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."

Comments

Ooh!

[freeze128]

Just give me 5 minutes in a room With Gary Gygax and a D20....

Nice guy...

[curtis]

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)

Insurance underwriter

[perdida]

I was an insurance underwriter. I took the job rather than going on with schooling at the University of Chicago to become an anthropologist. I did fairly well in insurance, was a supervising underwriter for individual, group, and association group, health, life, long term disability, and unusual risk policies.

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.

Re:Insurance underwriter

[Scaba]

I was wondering why my medical insurance form asked me for my constitution, how many hit points I have, and what my saving throws vs. disease are.

Gary Gygax's contributions to gek culture

[WTC Survivor]

Gary Gygax is a bit of a personal hero of mine; I recently completed a research project in which I charted the life and times of Mr. Gygax. Some of the more interesting biographical links I referenced are:

• His recent interview with RPG.net
• An insightful writeup at GameSpy
• A fairly thorough biography of the man
• And, of course, Gary's homepage

The Second Best Thing

[fobbman]

"...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*

Re:The Second Best Thing

[Keith Russell]

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*

What, you mean you've never whipped up some wonderfully elegant Perl code at four in the morning?

Oh, um... uh.... Neither have I! Yeah, that's it. Of course not. Neither have... I. [whimper] I hate my life.

Re:Am I Still a Geek?

[daeley]

I've never played an RPG. Can I still call myself a geek?

Let's see...

[roll roll roll]

Hmm...

[paper shuffling]

[roll roll roll]

The shop owner says No.

gary

[zephc]

"Hi, I'm Gary Gygax, and it's a..." *Rolls dice* " pleasure to meet you!" (Futurama)

Your AD&D Stats...

[Embedded Geek]

Seeing that, I gotta plug an oldie on the web: a CGI quiz that calculates your AD&D Stats in real life.

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*).