TSR Q&A with Gary Gygax

Joseph Elric Smith · Nov 5, 2003

Col_Pladoh said:
Argh!

A sore subject that.

Because of the poor market for comics, there is now a question of the project going forward

I have a query into the licensee, but no response yet--just sent it on Monday. It has brought me to wonder about our not incluiding a "print or pay" clause in the contract, though, ala films. Option money being small, the publisher has no real incentive to go forward in many cases without such a requirement.

If this goes into the dumper I will be most sad. Keep your fingers crossed that we can find a way for it to happen despite the bad market conditions.

Cheers,
Gary

Ack!!! I hope it does come to pass.
ken

Breakdaddy · Nov 5, 2003

Hi Gary, Glad to see you still lurking about! Do you ever play 3rd edition D&D or will you only play earlier editions? Also, since you seem to endorse Arcana Unearthed by Monte Cook, do you get to play this variant much, and if so, what is your favorite class?

Cheers,
Breakdaddy

Col_Pladoh · Nov 5, 2003

Breakdaddy said:
Hi Gary, Glad to see you still lurking about! Do you ever play 3rd edition D&D or will you only play earlier editions? Also, since you seem to endorse Arcana Unearthed by Monte Cook, do you get to play this variant much, and if so, what is your favorite class?

Cheers,
Breakdaddy

Howdy!

Actually, I don't get to play any RPGs much at all, other than to serve as the Lejend Master for my Lejendary Adventure campaign. Time is short, and I seldom am away from the computer and work.

I don't enjoy new D&D, but I will happily play original D&D or OAD&D when opportunity presents itself. In fact, I am working on an extensive compaign base module for the upcoming Castle & Crusade rules from Troll Lord Games. It is an OGL-based system that aims at coming close to OAD&D, and it that effort succeeds, then Rob Kuntz and I will be going to work on producing a version of the original Castle Greyhawk that is suitable in size and detail for the C&C system and the strictures of publishing such a potentially massive work. In short, we'll cut the size back to something in the range of 20 levels, a bit larger than my original work but a lot smaller than the combined material Rob and I used to entertain player groups of 10-20 persons several times a week.

This will be a lot of work, as we both used very sketchy encounter notes, a single line was typical, for "winging' was the favored approach to all adventures. Quantifyng will eat up much time and space, not to mention the re-drafting of old level maps to fit the new configuration we have outlined.

The salient features of the original dungeons will be retained, of course. If the work proves to be sufficiently popular we can always supplement the base with add-ons too, just as we did with the campaign material through opening new split and side levels, placing transporters into dungeon areas to move PCs to separate adventure areas akin to those published as separate modules--DUNGEONLAND, LAND BEYOND THE MAGIC MIRROR, and ISLE OF THE APE.

As for Monte's ARCANA UNEARTHED, I was impressed with the work because of its faciulity of using the D&D base to present a whole new and substantially different milieu. I would have very much liked to play some in it, as I did the 3E game in the long playtest of the LOST CITY OF GAXMOOR, but that wasn't possible, as the Good Mr. Cook doesn't live in the Lake Geneva area

Cheers,
Gary

Upper_Krust · Nov 5, 2003

Hey Col_Pladoh mate!

Col_Pladoh said:
Argh!

A sore subject that.

Because of the poor market for comics, there is now a question of the project going forward.

Dear goodness, thats terrible news.

Col_Pladoh said:
I have a query into the licensee, but no response yet--just sent it on Monday. It has brought me to wonder about our not incluiding a "print or pay" clause in the contract, though, ala films. Option money being small, the publisher has no real incentive to go forward in many cases without such a requirement.

If this goes into the dumper I will be most sad. Keep your fingers crossed that we can find a way for it to happen despite the bad market conditions.

I will indeed be keeping my fingers crossed, I have been awaiting this for some eighteen months now (or whenever it was you first mentioned it here on the boards) and I will be almost as gutted as yourself if it falls through.

Best of luck (in everything) Gary.

Col_Pladoh · Nov 5, 2003

Well, Upper_Krust...

If the project gets cancelled, the sole consolation will be that it was due to a lousy comic book market, not that the product was lacking. It seems at this time all that's movng well are trilogies. How one can publish trilogies and complete a graphic novel thus is something of a poser

Ciao,
Gary

Krypter · Nov 5, 2003

Hello Gary,

I was wondering how you developed the world of Greyhawk. I know it was undoubtedly an organic growth with pieces being fleshed out through your games, but later on when the project was becoming commercial, did you have specific design goals for Greyhawk? I've heard people commenting that Forgotten Realms is a "high-magic" setting with really powerful NPCs doing most of the adventuring while Greyhawk is a grittier world where evil often wins and even the most powerful NPCs (like the Circle of Eight) promote Neutrality rather than Good. The history of Greyhawk does seem a lot nastier than FR.

