"nits make lice" is an exact quote from a commander of the 3rd Cavalry of Colorado on why he ordered the murder and mutilation of hundreds of native children at the Sand Creek massacre.

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That'd be because Gygax's early stuff was fully eating the Tolkien archetypal stuff where one's nature was divinely determined long before birth and long after death. A child of an evil race such as orcs would be evil from birth, and so killing it would be morally justified.

And of course that kind of dipshit thought has infected all fantasy since with precious few exceptions. It's not even a particular victory that WoTC has moved away from that in recent years because each new edition of D&D does less with alignment than the previous so they can't fall back on precedent to keep up the "Evil races are always evil". That and the new crop of writers coming in that are able to actively correct this stuff in the new books.

I knew about this particular side of Gygax for a long long time, but I didn't bring it up much because he's still kind of a sacred figure to a lot of D&D players and I'd rather have a full game table as long as no one at that table was a nazi or a nazi apologist. I have driven people like that out of the group in the past.

It's because of stuff like this that I don't care for and see no value in "Thermian Arguments." Just because some fiction was done some way in the past doesn't mean that way is inherently better and can't ever, ever be changed because that would go against historical precedent for that fiction.

I've had some self-described "grognards" give me a hard time because the goblins in my campaigns aren't necessarily evil and don't have evil genes in their evil babies. He said I was "virtue signaling wokeness" and I on the spot told him he could leave. He did.

There were still quite stereotypically goblins, but more a culture of scrounging and scavenging and robbery and animal wrangling because they were poor and marginalized. They basically did almost everything typical D&D goblins did, except my other players came to the conclusion of "maybe it's kind of fucked what's happening to these goblins. Maybe the local city watch is enriching itself and further militarizing itself while the commoners do with less every year, justifying their own enrichment from stoked fear of further goblin attacks" and went from there.

One thing that helps a lot in my experience is having treasure be a reward from grateful people that are helped out because of some wrong being corrected, given by the people themselves, instead of "what creepy savages have evil temples we can loot for treasure?"

High level boss fights that do involve looting the lair and the dungeon often involve vampires in my campaigns. I wonder why. :thinkin-lenin:

Yeah Gygax was a libertarian tech bro type guy who got really into genetic determinism and that shit reflects in his game. Shit sucks.

I think this is something to keep in mind when formulating ur campaigns. The raciality of d&d and indeed “races” in real life are based on white supremacy. If you don’t outright get rid of “races,” you should be treating them the same as if they were all just different kinds of humans, instead of playing into the fantasy where the hero is made to look “white” in comparison to say, a goblin. The goblin exists in its form to supplement the “white” hero.

More and more, especially with Barker, another prominent trailblazing ttrpg scholar and writer being outed as a neo nazi, it is hard to separate the origin of amerikkkan ttrpg from reactionary, white supremacist, chuddy facistery.

However, d&d is very much a thing that can be reclaimed. Being a nerd isn’t just for mayos!! There are plenty of IBPOC in the nerd traditions. As well as, marginalized mayos and others like myself.

I always broke the rules and treated the “evil races” like ppl. One time I did a random d&d game with a professor guy who turned out to be a leftist. He was shocked by my actions, and some other dude left the table lol. Me n the prof are still friends :p

Fantasy have always been a highly problematic genre rooted in westerners using it as an escapist tool to indulge in reactionary fantasies. Tolkien might have dunked on Nazis that one time, but his works are ultimately based on the core concept of the supremacy of ancient tradition over the corruption of industry.

I googled 'nits make lice gygax' and found some posts of his; let's just say I'm glad he kicked the bucket because dear God that's some insane thinking.

Aside from his paladins sounding like they're based on Judge Dredd (a tyrannical one too, as early Judge Dredd didn't kill villains but did everything to capture them alive for trial) he really does actually see killing the children of your enemies as justifiable:

Chivington might have been quoted as saying "nits make lice," but he is certainly not the first one to make such an observation as it is an observable fact. If you have read the account of wooden Leg, a warrior of the Cheyenne tribe that fought against Custer et al., he dispassionately noted killing an enemy squaw for the reason in question.

I don't care if you can point to a native American (or any member of a minority) and be like 'look, they did it too!', it's still insane and vile, the heck is wrong with these people?

But then of course, the real problem is they've envisioned world with actual evil races to justify what are war crimes in the real world (the real world being where they refer to women and children of the opposing side as 'nits make lice' and that it's an observable fact).

People also run to the cliched argument of 'lawful good doesn't mean lawful nice or lawful stupid'; right, but apparently 'lawful good' does seem to mean lawful tyranny. Not being a war criminal doesn't mean you're being lawful nice or lawful stupid. There's a guy on that page who, while discussing with Gygax on the forums, mentions he comes up with contrived reasons for why everything works out okay anyway because he's clearly trying to avoid intellectually confronting the crazy he's talking to. He says when the party captures villains, they pull out secret weapons to justify just flat out killing them rather than taking prisoners, and that evil tribes don't have any children there.

Damn libs. Probably the sort who think Kissinger 'made difficult choices'.

The man lived at a time when the horrors of Auschwitz were still fresh in the popular consciousness. He had no excuse.

Shout-out to the podcast Three Black Halflings for going over a ton of shit like this. D&D's roots are problematic at best and there are a ton of issues that stem from it going into the present day. Imo the good and evil stuff should only be kept for literal angels and demons. I'm comfortable saying a devil is evil, I'm not comfortable saying an elf coded as black (drow) are inherently evil.

DnD started out as a wargame project. Gugsx being neck deep in wargaming is a sufficient inditement of him as a person.

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Gygax was a libertarian (i.e., a fascist) and D&D is an irredeemable colonial fantasy. The core system of the game is killing people designated as subhuman and taking their stuff. The primary environment of D&D, the dungeon, is literally a place where you invade, murder basically everyone you run into, and steal everything not nailed down.

You can of course try to play D&D in a way that avoids using this core loop, but then why are you playing D&D instead of something designed for at least non-colonial (if not de-colonial) gameplay?

Yeah as much as I enjoy D&D Gygax seemed to be kind of a chud, I've heard he originally wanted certain classes to be gender specific (the Fighter was originally going to be Fighting Man, for example).

I say it all the time but why tf do we call different species "races" (hint: to justify racism)