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D&D Co-Creator Gary Gygax was Sexist. Talking about it is Key to Preserving His Legacy.

writerbenriggs.com D&D Co-Creator Gary Gygax was Sexist. Talking About it is Key to Preserving his Legacy. — Ben Riggs

“Damn right I am a sexist. It doesn’t matter to me if women get paid as much as men… They can jolly well stay away from wargaming in droves for all I care.” -Gary Gygax, EUROPA 10/11 August-September 1975 Do TTRPG Historians Lie? The internet has been rending its clothes and gnashing its teeth

From a blog post by Ben Riggs. I thought it was interesting.
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Do TTRPG Historians Lie?

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 Wizards of the Coast’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.”

— Making OD&D

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?

Is there misogyny in 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.

I can’t believe Gary wrote this

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.”

— -Gary Gygax, EUROPA 10/11 August-September 1975

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.

Peterson & Tondro are truth-tellers

The outrage online directed at Peterson and Tondro is not only entirely misplaced and disproportional, and perhaps even dishonest in certain cases, 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.

That D&D is for Everyone Proves the Brilliance of its Creators

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 the world loves?

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 shit and there is no stink, and anyone who says there is shit 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 shit 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 shit 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 fucked 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.

Page 9 of Book 1 of OD&D. Note that the “Evil High Priests” are also chaotic.

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Additional Note from me: Images where he sourced the original quotes are in the blog post. They didn't copy over right.

rpg @ttrpg.network

D&D Co-Creator Gary Gygax was Sexist. Talking about it is Key to Preserving His Legacy.

writerbenriggs.com /blog/4h8ich5klfw83ehgcxamqko6u1yrg7

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51 year old here. I remember the 80's. Even ten year old me recognized that some things were mean for no reason. I didn't understand why my mom was so defensive of and everyone else was so derisive of her ex-husband (not my father). He was gay. I noticed bigotry, homophobia, racism, xenophobia, etc. in the most casual ways. I remember eleven year old me laughing my ass off at Sixteen Candles, especially the exchange student, but by my teenage years I was very uncomfortable with the racism, the sexism, and the casual rape thing. I guess being the only child of a single mom who also happened to be a social worker for the poorest people in already poor communities made me more sensitive than others.
My point is that people were shittier in the past, regardless of which point in time you chose to look back from. Hopefully this trend continues and we will be better tomorrow than today. This doesn't make Gygax a complete piece of shite. It makes him just another guy from 1975.
PS: In 1975, the pushback on feminism was fierce because women were literally changing the nation. Just look at some of John Hughes work in National Lampoon and you'll be appalled.
- This doesn't make Gygax a complete piece of shite. It makes him just another guy from 1975
  The point of the article is that he was a complete piece of shit even by 1975 standards, he was called out by people at the time, and doubled down.
  He was a double piece of shite. We have the receipts. We know he was.
  
  Maybe he was. The point should be that we should not let the old hangups of previous generations (I'm 51, my father is older than the oldest boomer, and Gary was even older than my dad) soil the enjoyment of something that brings so many together in such an inclusive way. There is no point denying his faults, but there is also no need to be hung up on them. He's very dead and gone.
- Thanks for your comment. It adds needed context for people who weren't there. I think all of us born before the 2000s can relate to thinking back and realising how wrong we were on some social issue that seems like a total no-brainer now.
  It's humbling to realise that even those of us who thought we were "free thinkers" were so totally the product of the dominant culture in many ways.
  Just to pick one actually pretty recent example I remember getting so tilted the first time I heard the "my culture is not a custome" logic, like whaaat I can't dress up as a pharaoh if I want to??? lol, cringe
- I agree. It doesn't mean we ignore all the good they did, but it does give us a more well-rounded view of our heroes, which I think is useful to humanize them. We can take the good and evolve from the bad. This blog post isn't asking anyone to quit D&D, it's asking people to recognize the flaws of our forefathers of the hobby, recognize that the hobby has changed from that time, and to look forward to further change, growth, and inclusion for all of us. They created a game that will live beyond them, which is kind of awesome. At least that's how I read it.
  Hell maybe one day I'll have kids and grandkids and they'll think I'm backwards in some way, and I'll be worried or skeptical because I think they're too radical or weird in some way. But in the end, I'll hope they're right despite my misgivings, because the world is better that way - if the world's next generation is able to carry things on and improve the state of affairs at the same time. We should want that and cheer it on. And looking back at things like this, including acknowledging the flaws of our progenitors and ourselves in addition to their great works, it let's us see all that and celebrate it, the path we've taken from there to here.