Was this intentional design or a later development at TSR?

Elodan · Nov 5, 2003

Col_Pladoh said:
I don't enjoy new D&D, but I will happily play original D&D or OAD&D when opportunity presents itself.

In fact, I am working on an extensive compaign base module for the upcoming Castle & Crusade rules from Troll Lord Games. It is an OGL-based system that aims at coming close to OAD&D

Hello Gary,

Based on this I was curious if you've tried HackMaster which is based on 1E/2E.

Sorry if this has been asked before, but I've only just discovered these threads. I'm also looking forward to the Troll Lord project.

Tom

Ed Cha · Nov 5, 2003

Gary,

I've noticed you seem to be writing a lot of mega-modules lately. Is this a publishing decision or just because you like doing them?

Personally, I'm not a big fan of mega-modules unless they're really good like the ones you did with "Necropolis" or "The Temple of Elemental Evil". I'd much prefer a series.

Ed

Col_Pladoh · Nov 5, 2003

Krypter said:
Hello Gary,

I was wondering how you developed the world of Greyhawk. I know it was undoubtedly an organic growth with pieces being fleshed out through your games, but later on when the project was becoming commercial, did you have specific design goals for Greyhawk? I've heard people commenting that Forgotten Realms is a "high-magic" setting with really powerful NPCs doing most of the adventuring while Greyhawk is a grittier world where evil often wins and even the most powerful NPCs (like the Circle of Eight) promote Neutrality rather than Good. The history of Greyhawk does seem a lot nastier than FR.

Was this intentional design or a later development at TSR?

Well...

When I was asked by TSR to do my World of Greyhawk as a commercial product I was taken aback. I had assumed most DMs would far perfer to use their own world settings. Furthermore, as I was running a game with a large number of players involved, I really didn't want to supply themwith the whole world on a platter. I'll repeathere what has been told before

I found out the maximum map size TSR could produce, got the go-ahead for two maps of that size, then sat down for a couple of weeks and hand-drew the whole thing. After the maps were done and the features shown were named, I wroite up brief information of the featyres and states. Much of the information was drawn from my own personal world, but altered to fit the new one depicted on the maps.

Whatever came out from TSR regarding the World of Greyhawk up through 1985 was from me, with a bit of material added as filler coming from Frank Mentzer after I approved the work.

The relatively low level of NPCs, and the balance between alignments was done on purpose so as facilitate the use of the world setting by all DMs. With a basically neutral environment, the direction of the individual campaign was squarely in the hands of the DM running it. The Circle of Eight came into the setting when it seemed to me that my PCs were generally too powerful to remain in active play, and they were put into the mix for DMs to use in case they wanted to keep the setting from being dominated by Good or Evil, to a lesser extent Law or Chaos and even true Neutrality. That was done because to my way of thinking dominamce by one alignment group tends to restrict the potential for adventuring.

If that doesn't fully answer your question, come on back.

Cheers,
Gary

Col_Pladoh · Nov 5, 2003

Elodan said:
Hello Gary,

Based on this I was curious if you've tried HackMaster which is based on 1E/2E.

Sorry if this has been asked before, but I've only just discovered these threads. I'm also looking forward to the Troll Lord project.

Tom

Actually, I have only read through the player's handbook for the system. After doing that I posted on the www.Dragonsfoot.org boards that the system was worth a look, because it had material usable by DMs with OAD&D campaigns. Frankly, I'd much rather play OAD&D than get into what started out as a parody of the game, then developed into a somewhat more serious RPG. To my taste the HM system isn't an improvement over OAD&D, so there's no incentive to invest in all the books now required to play it, learn the system changes necessary to properly GM and play it.

Cheers,
Gary

TSR Q&A with Gary Gygax

Joseph Elric Smith

First Post

Breakdaddy

First Post

Col_Pladoh

Gary Gygax

Upper_Krust

Hero

Col_Pladoh

Gary Gygax

Krypter

Explorer

Elodan

Adventurer

Ed Cha

Community Supporter

Col_Pladoh

Gary Gygax

Col_Pladoh

Gary Gygax

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