Now some of the village idiots have taken to calling Gygax a "sex pest"

Whats next? I am sure they can dig themselves deeper.

Quote from: Omega on July 11, 2024, 12:14:55 AMNow some of the village idiots have taken to calling Gygax a "sex pest"

Why does everyone believe Ben Riggs blog post about the interview of Gary Gygax?

I grew up in the seventies (in Europe but still) and the text does not strike me to be from '75. It reads very much as something a woke from the 2020s would like to read.

1) "nasty old sexist-male-Chauvinist-pig": He was 37. Sorry, but since when are people in their 30s called old? Sure from the view of a child maybe but otherwise?
2) He talks about "more non-gender names". In the seventies? Wow, how progessiv he must have been. Most people at that time wouldn't understand the meaning of it.
3) The seventies were all about dirty sex. Seriously. Porn movies were open topic, Emmanuelle and other, the sex tourism to east asia started. Not enough female representation in a game which was still new and at that time only played by a few thousand most of them males from his own peer group would never incur much critisim. Feminists at that time had other problems than to harass the creator of a game they wouldn't even know about.

And than the "picture". Not only is the citation worthless (missing page number) but the picture shows only the citated text, nothing more. What was the question Gary Gygax reacted to? What was the reaction of the one conducting the interview? There is no context at all to understand the answer.

User jhkim posted a link to an older edition of the Europa magazine. The text from the "picture" looks much more refined than anything from an actual edition of said magazine. But both are from '75.

Why did Ben Riggs not upload the whole page the exerpt is from? We can't check if this is actually an excerpt from a magazine or not. As it stands I'm not sure I can believe anything from this Ben Riggs.

I'm not an english native speaker but I hope you can still read this post without any problems.

Quote from: jhkim on July 10, 2024, 06:18:31 PMGygax claimed that women's low participation in RPGs was "biologically determined". If even modest environmental/social changes shift the ratio from 3% to 39%, then that ratio clearly isn't biologically determined.

I went and told you how you were going to distort the argument, and you did it anyway!  OK, I'm beginning to think you really aren't that intelligent.  You attack the word "determined," yet you said:

Quote... clearly their participation rates are dominated by environmental and/or cultural factors, not genetics.

where both "clearly" and "dominated" are both not established by some questionable surveys.  It is not "clear" at all what those surveys show and why they show it (and you never addressed the surveys themselves, which was my very first point), nor is "dominated" expressive of a still-male dominated hobby, as even shown by those same surveys you cite.  That the number of females increases does not affect the contention that males will be more interested in playing, especially when the overall number of players increase.  This isn't hard to understand, if you understand statistics at all.

Quote from: jhkim on July 10, 2024, 06:18:31 PMThere may be some biological influence, but that influence is masked by the other factors...

No, you said "dominated," not influenced.  You don't get the benefit of the doubt on your phrasing, when you immediately follow with:

Quote from: jhkim on July 10, 2024, 06:18:31 PMYou use "hobby" in quotes, but in the interview, Gygax never uses the term "hobby". He refers to "RPGs"...

Even when you are told exactly what you are going to do to distort the argument in advance, you still can't help doing it.  Not only are you a lousy scientist, you are a lousy arguer as well...

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on June 24, 2024, 02:25:43 PMThey will say yes, then you tell them Einstein was a mutant, he was missing grey matter that put two of his lobes closer than normal which gave him a different view on the world.  You would never be an Einstein without that mutation.

Maybe, but correlation does not equal causation. However trends do seem to indicate that most genius is due to random abnormalities and not a consistent hereditary trait.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 24, 2024, 04:23:55 PM

Quote from: Hobo on June 24, 2024, 03:59:50 PMORLY? https://www.unz.com/lromanoff/a-few-historical-frauds/

You are aware that there are direct appeals to anti-Semitic tropes in that piece (claims that Einstein was promoted by the "Jewish-controlled media", etc.)?  Unless you were posting it as a joke, I wouldn't put to much faith in any of its conclusions...

Ah shit, here we go again.

Quote from: Hobo on June 24, 2024, 06:37:58 PMYou are aware that Ron Unz, the editor and host of the site is Jewish, right?

An Antisemetic Jew. What a time to be alive.

Quote from: Hobo on June 25, 2024, 03:53:03 PMYou're taking a cowardly SJW tactic of "scan for some offhand comment buried in a link I can pretend to be offended by" followed by "dismiss everything factual that I don't want to face because of said offhand comment" combined with "attempt to cancel the person who I'm pretending to be offended by so I never have to face the sources that I don't want to see ever again."

Well there's also all those other articles on the site which don't exactly take a lot of fishing to find.

Quote from: Hobo on June 25, 2024, 03:53:03 PMI don't owe any answers to liars and bad faith actors, especially about off topic non sequiturs.

Talk about taking a cowardly SJW tactic.