Bruh, 50 years ago everyone was sexist...
This is what progress looks like, people from half a century ago have views that the majority today finds unacceptable.
In 2075 people will hopefully be saying we were bigoted assholes. If not it means progress has stalled.
- No, this isn't the casual sexism of the 70s. This is deliberate, rabid, reactionary misogyny that he felt OK to publicly publish:
  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’.
  That's specific, and directed hatred. Dude was engaging in standard Incel bullshit.
  
  It gets worse than that, and its weird no one has brought this up. This is going to be difficult to explain, because I have never actually played AD&D, only read it. There is a fighter feature called percentile strength, there the fighter has a percentage next to his strength score. This is only ever for strengths of 18, and the best was an 100, notated at 18/00. So Why mentioned this kind (face it) stupid and archaic rule?
  "in the Strength Table I, the range 18/01-50 is noted as "Maximum strength possible for a female human or male gnome character."
  
  Or is he just saying that historically that's what happened to women in medieval settings? Or that he's seen settings get changed to fit modern morals despite being set in a different world?
  It's followed by this:
  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.”
  That can be taken as he's against all that stuff, or that he literally doesn't care to oppose what was the sexist norm at the time and open to progress. Which would be wildly progressive for 1975 if he didn't care what gym shower people used or that women could work traditionally male jobs and be paid the same
  Like, if people want to judge this 50 year interview.
  It just seems like a much better idea for the post be that interview, and not someones personal blog.
  This way all context is stripped off and replaced by a bloggers personal interpretation.
- There is a difference between casually going along with it as the norm and saying
  Damn right I am a sexist. It doesn’t matter to me if women get paid as much as men… They can jolly well stay away from wargaming in droves for all I care.
  just saying
  
  The author of D&D is dead, both figuratively and literally. I haven't noticed any particular sexism in 5e. I haven't played any other systems, so I can't comment on those. But the system itself, in its modern incarnation, seems to have shed any sexism Gygax might have written into it.
  
  He didn't say he was against it. He said it didn't matter to him. He said it didn't matter to him if women took traditional male jobs. He said it didn't matter to him if women played wargames.
  Was he trying to be funny? I'd like to see more quotes before rendering judgement.
  
  That is the difference....
  Back then a majority of people didn't think that was bigotry, it was "common sense".
  Like, I don't know the context, but I'm betting it was that old school dnd women get a -1 to strength and a +1 to con? Or maybe dex?
  And if Gygax was called sexist for that...
  Then his response makes sense for the time.
  Hell, lots of people today are still fighting for that view if you haven't noticed.
- People in 2075: “I hope we can all come together in understanding that not a single one of you fuckers is touching my rats. I braved the wastes, I’m eating them.”
  
  In the apocalyptic hellscape of 2075, true equality is stabbing a man or woman for looking at your rat farm
- My dad was born in 1932. If some fat bearded hippie had started talking “rape and whores” around women, my dad would have punched him in the face. If no woman was around, he would have just told the pudgy incel to piss off. That’s the kind of sexism that existed back then among most decent folks.
  
  Oh ok, Pantyhosewimp@lemmynsfw.com....
  Surely this isn't some weird roleplay thing for you. No, totally normal response.

For those wondering if Gygax grew beyond this kind of thinking, no, he didn't. There's an infamous forum post of his from 2005 where he calls himself a "biological determinist," and says that "females" are generally incapable of enjoying RPGs as much as men "because of a difference in brain function." Could it be that, for some reason, the women he played with just didn't enjoy the games he ran? No! It must be that RPGs are simply beyond their female brains!
Also, anyone have links to a copy of the issue of Europa cited in the article? I'd love a primary document to cite in the future.
- He cites the issue in the blog post, but it will probably be a hard one to find on the internet. Someone else in this thread tried, but wonder if it's the kind you have to go to a library and look at that microfiche or microfilm to find. That would be cool if someone finds a link.
- This is so incel neckbeardy that it sounds like a bad ironic joke 🤦🏻
  
  I know, right? But it's not. You can check it out here.
  I forgot to mention. He thinks that there is no game, besides LARPing, that could possibly appeal to women (who he consistently refers to as "females"), so it is a waste of time for anyone to try.

We all are imperfect beings who sometimes manage to achieve wonderful creations. To deny these fruits of labour to their rightful owners is to become hypocrites casting shade over our own unmistakable imperfections.
- My unmistakable imperfection is that I deny the fruits of labor to intolerable shitheels whenever I can. I'd boot Gygax out of my table without a second thought. D&D is made by the people at the table, not this dude.
  
