D&D Has a LOT of Problems, But Hating Jews Isn't One of Them

Really quick: if you want something similar to Dungeons & Dragons, but which focuses on fun, usability, and quality—yet isn't grossly overpriced—as opposed to social justice progressive politics, propaganda, and irrational, obsessive hatred over mere disagreements and thought crime violations, check out Dungeons & Delvers.

Oy vey ist mir, while there are a lot of legitimate criticisms and complaints that could and should be leveled at the kadokheses behind the curtains at WotC for, say, their gross mismanagement of, well, name something they’re in charge of, as well as complete lack of consistency, a backbone, integrity, and moral character, you’d have to be a complete-and-utter nar-tard to think that hating Jews for being Jews is anywhere on that list.

But hey, this is the age of cancel culture and professional victimhood: gonif's gotta grift, and this article was written by doozy of a feckless fonferer, envious of the fauxppression opined by others, desperate for undeserved attention and pity by anyone wracked with some combination of self-hatred (both legitimate or misprojected), influence, and money that they are all too eager to part with in the vain hope for absolution from offenses both arbitrary and imagined.

The author—one Eric "the Schlemiel" Silver—pathetically limps out of the gate by misrepresenting the very fundamentals of the game, erroneously describing it—as so many other people that purport to play are wont to do—as one where you “tell a story"...presumably after 1d3 pre-game struggle sessions and writing 3d4 x 10 pages of mediocre fanfic. This is a mantra that runs counter to reality, which is to just, you know, play the game, have fun, and see what sorts of genuine stories organically emerge after the fact.

In one of many failed attempts to lend credence to his claim, Eric then tries to establish a pattern of discriminatory behavior by citing three instances that, surprising no one, didn't involve discriminatory behavior. Well, one did, just not in the way Eric hoped. It centered around a diversity hire, which is discriminatory, whining about how they were treated like any other employee, as opposed to receiving underserved, preferential treatment.

But then, I think we've known for years that WotC is brimming with racists and sexists who hire unqualified women and "minorities" to distract and briefly stave off the whingy words of the alphabet cult.

Operating under the delusion that he's building a solid case, Eric's next move is to execute a flawed bandwagon fallacy, asserting that “new, younger players” are "demanding" a more inclusive and accessible game, as if there are any bars of entry beyond paying a pittance to Amazon, an ebay seller, or a local gaming store that peddles used books (if you don't want to pay full price). Or even just an internet connection if you don't want to pay anything at all (either by legitimately downloading the basic rules, or via the, ahem, digital high seas).

The chosen chozer of course doesn't cite anything, such as the actual percentages or even statements. This isn't surprising, as these self-hating, perpetually offended would-be professional victims are equally allergic to facts as they are devoid of creativity and talent. I'm guessing the overwhelming majority of players don't want or care for the actually sexist, racist rhetoric perpetuated by petulant progressives, and either ignore the bullshit or play a game written by someone that actually enjoys games, and doesn't despise their target audience.

WotC is just doing what other duplicitous, moronic, out of touch corporations do, listening to a bunch of figuratively squeaky wheels (though I'm sure some might genuinely identify as a wheel) as opposed to normal people capable of feeling happiness. They either don’t realize or don’t care that the social justice bandwagon never stops: it just trudges along from hobby to hobby, on an ignoble crusade to “purify” them of joy, quality and entertainment (ideally to force people to trawl the same mire of mediocrity they choose to wallow in).

It's only after all that irrelevant, counterfactual preamble, that Eric finally presents his evidence that, in case you forgot, centers around the contrived claim that Dungeons & Dragons has an overwhelming, or at least slight scorn for Semitics, starting with dwarves.

Pictured: Jews, according to Eric.

Here I thought he would take unsubstantiated umbrage with their greed, as well as perhaps their noses, but Eric's, er, "logic" charts a more...circuitous path.

See, some aspects of D&D were obviously inspired by the works of Tolkien, an author that SJWs hate because—like H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, whose works also indirectly contributed to the game—he's a white male, probably straight, and even in death is far more renown and successful than any and all of them could ever be, combined. Also orcs are bad, and progressives are so racist that they think black people are orcs.

Lacking anything even remotely resembling honesty, instead of admitting his infantile bias, Eric attempts to distract with a flimsy strawmanlette, citing a time where Tolkien once mused during an interview that dwarves reminded him in some ways of Jews, as if this is an inherently negative notion, that dwarves aren’t a common and very popular race largely known for many positive traits, such as their skill in metalworking, dedication, work ethic, loyalty, and combat prowess.

