Rolling for Initiative is a weekly column by Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois and instructor in marketing at Southeast Missouri State University. This week, Thorne looks at the social media controversy revolving around The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons: 1970-1977, amplified by Elon Musk’s post about it.
There has been some controversy on social media over last summer’s The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons: 1970-1977 book (see “Dungeons & Dragons 2024-2025 Deets and Dates“), especially over comments Jon Peterson made in the forward on the sexism and use of gods in the early books.
Sexism? Yes, it existed in the early works. Go look at the cover art and much of the interior art from the era. Male characters could go around both bare-chested in a breechcloth as well as fully armored. Females, however, almost always appeared in revealing outfits and impractical armor both inside and prominently displayed on the cover of the book. Judges’ Guild’s City State of the Invincible Overlord even had a “harlot table” a GM could use to roll up the physical characteristics of women the players might encounter within the city. I do not recall seeing any tables ever allowing DMs to roll up the physical characteristics of male NPCs.
Gods from non-Christian religions were given statistics, which made them essentially another monster to attack when your character leveled up. I remember playing the game at the time, and we always thought it cool to read the background on beings from other religions, although incorporating elements from Christian theology was frowned upon, unless you were playing Chivalry and Sorcery.
As far as I can tell, the author of The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons spends about half a page discussing problematic aspects of D&D and not ascribing them to any of the creators, merely pointing out that such writing was not unusual for the era. However, some critics accused the writer of both slandering and attempting to erase the work of E. Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson and other creators of the game.
This was not getting much notice outside of X until, for some reason, Elon Musk pulled himself away from his new position with DOGE to post about it. With typical hyperbole, Musk posted: “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.”
Seriously? Over two paragraphs out of several hundred pages addressing problematic issues with early D&D product, including straightforward copyright violation (halflings, treants and balors were Hobbits, Ents and Balrogs in the original works until TSR got contacted about violating Tolkien’s copyrights) is hardly trashing the creators of Dungeons & Dragons, especially since they are never mentioned by name in the paragraphs addressing the topic. Even E. Gary Gygax acknowledged D&D / AD&D 1E needed improvement and that Dangerous Journeys was very similar to how AD&D 2E would have evolved had he remained with TSR.
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The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
Source: ICV2