Quote from: jhkim on June 25, 2024, 07:06:50 PMThis requires that not just the popular press be in on the conspiracy, but also the Nobel Prize committee (which takes attribution very seriously) as well as all of the mainstream biographers and historians of science.

A trivial matter when you control the very laws of physics!

Quote from: jhkim on July 10, 2024, 11:32:28 AMThe data shows a massive difference in female participation in RPGs between the 1970s, 1999, and the 2020s. Gygax cited only 3% women in his 1970s games, but in 1999 they were surveyed at 19% participation, and in the 2020s at 39%. Since women's genetics didn't change during that time, that shows that clearly their participation rates are dominated by environmental and/or cultural factors, not genetics.

Yes, it was a cultural shift, in that RPGs were starting to be designed in ways which appealed to women. However it did not change what they wanted. And the most popular to date is still the one about playing murderous sexual predators with consent violating powers.

Quote from: jhkim on July 10, 2024, 11:32:28 AMWomen have longer hair than men in Western society, but that doesn't mean there is a genetic trait that programs their hair to be longer. Assuming that it comes from genetics is an obvious fallacy.

Oof, bad example, because there are biological reasons women have longer hair, don't lose their hair later in life, and don't grow facial hair.

Quote from: SeekerOfTruth on July 11, 2024, 05:44:03 AMWhy does everyone believe Ben Riggs blog post about the interview of Gary Gygax?

I gave up on having any meaningful discussion about this over on the thread on enworld, since their terms of service there for the most part, forbid talking about things which are essential for addressing presentism (as it isn't 'inclusive') and that he was a man of his time.

Reading that interview, it leads me to think that GG wasn't really taking it seriously, and that ultimately, he doesn't want to engage with it and just wants to play and enjoy, and wasn't worried about offending anyone.

Greetings!

I just love all the shrieking Woke morons crying about Gygax being sexist and misogynistic.

Whaa! Whaa! Yes, Gygax was a traditional, patriarchal monster. Good! These Woke morons can cry and jerk themselves.

Whatever the real feelings of Gygax is irrelevant. The Woke Commissars have decreed that Gygax was a terrible monster--just like everyone else that refuses to suck down Woke jello.

Poring over brief writings, snippets of interviews, stridently or desperately seeking to "prove" one thing or another--to the Woke, TRUTH does not matter. Everyone must bow down to their fucking Communist tyranny.

Just tell them they are weak fucking Commie pussies. Mock them. Laugh at them. Woke morons hate being laughed at and mocked.

Someday here soon will arrive the time to feed the alligators. We aren't quite there yet. Still, when the time comes, the alligators will be very well fed! *Laughing*

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: SeekerOfTruth on July 11, 2024, 05:44:03 AMWhy does everyone believe Ben Riggs blog post about the interview of Gary Gygax?

I grew up in the seventies (in Europe but still) and the text does not strike me to be from '75. It reads very much as something a woke from the 2020s would like to read.

1) "nasty old sexist-male-Chauvinist-pig": He was 37. Sorry, but since when are people in their 30s called old? Sure from the view of a child maybe but otherwise?
2) He talks about "more non-gender names". In the seventies? Wow, how progessiv he must have been. Most people at that time wouldn't understand the meaning of it.
3) The seventies were all about dirty sex. Seriously. Porn movies were open topic, Emmanuelle and other, the sex tourism to east asia started. Not enough female representation in a game which was still new and at that time only played by a few thousand most of them males from his own peer group would never incur much critisim. Feminists at that time had other problems than to harass the creator of a game they wouldn't even know about.

And than the "picture". Not only is the citation worthless (missing page number) but the picture shows only the citated text, nothing more. What was the question Gary Gygax reacted to? What was the reaction of the one conducting the interview? There is no context at all to understand the answer.

User jhkim posted a link to an older edition of the Europa magazine. The text from the "picture" looks much more refined than anything from an actual edition of said magazine. But both are from '75.

Why did Ben Riggs not upload the whole page the exerpt is from? We can't check if this is actually an excerpt from a magazine or not. As it stands I'm not sure I can believe anything from this Ben Riggs.

I'm not an english native speaker but I hope you can still read this post without any problems.

You did fine. Better than some native english speakers.
And you bring up some good points about the authenticity of the quote source.

I wonder why people don't trust studies, statistics, etc by woketards...

Diversity Was Supposed to Make Us Rich. Not So Much.

Relevant as to why we dismiss Jhkim's "statistics" and his claims about what they show out of hand.

Hence why in the other thread I questioned the veracity of that article as it does not sound like things Gary would say.

  It's a good question. Gygax's articles in Europa 6-8 and 12-13 have been talked about; can anyone find any references to this before Riggs posts it?

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on July 12, 2024, 09:04:28 AMIt's a good question. Gygax's articles in Europa 6-8 and 12-13 have been talked about; can anyone find any references to this before Riggs posts it?

If it helps anyone's searches, Europa was a fanzine published by Walter Luc Haas in Switzerland - unrelated to the GDW magazine "Europa" published by GDW from 1987, and unrelated to Lucas Haas the actor. I have a Facebook friend who apparently has copies, though, so I might be able to get them in a few days.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan on July 11, 2024, 12:08:57 PM

Quote from: jhkim on July 10, 2024, 11:32:28 AMThe data shows a massive difference in female participation in RPGs between the 1970s, 1999, and the 2020s. Gygax cited only 3% women in his 1970s games, but in 1999 they were surveyed at 19% participation, and in the 2020s at 39%. Since women's genetics didn't change during that time, that shows that clearly their participation rates are dominated by environmental and/or cultural factors, not genetics.

Yes, it was a cultural shift, in that RPGs were starting to be designed in ways which appealed to women. However it did not change what they wanted. And the most popular to date is still the one about playing murderous sexual predators with consent violating powers.

Sure.

Different demographics of all sorts will have different preferences in gaming. Japanese RPG players have different (but overlapping) preferences with American RPG players. Older (55+) gamers have different but overlapping preferences from teenage gamers. Female preferences have different but overlapping preferences than male players. etc.

It's fine to produce a game that appeals more to male players - like say a Conan RPG. It's also fine to produce a game that appeals more to female players, like say the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG.

I don't agree with left-leaning claims that every RPG must have a balanced appeal to all demographics. However, I also think there's nothing wrong with producing RPG books that have different appeals.

Quote from: jhkim on July 12, 2024, 04:34:51 PM

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on July 12, 2024, 09:04:28 AMIt's a good question. Gygax's articles in Europa 6-8 and 12-13 have been talked about; can anyone find any references to this before Riggs posts it?

If it helps anyone's searches, Europa was a fanzine published by Walter Luc Haas in Switzerland - unrelated to the GDW magazine "Europa" published by GDW from 1987, and unrelated to Lucas Haas the actor. I have a Facebook friend who apparently has copies, though, so I might be able to get them in a few days.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan on July 11, 2024, 12:08:57 PM

Quote from: jhkim on July 10, 2024, 11:32:28 AMThe data shows a massive difference in female participation in RPGs between the 1970s, 1999, and the 2020s. Gygax cited only 3% women in his 1970s games, but in 1999 they were surveyed at 19% participation, and in the 2020s at 39%. Since women's genetics didn't change during that time, that shows that clearly their participation rates are dominated by environmental and/or cultural factors, not genetics.

Yes, it was a cultural shift, in that RPGs were starting to be designed in ways which appealed to women. However it did not change what they wanted. And the most popular to date is still the one about playing murderous sexual predators with consent violating powers.

Sure.

Different demographics of all sorts will have different preferences in gaming. Japanese RPG players have different (but overlapping) preferences with American RPG players. Older (55+) gamers have different but overlapping preferences from teenage gamers. Female preferences have different but overlapping preferences than male players. etc.

It's fine to produce a game that appeals more to male players - like say a Conan RPG. It's also fine to produce a game that appeals more to female players, like say the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG.

I don't agree with left-leaning claims that every RPG must have a balanced appeal to all demographics. However, I also think there's nothing wrong with producing RPG books that have different appeals.

Greetings!

Jhkim, pour yourself some fresh coffee!

I agree with your statement here.

There are different market demographics, wanting some things in common, but also having very distinct and different desires and preferences for their games.

It is also good for different companies, producing whatever, to seek to produce weird books that cater to normal people, or Hummy Bears Walking with Mommy.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: SHARK on July 12, 2024, 06:12:34 PM

Quote from: jhkim on July 12, 2024, 04:34:51 PMIt's fine to produce a game that appeals more to male players - like say a Conan RPG. It's also fine to produce a game that appeals more to female players, like say the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG.

I don't agree with left-leaning claims that every RPG must have a balanced appeal to all demographics. However, I also think there's nothing wrong with producing RPG books that have different appeals.

Jhkim, pour yourself some fresh coffee!

I agree with your statement here.

Thanks, SHARK.

Also, I got a copy of Europa 10-11 and put it up on archive.org. The quote appears to be genuine and complete. The context is a section on "Women and Wargaming" from pages 86-94, with  a series of quotes from 30 different people: Ellie Nye, Linda Mosca, Karen Berg, Jim Dunnigan, et al. Gygax's quote comes on page 92. Here's the link for the full issues:

https://archive.org/details/europa-10-11

EDITED TO ADD: I'm adding in more issues of EUROPA as well. The list is collected here -

https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Walter+Luc+Haas%22

Thanks jhkim for putting those up on Archive.org - a genuine service in getting that zine up.

The other comments in that section of Europa remind me of Marc Miller of Traveller (and the other Europa) fame saying that he was disturbed about the tendency of some war gamers in the late 60s and early 70s to turn up in full Nazi uniforms and role play Nazi commanders at cons.

You wouldn't get that today, but I am sure those players went home and were perfectly decent after the con. Its not like  pushing toy soldiers around a sandbox led to organised chapters of the Schutzstaffel growing in the US.