Heck, I’m beginning to think he may not even be a real doctor.
You are misunderstanding what people are saying about Gygax. His work reflects cultural racism. Like many people’s work. So it bears scrutiny and revision. Like many peoples work. That is all. It’s not a specific criticism of Gygax’s personality or character.
OK, that I agree with. Very reasonable and true.
A lot of those posts seem to be accusing him of being racist and he might have been, but his contributions to D&D don’t really prove it.
When we were having that protracted discussion in ATMB about trans issues and misogyny, I chimed in with other posters that some women had left the Dope due to sexism on the board. I know this because they PMed me about it. He demanded access to a “secret list” of 100 women who had left the board due to sexism - a thing nobody at any point claimed - and then when the mods shut down that tangent, he went out of his way to PM me that he didn’t believe me. That’s a sore spot for me because while my memory is not infallible, I strive to be honest in all my dealings.
I don’t typically write whole people off over single incidents, but I’ve been growing frustrated. He seems to have this mentality that if he doesn’t notice something, it doesn’t exist, and only sees what he wants to see - even though he’s missing out on a ton of experiences just by nature of his gender. Personal experience is highly subjective. I thought it was a problem with taking women seriously, but maybe it’s just a broader pattern of posting.
As I said over there, “Gary Gygax was racist” doesn’t mean that he originated in the elemental plane of racism, that he takes double damage from Banish White Supremacy spells, or anything like that. It means that, when he wrote about orcs in the way he did, that was racist. Gygax was racist when he did that.
Outside of the David Dukes and Adolf Hitlers of the world, there are few people who are irredeemably racist, for whom racism is their defining characteristic. But there are a lot of people who have been racist at certain times. Since we were discussing Gygax’s use of racist stereotypes in the depiction of fantasy creatures, that was the context in which I said he was racist.
I think that a lot of folks who spend a lot of time thinking about racism use the word “racist” in this way, and a lot of people who do not think much about racism use it in the “elemental plane of racism” way.
As for this thread, years ago I started a thread for another dumbshit user, and would transfer conversations to that thread when they became too stupid for the original forum. I think I’ll use this thread in this fashion going forward, and invite others to do the same: y’all are right that he stinks up a lot more threads than just the D&D one, it’s just I’m usually better at not engaging with him. Yeah, he doesn’t use the pit, but if the conversation moves here and he bows out, that’s on him, and might keep other threads less fuckin stupid.
…I’m so sorry he did this. 
I get anxiety when someone PM’s me just to be nice. I would completely freak out if someone PM’d me to call me a liar.
Would he have been considered racist by the standards of 1970s Minnesota? No, probably not.
Are the standards of 1970s Minnesota racist by todays standards? Yeah, pretty much. Things were more racist back then in general, and Gygax wasn’t notably enlightened for his time.
Yes, I agree.
I happened to go to school that was around 37% African American, so probably less racist than average. But I wasn’t enlightened, my parents weren’t. Very few of my friends weren’t white by High School though it was different in lower grades.
Oddly, not separated by race but by nerd-dom. My friends that were black didn’t want to hang out with a nerd by high school. My nerd friends were OK with me. My grease monkey friends were much more accepting.
Oh, shit, I suffered from reverse racism. What do you know? I never thought about it before. Or kids grow apart as they get older and their interests change.
Whenever I get involved in conflict, I usually have an immediate panic response (thanks, Mom!) but then I realize it doesn’t matter that much. It was notable in that I rarely receive nasty PMs.
That thread is full of strawmen. The main argument being made is that D&D’s depiction of “evil races” has been one of the many many many many things which have contributed to America’s serious problem of institutional racism.
DrDeth was a dense motherfucker 20 years ago, and after my extended break from the boards, I return, and I find that he continues to be exactly the same dense motherfucker he was before.
Plus ça change, and all that.
He’s a moron (or perhaps I should say, “a mouth-breather”) who can’t spell or write properly.
Or this:
Speaking of which:
I wouldn’t even mind so much if all he did was assume he was right. We all have situations where we believe we have the data and have come to a conclusion, and thus argue our point while regarding any counterarguments as flawed.
No, what frustrates me are the one liners with no attempt to actually engage. Very often, his only argument is his single sentence claim. Other than that, it’s just basically implying everyone else is stupid if they disagree.
There are other posters who are very opinionated, especially on topics they really care about. I’m one of them. But we at least lay out our thinking, opening it up so people can point out flaws.
Granted, sometimes it seems to me that we get nitpicks that don’t change the overall argument, or portions of the post are taken out of context and distract from the main point. But the alternative of not stating that reasoning at all isn’t better. It just makes what you say more dismissible.
He also seems easily triggered on any bigotry-related topic. This tactic of one liners seems most common when he’s angry.
Finally, I’ll point out that there is a difference between pointing out that something someone did might be racist, and saying the person themselves was a racist. And there are degrees of racism in a work, from accidental tropes that snuck into your work through the cultural zeitgeist of the time, to purposefully trying to push a racist ideology. People often state the first one, but then the refutations seem to be about the latter.
I remember he had the opinion that FOX News promoted smoking because Lucifer had the lead character smoking a cigarette. That was when Lucifer was on Fox and he assured us FOX news was also in charge of programming. Don’t know if he still thought that after Lucifer moved to Netflix.
Oh, I remember that. Weirdly, I had several women say similar things to me way back (I’d mentioned that my wife had left for greener pastures, and several women asked for a link to said greener pastures). DrDeth’s demand there was super stupid. Can’t remember, though, if that’s one of the times I made my saving throw against responding to his bullshit.
For what it’s worth, his idiotic thread about BUT ITS OKAY IN ROMANCE MOVIES TO BE A CREEPER is made worth it by your wonderful explanation of the symbolism and story beats of romance fiction. It’s not a genre I read much of, but I read a fair amount of YA stuff, which is largely romance-adjacent, and what you say helps make sense out of a lot of it. Thank you for your posts there, and for just generally being an excellent poster.
Gee, thanks! I’m rather fond of you too. 
Wait, he actually specifically said that Fox News was responsible? The news portion?
On the other hand, I’ve repeatedly pointed out something similar in such ATMB threads: I knew from PMs that around a dozen trans people left due to how transphobia was being dealt with. Yet he’s never PMed me about that.
Also, I understand that frustration of when people accuse you of lying. I also strive to be honest in my dealings. And I’ve had a poster PM me out of the blue and make up things I didn’t say.