TSR Q&A with Gary Gygax

Nathan P. Mahney · Mar 14, 2005

Gary,

First up, I'm a big fan. I've just been reading through some of your old modules, and I'm gearing up to run my newish players through Keep on the Borderlands. It'll be interesting to see how these 3e folks handle 1e characters! So thanks for the game, and thanks for all of the inspiration!

Secondly, you ruined my life! Everyone else talks about how D&D made them better readers, better at math, better at school, etc. But I was an A+ student before I discovered D&D. After that, my grades took a dive, and now I'm ekeing out a "living" as a freelance writer. Curse you, Gary Gygax! (No, I love you, really. Just don't let my mum catch you!)

Anyway, because we must ask a question, and because I'm a morbid fellow:

What's the most memorable character death you've seen in all your years of gaming?

Also, what's up with the Thoul? It's a pretty bizarre creature, and I've always wondered what it's genesis was.

One more: how do you pronounce Gygax?

Col_Pladoh · Mar 14, 2005

Krieg said:
Gary, there is an auction on eBay currently for what the purported first PHB ever sold.

The auction claims the following...

Is there any chance that you can confirm the validity of the story & the pedigree of the book in question?

Thanks!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5173461823&fromMakeTrack=true

All I can say is that I know Tim Jardini. I'll send the URL of this thread to my son Ernie to see if he can confirm or deny the authenticity.

Cheers,
Gary

Col_Pladoh · Mar 14, 2005

Zudrak said:
Aw, man. Is that because it's all done?

If I am going to be harassed, I'll just forget about the whole thing...

Double heh (heh-heh).

I am a big fan of the GFW reference books. I have 4 so far and they are great reads -- let alone great tools for the DM/GM/CK. Anyone who wants some serious assistance in bringing their campaign to life (like I did) would find them most useful.

My Castles & Crusades PHB should arrive tomorrow. I cannot wait. My next target purchase is the Yggsburgh resource for Castle Zagyg (*cough Greyhawk cough*).

How often do you and Rob Kuntz communicate regarding the CZ project?

There will be about 12 books in the GFW series when it's completed, and all should be as useful to those creating fantasy material as as encyclopedias to students

Rob and I have exchanged a goodly number of emails and a few phone calls regarding the CZ project. Right now, though, things are quiet, as I need to send along m,aterial and I am not sufficiently energized to spend the several weeks of intense concentration and long hours of keybpadring to prepare it.

Cheers,
Gary

Sir Elton · Mar 14, 2005

Gary,

1st. I was looking through the D&D Cyclopaedia, and I noticed that gem dragons were a fixture for D&D. Did you like the "old" versions of Gem Dragons?

2nd. I've also noticed that I can get inspiration for campaigns from anywhere. I was thinking of doing a bibical movie epic-style campaign (drawing on the worlds of Ben Hur and Ruth, with a lot of influence from Clash of the Titans [I highly recommend this movie for your five year old, everyone!]). What I'm wondering is beside literary sources, did you take any inspiration from Celluoid Films and T.V.?

I've been taking a lot of inspiration from T.V. lately. Especially Japanese Sword, [insert your favorite anime genre here], and sorcery. Yes, Sword and Sorcery fanatics, the Japanese Animation studios are wholly naive about what you regularly want in your fantasies. Ahem . . . moving right along. I've also turned to getting my inspiration from movies, as you can probably tell.

Zudrak · Mar 14, 2005

Col_Pladoh said:
If I am going to be harassed, I'll just forget about the whole thing...

Double heh (heh-heh).

Uh... I retract my earlier statment.

Rob and I have exchanged a goodly number of emails and a few phone calls regarding the CZ project. Right now, though, things are quiet, as I need to send along m,aterial and I am not sufficiently energized to spend the several weeks of intense concentration and long hours of keybpadring to prepare it.

I'm free Saturdays if you want to dictate over the phone. I type pretty fast for a guy! That could cut down your keyboarding. Then you could dictate from your porch while you sip some tea and catch some rays.

Just a thought...

Col_Pladoh · Mar 14, 2005

Nathan P. Mahney said:
Gary,

First up, I'm a big fan. I've just been reading through some of your old modules, and I'm gearing up to run my newish players through Keep on the Borderlands. It'll be interesting to see how these 3e folks handle 1e characters! So thanks for the game, and thanks for all of the inspiration!

Happy to have been of service.

Secondly, you ruined my life! Everyone else talks about how D&D made them better readers, better at math, better at school, etc. But I was an A+ student before I discovered D&D. After that, my grades took a dive, and now I'm ekeing out a "living" as a freelance writer. Curse you, Gary Gygax! (No, I love you, really. Just don't let my mum catch you!)

Indeed, my influence on you has been bad if you have ended up as a freelancer in gaming--sure starvation :uhoh:

Anyway, because we must ask a question, and because I'm a morbid fellow:

What's the most memorable character death you've seen in all your years of gaming?

That's not something i keep track of. To me the loss of a PC is either well-deserved in the case of bad play or else very sad when the character was well-played but fate was against that one.

The one PC death I remember vividly is whan my own, Yrag, threw himself on his sword because of wretched DMing. The direction was so terrible that I was willing to never play again in a campaign run by that individual. The two other players with PCs took Yrag's corpse with them, had him raised despite my protests.

