Slashdot Mirror
Interview with Gary Gygax
the_bahua writes "Have a look at this one-on-one with Gary Gygax, over at KCGeek.com. It's a tell-all, see-all, look into the mind of the man behind the second-best thing to do at four in the morning. Responsible for one of the cornerstones of geekdom, he is largely unknown to many, including many RPG fans."
I've never played an RPG. Can I still call myself a geek?
Knowledge is like ignorance.. too much can be just as bad as not enough.
Just give me 5 minutes in a room With Gary Gygax and a D20....
... too scared of what the 'second-best thing to do at four in the morning' might be....
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
I wandered across his website once while browsing and he had his email address available if you wanted to contact him...
On a whim, I emailed him to ask him a few questions and thank him for some of his early work, DnD, Gord the Rogue books, Greyhawk, you name it.
To my surprise, he actually took the time to respond to my questions and bring me up to date with what he has been doing in the post TSR days.
It always amazes me when someone that has made it big at one point will take the time to answer someone they don't know. Kudos to him. (or at least his staff)
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
I smiled when I saw this. I couldn't help but think that this is where D&D, and so many of its descendants on boards and on chips, got their obsession with tracking numbers for so many unquantifiable characteristics.
Risk assessors have to put a number on health, wit, and daring; they classify you by background, skills, and lifestyle, in dollars and cents.
Only recently have more plot-driven games broadened out of this focus - like the Final Fantasy series, which puts interesting, structured plots ahead of arduous level-building.
Goat sex free since 2001
One thing about the old AD&D, was that if there was a rule that didn't make sense, instead of creating an errata, there was some sort of official apology for the rule. What motivated that? Some kind of inertia or commitment to what has already been printed?
Also, AD&D become very unweildy with rules - distinct and unusual rules - for everything from pummelling to jumping to what-have-you. Once, as a sort of thought experiment, we tried to run a game in which we actually followed all the rules. It was unplayable, we returned quickly to the faster/looser style (in which the mechanics are more abstracted) that has now become part of most RPG's. Did you ever see or play a game that actually used all the systems published as AD&D? Did you recognize this as a problem? Do you see the Wizards of the Coast edition as an improvement in this regard?
the second-best thing to do at four in the morning
What could be better than sitting in the basement with for unbathed geeks, rolling dice and pretending to be dwarv.......
Ahhhh... Sex! That's what your talking about.. Hrm... Judging by my sex life, I disagree. Ill take the smell geeks..
I met him at a GenCon once and he is a big freak. But the again, so am I. Too bad he got dicked-over by the former equity partners at TSR in the 1980s.
1980s=TSR
1990s=WotC
2000s=????
It's an age thing.
If you played with the 1st edition D&D books, Gary Gygax's name was on them. Not sure if he's on the later editions, because I haven't played D&D in probably 10 years.
I don't have an anger problem, I have an idiot problem
This guy reminds me quite a bit of Steve Wozniak, from Apple.
Subtle, quiet, approachable, and doing something for the love of the field. These are the type of people who do more for a field without thinking about it than most people even think possible.
That and he seems to be a huge Mac fan!
He even mentions Lemonaid Stand! I remember playing that game when I was about seven!
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
His CON must be really low by now :-).
>(or at least his staff)
Heh... while I'll bet Gary wishes he has a staff, alas he does not. He does get the occassional Futurama gig, but even mighty D&D does not create enough groupies and inquiries to allow for staff.
For better or for worse, Gary is 100% Gary, and definitely one of the more approaschable creators.
A.
Thinking about the ubergeek Gary Gygax, got me wondering. (Wasn't it E.Gary.Gygax ?)
Is old D&D stuff collectable now ?
I've got bits and bobs such as a 1979 Dungeons & Dragons rule book (3rd Edition D&D, Not Advanced D&D) are they actually worth anything these days?.
I'm not that bothered either way, if its worthless financially, its still an heirloom from a mispent youth.
Ah wistful thoughts about +5 Backscratchers... (for those scratching their heads...it was a cartoon in the 1st edition AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide)
Guess TSR wasn't TSR without old Gygax....At least Wizards are trying to make the best of the old stuff now.
