"Ruminations on the life of Gary Gygax" Topic

I have spent a lot of time today thinking about Gary Gygax. More, perhaps, than I have spent thinking about the guy in my entire life.

I knew who the guy was, of course. Never met him personally.

Today, I felt more than a little off. The news of the man's death left me a tad shaken, I confess. Durned if I know why. And yeah, I'm a D&D geek. Have been since '78… and it's D&D that brought me to wargaming, and to miniatures.

And today, it seems, I have seen the man reflected back everywhere I looked.

icanhascheezburger.com had a lolcat devoted to his memory. Didn't expect to see that.

On the way home, I passed a GameStop. I don't play a lot of computer games these days… but I noticed that World of Warcraft stuff was selling big. Has been for awhile. Lots of it in the window… Burning Crusade is still selling, and BradyGames is still hawking guides, and Chinese farmers still want to sell you their gold. Wanna try it? Free demo discs, with two weeks of free play…

Would this have happened without Gygax? Would there be MMORPGs set in fantasy worlds, distorting the shapes of our lives, generating insane amounts of money, feeding the inner geek of people who will never touch a set of dice?

Everquest, Star Wars Online, Might and Magic… man, I see a horde of old DOS titles parading before my eyes. How much has this dippy old former insurance underwriter shaped the world in which I live?

Mage Knight. Magic: The Gathering. LARPs. LAN parties. Reaper Miniatures. Descent: Journeys In The Dark. All the different Munchkin card games. The very concept of "leveling up." How much of this would ever have existed without this guy Gygax, writing books in his basement?

Before Gygax and Arneson, there were wargames with little painted Napoleonics miniatures or little cardboard counters with little boxes with X's in them to represent infantry.

Now, there are five colors of magic, a hundred colors of dragon, and a whole universe of topics outside the range of ordinary historical miniatures. There are murlocs. There are a dozen different kinds of elf. There is a whole mythology that a hundred different grad students will take years writing masters' theses to examine.

The man made an IMPACT.

Or have I just had too much to drink this evening?

The question I've never heard a definitive answer to, is how much was Gygax's work and how much was Dave Arneson's work.

Gygax was the guy who developed the idea of using fantasy-based heroes and monsters in an otherwise historically based miniatures game. He also came up with the idea of "one player, one miniature," i.e., "a character."

I know Arneson cracked the problem of "one shot death" to a miniature by inventing the concept of "hit points." He may also have developed the concept of "leveling up" and gaining additional hit points and new powers.

Gygax, on the other hand, was definitely the guy who singlehandedly wrote everything down and published it all. While Arneson certainly deserves his due, it wouldn't have gotten anywhere if Gygax hadn't written it down and published it.

( I thought it was Dave Wesely & his Braunstein game.. that came up with the one player/one figure thing… as well as doing non-combat oriented actions ? )

Hitpoints go back to Jane's Naval Wargames; Arneson may well get credit for putting the idea onto individual people.

If it had been up to Gary, D&D might NEVER have been published. It was his partner at G&K Enterprises (publishers of Tactical Studies Rules), Don Kaye, who saw the commercial potential and insisted that D&D be the company's next project. Gary wanted to do the egregious "Airpower" rules that the re-organized TSR, Inc. finally published several years later, after Don's death.

Don was also the guy that organized the mass of notes, sketches, charts, maps, etc. that Arneson and Gygax had developed. But he died just as D&D was starting to hit it big, and Gary and the Blumes managed to sweep his part in things under the rug.

Gary did not come up with the use of fantasy heroes/creatures in games, nor did he invent "characters". When his co-author, on "Chainmail", Steve Perrin, came up with the fantasy matrix, Gary tried to keep Don Lowry of Guidon Games, the then publisher of "Chainmail", from including it, because it was "dumb".

Wesely was certainly one of the poeple who originated the idea of "characters", but the Twin Cities Wargamers had laready been using "proto-characters" in historical games for a number of years. The Braunstein game was a more or less natural outgrowth of the campaign games the group was carrying on – sort of a "campaign writ small", if you will.