Also, what's up with the Thoul? It's a pretty bizarre creature, and I've always wondered what it's genesis was.

What's so bizarre about a ghoul troll? They just are not in ther general undead pantheon, if you will, but they make great monsters that paralyize and regenerate and are much tougher to turn that are ghouls or even ghasts.

One more: how do you pronounce Gygax?

Asked and answered many a time, even in this chapter of the Q&A thread, but I'll do so once more. Auf Switzer Deutsch the name is pronounced as "Ghe-gox." My branch of the family has Americanized it to "Guy-gax."

Cheers,
Gary

Gray Mouser · Mar 14, 2005

Col_Pladoh said:
What's so bizarre about a ghoul troll? They just are not in ther general undead pantheon, if you will, but they make great monsters that paralyize and regenerate and are much tougher to turn that are ghouls or even ghasts.

Hey Gary, I remember reading the entry for the Thoul in the Basic D&D set and thinking, "Man, I don't want to meet any of those guys!" when I was younger. A quick perusal of the appendix of the Monster Manual II, however, indictaes that these monsters didn't make it into AD&D. Was this an over sight on your part of did you decide not to include them for some reason?

In any event I think I will throw a few at the PC's in my online game and see how they fare

Gray Mouser

BOZ · Mar 14, 2005

most OD&D-specific monsters were not included in AD&D until rather late in the 2nd edition. i suspect this was intentional on the part of Gary and others, to keep OD&D with its own identity.

the designers in the later part of 2E, and even moreso 3E had no such qualms about keeping things like that separate.

Nathan P. Mahney · Mar 14, 2005

Col_Pladoh said:
Indeed, my influence on you has been bad if you have ended up as a freelancer in gaming--sure starvation

Well, I'm more into writing fiction than gaming stuff, though I'm working up to that. I can't quite wrap my head around the finer points of the d20 system, though. I just about had it sorted when they changed the rules on me...

Col_Pladoh said:
That's not something i keep track of. To me the loss of a PC is either well-deserved in the case of bad play or else very sad when the character was well-played but fate was against that one.

The one PC death I remember vividly is whan my own, Yrag, threw himself on his sword because of wretched DMing. The direction was so terrible that I was willing to never play again in a campaign run by that individual. The two other players with PCs took Yrag's corpse with them, had him raised despite my protests.

LOL! You probably would have appreciated the rule in 3e that lets your soul refuse resurrection.

"Bugger off! God's against me, and he's a crap DM!"

Col_Pladoh said:
What's so bizarre about a ghoul troll?

Hee, only a gamer...

Col_Pladoh said:
They just are not in ther general undead pantheon, if you will, but they make great monsters that paralyize and regenerate and are much tougher to turn that are ghouls or even ghasts.

Aha, you've just made this beastie sound a thousand times cooler than it ever did in the game! In the rulebook I read (Moldvay D&D) it's described as a cross between a ghoul, a hobgoblin and a troll. The hobgoblin bit must have thrown me. Now I'm itching to send one of these against the party.

Col_Pladoh said:
Asked and answered many a time, even in this chapter of the Q&A thread, but I'll do so once more. Auf Switzer Deutsch the name is pronounced as "Ghe-gox." My branch of the family has Americanized it to "Guy-gax."

Sorry! I realised this must have been asked before, but I didn't see it in my skim of this very thread, alas. I have to ask, though, is the second G hard or soft? I have the sinking feeling I've been mispronouncing your name for the last 17 years...

Gray Mouser · Mar 14, 2005

BOZ said:
most OD&D-specific monsters were not included in AD&D until rather late in the 2nd edition. i suspect this was intentional on the part of Gary and others, to keep OD&D with its own identity. the designers in the later part of 2E, and even moreso 3E had no such qualms about keeping things like that separate.

I don't know about this, actually. I didn't see "Thoul" in any of the OD&D booklets (granted I did a quick skim not an indepth search).

As far as I know they appeared in the Moldavay edition of Basic D&D, although I could certinaly be wrong in this regard. As for OD&D specific monsters not making it into AD&D until much later in 2e, a quick perusal of the OD&D booklets reveals the following monsters that made their way into the 1e Monster Manual:

Invisible Stalker
Beholder
Liches
Umber Hulk
Displacer Beast
Blink Dog
Hell Hounds
Rust Monster
Stirges
Owl Bear
Carrion Crawler
Gelatinous Cube
Intellect Devouerers
Mind Flayers
Su-Monster
Thought Eaters
Aquatic Elf
Sahuagin
Eye of the Deep
Ixitxachitl
Locathah

That's a pretty fair number, imho, and doesn't include things such as the various Demons, Elves, etc. to which EGG gave his own personal stamp.

Gray Mouser

TSR Q&A with Gary Gygax

Nathan P. Mahney

First Post

Col_Pladoh

Gary Gygax

Col_Pladoh

Gary Gygax

Sir Elton

First Post

Zudrak

Explorer

Col_Pladoh

Gary Gygax

Gray Mouser

First Post

BOZ

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Nathan P. Mahney

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Gray Mouser

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