Gary Gygax invented the infomercial?
Surely he's not responsible for feeding one's infant daughter.
I always figured that the goofy rules were there to keep the players in line. Gygax says in the interview that he mostly ignores things like encumbrance, except when somebody's acting stupid.
I mean really - who wants to keep track of every single gold piece? But when the players want to "run away" when they're lugging 100+ pounds of gold each, it's nice to be able to point to the place in the DM's guide that says they can't do that.
I did have a little trouble with the Psionics and Grappling rules in AD&D, though. It was a litttle too difficult to integrate them into the rest of the system. For handling specific situations though, they were very workable.
-Mark
It depends on who you're RPG'ing with.
If it's someone you're upclose and personal to, you don't even have to stop role-playing to enjoy it. In fact, if you're role-playing in a large group, you might even get some good creative criticism on your technique or even... if you're the adventurous sort... outside help.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Let's face it, the first time most people used dice for other than shooting craps was when rolling up characters and playing D&D and like games. Eventually the same or highly similar probability systems were implemented by other game companies and many computer games. Some time in the past TSR voiced their displeasure at other games using 3D6 for stats, how armor class is calculated, etc. Hence many games used their own varied methods of valuation of stats, etc., making it a bit of a trick to determine where characters of various genres stood. Is it still a concern for RPG game developers, to create their own systems of statistics, or is those methods and values as detailed by TSR pretty much an open standard?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
man, the futurerama with him in it was so damn funny.
I''m having a [rollroll] nice day.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Chainmail actually predates both WoTC and D&D and was in many ways an ancestor. If they re-released it, that's cool.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I wonder if Gary has gotten around to admitting that just about every single creative idea he incorporated into D&D was first stolen from Dave Arneson? And later, the guy who wrote "Metamorphosis: Alpha", Jim Ward?
Of course, y'all are probably so young these names mean nothing to you. Young geeks these days, they have no culture....
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
"...the second-best thing to do at four in the morning"
Second-best thing to do, but sadly the first most likely of the two to be happening to those who know his name well. *sigh*
Wizards of the Coast (who is owned by Hasbro) is laying off 100 employees... for those that do not know Wizards of the Coast is the current owner of D&D
read about it here
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
...right here! never met the guy, but he personally responded to a letter i wrote him in 1984-ish.
i asked if they would release a set of leatherbound rulebooks on heavy vellum paper -- more tome-like than the current AD&D ruleset binding. he sent me a note saying it was a great idea and that i should fill out the submission forms provided (a dozen papers were included for TSR submissions by freelance writers). i enlisted 5 friends in my fifth-grade class to write a second monster manual (these were pre-FeindFolio & MM2 days, mind you). of course we never got anywhere, hell, we were kids.
even though the letter was a token form-reply, it _did_ have his signature in pen on it. sigh. i still have it somewhere with my old modules, boxed away.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
"Hi, I'm Gary Gygax, and it's a..." *Rolls dice* " pleasure to meet you!" (Futurama)
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
Was Gygax responsible for "Top Secret" and that post-nuclear-mutant-game-whose-name-I've-forgotten ?
It's been a long time...
Sigh. Experience. I've gamed off and on for about 20 years now, and yuppers, a truly wound-up gamer does not go out to the clubs every Saturday night. Those years of weekends spent with other guys around a table, drinking Dew and eating pizza, didn't usually create the opportunity to learn the urbanity of Sean Connery.
It wasn't that the game wasn't cool. It's just that, when your whole life starts becoming the game, the True Geek alarm starts flashing.
Nowadays, tho, things are not what they used to be, back in the olden days of the early nineties. RPGs have attracted a greater variety of participants (read: women), and the bad-fraternity house mannerisms are giving way to, well, more style n'grace amongst gamers.
Well, to answer the question, people see gamers as geeks with weird mannerisms cause they tend to be people with weird mannerisms...
Perhaps you're looking for Murphy's Rules, published by SJG in Pyramid magazine and later compiled into a book format.
