Ernest Gary Gygax (July 27, 1938 – March 4, 2008) (IPA: [ˈɡaj.ɡæks]) was an American writer and game designer, best known for co-creating the pioneering role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) with Dave Arneson in 1974, and co-founding the company Tactical Studies Rules (TSR, Inc.) with Don Kaye in 1973. After leaving TSR, Gygax continued to author role-playing game titles independently, including another gaming system called Lejendary Adventure. Gygax is generally acknowledged as one of the fathers of the tabletop role-playing game.
Biography
Early life and inspiration
Gygax was the son of Swiss immigrant Ernst Gygax, and an American, Almina Emelie Burdick. His love of gaming began at the age of five, playing pinochle and chess as well as the imaginative games of any child, similar to live action role-playing. He played with Jim Rasch as referee/game master and John Rasch and Don Kaye as fellow participants. It was during this timeframe that Gygax began exploring science fiction with Ray Bradbury's "The Veldt" in Bluebook and Robert E. Howard's Conan the Conqueror.In 1953 Gygax began playing miniature war games with Kaye. The game Gettysburg from the Avalon Hill company captured Gygax's attention. It was from Avalon Hill that he ordered the first blank hexagon mapping sheets that were available. He began looking for innovative ways to generate random numbers, and used not only common dice (with six sides), but dice of all five platonic solid shapes.
Gaming career
In 1966, the International Federation of Wargamers (IFW) was created with the assistance of Gygax.Gygax organized a 20-person gaming meet in 1967. It was held in the basement of his home and later became known as "Gen Con 0" as this meet birthed the annual Gen Con gaming convention in 1968. Gen Con is now North America's largest annual hobby-game gathering. Gen Con is also where Gary Gygax would meet Brian Blume and Dave Arneson. Blume later partnered with Gygax and Kaye in the TSR enterprise.
"I'm very fond of the Medieval period, the Dark Ages in particular. We started playing in the period because I had found appropriate miniatures. I started devising rules where what the plastic figure was wearing was what he had. If he had a shield and no armor, then he just has a shield. Shields and half-armor = half-armor rules; full-armor figure = full armor rules. I did rules for weapons as well."
Together with Don Kaye, Mike Reese and Leon Tucker, Gygax created a military miniatures society, Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association (LGTSA), with its first headquarters in Gygax's basement.
In 1971, Gygax and Jeff Perren wrote Chainmail, a miniatures wargame from which the role-playing game (RPG) Dungeons & Dragons (aka D&D) was developed.
TSR
Gygax and Kaye founded the publishing company Tactical Studies Rules in 1973 and published the first version of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) in 1974. Gygax was inspired by Jack Vance while developing the spell systems and also drew upon the work of such renowned fantasy authors as Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp and Fritz Leiber. The hand-assembled print run of 1000 copies sold out within nine months. In the same year, Gygax hired Tim Kask to assist in the transition of the magazine The Strategic Review into the fantasy periodical, The Dragon, with Gygax as author and later as columnist.
After the death of Kaye in 1976, his widow sold her shares to Gygax. Gygax, now controlling the whole of Tactical Studies Rules, created TSR Hobbies, Inc. Gygax, coming into financial troubles soon after, sold TSR Hobbies to Brian Blume and his brother Kevin. The Blume family would own roughly two-thirds of TSR Hobbies by late 1976.
Tactical Studies Rules published the two first printings of the original D&D and TSR Hobbies, Inc. continued on with the game.
Beginning in 1977, a new version of D&D was created, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D). The Monster Manual would be the first rule book of the new system, with many books to follow. The AD&D rules were not compatible with those of D&D and as a result, D&D and AD&D would have distinct product lines and expansions.
Gary Gygax left TSR in 1985 during changes in TSR's management. This development arose while Gygax was involved in the making of CBS cartoon series Dungeons & Dragons.
"I was pretty much boxed out of the running of the company because the two guys, who between them had a controlling interest, thought they could run the company better than I could. I was set up because I could manage. In 1982 nobody on the West Coast would deal with TSR, but they had me start a new corporation called "Dungeons and Dragons Entertainment." It took a long time and a lot of hard work to get to be recognized as someone who was for real and not just a civilian, shall we say, in entertainment. Eventually, though, we got the cartoon show going (on CBS) and I had a number of other projects in the works. While I was out there, though, I heard that the company was in severe financial difficulties and one of the guys, the one I was partnered with, was shopping it on the street in New York. I came back and discovered a number of gross mismanagements in all areas of the company. The bank was foreclosing and we were a million and a half in debt. We eventually got that straightened out, but I kind of got one of my partners kicked out of office. (Kevin Blume, who was removed as TSR CEO in 1984 - ed.). Then my partners, in retribution for that, sold his shares to someone else (Lorraine Williams - ed.). I tried to block it in court, but in the ensuing legal struggle the judge ruled against me. I lost control of the company, and it was then at that point I just decided to sell out."