As to who invented what parts of D&D, Arneson first started running games involving fantasy characters apart from armies. EGG and DLA were, respectively, President and Vice President of the Castles and Crusades Society, the medieval wing of the International Federation of Wargamers. Individual members were assigned fiefs and encouraged to have miniatures battles (using the official Chainmail rules, of course) with each other. When the edition of Chainmail with the fantasy matrix came out, members began including fantasy units in their armies, much to EGG's distress.

Arneson's group was part of this, but quickly began to add things like "Horsepucky the Barbarian wants to sneak into Lord Funt's castel and steal his magic sword". Dave obliged. Soon, the quests and secret missions began to be more frequent than the battles. And action became localized in the vicinity of Blackmoor Castle. Finally, it evolved into the classic dungeon crawl.

Arneson's rules, such as they were at this point, were pretty freewheling, and very much skill-based. No classes, no levels. The "hit points" concept was adopted from Fletcher Pratt's Naval Wargame, which was popular in the group. There was even a formula involving size, armor, and experience at first. Decisions made by the referee were recorded and served as precedent for later games. Since the group was used to playing refereed games, not only Fletcher Pratt, but also the Strategos N and Strategos CW Napoleonic and ACW rules (based on C. A. L. Totten's "Strategos:An American Game of War"), the idea of an all-powerful referee was easily accepted.

DLA kept sending reports and copies of his notes to EGG, who kept complaining that the Twin Cities group were wrecking the C&CS campaign with this nonsense. Finally, he came up for a visit and sat in on a game. His whole attitude changed. He went back to Lake Geneva and set about reorganizing Greyhawk, his C&CS fief, as a Blackmoor clone. The big difference in styles was that Gary de-emphasized skills and insisted that his players choose a class. They also advanced through "levels" as a result of earning experience, which they did at an alrming rate, Greyhawk being the original "Monty Haul" dungeon.

Dave and Gary continued to correspond, with the majority of input still coming from Arneson. By this time Gary and Don Kaye had formed G&K Enterprises to buy out Guidon Games. They kept publishing "Chainamail" and other GG products such as "Tractics" and "Don't give Up the Ship". They added new miniatures rules to the line such as "Tricolour" and "Fight in the Skies" (later "Dawn Patrol"). The company was propspering and looking around for the next title. As noted above, Gary wanted "Airpower", at that time even less well developed and more greatly flawed than the final product. Don over-rode him and pushed D&D out the door.

'The question I've never heard a definitive answer to, is how much was Gygax's work and how much was Dave Arneson's work'

I think all those guys had a hand in bringing it to our tables. These things hang on a series of chances. One could say, 'if it were up to that guy, it would never have been done', but thats never the whole story. Kind of like The Beatles, or the rise of Elvis. Chance and consequences of action. We should honour people like Judges Guild (Bob Bledsaw, Paul Jaquays) as well as TSR movers shakers and obstructers. Gygax was a crazy, infuriating, likeable, creative, insecure human being. These are always the people we honour in death.

Doctor Bedlam – you missed one item from your list, and no I don't weant to turn this thoughtful thread into a rant page, because I too have much to thank Gary Gygax for.

Anyway – I believe that with no D&D there would have been no fantasy wargaming boom. It'd have been Hyboria and Middle Earth as a sideline of ancients and that's plenty thank-you ! Games Workshop had it's initial boom on the back of D&D and then Traveller and Runequest. Without them they'd still be converting wooden bread boards into solitaire boards. Or they'd have gone bust. Wargaming today would be a very different hobby. Very different indeed.

I must agree.

And yeah, I'll be the first to admit that Gygax had his faults, sure.

It is my understanding that the Braunstein concept did not attach to "one mini, one character." The original Braunstein games' players were controlling factions, not individuals. However, due to the fast and furious nature of the game (and the surprising number of players who showed up), Wesely invented the concept of "dungeon mastering" or "reinterpreting the rules on the fly to give the players the freedom to interact in a new way."