Get thee to The Miniatures Page
What you are looking for is miniatures gaming. I enjoy it much more than RPGs, because I'm not much into role-playing, but I do enjoy building an army throwing it into combat.
If Gary is as approachable as he seems, would it be possible to have a Slashdot interview of him? I'd like to know what he thinks about the Open Gaming License.
Siggy Wiggy Figgy Tiggy a bana bo Biggy!
13 years ago (*gak*) we invited him to speak at our dorm at Stanford; it became a campus-wide event and was quite well-attended by some 100+ people.
:)
As I recall, he was witty, self-effacing, yet very respectful of the community he helped create (in sharp contrast to some other cult figures, esp. amongst the Trek cast). This was in the midst of his fall-out with TSR, so he didn't exactly have glowing words for the company that booted him.
Afterwards there was a long line of Ur-geeks with Monster Manuals and Players Handbooks in-hand for him to sign. I'm glad I brought my DM Guide...
He's a great public speaker; consider him if you are involved in any kind of college / geek community.
The honest work and thought that Gary put into the AD&D rules was tremendous. I remember DM'ing in the 80's for a couple friends getting into a firefight with some Wizard or other. The Wizard wasn't that butch, but he did have a Ring of Invisibility.
:)
"No problem," said Roger (arrogant, cheated). "I put on my Ring of Invisibility and now I can see the Wizard."
"Bullshit," I said (ever an officious bastard, I spent my free time reading the rule book). "The AD&D rules specifically say that Rings of Power (including Invisibility) confer no benefit other than those explicitly stated." It was true - the example in the book even said (paraphrasing), "A Ring of Invisibility makes you invisible, but doesn't allow you to see other invisible things."
Then I told him that every 60 second he'd been arguing he'd taken 2d8 fire damage from the Wizard
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
Yeah, Gary left Dave's name off AD&D, and honestly there wasn't enough of a difference to merit that. Gary just put his spin on the D&D rules he and Dave made, and called it a new game.
Jim Ward wrote some of the best stuff that TSR put out, even though Metamorphisis Alpha was basically a rip off of that Heinlein story, whose name I can't remember. MA and Gamma World were a blast to play.
I haven't looked at his new stuff yet, but if it's anything like the last game he wrote (Dangerous Dimensions?), I'll pass. Way too much renaming things, just for the sake of being named different. Far too much die rolling for my tastes.
The other interviews that I remember (the BIG article in Dragon slamming people for using house rules and still calling it AD&D), he came off sounding a lot like RMS does now, when he's bitching about the whole GNU/Linux thing. Gary seems to have mellowed with age, but calling the GM the Lejend Master??? Come on Gary, get over the names.
Wu-Tang Name: Half-Cut Skeleton Get your own Wu-Na
I've gamed for over 26 years.. ;)
sorry, obligatory I've been gaming for this long comment
First, I wouldn't consider what happens in night clubs to be the pinicle of social grace.
It seems to me that the person who makes assumptions on how a person behaves based on a stereotype is the one with low social graces.
Sure we had few social graces in high school, but that true with everybody, when compared to people outside there social circle.
I have social graces, and so do the people I play with, and most people I've games with for that matter.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I loved the sci-fi based... Traveler RPG, the Steve Jackson games (Car Wars was fun combat side games with Ogre (carwars meets Ogre was a horrible mess with th Ogre always winning) But the obscure games like The Morrow project. If anyone has seen the new Cinemax series Jerimiah it's close... a nice post-apocalypse RPG....
Dnd was fun but too far seperated from reality... LOL reality and RPG's in the same sentence... LOL
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I was hopelessly addicted to this for a few months last year-- if you don't want to muck about with emulators, just click here.
