crucial things in life. The most important thing is people are people and we all have to live with the hands we were dealt. Obviously women are on average better at some things than men are and men are on average better than women at some things. To me it looks like a simple difference of opinion on what things have the highest value, if you believe power and strength are the best traits then men are superior, if you believe that whatever it is that women are best at has the highest value then women are superior. Either way liberty is king and men and women are and should be equal under the law.
Eh, Gygax was sexist, he knew it and he admitted it. Plenty of material there for those who care to look. This is not really news.
That does not mean he was not more than just a mysoginist, just like Washington was more than just a slave owner.
Acknowledging that people are flawed should not be a problem when looking at someone’s legacy. People are not defined by their worst moment or flaw, just like they are not by their best.
All this outrage over things Gary was already being called out for in the 70s and doubled down on in his responses is just willful ignorance. You can love D&D even if you have to acknowledge that its creator was flawed.
Utter nonsense
No he wasn't and he didn't admit it. You are clearly not listening and you are lying.
@@filip3620 Just because you have no idea what you are talking about does not mean that I am lying...
Anyone who looks into Gary a little will invariably come across this, so to me there are only three options
1) you never cared to look into the guy
2) you are willfully ignoring it because you like him
3) you do not find it objectionable, which says more about you than him
As to him never saying he is a sexist, Google helps... he said so after being called out in the 70s already (think about how sexist you must be to be called out in the 70s...) and he never changed his position.
Here is a letter he wrote to a magazine at the time, I am quoting the second half, picture below
"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."
www.enworld.org/attachments/gr9iyo3xwaaqctk-jpeg.371500/
Plenty others if you would care to look
WotC: Gary Gygax was sexist.
Pickled Dragon: No he wasn't!
Gary Gygax: Damn right I'm a sexist!
Pickled Dragon No you're not!
Pathetic. Just admit when you're wrong. Gary Gygax invented my favorite hobby. And yes, he was a sexist. Just like Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft wrote some of my favorite fiction but that doesn't change the fact that they were openly and even viciously racist. You don't have to pretend someone was a saint to enjoy their works and celebrate their achievements.
Quit being a knee-jerk cultist and face reality.
"Open and vivacious racist". Spike Lee, Mohammed Ali, Malcom X, and Louis Farkhan all say/said worse things about race. The outrage is so selective.
I love that you completely skipped over Dracoya, the woman in the video.... Sexist? 🤔