TSR Q&A with Gary Gygax

ColonelHardisson said:

Personally, I'd compare him to Jack Vance and Lord Dunsany. Those are the only two that immediately leap to mind. Ursula LeGuin...I don't see the resemblance.

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Now you have my attention

Cheerio,
Gary

Col_Pladoh said:

Now you have my attention

Cheerio,
Gary

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Good, good. Wolfe has a proficiency with the English language that reminds me very much of Dunsany. I'd say Wolfe's style is more difficult; densely worded, yet ultimately rewarding. He breathes new life into old words, the kind you'd enjoy seeing in use again, the kind that don't appear in newer dictionaries, but which fit the narrative perfectly. Where he reminds me of both Dunsany and Vance is in his settings, which are dreamlike yet somehow profoundly familiar. His work in general reminds me of Vance's "Dying Earth" stories. In my personal opinion, Wolfe, now in his mid 70s, is one of our greatest living writers. Here's a quote from Thomas Disch I found at Wikipedia, which I think nicely describes Wolfe:

"When asked the "Most overrated" and "Most underrated" authors, Thomas Disch identified Isaac Asimov and Gene Wolfe, respectively, writing: "...all too many have already gone into a decline after carrying home some trophies. The one exception is Gene Wolfe...Between 1980 and 1982 he published The Book of the New Sun, a tetralogy of couth, intelligence, and suavity that is also written in VistaVision with Dolby Sound. Imagine a Star Wars-style space opera penned by G. K. Chesterton in the throes of a religious conversion. Wolfe has continued in full diapason ever since, and a crossover success is long overdue.""

Col_Pladoh said:

The son of Odin and the earth goddess Jord, married to a giantess?

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About Thor in Stargate SG-1 . . . I don't think Thor ever talked about his family in Stargate, as he was born in a test-tube, being a clone of a clone of a clone, many thousands of years old but with a replacement body every once in a while, kinda like a Timelord, except it's always a copy (slowly degrading over the millenia) of their original body.

In the ancient past, Thor's race -- the Asgard -- protected humans, who were developing as an interesting race fitting into a prophecy among the Asgard of the rise of the "fifth race" of intelligent beings -- by a treaty with the bad guys, preventing them slaughtering Earthlings. They appeared to those humans as primitive humans themselves, to not frighten them. The humans thought of the bad guys are threatening giants or ettins (which is odd, since other humans thought of the bad guys as Egyptian gods or Aztec gods or even Chinese gods).

Anyhow, the Asgard's true form is aliens who are grey skinned, naked and without gender, about three feet tall, with large bulbous heads and all-pupil black eyes. They are known to UFOlogists as "greys". Why are they known in their true form at all? Why, an Asgard rogue scientist, named Loki, has been abducting humans for thousands of years to do strange experiments on them; he's been trying to solve the problem of copy of a copy degradation of the Asgard genome by studying human DNA and sexual reproduction. His experiments were banned by the Asgard High Council, but he started them up again in the 1940s or so . . .

The one thing they didn't explain is if Loki is responsible for cattle mutilation and crop circles, but I'm sure he is.

Col_Pladoh said:

The old Celtic areas of the UK still have some nationalistic movements in them indeed.

There were lots of Cornishmen in the lead mining area of southern Wisconsin, and that is indeed where the term "Badger State" came from. There are no actual badgers here.

My grandmother told me how the miners would take their pasties into the mine for lunch, warming them under their arm...

Yes, Onwall was inspired by Cornwall, Land's End and all that good stuff

Cheerio,
Gary

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Underarm warmed pasties are probably better than cold pasties . . . I made the mistake of trying a pasty out of the fridge in the UK once. A congealed fat sandwich is not too tasty!

As for Land's End and Cornwall in general, it's as beautiful as you'd guess . . . I recommend checking it out if you visit the UK. But for you, Caernarvon Castle in Wales and Edinburgh Castle in Scotland would be higher priorities, if you haven't seen them yet.

