TSR Q&A with Gary Gygax

Col_Pladoh · Feb 6, 2008

As a lad I was iaken often to the Field Museum in Chicago, and my favorite exhibits were the fighting bull elephants, the many rooms with cases of sruffed wild animals, the bronzes of the African tribesmen spearing a pair of lions, the Egyptology area in the basement, and the dinosaurs up on the second floor.

The museum sold metal miniature models of several species of dinos, in a scale smaller than HO (about 12 feet to the inch), and I had a T tex and a triceratops when I was about five years old. Those two had many a battle for my entertainent! :lol:

Cheers,
Gary

Col_Pladoh · Feb 6, 2008

Gray Mouser said:
Hi Colonel, it's been quite a while since I've posted to this forum and was just reading through what I had missed. You can tell from the quote, perhaps, that it's been some time since I visited this thread.

Anyway, I've seen you make comments like he above a few times before but I have a question as to how you envisioned this to work in your home campaign. Did you envision demi-humans, for example, being native to a parallel Prime Material Plane and immigrating to Oerth at some point? Was this immigration a one time occurance in the past or is it something that can still occur? Given the rather long life spans of some elves (e.g., Grey Elves) was it possible that some of these creatures who came to Oerth in the initial wave were still alive during the playing of your campaign? Lastly, did you have an idea about when the demi-humans (and other creatures) entered Oerth? (In the Greyhawk guide it lists 5050 S.D. as the date when humanoid mercenaries were first employed. Certainly such creatures were already on Oerth for some period before this.)

Sorry for the lengthy questions

Gray Mouser

The long questions can be answered with a short response,

How the non-human races came to Oerth was never a question in my campaign.

I had a vague notion about large gates being common in past millenia, these inter-world portals gradually decreasing in size and eventually virtually disappearing, the deities of Oerth being responsible for that.

So such gates brought the great variety of life forms to the world--along with some magical laborators monster creations of course.

In the Lejendary Adventure game's Lejendary Earth world setting all of that is basically attributed to the great wizards of Learth's lost ages.

Cheers,
gary

Col_Pladoh · Feb 6, 2008

Gray Mouser said:
Gary, I was just wondering how much input you gave to Len Lakofka when he wrote up the gods of the Suel Pantheon for publication in Dragon. Did he come up with everything and just use the names and areas on influence you provided in the Greyhawk guide or did you give him some general guidelines to follow (i.e., this god gets this special power, that one has the abilities of these classes, etc.)?

Thanks,

Gray Mouser

Len deserves the lion's share of the credit, and blame if any, for the Suel deities. I simply did a bit of editing of his work.

Cheers,
Gary

Col_Pladoh · Feb 6, 2008

heirodule said:
When you wrote up encounters with Orcs, goblins, etc, that included noncom females and infants, did you expect the Good PCs to put them to the sword, let them go, or have a moral dilemma?

What did they tend to do?

I expected the DM to decide how to handle such a situation, of course.

Cheerio,
Gary

Gray Mouser · Feb 7, 2008

Col_Pladoh said:
The long questions can be answered with a short response,

How the non-human races came to Oerth was never a question in my campaign.

I had a vague notion about large gates being common in past millenia, these inter-world portals gradually decreasing in size and eventually virtually disappearing, the deities of Oerth being responsible for that.

Very interesting, Colonel. If the deities of Oerth were responsible for closing the gates that may explain why there were no demihuman deities included in the WoGH. Except, of course, for Raxivort. Hmmm. Maybe not. :?

So such gates brought the great variety of life forms to the world--along with some magical laborators monster creations of course.

In the Lejendary Adventure game's Lejendary Earth world setting all of that is basically attributed to the great wizards of Learth's lost ages.

Cheers,
gary

SOunds like Learth's old time mages could give those of the Bakluni and Suel a run for their money, even with the Invoked Devastation and Rain of Colorless Fire!

Gray Mouser

Gray Mouser · Feb 7, 2008

Col_Pladoh said:
Len deserves the lion's share of the credit, and blame if any, for the Suel deities. I simply did a bit of editing of his work.

Cheers,
Gary

Kudos to him, then, as I greatly enjoyed the series on the Suel pantheon. I did find some of them to be a bit on the good side considering the description of the Suel old-timers in thne WoGH, but they are an interesting group, all in all. While Olidammara is one of my favorites Norebo certainly ranks up there, as well

Now, if I recall correctly, the Suel pantheon series came out after the release of the Greyhawk boxed set. I think you'd mentioned before that you had hoped to detail more of Oerth so I was wondering if there were there plans to revise the box set with the inclusion of these deities, or did you simply think they would make for an interesting series of articles in Dragon?

Gray Mouser

Geoffrey · Feb 7, 2008

Nagora said:
I'm not sure if it's etiquette to jump in with something like this, but the same comment got me thinking and the article at this link is an early draft (with speling mistoks) of something that may be going into the next FootPrints from the Dragonsfoot guys. I took Gary's comment and RAN with it! Any feedback would be welcome (especially if positive )

That's pretty good stuff, though I'd be tempted to make the various types of fey and demi-humans NON-natives. The only animals druids would regard as natural would be those organisms that exist in the real world, as well as giant and miniature versions thereof.

IIRC, druids in the AD&D Players Handbook can be only human or half-elf. If elves are not native to the druids' world, then that would mean that the half-elven druids identify totally with their human half. But, IIRC, elves are allowed to be druids in Unearthed Arcana. That would throw a sticky wicket in my whole scheme.

Gray Mouser · Feb 7, 2008

Geoffrey said:
IIRC, druids in the AD&D Players Handbook can be only human or half-elf. If elves are not native to the druids' world, then that would mean that the half-elven druids identify totally with their human half. But, IIRC, elves are allowed to be druids in Unearthed Arcana. That would throw a sticky wicket in my whole scheme.

Halfling NPC's could also be Druids.

You could say, however, that part of the reason these particular races (Elves and Halflings) entered Oerth (or whatever campaign world you were using) was their affinity for nature which may have been the same as that on their home plane.

Gray Mouser

Nagora · Feb 7, 2008

Gray Mouser said:
Halfling NPC's could also be Druids.

I had forgotten that. Well, there will be another draft.

Getting back to Gary:

Gary,
I'm thinking about running an AD&D game for a pair of bright not-quite-12-year-olds (twins). Did you or TSR ever think about releasing scenarios/modules aimed specifically at pre-teens? Do you think it's something that would be useful? Is there any advice you would have? I know you've run a few games for young players.

Col_Pladoh · Feb 7, 2008

Gray Mouser said:
Very interesting, Colonel. If the deities of Oerth were responsible for closing the gates that may explain why there were no demihuman deities included in the WoGH. Except, of course, for Raxivort. Hmmm. Maybe not. :?

SOunds like Learth's old time mages could give those of the Bakluni and Suel a run for their money, even with the Invoked Devastation and Rain of Colorless Fire!

Gray Mouser

Likely that. Although a few more of evil sort managed to find and pass through remaining gateways to Oerth.

Yes, the ancient Adepts of Learth could and did end up devistating not only their reptillian former slave masters but their own empires.

Cheers,
Gary

TSR Q&A with Gary Gygax

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Gary Gygax

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