Gygax, E. Gary

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E. Gary Gygax

Personal

Born July 27, 1938, in Chicago, IL; married (divorced); married second wife, Gail Carpenter, August 15, 1987; children: (first marriage) two sons; (second marriage) one son, three daughters. Education: Completed one year of college. Hobbies and other interests: Game play, reading history, travel, bird watching, fishing, walking, pyrotechnics.

Addresses

Agent—c/o Author Mail, Troll Lord Games, P.O. Box 251171, Little Rock, AR 72225.

Career

Novelist and game designer. TSR, Inc., Lake Geneva, WI, cofounder and game designer, 1972-85; founder of GenCon (international annual gaming convention), 1968. Also worked as an insurance underwriter and shoe repairer.

Awards, Honors

Hall of Fame, CSR Awards, 1980; four-time Best Game Inventor, Games Day (United Kingdom).

Writings

NOVELS

(With Frank Mentzer) The Temple of Elemental Evil, TSR (Lake Geneva, WI), 1985.

NOVELS; "SAGARD THE BARBARIAN" SERIES

(With Flint Dille) The Ice Dragon, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1985.

(With Flint Dille) The Green Hydra, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1985.

(With Flint Dille) The Crimson Sea, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1985.

(With Flint Dille) The Fire Demon, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1986.

NOVELS; "GREYHAWK ADVENTURE" SERIES

Saga of Old City, TSR (Lake Geneva, WI), 1985.

Artifact of Evil, TSR (Lake Geneva, WI), 1986.

NOVELS; "GORD THE ROGUE" SERIES

Sea of Death, New Infinities (Lake Geneva, WI), 1987.

City of Hawks, New Infinities (Lake Geneva, WI), 1987.

Night Arrant (short stories), New Infinities (Lake Geneva, WI), 1987.

Come Endless Darkness, New Infinities (Delavan, WI), 1988.

Dance of Demons, New Infinities (Delavan, WI), 1988.

NOVELS; "DANGEROUS JOURNEYS" SERIES

The Anubis Murders, Roc (New York, NY), 1992.

The Samarkand Solution, Roc (New York, NY), 1993.

Death in Delhi, Roc (New York, NY), 1993.

GAMING MANUALS; UNDER NAME GARY GYGAX

(With Jeff Perren) Chainmail, Guidon Games, 1971.

Dungeons & Dragons, TSR (Lake Geneva, WI), 1974.

Greyhawk, TSR (Lake Geneva, WI), 1976.

Eldritch Wizardry, TSR (Lake Geneva, WI), 1976.

Monster Manual, TSR (Lake Geneva, WI), 1977.

Tomb of Horrors, TSR (Lake Geneva, WI), 1978.

Stedding of the Hill Giant Chief, TSR (Lake Geneva, WI), 1978.

Shrine of the Kuo-Toa, TSR (Lake Geneva, WI), 1978.

Hall of the Fire Giant Chief, TSR (Lake Geneva, WI), 1978.

Descent into the Depths of the Earth, TSR (Lake Geneva, WI), 1978.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook, TSR (Lake Geneva, WI), 1978.

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Masters Guide, TSR (Lake Geneva, WI), 1979.

The World of Greyhawk, TSR (Lake Geneva, WI), 1980.

Legion of Gold, TSR (Lake Geneva, WI), 1981.

The Keep on the Borderlands, TSR (Lake Geneva, WI), 1981.

The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, TSR (Lake Geneva, WI), 1982.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual II, TSR (Lake Geneva, WI), 1983.

Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure, TSR (Lake Geneva, WI), 1984.

The Temple of Elemental Evil, TSR (Lake Geneva, WI), 1984.

Dangerous Journeys: Necropolis, Game Designers' Workshop, 1992.

Dangerous Journeys: Mythus Magick Game Designers' Workshop, 1992.

Dangerous Adventures: Mythus, Game Designers' Workshop, 1992.

The Lejendary Rules for All Players, Hekaforge (Lake Villa, IL), 1999.

Lejendary Adventure: Beasts of Lejend, Hekaforge (Lake Villa, IL), 2000.

The Slayer's Guide to Undead, Mongoose (Swindon, England), 2002.

The Slayer's Guide to Dragons, Mongoose (Swindon, England), 2002.

Gary Gygax's Necropolis, Necromancer Games, 2002.

Gary Gygax's The Canting Crew, Troll Lord Games (Little Rock, AR), 2003.

Gary Gygax's World Builder, Troll Lord Games (Little Rock, AR), 2003.