Granted they have some negative stereotypes, as all races do, such as the aforementioned greed, being stubborn, carrying eternal grudges, and even overindulging in alcohol, but oddly Eric doesn't point to any of those (not even greed). No, he's instead upset because, and I'm not kidding, they can be stout, are known to (often) work with jewels (and be quite good at it), and are—according to him and him alone—relegated to a secondary status.

First off, stout isn't necessarily a bad thing. I know progressives like to invent terms and redefine words to suit their despicable dogma (they have to, given the lack of evidence and capacity for individual thought), but if they've given the social justice treatment to stout I'm both out of the loop and don't give a shit: the former is highly possible given that a deliberate strategy on their part is to frequently, randomly, invisibly change their language up so that no one can keep track of it all (which allows them to punish people later for not somehow knowing which is the current, "correct" usage), and the latter is a certainty.

Second, working with jewels (his words), is likewise not inherently bad, and only a progressive would regard an actually useful skill as an insult. Maybe if dwarves were known for Marxism, genders studies, or feminist slam poetry Eric wouldn't be so arbitrarily offended? I gotta say, though: if "working with jewels" is a Jewish stereotype, it's not one I'm familiar with. Money is, and apparently there’s at least one Jewish joke, written by Jews, that you’d have to belong to the Jewish faith to understand, but not so much jewels.

Now, being relegated to a secondary status would be bad, but it's also objectively untrue. Perhaps some campaigns do that, should the DM desire, but none of the “official” ones do, and there’s nothing wrong with that...unless of course the DM utterly despises Jews, and like actual racists pitching preposterous theories such as orcs being standins for blacks, somehow arrived at the same contrived conclusion that dwarves must be Jewish standins, and then proceeded to go well out of their way to create a homebrewed, imaginary fantasy world just so they could...I don't know, surreptitiously indulge their hatred?

He then disingenuously states that D&D dwarves are “pretty much the same as their portrayal in Tolkien's work”, before blatantly lying that they're written into this game as a race to pick "if you don't want to be a hero, [but] a fantasy sidekick who will carry the humans and elves with shimmering blond hair once they're done being grumpy and get over their own beliefs”. You can check it out for yourself, but most of that paragraph is lifted directly from Eric's article.

First off, D&D dwarves were obviously not solely inspired by Tolkien's works, which were themselves inspired by Norse and Germanic mythology. Gygax also drew from Norse and apparently Teutonic mythology, the Germanic story The Ring of the Nibelungen, Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions, and even the fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin.

You could chalk these omissions up to ignorance, but given that Eric has an axe to grind I think it was intentional: Eric needs you to believe that Gary lifted dwarves wholesale from Tolkien, alleged, simultaneously secret and blatant Jew-hatred and all, because he hates Jews just as much if not more than Tolkien, that rascally racist. You know, all that anti-Semitism...that only Eric was able to discover and decipher, and is even now being subconsciously encoded into the unwitting minds of everyone playing the game.

Interesting that only the control-left is able to hear these sorts of alleged alt-right dogwhistles. I guess it's a good thing I stopped playing Dungeons & Dragons nearly a decade ago, otherwise I'd probably be helping run one of those numerous, nightmarish American concentration camps along with the rest of the widespread white supremacist player base.

One of many things that Eric neglects to mention, is that the game never at any point enforces racial stereotypes or cultural defaults, so there's only really three reasons to pick a dwarf: the first is if you think you'll actually enjoy playing to the stereotypes and norms, the second is that you like the look, and/or the third—which I think is most likely—you want some mechanical toughness baked into your stats. There is absolutely nothing that outright requires, states, or even implies that you cannot be a hero and/or must be relegated to the role of sidekick.

In fact, no race is subject to these wholly dishonest stipulations. Not only is Eric outright lying, but—given his contempt for Tolkien, Christianity (which we’ll get to in a bit), and assumptions that the “lowly” dwarves would be relegating to doing the actual work that the presumably evil, definitely blonde humans and elves will be credited for—what do you want to bet he’s also racist? He did after all call out blond hair and is a progressive; we know how much those guys love to project their shortcomings and reprehensible beliefs onto others.