~Philly
I was all set to flame the original post but I'd rather just support yours. Kudos. To each his own, neither hobby is better than the other (though gaming certainly stimulates brain cells, club going tends to destroy them ;) ). Personally, I got out of RPG's, as I got older they started to seem sillier (this is not a condemnation of those who still play I am still nostalgic for a good WFB campaign) to sit around a table telling stories to each other. I started getting more into tabletop minitaure games, and good board games. IMHO it's a hell of a lot of fun to sit around shooting the shit with a bunch of friends and playing Settlers of Cataan or something similar.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
And in the interest of full disclosure, I come out with:
Str: 11
Int: 15
Wis: 15
Dex: 9
Con: 11
Chr: 15
A nice waste of a few minutes. Obviously flawed, though - assigning a 15 INT simply for a Masters Degree indicates you've never actually dealt with people in graduate school (*GRIN*).
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
Dude! Those sigs are great for fame rubs.
Remember, left-to-right for high numbers, right-to-left for low numbers.
;)
1. Most of the original ideas for D&D came from Dave Arneson and others. Mr. Gygax simply put them together into a book.
2. Dave Arneson and E. Gary Gygax had a grave difference in opinion about how to run TSR and so Mr. Arneson left. However, he made sure his lawyers made it clear that he would continue to receive benefits (such as money) from his previous work. The Monster Manual in particular.
2a. Years later TSR came out with Monster Manual 2 and several other hardback books. They also stopped paying Dave Arneson his royalties. Mr. Arneson did not like this and so he sued. Unlike M.A. Barker though, Mr. Arneson was rich enough to force TSR to begin paying him again. Eventually thought, TSR bought Mr. Arneson out completely. To read about this go to D&D History or do a google search or go to the newsgroup on D&D (D&D FAQ).
3. TSR, over the years, ripped off many ideas et al from people. One story in particular stands out. M.A. Barker's "Empire of the Petal Throne" was released by TSR minus it's copyright notice. Mr. Barker did not notice this right off and by the time it was brought to his attention TSR used an obscure copyright technical issue (since modified by Congress) to assume total control over Mr. Barker's work. Mr. Barker (of course) filed suit and went bankrupt trying to get his work back. Years later, a Mr. Lou Zaukie (spelling?) - the inventor of the high impact die and friend of Mr. Barker - convinced TSR to sell the rights to him and Mr. Zaukie returned the rights to Mr. Barker. Who has since gone on to print the rules again as well as to produce other tomes.
4. The heires to the Flash Gordon fortune, who happened to be nuts over D&D, was the person who bought up most of TSR's outstanding stock and kicked Mr. Gygax out of TSR. (This is mainly what I read and heard about many years ago so take it with a grain of salt.) From what I heard, Mr. Gygax kicked out several of the people this lady liked from TSR and in a fit of revenge she did this.
5. Then came several years of nothing new from TSR and, according to accounting records, TSR went heavily in debt as the heiress sucked all of the money out of TSR in order to build some sort of an amusement park dedicated to Flash Gordon. The amusement park deal went sour and she went shopping for someone to buy TSR. Especially since most of the creative people either were not allowed to finish works and/or left when Mr. Gygax left. (Some to other companies and some with Mr. Gygax - according to other reports.)
6. Then, from left field we have Wizards of the Coast. WotC originally was another company. TSR put them out of business. So they had to re-invent their company and did so using a novel idea - playing cards like you would D&D. WotC's revenge was that they bought TSR from the heiress (who, from some accounts had doctored the books so TSR looked like it was a great thing to buy but subsequently WotC found out that all of this inventory TSR had was rotting in various warehouses because no one was buying it anymore since it was so outdated.).
7. So now we come to the latest chapter in TSR's history. Hasbro bought WotC recently. Just when WotC was beginning to breath new life into TSR; Hasbro and WotC's owner had a falling out. As of today, Hasbro has sold off most (if not all) of the electronic/computer software related to both WotC and TSR games. Only the board/book rights are left and Hasbro has let it be known that they are not looking exactly - but would not be against having offers made to buy WotC/TSR.
But that's just some of the past history of Mr. Gygax and TSR. :-)
Player's Handbook, DM's Guide, Monster Manual.