Gary Gygax's Living Fantasy, Troll Lord Games (Little Rock, AR), 2004.

Lejendary Adventure Essentials: Fantasy Role Playing Game, Troll Lord Games (Little Rock, AR), 2004.

Contributor to magazines, including Gaming Trade, Gaming Frontiers, and Dungeon.

Adaptations

Dungeons & Dragons was adapted for a cartoon series by CBS, 1983.

Work in Progress

More titles in the "Gygaxian World Builders" series; a Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) version of Lejendary Adventures; two new rules supplements to Lejendary Adventures.

Sidelights

Called by many the father of role-playing games or RPGs, E. Gary Gygax was coauthor of the seminal Dungeons & Dragons, the game that put RPGs on the cultural map. Until publication of this game in 1974, gaming was confined to a limited number of war-games specialists and fantasy fans; Gygax and his company, TSR, brought gaming into the mainstream. Gygax, who himself grew up on science-fiction, fantasy, and sword-and-sorcery books, as well as on games such as chess and cards, also founded GenCon in 1968, which has become the world's largest annual gaming convention with sites in the United States and Europe. Taking a break from his game design work in the 1980s and early 1990s, Gygax turned out a number of fantasy novels set in the worlds he had created for game play. But it is for his role in the cultivation of fantasy games that Gygax is best known. As Harvey Smith noted in Game Developer, "If he isn't the most influential person in the world of RPGs, Gary Gygax certainly belongs in the pantheon of the giants of the genre." Gygax spans the decades of RPGs, from the early days of what is known as Paper and Pen games, to high-tech MMOGs.

From Chess to Fantasy Games

Born in 1938, in Chicago, Illinois, Gygax was the son of German immigrants. He grew up loving games and fantasy literature; at age five he was playing card games, and by six he had moved on to chess. "My mother showed me how to play because I was bored," Gygax told Allen Rausch in a GameSpy interview. As a teenager he played with miniatures and invented his own game scenarios. These were influenced by the books he was reading at the time, fiction by authors such as Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp, Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, and Jack Vance, as well as works of mythology, an enthusiasm his father fostered. As a ten year old, Gygax was also a fan of sword and sorcery books. As he commented in an interview for OneRing.net, "I read my first Conan yarn about 1948, and was a fan and collector of the pulp SF and fantasy magazines since 1950." Unlike other fantasy buffs, however, Gygax was not impressed by the books of British author J. R. R. Tolkien. "I found them very droll and very dull. I still don't give a hoot about Hobbits." Interestingly, Tolkien touches found their way into the initial versions of Dungeons & Dragons.

Gygax dropped out of high school and spent only a year at a local college before going out on his own. He worked in the insurance industry and continued his gaming hobby with more than just an avocational interest. As he mentioned in his OneRing.net interview, "I was determined to be involved in the creation and publication of games from around 1965." For such games he chose a historical period close to his heart: the Medieval era and the Dark Ages. "We started playing in the period because I had found appropriate miniatures," he told Rausch. "I started devising rules [about] what the plastic figure was wearing was what he had." After Gygax became the unofficial game master in encounters among his tight band of gaming friends, his rules became increasingly complicated and battles both large and small were waged. When his friends tired of this, he threw in a wizard to spice things up. Gygax subsequently wrote up the book of rules, with friend Jeff Perren, and called the game Chainmail. It was this miniatures game that eventually transformed itself into Dungeons & Dragons several years later.

Another friend, Dave Aronson, began playing Chainmail with just one character on the board, and this inspired Gygax to move the game more toward role play. The gaming manual was a straight-war-gaming rule guide for miniatures, but in a fantasy supplement, Gygax laid the groundwork for Dungeons & Dragons. First, however, he and friend Donald Kaye started the game publishing company Tactical Studies Rules, or TSR. The company began with a meager $1,000 in working capital, and by 1973 they were publishing updated versions of Chainmail and Gygax was hard at work with Dave Aronson on an epic medieval heroic quest game.

Enter Dungeons & Dragons

Gygax completed the first draft of his new quest game in 1972 and sent it out to friends around the country to get their response. The final draft was completed in 1973 and published by TSR in January 1974. Dungeons & Dragons had no fancy frills or game board: it required dice, three operators' manuals, and the players' manuals. An innovation was the referee, or Dungeon Master, who sets up the fictional setting for the game, who is also the antagonist, and who additionally moderates the action on the adventures or quests the players set out on, hunting for treasures in dangerous locales. Three classes of characters were designed: fighters, wizards, and clerics. It also had hobbits, dwarves, and elves. Monsters such as goblins and dragons awaited the participants, and players earned experience points as they overcame these obstacles as play progressed.