Next on his agenda are liches. Since Eric has an irrational hatred of all men white, straight, and successful (and blond), he insinuates that Gary deliberately created the lich as a way to, obviously, villainize Jews. I say obviously because, and I’m not kidding: Eric actually describes liches as a “more explicit example of villainizing Jewish objects and folklore”. Can you guess what he cites as his so-called evidence? Should be easy, right? After all it is a "more explicit example".

Give up? As it turns out, it’s not the actual monster at all—which was conceptually derived from the stories of fantasy authors, that featured sorcerers that either came back to life, or used magic to attain immortality—but the phylactery, a device sometimes but not always associated with liches throughout the editions.

Not pictured: a phylactery, because no lich is going to just carry it around.

Eric's argument centers around him "only ever seen phylactery used as a translation for a Jewish ritual object called a tefillin". I’m not surprised, as Eric’s “research” seems to either end the moment he arrives at his foregone conclusions, or he just omits the rest of the inconvenient facts because, again, agenda: Dungeons & Dragons hates Jews, and Eric’s going to prove it to you no matter how far he has to reach, how many words he has to redefine, and how many facts he has to distort, omit, or invent.

I did some digging, which amounted to skimming a Wikipedia article and a couple other sites, and what I found is that it's actually derived from the Greek word phylakterion, which means amulet or “guard”. They were also at least mentioned in Matthew 23:5, where as opposed to a box they might have just been folded parchment tied to the head and hand. This only took a few minutes, so remember: if an SJW tells you something, be sure to look into it yourself because most if not all of what they say are lies (and it won't take you long to figure out the truth).

Eric tries to use Gary's fascination with history and religion as a kind of smoking gun. That Gary would have looked into this on his own, and so would have definitely known what a phylactery was, or at least how Eric defines it, and—fueled by his infamous Jew-hatred—made the careful, calculated choice to associate it with liches. Eventually, as it wasn't associated with liches for a few editions. In fact, before it was renamed to phylactery, it was just referred to as a "jar".

In all likelihood, Gary or some other writer stumbled on the term phylactery, and simply thought it sounded interesting, or more interesting than charm. I cannot believe for a second that liches started out with no jars/phylactery at all, but then an edition or two later they added in the jar, and then later still someone seized an opportunity to “deep code” subconscious anti-Semitism whilst simultaneously fleshing out the lich.

Not that explicitly associating the specifically Jewish version of the phylactery with liches would be inherently anti-Semitic (which they didn't): lich phylacteries can be pretty much anything they want, and I've never seen one rocking a head- or arm-box. Smart liches don't even bother carrying it around, much less strapping a box to their fucking head. No, they're pretty much always kept someplace hidden and trapped (and enchanted with various defenses), so that the lich can safely recover should they be destroyed.

Regardless as to how hard SJWs try to deny it, intent matters. You would need to prove that a designer deliberately chose the word—and just the word, because again lich phylacteries aren't strap-on boxes—because they hated Jews and wanted to associate some aspect of their religion with a fantasy monster in a make-believe game. Not even in pursuit of any supremacist movement's goals. Just prove to me that it was done not even purely, but mostly because of Jew-hate. That's the bar, here.

In a last ditch effort of already middling efforts, Eric goes after golems, really the only thing on his list that people would have any meaningful likelihood of realizing has roots in Jewish folklore. I don't know why Eric felt that phylacteries were the "more explicit" example when this was on his docket, but feelings are no substitute for facts, and inclusion isn't synonymous with discrimination. Except, according to progressives, if they just don't like what you did, or you, for whatever "reason" pops into their infantile minds.

I know self-hating white people with an excess of time, real privilege (ie, money), and guilt have a difficult time coping with this fact, but people from other cultures actually like this sort of inclusion, or at least don't mind. Probably because they have lives and actual problems to worry about.

Getting back on track, this time Eric takes a different approach: instead of Gary including golems due to Jew-hatred, he instead "appropriates" it, which is one of many made up buzzwords SJWs throw out whenever a white person (and only a white person) uses anything from another culture in a way that they specifically don't approve of. It doesn't matter if the complainer is even meaningfully educated about or partakes in that culture, and it doesn't matter if a majority of people that are meaningfully educated about and partake in that culture don't care or even disagree: Eric pretends to hate it, and he's got some Jew-blood, so this makes it automatically bad.

More specifically, he's upset that Gary "flattened out" the golem. It's no longer entirely based around the very narrow concept of protecting Jews, which would make an already uncommonly used monster even harder to utilize, moreso if they had to protect Jews, as opposed to members of any sort of religion. 