  Yes and yes, but it WAS made by "this dude" like it or not

Gary sounding a lot like the creator of FATAL right here.
- Some of those quotes blew my mind. It sounded exactly like FATAL. I couldn't believe it lol.
  
  but hey, at least he didn't make one race that's just Humans But Better And That Everybody And Their Mom Cannot Help But Want To Fuck
  he didn't include a handy list of racial slurs against all the races in the game (just in case you wanted to make a racist NPC (or a racist PC)) and make the slurs for that special race "Raptor" for males and "Hourglass" for females
  for those morbidly curious

Neckbeard gamer from the 1970's that propagated medieval fantasy tabletop games was sexist. More breaking news at 11.
- bro read the comments, he wasn't just casually sexist, he actively hated women

Gary was part of bringing a cool game into existence. He was also a bit of a power tripping jerk. Just look at the monsters he built. "Oh no! A random monster came along and destroyed all your stuff! How terrible for you."
Just like Morrissey or Kevin Spacey or any other person who has created something cool but also happened to be awful.
- Didn't he famously like hate actual role play too? Like for him it was all just a new and more personal format of tactical war gaming.
  
  Totally. It was (in his mind) an antagonistic strategy game of the dm vs the players. The dm dreaming up elaborate plans to crush the players. It was ... a style but it wasn't always fair.

Good article. There's everything right with acknowledging the truthful roots of something while continuing to support its evolution.

I actually argued with a group of (cisgender, white, straight, middle-aged) men that I was gaming with at the time that there were a lot of black folks claiming that early orcs were based on racist black stereotypes. They said the black folks were “being too sensitive” and that the accusation was “absolutely ridiculous”. Like there’s not an issue with claiming that maybe the makers of D&D were a little racist. Like just make sure we’re not leaning into it now.
- I have a friend who I game with who has been known to occasionally dabble in head-assery, and when we were all talking about removing alignment restrictions on race this was his take. "These are fantasy races!" "You're just being too sensitive!"
  I finally prevailed by pointing out that it's just bad writing. If you want to tell me your villain is a monster, have them do something objectively evil like laugh and poison the drinking water of the town of Doma. Don't just say, "he looks like the eeeeevil race"!

Oof. Sad to learn. I know to some extent people are a product of their time, but this seems like a trite worse than "he was born almost 100 years ago!"
- If Gygax could be the butt of an Everett True comic, their shittiness is all but eternal. Day ending in Y: time to migrate away from DnD again.

Joke's on them I love Tiamat she's fuckin' awesome. More successful evil dragon goddesses with legions of children and cool magic powers please
- I was always more of a Takhisis man myself.

People are so unconcerned about stuff back then, they don’t care that Gygax wasn’t even the sole inventor of D&D. Dave Arneson was a co-creator. There was a lot of drama about it back then. Both of them passed away.

Not an excuse but I think shitty moms often have a role in creating a dude like Gygax. As many people grow up, they're able to realize that their bad experience shouldn't be applied to every woman out there...obviously. I guess he just went with his damage instead of ever questioning it and dealing with it.
- Shitty dads too.

Baseball was all white people even he was a kid, I wasn't expecting him to have a ton of progressive ideas.

I had never really thought about this before, but I've always imagined and played dragons as having an undefined sexuality/gender or at least in a way where it wasn't really a defining part of their identity.
Sex: Dragon sexuality is a bit too much of rule34 for my games.
Gender: Social constructs don't necessarily translate between a fantastical species and our labels? let alone our limited understanding/imagination of whatever ficticious draconic society.
In a broader way, most things have been tainted by misogyny or other bigotry.
I don't think we should hide and pretend it never happened, but rather recognize the shortcomings and try and move forward in a more open and interesting manner.
Gygax is dead. 2024 D&D is not Gygax.
TL;DR: If a player asks which sex or gender a dragon is, just roll for the breath weapon before they can find out?
- Even 1970s D&D wasn't Gygax. D&D is a game, Gygax is a person. They're very different things.
  One may ask whether 1970s D&D was sexist, of course. And perhaps it was to some degree, but not fundamentally so.
  
  Good point, and I think that was main thesis of the article. There were sexist parts of the game, but nothing easily fixable. Gygax and Arneson created something greater than themselves, that could live beyond any flaws they had (well, Gygax, so far nothing on Arneson luckily).
- Sex: Dragon sexuality is a bit too much of rule34 for my games.
  r/dragonsfuckingcars has entered the chat.
- Like the dwarves of discworld. Does it matter if they're male or female if they eat rat, and can fell a troll with an axe at 20 paces?

