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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   23184 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 10, 2025

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They would 100% not put out today the version of D&D that Gygax put out in 1974. No sane business that wanted to make lots of money would. And you know exactly why. It would offend way too many customers for no good reason. Not a good business reason and not a good artistic reason, (unless you squint really hard).

So, I think this means it's not a dead battleground. Though I would go on and say it's different; this isn't the same stuff as making elves black.

Then Trump won, the illusion shattered for about a year. But now the same dead fights are being rehashed.

Just because Trump won an election doesn't mean you can ignore the racial demographcs of your potential customer base (>30% black or hispanic, 50% female) along with half of the white people stressing out about things they see as bigoted.

I'm mostly not up to date on this issue though, and found this discussion on r/KotakuInAction informative albeit a bit circle jerky.

From that link

In the 1970s, historical wargamers in America were predominantly white, middle-class men

Who would have thought that a nerdy (demographic primarily male) tabletop game (demographic primarily male) created in the US (demographic primarily white) and written in English (demographic primarily white) would be predominantly populated by white males

What a fucking mind-blowing concept

and

White men (and later men in general) were the main consumers at the time because they were ruthlessly mocked by women just for playing the game. Women thought it was lame and wanted nothing to do with it. They only became interested after it became trendy to be a nerd and after watching Critical Role.

Whites have slipped demographically but also D&D is mainstream now.

The slipping demography of white America and the not-exclusively-for-hideous-neckbeardedness of D&D anymore explains the behavior a lot better than progressive dead-battlegrounding, IMO. Though of course the woke ideological shit-tests are a part of this too.

In order for women to mock men for playing D&D, they'd have had to know what it is, and plenty of women plainly like some element or other of the concept of the game (they like roleplaying tea parties).

The main issue was that they wanted nothing to do with the men that played it.

Women who play dnd roleplay alot more than munchkin. Killing baddies is the boring part for girls, just like dialogue filler is boring for guys. The girls (including autogynephiliac men) I dm'ed for back in college were really into their female characters being put into near rape scenarios ("I remove my clothes in this prison to increase my stealth check roll!" "uh... ok...you can just stay in your enchanted leather..." "I roll for wisdom check if I remember that the enchanted leather is stealthy enough" "pass" "fuck roll again"). I know that a pbp forum had to offload all ERP because the main threads were getting clogged with sex roleplay and wasting turns for the rest of the party.

True that the girls never wanted anything to do with the guys playing. Creeps or munchkins are equally irritating. and the presence of a woman just makes that much worse. Though I have seen relatively healthy dnd groups among younger kids where girlfriends tag along just for shits and giggles, and thats honestly one of the best outcomes for an irl dnd session. Getting epic failstreaks to be funny requires good DM and good players and thats generally pretty rare.

The girls (including autogynephiliac men) I dm'ed for back in college were really into their female characters being put into near rape scenarios ("I remove my clothes in this prison to increase my stealth check roll!"

The Noticer in me couldn’t help but be reminded of an irl parallel: chicks dolling themselves up, putting on slinky outfits, slapping on high heels to go out, get drunk, and teehee and stumble around late into the night.

I think it is possible to overstate this thesis. I think D&D has a Star Wars-like thing going on with it: Star Wars was a massive blockbuster, watched and enjoyed by tons of men and women. It is also the case that autistic men gravitated towards it as a long-term special interest at a much higher rate, and so they became the core of the Star Wars fandom.

D&D Red Box was a huge Christmas smash hit the year it came out. While I have no doubt that male players outnumbered female players back then, I would find it extremely plausible that tons of kids, male and female, got D&D Red Box in their Christmas stockings, tried to start a campaign and had it peter out after a few weeks or months, and that this group constituted the majority of all D&D players back then. The ones who stuck around were probably disproportionately autistic men, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that if you subtracted them you would have a much more gender-balanced (though still skewing male) early audience for D&D than you might expect.

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