In Eric's own words, D&D golems have been altered into "a crude beast that has no ambitions, needs no sustenance, feels no pain, and knows no remorse and “exists to follow its creator’s orders." I find these statements hilarious because not all golems were created to protect Jews, and some were essentially mindless automatons that for the most part blindly obeyed their creator.

Granted they generally ran amok at some point and had to be destroyed, which is reflected in D&D by their chance to go berserk. The golem of Prague was said to possess magical abilities (specifically invisibility and necromancy) which might be the reason why many golems have access to various spell-like abilities. Not so sure about the almost universal spell immunity, though.

I should note that Dungeons & Dragons takes creative liberties with a number of things, across many cultures and mythologies, but unsurprisingly Eric doesn't care about bards, druids, monks, or even paladins. He doesn't care about banshees, elves, the tarrasque, ghouls, kobolds, ogres, giants, rakshasas, and vampires, all of which stray from the default mythology and folklore in varying ways and degrees. Oh he cares about angels and demons, but only because of his vehement hatred of Christianity.

See, as with his imagined "deep coded" anti-Semitism, based on oh-so concrete evidence such as his misunderstanding of words, Eric thinks that "like most American media, Dungeons & Dragons assumes the world is Christian", all because it contains content such as angels, demons, clerics, and crusades. I'm guessing some adventure or campaign setting has made mention of a crusade, though nothing comes to mind, and I seriously doubt any of them referenced Christianity if they did.

As for angels, had Eric bothered to do any research he would have realized that D&D angels don't follow the Christian hierarchy: they're all just winged humanoids, though in some editions you have generally labeled "celestials" that bear animal traits or heads, though they aren't related, instead relegated to other Good-aligned planes. There's also some conflation between the Hebrew and Christian religion with the names and descriptions of angels: for Dungeons & Delvers I basically had to just say screw it, and pick one set.

SJWs don't respond to criticism, but it would be nice if Eric could point out where the deva (a Hindu term for a heavenly being), planetar, or solar are referenced in Christian texts. To say nothing of the agathinon and light of editions past, the latter of which is the only angel without a humanoid form. Maybe he can point out which Dungeons & Dragons supplement features the ophan, ish, and cherub.

So, by default, not very Christian at all. I'm even more curious about demons, which is a word that stems from Greek (daimon) that used to just mean a lesser god or spirit of some sort, good or bad. While writing and designing Dungeons & Delvers, I did a bunch of research on demons to see if I could find specific examples to draw from (before largely settling on Christian angels corrupted by sin): did Eric actually perform any research, here?

Is the spined devil based on a known Christian demon? The bone devil? Lemures are drawn from Greek mythology, and balors were lifted from Tolkien's balrog, but what about the glabrezu? Nupperibo? Hezrou? Barlgura? Dretch? What about the fact that there are canonically three different infernal planes, and something like five different demonic subtypes? Was that taken from Christian literature?

Only thing that comes to mind is the succubus which...has its origin in Jewish folklore? According to a Wikipedia article that took me seconds to find and skim, the succubus was mentioned in Zohar, and the Alphabet of Ben Sira. Come on Eric, you already dropped the ball on dwarves, phylacteries, and even the golem. I'm starting to think you don't actually know anything at all about Jewish folklore or religion, and are just using your genetics to force a cowardly company into compliance, so you can go online and brag to other miserable losers about your victory.

But for a moment let's ignore all that. Let's ignore the spurious claims about Jew hatred, and focus instead on Eric's other spurious claim, that white, straight supremacy "lurks" within the D&D books (note how he tries to make it sound sinister). Books which tell "so many they are monsters and unwelcome", contain "an unspoken Christian supremacy", and tell Jews that they are "unwanted". Note that Eric doesn't actually point to anything,. He can't, and he knows this.

Instead he just says it, because cancel culture (which belongs under a broader umbrella of cancer culture plaguing the world) is real, intoxicating, and trivially easy to accomplish. Evidence is unnecessary (and even outright ignored when it isn't viewed with scorn) when so many businesses cave so easily and frequently, like slapping up a trans flag during a specific time of the year and pretending that you care, that you're making a difference. It's so transparent that it ironically only fools other self-hating, privileged losers, who engage in the exact same practice.

All you need to do to refute the shit spewing out of Eric's mouth is look at the books: blacks are overrepresented, as are non-human races. One writer (a term I use as loosely as SJWs throw around Nazi) pledged to push homosexuality in every product, a practice he thinks is both unconventional and progressive despite homosexuality being pushed in everything else. They hire to check off diversity boxes instead of talent and skill (and boy oh boy does it show), and I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if they covertly engaged in discriminatory hiring practices.