The other castle I'd like to see someday is Krak de Chevaliers, but tourism to Syria doesn't seem wise at the moment.

Col_Pladoh said:

the Gygax family armorial bearings are a green ground with a white goose facing dexter, a red star in canton and a buffalo horn. IIRR, the star and the horn were later additions for service and bravery.

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Ah, so the Gygax family was from the County of Urnst, it would seem.

Geoffrey said:

I think that's something that hurts D&D in the long run: Not having a single boxed set that is essentially unchanged from decade to decade (just like Monopoly). Having such a set, of course, would not preclude all kinds of additional D&D products for hard-core gamers. But only a small fraction of people want to essentially game full-time. But lots of people are amenable to an occasional 2-hour D&D game. That sort of casual gaming would be best served by a static boxed set with a short rulebook (say, 64 pages) that stays the same except to fix typos. That way people would always know how to play rather than having to digest 1,000-page "core" rules that change all the time.

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You are so right. Even as a gamer who likes D&D far too much, I have to agree with that. For most of the players I know, rules changes and supplemental rules are a distraction, rather than adding to the fun. However, it would seem there are a small minority who wants new, additional rules every month, either because they like collecting new rules, or because they game for something like 4-6 hours, 4 times a month, and are jaded with traditional concepts, settings, and rules.

(By contrast, I love traditional settings and dislike new rules. I play in a game every 2-3 months, run a game about once every 3-4 months, and have been running a constant but very slow game over email since 1998 -- the highest level characters just hit 7th level after 6 months of game time/9 years of real life!)

Col_Pladoh said:

The main moon of Oerth was a viable sphere, although none of my players ever made it there. Mars and Venus were likewise habitable ala ERB. Getting to those places was via portal or special spells that I never did manage to ger around to detailing.

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In 1998, TSR briefly revived Greyhawk. One of the first products they put out was an adventure by Roger Moore called "Return of the Eight". It was about penetrating Tenser's fortress on the Nyr Dyv to rescue him (his clone, actually). The final scene involved an old, old Greyhawk villain and too place on Luna, reached by a special gate. IIRC, Luna was a jungle-like environment, but I might be remembering my own spin on it.

Anyhow, it was pretty good. I think Roger Moore and Eric Mona were always respectful of the setting, its creator, and its fans, and I appreciated their rabid fandom on AOL even in the era when TSR was not publishing anything for Greyhawk (1993-1998?). Perhaps the unofficial Greyhawk underground will need to reemerge, with lose of Mona's Dungeon/Dragon editorship.

Col_Pladoh said:

Avatars from different genres can indeed become at home in new settings.

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In moderation, that's one of the my favorite things to do.

Impressive ColonelHardisson...

But I hope Wolfe is easier to read than I found Chesterton to be.

Cheerio,
Gary

Well, haakon1,

It seems as if the writers for that program not only do not know much about Egyptian mythology, but are also equally misinformed about the Norse, for Thor was of the Aesir race...

anyway, this reinforces why I shun the show, much as U do the new BBC production of Robin Hood. What a travesty!

Cheers,
Gary

haakon1 said:

Underarm warmed pasties are probably better than cold pasties . . . I made the mistake of trying a pasty out of the fridge in the UK once. A congealed fat sandwich is not too tasty!

As for Land's End and Cornwall in general, it's as beautiful as you'd guess . . . I recommend checking it out if you visit the UK. But for you, Caernarvon Castle in Wales and Edinburgh Castle in Scotland would be higher priorities, if you haven't seen them yet.

The other castle I'd like to see someday is Krak de Chevaliers, but tourism to Syria doesn't seem wise at the moment.

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I have been to the UK quite a few times, but Bath is about as far west as I got. I do want to see Cornwall as well as the Vale of Belvoir, the Lakes Country, Wales, and Yorkshire...then cross over to Ireland.

Cheers,
Gary