Initially, Gygax thought his game would appeal to a very limited audience of fantasy fans like himself, and he set up a shoe repair business on the side to support his family. In any event, it was not needed. Dungeons & Dragons "took the country by storm," according to Susan Buchsbaum, writing in Inc.

College students became an especially strong customer base. Several supplements, including Greyhawk and Eldritch Wizardry were added in the next few years. By 1978 the sales for Dungeons & Dragons had hit $2.2 million. With publication of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons between 1977 and 1979, sales skyrocketed to almost $20 million. The newer version added genders and races, as well as new classes and a set of basic qualities to character creation. The success or failure of various moves and gambits was still controlled by a roll of the twenty-sided die. "It was just great," Gygax told Rausch. "I had done something that so many people were having a great time with. I obviously love the game and I loved sharing with so many people."

Soon, however, the bubble did not so much burst as become punctured. First came a backlash from religious groups and some parent groups who criti-cized the magic elements and claimed that the game even caused children to commit suicide. Gygax suddenly found himself in the middle of a media frenzy, even appearing as a guest on 60 Minutes to defend his industry. Eventually this storm blew over, however. By 1982 Gygax was in California overseeing production of the Saturday morning cartoon show adapted from his famous game. TSR cofounder Kaye had died in 1975, and Gygax increasingly found himself being edged out of his own company. By 1985 he had left TSR to work on his own projects.

Life after Dungeons & Dragons

As an indie game designer, Gygax wrote a more advanced RPG with multiple genres, Dangerous Journeys. He also turned to writing novel-length fiction. Of his "Sagard the Barbarian" series, cowritten with Flint Dille, a contributor wrote in the St. James Guide to Fantasy Writers that while the books got "little attention from critics," they were "nevertheless pleasing to role-playing gamers."

Another fantasy adventure series features an orphan beggar named Gord, who rises to heroic deeds in the manner of Conan the Barbarian. "Gord the Rogue" includes elements of Dungeons & Dragons, such as its setting in the city of Greyhawk. In each title, Gord sets out on a quest with mentors such as Gellor and Curley Greenleaf. In series installment Saga of Old City, Gord returns to Greyhawk as a master thief, but also shows his heroic nature when he rescues a young noblewoman. Sea of Death finds Gord traveling far in search of a lost city, and in Dance of Demons Gord and Gellor enter the Abyss on their final epic quest. Gygax also wrote a short story collection, Night Arrant, featuring Gord.

Another trio of books uses the Dangerous Journeys RPG as inspiration. Set in a land resembling ancient Egypt, and featuring the magician and wizard priest Setne Inhetep, these books are a combination of historical fantasy and mystery novel. In each title, Setne and his beautiful bodyguard Rachelle battle the powers of darkness as they investigate murders at home and abroad. A contributor to the St. James Guide to Fantasy Writers felt that these books are less than successful. The writer found Gygax's setting of Egypt a "mishmash of Ancient Egyptian locations and society, with a gloss of 20th-century America applied." Similarly the critic maintained that Setne's magical powers are "not enough to make the investigations strong and original in their own right."

If you enjoy the works of E. Gary Gygax

If you enjoy the works of E. Gary Gygax, you may also want to check out the following:

The work of role-playing game designers such as Dave Arneson, creator of Blackmoor, Greg Stafford, creator of Glorantha, and John Wick, creator of Legend of the Five Rings.

A Return to RPGs

Gygax returned to writing role-play games in 1999 with Lejendary Adventure, a game with very few rules that are easy to remember, and one based on skills bundles for the characters. Unlike Gygax's previous games, this RPG does not require players to continually refer to the rules book during play. The character-creation system is also more streamlined than in earlier games. At the same time, the game can be played on many levels, making it as complex or straightforward as participants desire. Many consider Lejendary Adventure to be Gygax's best work. Another project for the ever-busy Gygax is a series of reference books, the "Gygaxian Fantasy Worlds" series, written together with other game designers.

A stroke and a minor heart attack in 2004 slowed Gygax down somewhat. He went into partial retirement and quit his cigarette-smoking habit of half a century. His enthusiasm for games and game design has not been dampened, however. At heart, games are, as he told Rausch, "an interesting diversion from everyday life. Games give you a chance to excel, and if you're playing in good company, you don't even mind if you lose because you had the enjoyment of the company during the course of the game."