Late career
After leaving TSR, Gygax created Dangerous Journeys, an RPG spanning multiple genres. He began work in 1995 on a new RPG, originally intended for a computer game; however, it was released in 1999 as Lejendary Adventure. A key goal of its design was to keep the gaming rules as simple as possible, as Gygax felt that role playing games were becoming discouragingly complex to new users.In 2005, Gygax returned to the Dungeons & Dragons RPG with his involvement in the creation of the Castles & Crusades system with Troll Lord Games. Troll Lord Games has published Castle Zagyg, the previously unreleased, original version of Gygax's Castle Greyhawk with the original dungeon setting for D&D.
Television appearances
In 2007, Gygax had a special guest appearance as himself on the G4TV show Code Monkeys, when Todd sought him out and offered actress Molly Ringwald as a "virgin sacrifice" to Gygax to restore Todd's Charisma, Strength, Dexterity, and Sexual Stamina points.He also lent his voice to his cartoon self in the episode "Anthology of Interest I" of the TV show Futurama.
Other appearances
Gygax performed voiceover narration as a guest dungeon master in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach. He narrates "Dead Girl's Spellbook" in Valak's Mausoleum as well as all of the dungeons in the "Mystery of Delera's Tomb" quest chain.Personal life
Gygax married Gail Carpenter on August 15 1987, the same day as his parents' 50th anniversary. As of 2005, he was father to six children and grandfather to seven. His first five children are from his first marriage to Mary Jo Gygax, and the last child is from his second marriage. Gygax resided in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. He described his studio in his typical narrative fashion asA small but sunny upper room — cluttered with books, magazines, papers, and who-knows-what else. Right now, pending the redecorating of that room, I am lodged in the downstairs dining room at a long table that holds two computers and a scanner, with the printer hiding to one side below it. The radio there in the studio was usually tuned to a classical music station, but the station was sold, programming changed, so now I work sans music, or now and then with a CD playing through the computer. While there are bookcases in the upper studio, elsewhere on the second floor, and on the first floor, the main repository of printed lore (other than that piled here and there) is my basement library which includes thousands of reference works, maps, magazines, and works of fiction.
Illness and death
Gygax died the morning of March 4, 2008, at his home in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, aged 69. He was in semi-retirement, having almost suffered a heart attack after receiving incorrect medication to prevent further strokes after those on April 1 and May 4 2004. He was diagnosed with an inoperable abdominal aortic aneurysm. Even while his health failed, gaming remained very much a part of his life. Gygax was still active in the gaming community and had active Q & A forums on gaming websites such as Dragonsfoot and EN World.I would like the world to remember me as the guy who really enjoyed playing games and sharing his knowledge and his fun pastimes with everybody else.
Awards and honors
Gary Gygax received several awards related to gaming:- Strategists Club's "Outstanding Designer & Writer" for the creation of D&D
- Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design Origins Award Hall of Fame 1980
- Four time winner of Games Day's "Best Games Inventor" (1979–82)
- GenCon 2007 (40th Anniversary), Premiere Guest of Honor
Gary Gygax was tied with J. R. R. Tolkien for #18 on GameSpy's 30 Most Influential People in Gaming.
A strain of bacteria was named in honor of Gary Gygax, namely "Arthronema gygaxiana sp nov UTCC393".
Sync Magazine named Gary Gygax #1 on the list of "The 50 Biggest Nerds of All Time". SFX Magazine listed him as #37 on the list of the "50 Greatest SF Pioneers". In 1999 Pyramid magazine named Gary Gygax as one of The Millennium's Most Influential Persons "in the realm of adventure gaming.
Tributes
Gary Gygax was commemorated in a number of webcomics, including xkcd's comic #393 "Ultimate Game, Penny Arcade's "Bordering On The Semi-Tasteful", Dork Tower's "Thanks for the Worldbuilding Rules", Order of the Stick #536, and GU Comics' "The Journey's End".Blizzard Entertainment dedicated the 2.4.0 patch to World of Warcraft, "Fury of the Sunwell", to Gary Gygax.
Electronic Arts dedicated Publish 51 in Ultima Online to Gary Gygax. This included a new room in the dungeon Doom containing a special encounter and unique decorations.
Turbine, Inc. included two tributes in the Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach Module 7, released June 3 2008: A new area in Delera's Graveyard containing a memorial marker and text, and a new unique item, Voice of the Master, that improves the wearer's experience awards.
Job titles
Works
Role-playing games
Dungeons & Dragons
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons
Gamma World
Cyborg Commando
Dangerous Journeys
Lejendary Adventures
Castles & Crusades
For Castles & Crusades, the Castle Zagyg series is a planned series of seven sourcebooks based on the Castle Greyhawk from Gygax's original campaign. For trademark reasons they are not actually published under the name of Greyhawk.Generic d20 System
(see also d20 System & Open Game License)Non-RPG games
Rules for miniatures/table top battle games
Board games
Chess variants
Literature
Fantasy novels
Miscellaneous books and short stories
Periodicals
Notes and references
External links
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Last updated on Thursday July 24, 2008 at 13:52:36 PDT (GMT -0700)
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