Best Slashdot Co
There are "mana"-type systems for D&D 2ed and 3ed. 2ed has the "spell points" rules in the Skills and Powers rulebook, and a 3ed Sorcerer is similiar. Spell points give more of a "mana" feel, and the sorcerer has a set of slots to cast from, rather than a pre-memorized selection of one-shot spells.
I don't see how the one-shot spell system is "unacceptable", however. It's not an oversight, it's just one method of dealing with a magic user. There are published reasons to explain this system... you may not like them, but they are there. I have found that it tends to lead to much more inventive spell casting... when you can't just select the spell you'd like at will, you tend to think up creative ways to use what you've got.
In the end, who cares about lame rules? It's up to the DM whether to use them or not, based on whatever provides the best role playing experience for the set of players he's dealing with. D&D's rules were never set in stone, so they cannot be "fundamental flaws"... the rules serve the DM, not the other way around. That's why pretty much every DMG begins with rule #1: the DM is in charge.
Gygax has recently moved away from the "power gaming" that dominates D&D, but in Runequest, it's always been impossible to succumb to gaming dominated solely by statistics and probabilities.
Stafford, Perrin, et. al. created a game that not only utilized a straightforward skills-based system, but also made a marvellously-detailed and lifelike world - Glorantha.
I say "lifelike" because it had internal contradictions. There were conflicting sources of information. There was never any one, overarching "true history" of Gloranth, only snippets you'd find here and there. Plus, the world was dominated by the truly epic struggle between the Lighbringers and the Lunar Empire - a backdrop that gave life to countless adventure opportunities.
The game system was fantastic, because you could get to be a real badass and still you had to pay attention to combat. In D&D, as a 10th level character, a 1st level monster presents no threat to you. Not even remotely. But in Runequest, there's always the chance that that nasty, grimy little broo can take down your kick-ass Rune Lord (as poor Khorat the Barbarian found out lo those many years ago - may Urox guard his soul).
Anyway, although RQ is out of print (the sortid history of its demise is really too painful to recount), Glorantha is alive and well, and there's even a new game that allows players to explore Glorantha (haven't played it - I'm still too wedded to my RQIII materials).
Find out more about Runequest here.
Find out more about Glorantha and the Hero Wars here.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Find a copy of it, and an emulator to run it in. Look at all the stats that you can, and try to reverse engineer the mechanics. Once you've got that, it would be trivial. In fact, it's probably easy enough to do in javascript or something.
I don't know about you, but a little role-playing at 4 AM can be a lot of fun...nudge nudge, nod nod, wink wink:
You've been a BAD little dungeon master, haven't you? You must be punished...
"she says i'm lousy conversation. as if that's supposed to help."
His corporation was thoroughly and soundly thrashed on the front page of Wall Street Journal well over a decade ago.
Why?
The Wall street Journal wanted potential unwitting investers to be aware of his corporations highest ratios of family members in a listed public company in history.
He hired every relative, near relative, friend, etc and let them bicker and fight the company into utter chaos and floundering.
Rule #1 dont hire relatives and friends just for the sake of it to give them jobs.
He blew it.
Wall Street Journal spelled it out quit clearly to me... Gary Gygax is a terrible business man.
I did play AD&D all though high school and College though, and many other RPGs, and do think fondly of of the standardization of the game so that I could easily merge into other peoples games.... I respect him for that (being successful) But he destoryed the integrity of the game with bad decisions to capture children market. It should never been brought below adult level gaming.
What? Gygax doesn't have a staff? Quick, someone go get a nice walking stick while I prepare to cast "Enchant an Item"...
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Lou Zocchi helped MAR Barker with the EPT copyright issues, but he was also known for whipping out not-too-good "clones" of popular games in short order.
TSR was known for pulling nasty crap on a regular basis, and while they'd sue at the drop of a hat for copyright infringement, they'd use "inspirations" from other games and sources quite freely. All of the smart gamers made sure to never show any works in progress to TSR employees, because those works would be the next TSR "invention." For example, Steve Jackson Games was working on a vampire-hunting game called, of course, "Vampire," and after some TSR employees got wind of it, TSR announced a game with that exact same title (and no game to sell with that title - that came later. Shades of Microsoft, there).
