TSR Q&A with Gary Gygax

KRBourgoine · Jun 28, 2007

Gary,

Good morning, I hope you haven’t collapsed under your mountainous workload. And to help you get even further behind in your endeavors here is a question for you.

Were there ever players that you DM'ed more leniently than others? Not children per se, but rather players who you thought were less adept or that you knew wouldn’t take a beating well, so you fudged a little in their favor?

K.R.Bourgoine

Col_Pladoh · Jun 28, 2007

increment said:
A ripping yarn! I guess things must have been simpler in the early days - the Alex Raymond estate probably wasn't banging down your door looking for a cut. I hadn't known of that story before, but I'm sure now collectors will be scrambling to find a copy... and there's probably more where that came from, I imagine.

...

About all there is to be found are some Dippy press releases, mainly from whan I was playing Turkey. I was always Sultan Omar (I for the firsy tme I played that nation, II for the second, etc.) The head of my Armed forces was the Levantine, Genghis Cohn, and the secret service (Faithful Believers in Islam, or FBI) was headed up by J. Akbar Hookah. He was keenly hunting down the glamorous Austro-Hungarian spy, Lotta von Schlag.

There was also an exchange of letters rith Walker, IIRR, where I nailed him with simulacra...he assumed I made an error and meant simulacrum, so a second such construct got his protagonist. That's about all I can recollect.

Exchanging letters of invective and character assassination, writing imaginative press releases for postal games, was for me the greatest part of playing Dippy thus.

Cheers,
Gary

Col_Pladoh · Jun 28, 2007

KRBourgoine said:
Gary,

Good morning, I hope you haven’t collapsed under your mountainous workload. And to help you get even further behind in your endeavors here is a question for you.

Were there ever players that you DM'ed more leniently than others? Not children per se, but rather players who you thought were less adept or that you knew wouldn’t take a beating well, so you fudged a little in their favor?

K.R.Bourgoine

Howdy Pard!

Aside from youngsters, no. However, I am uniformly harsh with bad play and kind to good players suffering from bad luck.

Now back to the LA and CZ game products grind. Some semi-retirement

Cheers,
Gary

Edena_of_Neith · Jun 28, 2007

Hey there, Mr. Gygax. Edena_of_Neith here.

I am made to understand you did not approve of the From the Ashes Boxed Set, and the destruction of the Flanaess that resulted in the Greyhawk Wars. Is this true?
If you had decided to create a 'Greyhawk Wars' scenario, how would your 'Greyhawk Wars' have gone? (If they had gone at all ...) Would Acererak have become involved?

Col_Pladoh · Jun 28, 2007

Edena_of_Neith said:
Hey there, Mr. Gygax. Edena_of_Neith here.

I am made to understand you did not approve of the From the Ashes Boxed Set, and the destruction of the Flanaess that resulted in the Greyhawk Wars. Is this true?
If you had decided to create a 'Greyhawk Wars' scenario, how would your 'Greyhawk Wars' have gone? (If they had gone at all ...) Would Acererak have become involved?

Decreeing major wars in the Flanaess would have been quite contrary to the design philosophy behind the WoG. It was a template for use by DMs to use in developing their own campaigns based in the milieu. The various alliances and hostilities were set forth, but where they went was meant for each DM to determine as suited his own creative application of the base information.

That said, I did indeed find the concept of FtA quite inappropriate, but typical of TSR at the time. Creatively speaking, I do not believe they could find their butt with both hands.

Cheers,
Gary

Edena_of_Neith · Jun 28, 2007

Let me ask this. I've always wondered about this, since I went through S1, the Tomb of Horrors, 20 years ago. (My character was the only survivor ... as usual, the infamous Tomb killed everyone or left one survivor to tell the tale as a warning to others ...)

What would have to happen to so provoke Acererak that he assumed full form, came out of the Tomb, and decided to wreak some havoc?

Col_Pladoh · Jun 28, 2007

Edena_of_Neith said:
Let me ask this. I've always wondered about this, since I went through S1, the Tomb of Horrors, 20 years ago. (My character was the only survivor ... as usual, the infamous Tomb killed everyone or left one survivor to tell the tale as a warning to others ...)

What would have to happen to so provoke Acererak that he assumed full form, came out of the Tomb, and decided to wreak some havoc?

As son Ernie has said, when Tenser saw the nature of the tomb he simply retired from it not caring to risk life and limb for whatever treasure it might hold.

Anyway, as far as I am comncerned, Acererak needed some great source of magical negative energy to return to regular lich state, be able to manage such a return to his former "glory."

Cheers,
Gary

Gentlegamer · Jun 28, 2007

Col_Pladoh said:
As son Ernie has said, when Tenser saw the nature of the tomb he simply retired from it not caring to risk life and limb for whatever treasure it might hold.

Was it Tenser or Robilar that scooped up as much treasure as possible from the demi-lich's vault into a bag of holding before teleporting away?

Col_Pladoh · Jun 28, 2007

Robilar did that deed, but he then beat feet, no teleporting spell involved. IIRR, he had rerpleaced his lost Boots of Flying with Boots of Speed :uhoh:

I was quite unprepared for such a dirty trick

Cheers,
Gary

Moggthegob · Jun 29, 2007

Dear Gary,

My friends and I were discussing characters in greyhawk and a few interesting questions came up. If there were a World of Greyhawk movie, who would you have play Robilar, Tenser, and Mordenkainen. Or at very least what are good descriptions of what they look like.

Mogg the gob,
Goblin Extraordinaire

TSR Q&A with Gary Gygax

KRBourgoine

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Col_Pladoh

Gary Gygax

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Gary Gygax

Edena_of_Neith

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Gary Gygax

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Gary Gygax

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