Source: The Roleplaying Gamer's Bible, by whatzisname that I can't look up because I'm at work. First edition.

To be blunt, it doesn't matter who came up with the mechanics and "background" of the game. E. Gary Gygax was the promoter and marketer who got the game out there to the public. Without this it would of never taken off. So he remains the "Father of Role Playing Games."

penny-arcade.com/comic

A tangent involving one of EGG's contemporaries:

I wonder what M.A.R. Barker would have done if D&D had never come along? Would Empire of the Petal Throne still have appeared as an RPG? Would it have been the *first* RPG? Would such a quirky setting (compared to Greyhawk, anyway) have sold well enough to start the RPG boom?

EPT was just too esoteric for the masses IMHO.

I also seem to recall that there were also a lot of empty spots (or at least barely covered) in the rules. While I think this is appealing to those "free wheeling" types the majority of RPGers that I have seen want a little more structure to their world than EPT provided.

I still remember the maps that came with 1st edition EPT. They were absolutely marvelous and the best maps I have ever seen for an RPG. I forget the exact material they were made out of but it was thick, resiliant, durable, and had a unique smell even years later.

Gary Gygax was responsible for a revolution in Wargaming that spread into popular culture. He is the only rock star that the hobby has ever had.
Regardless of anyone's opinion of the man, or even of the necessity of having rock stars, his legacy is enormous.

'I forget the exact material they were made out of but it was thick, resiliant, durable, and had a unique smell even years later.'

I thought I was the only one.

Father of more than just RPGs, I think.

How many fantasy novels wouldn't have been written? How many fantasy-based card games, board games, MMORPGs? Would R.A. Salvatore be writing murder mysteries? Or would he even have tried to become a full time writer, at all?

Gygax didn't invent fantasy. He didn't invent fantasy novels. He didn't create Drizz't Do'Urden. Hell, he didn't even create drow.

But without him, would any of this have come to pass?

Yes, I often wonder, (well, sometimes wonder), if EPT would have been a game if not for D&D. Maybe a wargame, butprobably not an RPG.

Oh, and Prof. Barker is in not too good health, at the moment, I understand.

Gygax death is the passing of an era but that happens. I remember seeing him walking about at Gen Con. I never spoke to him. What did I have to say. "Cool game… but here are all the changes I've made to it?" No matter how much he wrote of D+D he promoted it and made the hobby. I was part of that first wave of teenagers who picked the game up in 1976 and then moved into miniatures gaming. I have to thank him for that.

As to those EPT maps. My guess is that they were screen printed using solvent based ink on a sturdy vinyl sheet. They had a plastic like feel. I've been experimenting with screen printing in board games I'm making. Labor intensive but nice result. I only hope to make something half as good as those EPT maps.

Time catches up with us all. I first saw EPT in 1978, and at the time, Barker was a college professor. That was thirty years ago…

In 1968, four of us high-schoolers drove up to Lake Geneva to run our naval wargame at the second GenCon. We had no place to stay, but we had Gary's address, so we went there. He was nice enough to let us crash on his porch. I have a photo (alas, negatives long gone) of Gary in the hall kitchen cooking hot dogs for us at the Con. A great memory all around.

I choked up when I read the news about Mr. Gygax. I've always been aware that he shared credit with others, but the others didn't have a weird name like Gygax to burn into my brain.

The D&D universe was the lifeboat for the small number of geeks and nerds to cling to in our little town in Texas. There was little else to bind us freaks together in the early 1980's. It gave me lifelong friends to enjoy since.

D&D lead to miniatures and wargaming and all have been one of the few constants I could count on in the midst of the everchanging life I've experienced going on 25 years.

I mourn your death Gary.

RIP Gary. I put out my first minis I ever painted, circa 1980, out on display under the confused eye of my wife.

My first character, 1st level human cleric Ragnar, salutes you. I was 15.

…"The D&D universe was the lifeboat for the small number of geeks and nerds to cling to in our little town in Texas. There was little else to bind us freaks together in the early 1980's."

That's creepy. I could have said the exact same thing. Where you from, Sarge?