If WotC were really trying to push a straight, white agenda, for starters they would at least somewhat properly represent skin color, and go out of their way to ensure that every NPC is straight (regardless of whether or not it matters to whatever terrible adventure they're pushing). For a secret Christian agenda you'd have angels looking like Christian angels. You'd have references to Christian angels and demons. You wouldn't be able to play wizards at all (or druids or warlocks). There would be inherent benefits for being religious, and only the Christian God would be acceptable.

It's almost as if WotC is bending over backwards to pander to every demographic but Christians (and normal people in general), and are only resorting to certain terms because they've been around forever, and are easily understood even if used incorrectly. For example, using church for pretty much any structure used as a place of worship. Or, like how people might equally use—and technically misuse—cathedral or temple for any old religious building, or paladin to refer to any conception of a fighter/cleric hybrid, kobolds in general, or lycanthrope instead of therianthrope.

Again, Eric is pissed, not because WotC used elements or concepts from Jewish mythology—a practice by people from other cultures praise, so long as they aren't indoctrinated into victomhood and grievance culture—but because they didn't use them precisely how he wanted them to. He's also not upset about the alleged Christian references, of which there are virtually none: he's just bringing it up because it's "okay" if not required to hate Christianity and traditional values in general, and he's hoping people will side with him for no other reason than to purge content from a game that I don't think he plays or even enjoys.

WotC is guilty of a lot of things (such as mangling the intellectual property of far more popular and talented predecessors), but here it’s for merely violating a contract they didn't know they agreed upon. The reality is that they are unwittingly playing a game that they can't win. The best they could have done was hire Eric, paid him far more than he deserves (which is anything, really), all to merely delay his racist screed. At some point they would slip up. Innocently say or do something, ironically while bending the knee and capitulating to Eric's whims, and then be subject to his apocryphal accusations. 

The correct move is to simply refuse to play their game. Ignore them or, even better, mock them. Yeah, he'll go whine on social media, but after a week or so will become bored, somehow exhausted despite not having done anything, and, in need of his dopamine fix, find something else to pathetically whine about in hopes for undeserved attention and adulation.

Eric mercifully closes things out by declaring (some would say threatening) that he'll never stop playing Dungeons & Dragons, not that I'm convinced he really does, and that he won't "let" anyone push him off of something he loves...a very stunning and brave stance, given that no one is trying to stop him from doing anything. It's also bullshit, as we all know progressives aren't capable of love, or even joy. The closest they get to experiencing pleasure is whenever they get a company to make a change precisely in accordance to their whims, or get someone canceled (the big "O" is of course getting someone to commit suicide).

He also states that if WotC wants to make a game for everyone—which they did, as anyone can play it and do whatever the hell they want—they "just" have to do everything he says. Which for now would be to get rid of all the alleged antisemitism...that only he was apparently able to discern despite the game being out for decades. But, when your only tool is actually racist, sexist social justice rhetoric, everything else looks racist, sexist, and so on.

This is just how it starts: set a precedent for capitulation, then push incrementally harder. Get others to join in and push other seemingly trivial tweaks for the sake of mentally ill narcissists. Then keep pushing for more pervasive changes, until eventually the game isn't enjoyable ,and the actual players just abandon it altogether. It's kind of like how the government likes to gradually erode rights and freedoms when not called out and resisted.

And that's the real goal: destroy Dungeons & Dragons—well, what's left of it, anyway—before moving onto the next arbitrary target, or at least get it out of the way so you can promote other, somehow worse games shoved out by people desperate for attention and reinforcement of their delusions of being a game designer.

This is partly what led to the creation of my own game, Dungeons & Delvers. It's fairly similar to Dungeons & Dragons (yet different enough to I guess you could say validates its existence), just without all the ham-fisted, shoehorned social justice politics, virtue signaling, and pandering. It's a game made by people that both actually game and enjoy it, and you can check it out here. 

Something to point out is that we "appropriated" golems better than Dungeons & Dragons ever could have hoped to, by specifically researching Jewish golems and combining our results with the D&D flavor, perhaps other sources (I can't remember at this point), and some original ideas. It's definitely closer to Jewish myth, not perfect, but then it doesn't need to be in the context of a fantasy game not trying to accurately portray real life.

Here's some art featuring the clay and stone golems respectively: