It was inevitable from the moment Wizards of the Coast bought out TSR way back in 1997 that players and their former creatives would be treated poorly.
One could point to signs of what we would now call "SJW entryism" early in the hobby. But by and large, the hobby was run and played by normal people in the beginning, and they did not gain any real traction.
Gygax himself was an insurance underwriter who loved wargaming. Virtually everyone who came into the hobby in the beginning had life experience outside of RPGs before they decided to try and turn their hobby into a business.
The real nail in the coffin for relatively normal people running the RPG hobby came when Peter Adkinson finally got his hands on the D&D IP.
Behold, WOTC corporate culture circa 1997:
GENCON Owner & Former WOTC CEO, Peter Adkins
“The first thing I noticed about my new employer was how the halls of the offices ran rampant with representatives of alt culture. Up to that point managers' hiring practices seemingly consisted of recruiting anyone they gamed, partied or slept with, and preferably all three. If you were a Seattle gamer in 1994-95, you had to be willfully incompetent to not get a job at Wizards.”
“Best of all, though, we would fuck like rabbits. On "Who Knew? Day" employees wore badges proclaiming their sexual orientation. Intimate relationships sprouted like mold on bread, cutting across departments and seniorities with the hierarchy-smashing fervor of our consensus-driven team meetings. Heedless of status, even peasants and princes coupled, and fell apart.
The example was set right at the top: Peter and his wife, also an employee, had an open marriage. Wizards was a big horny summer camp, and we were starring in the teen sex comedy of our fevered dreams. …”
The quotes from the Salon piece show that from the beginning, the workplace culture at WOTC was set early on. This standard was set from the top down by the CEO himself. Yes, Hasbro bought out WOTC in 1999, and to a degree the employees were required on the to clean up their act. On the surface. But the damage was already done.
If there is one thing that we know to be true; It is that once these people get in positions of power, they will only hire fellow travelers that also think like them. Virtually without exception.
The result of fostering such an internal culture manifested itself in the ‘crack team’ of game designers that Adkinson had put in charge of D&D 3e being proto-woke leftists that utterly despised their core sales demographic and openly resented having to cater to them.
Johnathan Tweet: 3E Designer And Originator of D&D Diversity
Mr. Tweet openly talks about excising any references of or to real-world mythology when worldbuilding for official 3e D&D. Making the game entirely self-referential. Effectively doing a “Year Zero” of D&D lore…
“…one part of the process I enjoyed was describing the world of D&D in its own terms, rather than referring to real-world history and mythology. When writing roleplaying games, I enjoy helping the player get immersed in the setting, and I always found these references to the real world to be distractions."
...
"…by the time we were working on 3rd Ed, D&D had had such a big impact on fantasy that we basically used D&D as its own source."
…
"We were fortunate that by 2000 D&D had such a strong legacy that it could stand on its own without reference to Earth history or mythology.”
Mr. Tweet also openly discusses pushing a “diversity and inclusion” agenda for 3e.
“One way we diverged from the D&D heritage, however, was by making the game art more inclusive.”
…
“Luckily for us, Wizards of the Coast had an established culture of egalitarianism, and we were able to update the characters depicted in the game to better reflect contemporary sensibilities.”
…
“By the time I was working on 3E, I had been dealing with the pronoun issue for ten years.”
Notice how furious he gets when the WOTC Marketing team of the time (TSR holdovers long since purged.) insisted that they throw their biggest sales demographic a bone:
“…the marketing team added Regdar, a male fighter, to the mix of iconic characters. We designers weren’t thrilled, and as the one who had drawn up the iconic characters I was a little chapped.”
And to his utter horror:
“… Regdar proved popular, and if the marketing team was looking for an attractive character to publicize, they got one.”
Monte Cook, Former TSR Developer
Monte Cook originally posted on his now-defunct livejournal blog revealing his social justice proclivities.
Mr. Cook was an early leftist cultural colonizer who had embedded himself within TSR. We can see how he gleefully reveals his true colors when he feels that the corporate culture has swung in his favor.
“When I worked at TSR, there was always basically a truism in cover art--the central figure had to be a white male. Most of us actually helping to create the cover art, either by conceiving it or actually creating it, hated that kind of outlook, …”
“…when D&D was bought by WotC and we started working on 3E, we really felt that this was a time when we could break this mold. …”
“It was a thumb to the nose of the old TSR requirement.”
“At least that was our intention.”
“…to the credit of a number of people--artists, art directors, designers and editors alike--our disdain for Regdar made its way into a lot of art. If you look closely, Regdar is getting thrashed on most of the early pieces he shows up in. (Look for his ignominious fate on the original DM's Screen, for example.) …”
Vicariously killing off their core sales demographic was viewed as a necessary part of art commissions
!
James Jacobs: ( D&D Writer and Current Creative Director for the Pathfinder Adventure Paths).
Jacobs continued what Cook put forward as he spoke about his leftism.
“Killing off Captain Whitebread is indeed a time-honored tradition in WotC books. I've written my fair share of art orders for those books, and have made sure to have Regdar get blasted or ruined or murdered a few times myself (such as at the end of Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk). It's a fun little semi-secret D&D tradition!”
The idea that this kind of behavior would not continue to manifest itself over time would have been wishful thinking at best.
One only needs to read what the recent 5th edition stewards over at WOTC have openly said about the game's core sales demographic in order to see the culmination of this anti-white male attitude some twenty-seven years later.
Kyle Brink, Former Executive Producer for D&D at WotC:
Brink famously wanted white males out of the hobby, as he said on a YouTube channel before his departure.
“And I think there's been mistakes made in years past where people assumed that D&D players were all, y'know, white dudes in a basement. Which has been a faulty assumption for a lot of years and gets more and more false every day and so in my viewpoint, honestly, guys like me can't leave soon enough for this hobby.” (Or alternately insert Kyle brink meme quote in place)
Christopher Perkins, Current Creative Director of Dungeons & Dragons at Wizards of the Coast:
This doesn’t leave much doubt on where he stands, does he?
WotC has been so desperate to move on from its ‘toxic’ white male fanbase that even the creators of the game are no longer immune to progressive scrutiny.
Jason Tondro, current D&D Senior Designer/Project Lead:
After smearing Gary Gygax as a rampant sexist for daring to thumb his nose at the feminist busy-bodies of his era, he proceeded to declare the concerns of their traditional fanbase at his unwarranted smear as beneath all notice.
“… It never occurred to me I’d arise the ire of the grognards. It’s obvious now that I look back on it, but I just don’t those critiques seriously even now. I consider these people not worth listening to, …”
Everything we are currently seeing with the direction of D&D in 2024, from the ‘diversity’ in the art to the writing, has been the natural result of the D&D brand being run by leftists that have only gotten bolder over time in turning the product that they have control over into a propaganda vehicle for their ideology.
And it will not get better anytime soon. The people currently in charge of D&D are a continuation of the anti-white male corporate culture that has been part of WotC since the beginning. Everything we have seen so far points to WotC following the same destructive path that we have already seen taken by their fellow travelers in the TV, Movie, comic, and now video game industries. It is no longer a matter of if, just when.
by Wes Pryor
If you enjoy clean fantasy fiction with great worldbuilding and a classic feel, read The Adventures of Baron von Monocle six-book series and support Fandom Pulse!
I'm surprised you didn't mention Tweet's long track record of public support and fundraising (including a Bundle of Holding and sales from his gaming collection) for Planned Parenthood.