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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 25, 2023

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Recent release of a new entry in the hit crpg series Baldurs Gate, has prompted me to look into the history of the parent franchise, Dungeons and Dragons. It's influence is immense1, crossing borders2.

But like any cultural product, it is itself a product of its surroundings. It's a game that exalts the American values of self-reliance, ability, and the ruthless accumulation of money.

It is not only non-medieval, it is anti-feudalistic and anti-aristocratic. Creatures with more XP and hit dice rule lower-level ones, from settled barons and goblin kings to wandering bandits and nomads. Level requirements for baronies are at odds with the hereditary gloss added to D&D in nearly every subsequent setting.

Obsession with money-gathering for its own sake that is suggestive of mercantilism or capitalism.

Gygax original pre-publication Greyhawk campaign drew heavily from his own American experience. It took place on a United States map, with Greyhawk at Chicago, and Dyvers at Milwaukee. His buddy Don Kaye’s Greyhawk character, Murlynd, was a gunslinger from Boot Hill.

Most of D&D’s thousands of imitators, in game and fiction, preserve the game’s democratic bones (cash economy, guns for hire, rags to riches stories) while overlaying a medieval-European skin.

Gygaxian levelocracy, where a villager can rise to become a baron or a “Conan type”, is fundamentally incompatible with the European fantasy typified by Lord of the Rings, in which no fellowship can alter the fact that Sam is by birth a servant, Frodo a gentleman, Strider a king, and Gandalf a wizard.

1:D&D invented "leather armor" and those "leather bracers" we see in so much historical fiction today. Even in documentaries!

Also D&D started the myth of bows being a "dexterity weapon". In reality, the sword is a much more suitable weapon for weaker people (blades require so little strength, we hide knives from children, and cut ourselves unintentionally while cooking), while a bow requires strength to operate. A war bow requires bodybuilder tier strength to use, and its shoulder and back muscles, the hardest ones for a woman to pack.

I'll also blame D&D for popularizing dumb weapons, like flails, which probably never saw battlefield use and were just dumb ornaments. I've tried to play with one, its more dangerous to the wielder than to his opponent. And, of course, the overall size of weapons is exaggerated in official art, but that was already bad and only got worse in other media.

2: Record of Lodoss War, Porcine appearance of orcs in Japanese media

Edit: Restoring this post, warts and all, because when I deleted it I didn't see the notification count increase. If I had, I would have left it up. Now that they did and a discussion has started (and accusations of trolling), deleting it is pointless.

That's because D&D is (was) really a Western dressed up in an anachronistic pseudomidieval setting. And it's settings and monsters owe more to Conan and Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser than to Lord of the Rings.

Now it's become an alice-in-wonderland tea party for non-binary tiefling warlocks.

I can't reply to the deleted post, so I'll reply to this instead: What is the deal with the recent trend of top-level posts being posted and then immediately deleted?

It’s almost all the same guy. He really needs to be banned although I assume they keep creating alt accounts.

Almost certainly trolling.

I apologize sincerely. In my defense, I deleted the post about inaccuracies in D&D, political or otherwise, after realizing it was poorly researched, after less then four minutes.