So what the hell really happened with Dave Trampier? Somewhere I still have a freakish flame letter from him because my brother wanted his money back for the Wormy compilation he failed to produce. Did the dude go into the rubber room for a couple years or what?
Oh boy, EQ in pen and paper?
So now I get to sit around a table and camp the FBSS without the pretty graphics?
Player: "has the ghoul spawned?"
EM: "not yet."
(2 hours pass)
Player: "has the ghoul spawned?"
EM: "nope."
Sorry, but I think the statement that Gary Gygax is unknown, is sorta unfounded. Hell, Homer even met him on the Simpsons.
Hello, I am Gary Gygax, I am.........(rolls D20)....... happy to meet you.
If you read the FAQ that is linked in the article you will see that for most of TSR's existance Gary Gygax was a minority shareholder who had little control of the company. Over 60% of the shares were controlled by Brian and Kevin Blume. 90 of the Blumes relatives were employed by the company, that is the nepotism the Wallstreet Journal spoke of.
At some point in 1984 Gygax convinced the board of directors (The two Blumes, Gygax and 3 other directors brought in by the Blumes) to remove Kevin Blume as president and replace him with Richard Koenigs as president pro-tem. At this point those 90 relatives of the Blumes were let go and many other changes were made in order to save the company from bankruptcy.
Eventually Gygax sold off his shares when an associate of the Blumes acquired a majority interest in the company.
For most of TSR's existance Gary Gygax was not in control of the company, he just had the misfortune of being the famous figurehead of a notoriously badly run business.
I browse with my threshold at 2 so I can't read my own comments :-)
I wonder how many current writers and filmmakers there are today who owe at least part of their ability to entertain to Gygax and D&D? I guess we'll never know; I'd bet many wouldn't admit it.
You know, there's a tremendously funny joke here about the quality of recent Hollywood writing... ahh, skip it. Everyone's thought the same thing already.
Gary Gygax
Steve Jobs
Richard Garriot
I'm sure there are tons more. I think that it would the most depressing thing to come out with something like Apples, D&D, Ultima - something that catches on, something that you created, and then eventually lose it/have it taken away from you.
When I was in 8th grade, I was an avid D&D player, along with some others in the neighboorhood.
During that time, we travelled to Ohio to visit some high-school friends of my mom and some old friends of my grandmother.
I remember sitting in my grandmothers friends house and my grandmother asking the other ladys grandson if he played Dungeons and Dragons.
The other lady started blabbing on and on about how it was an evil game made by the devil and it was not allowed in her daughters house and so on.
I think about the most evil thing D&D has ever made me do is spend a lot of time on ebay trying to obtain an original version of Dieties and Demigods to complete my collection.
Now, if you will excuse me, I must go crawl around some steam tunnels and put curses on people
Back at a Science Fiction Convention I-CONX, I think it was 1990, I was assigned to drive Gary Gygax from his hotel and the con site. He was a real blast to talk to. On the second day of driving, he bought me a few pints of beer at the hotel bar and chatted for awhile. It was incredible to talk gaming stuff with him for an hour.
Gary always seems to have some game that he's beta testing. So the few times that I saw him at other conventions, I would participate in some of them. We all laughed pretty hard when he took out a large stack of business cards. He must get a ton from people because he converts them into his new game cards. Real rough beta I guess.
I'm amazed that someone actually combined RQ and Aftermath! but my guess is it came out a lot better than Arduin or GammaWorld or any of the other crossover games that have plagued us for an eternity.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Just wondering. I want to know if I have lived in a hall that has been visited by such an auspicious guest.
Lasers Controlled Games!
The Wizards of the Coast was a guild of wizards (in a coastal city probably ;) in Peter Adkinson's D&D campaign world (which I believe was the same as the M:tG base world).
I have a catalog (don't ask me to pull it out, it's at my parents' place or trashed) from ~1991 selling D&D accessories for a company called Wizards of the Coast (implies before they were sued? or did they simply go right back at it?).
I'm interested now; what name did they go by before Wizards?
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.