TSR Q&A with Gary Gygax

This is the multi-year Q&A sessions held by D&D co-creator Gary Gygax here at EN World, beginning in 2002 and running up until his sad pasing in 2008. Gary's username in the thread below is Col_Pladoh, and his first post in this long thread is Post #39.

 

[BOZ]

Glad you didn't take offense at my grouching about Authurian legens. It is most unpalatable to me, so I tend to become ascerbic

i take it then, it wasn't your idea to have them in Dieties and Demigods. i've never made any use of that section, myself.

 

[Col_Pladoh]

Hi Gray Mouser,

Thanks for the kind words

Ciao,
Gary

 

[Col_Pladoh]

i take it then, it wasn't your idea to have them in Dieties and Demigods. i've never made any use of that section, myself.

Right you are!

Brian Blume oversaw that particular project.

Cheers,
Gary

 

[Orius]

Glad you didn't take offense at my grouching about Authurian legens. It is most unpalatable to me, so I tend to become ascerbic

....

While I find the raw power of Robert E. Howard's swords & sorcery tales compelling, I am not in the least captivated by the majority of the Exaulted Professor's yarns, other than The Hobbit, which book I read many times aloud to my children.

It would seem you're not much of a fan of medieval romances then. I can understand that. Even though I like Tolkien, medieval romances bore me somewhat. I tried reading the sections about Charlemagne's paladins in my copy of Bullfinch, but started getting lost after the 6th or 7th enchantress showed up and tried to seduce the paladins. People talk about bad fantasy cliches today, but IMO some of those medieval writers were even worse.

 

[Orius]

I created the D&D game to sell, to get to as many consumers as possible, and the best way to do that was to include races that were favored by the many young Tolkien fans. Dwarves are hardly a main feature of the Rings trilogy, but hobbits, elves, orcs, balrog, and ents (the Anglo-Saxon word for "giant," of course) were. So I included them so as to sell the game. Even though I find the Rings trilogy a bore, found Bored of the Rings great sport, so what? Gamers are able to enjoy their D&D campaign with as much Tolkein flavor as they wish.

There's a number of Tolkien fans out there on the net who'd probably want to tar and feather you if they knew you thought LotR was boring. They already don't like the influences that are in the game, even if they don't realize it's a pretty small part. Some fans can be far too serious about the things they like.

Still, I think the perception of heavy Tolkien influences comes from the fact that a great number of D&D players have read his books. I remember back when I started playing, it seemed like the vast majority of gamers took an interest in D&D because they were fans of LotR. So it would seem your marketing scheme worked pretty well. That influence seems to have waned a bit in recent years, but I think the movies might very well cause a new upsurge in Tolkien influences in the game.

I have to admit though, I generally prefer a pulpier flavor to my games. It just seems to work with D&D better.

 

[Gentlegamer]

Ah, yes, the one thing that I strongly disagree with Our Dear Gary about: opinion of the Good Professor! The Professor might say much the same about the kinds of writing you evidently prefer (to paraphrase his foreward to LORD OF THE RINGS); although, by all accounts, he also enjoyed REH's Conan stories.

At any rate, I love them all, (Howard, Lovecraft, Moorcock, Smith, Camp and Pratt, Carter, Anderson, Merrit, Vance, Leiber, Alexander), though Tolkien remains my favorite!

I'll add that while Our Dear Gary isn't a Tolkien fan, the marketing inclusion of a few of Tolkien's creatures certainly enriches the rich stew of all the various sci-fi/fantasy authors and genres that makes up the D&D world. To that I think he'll agree!

 

[Storm Raven]

Aye, Bored of the Rings was hilarious.

Eh, I thought it seemed like a Saturday Night Live skit that went on far too long. Started out funny, but just got repetitive as the book went on. In any event, people should take the Tolkien influence in D&D for what it is: some references and some creatures mixed with a whole lot of other stuff into a mash.

Tolkien influenced stuff: the original ranger class, orc, ents, halflings, dwarves (as presented, they are similar to Scandanavian/Germanic dwarves, but the Tolkien sheen on them is very apparent, lots of D&D dwarf elements just don't show up in the myths, but do show up in Tolkien), balrogs (the Type VI demon), and a couple other things.

 

[Gentlegamer]

Tolkien influenced stuff: the original ranger class, orc, ents, halflings, dwarves (as presented, they are similar to Scandanavian/Germanic dwarves, but the Tolkien sheen on them is very apparent, lots of D&D dwarf elements just don't show up in the myths, but do show up in Tolkien), balrogs (the Type VI demon), and a couple other things.

Elf types (High, Grey, and Wood)

This reminded me of a question for Our Dear Gary: while you included some elements from Tolkien for marketing reasons, why were there no explicit Vance creatures such as pelgranes, erbs, and deodands? The original presentation of the banderlog in The Dragon described it as a type of deodand, but this categorization was dropped by the time it was published in MMII.

 

[Col_Pladoh]

Well Fellows...

As I said earlier, discussion of the pros and cons of JRRT's work, their influence on the D&D game, are tedious, so I really won't carry on further discussion regarding the topic.

Some millions of roleplayers were quite satisfied by the presentation I made in A/D&D, no game since has managed to captivate so many fans, and I'll let it go at that.

I did not include Vance-inspired creatures in the A/D&D game because they didn't fit well with a quasi-medieval fantasy game, and although I found his work excellent, the potential audience for the RPG would not be particularly attracted by such inclusion. I let it go at having the whole of the spell-casting system be an inspiration from his writing.

Cheers,
Gary

 

[Gentlegamer]

I have purchased the Lejendary Adventures Essentials and eagerly await it's delivery at my home. Using the LA rules, what would Conan, Cugel the Clever, Rhialto the Marvelous, or the Gray Mouser look like under this ruleset? I am curious as to how the system accomodates more "tailored" characters.