I’ve seen many a good wargame and wargamer spoiled thanks to the fair sex.
I wonder what this means.
Did his mommy say he was playing games too much and made him go outside?
- It means his friends got laid and stopped playing.
  I'm not even kidding, I think that's the real story.
  
  Or a woman showed up to the table and had the gall to be better at the game than him lol.
  
  I figured it meant drama happening from players going out and then breaking up or something like that. Seen that before, but I could totally believe your theory, too lol.

I'm only halfway through reading this, but I'd like to clarify that Law is evil and Chaos is good. Fascism is Lawful Evil, while Anarchism is Chaotic Good. The male dragon is the bad one and the female dragon is the good one. Law is the alignment of literal Hell and devils in D&D, while chaos is the alignment of elves, fairies, and firbolgs.
Gygax insulted women by calling them chaotic because he's a fool who doesn't understand the game he himself created.
EDIT: Read the rest, very interesting. Yeah, the old one axis alignment system is absolutely shit. It portrayed fascism as good and communism as bad. Fucking hell. It's basically the ideology of colonial genocide. It says that anything "uncivilized" (like indigenous tribes) is inherently evil, and good people all come from agrarian monarchies which subjugate nature and the poor.
- Law is also the alignment of angels and modrons. Chaos is the alignment of demons and slaad. Your point hinges on ignoring half of the D&D cosmology.
  I'm not saying there aren't problematic aspects, but it's not nearly as bad as you make it out to be.
  
  I know a great many Satanists and Luciferians who would say angels are a bunch of shitheads. The entire concept of Lawful Good is nonsense. "Here's a rigidly stratified society with a monarchy, but everyone's happy I promise". The existence of lawful good characters is how you know that Dungeons and Dragons really is a fantasy game.
- Law and Chaos in the D&D cosmology are a separate axis from good and evil. Devils are lawful evil, demons are chaotic evil. Planetar are lawful good, pegasus are chaotic good.

Don't like it, then Don't Play it WotC should have just retired D&D and started a new Game System

Oh that's why all female characters get debuffs /s
- In old (pre-ADnD 2e) versions of D&D female characters did have lower max strength stats than male characters.
  
  Wow that's actually interesting thanks for letting me know!
  
  This, at least, is not entirely true. OD&D does not have any distinction at all between male and female characters in the original 3 pamphlets.
  Pretty sure that stuff came in later, post-Greyhawk. It certainly showed up in fanzines of the late 70s, though...

Don't care.
- And yet here you are

Yeah I'm not too happy with all the kids, mostly because they largely ruined animal humanoids with their weird furry BS, and they think Critical Role is some kind of good demonstration on what a real session is like and not a well funded production.
The rules could stand with being a little less dumbed down, more of a happy medium between 3.5 and 5e. It's too user friendly, and like the Internet, when anyone can jump in, everyone will jump in. There's needs to be at least a minor technical barrier to entry, as I think all is Lemmy users can agree, otherwise it's all just reddit garbage. Is it gate keeping? Yeah, it is. It's the same reason bars adopt a charge charge. And didn't even get me started on the fuckers who charge to be GMs.
- intentional barriers are stupid and malicious. we're federated, if some kids showed up and were annoying i would simply cease to perceive them using the power of well-designed systems
- Don't play with them at your table? How hard is that. Also you can workshop your own ruleset, most tables do that already. Building in barriers is just fucking stupid though, it's as if you want the thing to die out with you.

I read until they started to equate "Chaotic" with "Evil". The thesis might be correct, but if your very first example you don't understand the two axis alignment system (Lawful evil and chaotic good exist) I am just going to stop reading.
- Original D&D did not have a two axis system.
  
  Oh, I did not know that.
  I was thinking in the 70s, pushing back against the patriarchy was seen as Chaotic - but not inherently evil.

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.
To think “lawful” means “good” and “chaotic” means “evil”, tells me the author of this article has never played DnD in his life.
- Have you ever even seen a Gygax era rule book? The two-axis alignment system did not exist back then.
- Thank god there was that one line of the article that you could take out of context in order to disregard the underlying thesis!
- Read the rest.
- In the old one-axis alignment system, the alignments were essentially "chaotic" which is equivalent to chaotic evil, neutral, and "lawful" which is equivalent to lawful good. The addition of other alignments like lawful evil and chaotic good were an AD&D change.
  
  TIL! Cool!
- Maybe if instead of trying to um actually someone on the Internet, you could fully read the work and see it address your concern. Or you could try actually knowing what you're talking about, since the two-axis alignment system that you're used to came after Greyhawk.

123 comments