Gary Gygax Daughter Calls Her Father "Sexist" In Response To Recent Dungeons & Dragons Controversies
Gary Gygax has been under attack from woke activists within Dungeons & Dragons, which went viral this weekend as Elon Musk chimed in telling Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro to “Go to hell” over their treatment of the D&D creator. Now his daughter Heidi Gygax Garland has chimed in, calling her father “sexist” to appease the woke mob.
Fans of the original Dungeons & Dragons reacted with outrage as the story of how a book, The Making Of The Original Dungeons & Dragons, blasted creator Gary Gygax with misinformation maligning the D&D creator.
In the preface written by Jason Tondro, a Senior Designer on Dungeons & Dragons, and shared to X by user dLsd_25, Tondro attacks the original creators writing, “Some language in the first iteration of D&D presents a moral quandary. The documents reproduced in this book include many pages of charts and tables alongside lists of monsters, spells, and magic items. But that game content also includes a virtual catalog of insensitive and derogatory language, words that are casually hurtful to anyone with a physical or mental disability, or who happens to be old, fat, not conventionally attractive, indigenous, Black, or a woman.”
Tondro continued, “Some people have charitably ascribed this language to authors working from bad assumptions. In the 1970s, historical wargamers in America were predominately white, middle-class men; it isn’t surprising that they would dub a class of soldiers the ‘fighting-man.’ But when, in the pages of Greyhawk, the description of the Queen of Chaotic Dragons includes a dig at ‘Women’s Lib,’ the misogyny is revealed as a conscious choice. It’s an unfortunate fact that women seldom appear in original D&D, and when they do, they’re usually portrayed disrespectfully.
Tondro went on, “Slavery appears in original D&D not as a human tragedy that devastated generations over centuries, but as a simple commercial transaction.”
“The cultural appropriation of original D&D ranges from the bewildering (like naming every 6th-level cleric a ‘lama’) to the staggering; Gods, Demi-gods and Heroes (not reprinted in this book) includes game statistics for sacred figures revered by more than a billion people around the world,” he wrote. “Were players expected to fight Vishnu, one of the principal deities of Hinduism, kill him, and loot his ‘plus 3 sword of demon slaying’?”
Tondro concluded the preface writing, “Despite these shortcomings, D&D has always been a game about people choosing to be someone unlike themselves and collaborating with strangers who become friends. It has slowly become more inclusive, and as the player base has become more diverse, the pool of creators who make the game has expanded to include people with a broader range of identities and backgrounds. As these new creators make the game more welcoming, the game has attracted new fans who, in turn, continue to make the game more inclusive. The future of Dungeons & Dragons, here at its fiftieth anniversary, is bright.”
World of Warcraft designer Mark Kern, posting as Grummz on X, made a thread this week reiterating how D&D has fallen, saying, “DnD creators, Gygax and others, are erased and slandered at the same time. WoTC and Hasbro just released the new Players Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide, as well at the 40th Anniversary "Making of DnD" book whose foreward slams the original creators and attempts to distance themselves. I spoke with one of the original creators, Rob Kuntz @threelinestudio, about the problem.”
Elon Musk saw the post and chimed in with his passionate expertise, “Nobody, and I mean nobody, gets to trash E. Gary Gygax and the geniuses who created Dungeons & Dragons. What the f*** is wrong with Hasbro and WoTC?? May they burn in hell.”
The post went viral with several news outlets as well as tabletop industry professionals responding to the situation.
Now, Gary Gygax’s daughter Heidi Gygax Garland responded on Facebook saying, “Regarding the post by Ben Riggs “D&D Co-Creator Gary Gygax was Sexist” IMO much seems to be taken out of context and pieced together. I cannot verify the sources, although I truly believe they are incomplete and/or incorrect. I think Frank Mentzer states his insights on this eloquently. As for my perspective, I do not believe my father was racist or misogynistic. Was he sexist? He was born in 1938 to a father born in the 1880’s and a mother born in 1906. He was raised in a traditional Anglo-Saxon Protestant family with traditional biblical family values where the male was the head of the household. In my adult opinion, yes, this is sexist and doesn’t hold up to our more enlightened standards today. Yet, he was a loving father and husband who valued all of his children and his wife. All 3 of his daughters played D&D with him at some point, but I happen to be the only one who still plays. In short, he wasn’t perfect, but he was far from all of the negative accusations that are (re) surfacing, and I’m extremely proud - as a strong, independent female - to have E. Gary Gygax as my father and my family legacy.”
Appearing as a defense of Gygax, unfortunately the post does call Gary Gygax “sexist” by modern standards, and also attacks traditional biblical family values as regressive.
Gygax having Christian values is positive, not negative, and shows how insidious the woke mind virus is in corrupting our culture, including systems like Dungeons & Dragons which in prior editions to the modern Wizards of the Coast era, took great care to ensure it was mindful of Christian beliefs.
Heidi Gygax Garland is part of the problem of politicizing tabletop gaming that’s gone on from the extreme left, having signed on earlier this year to “Gamers 4 Harris,” a campaign to try to pressure the gaming community into supporting Kamala Harris for president by making a list of industry professionals that supported the failed candidate.
The site has since been removed but has been archived by gamers who want to remember who in the industry is causing these problems, making tabletop gaming something it was never intended to be by its founders.
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