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.

 

[haakon1]

The players wisely declined to venture into NYC during the famous blackout. After wholloping some street punks they went back down the subway tunnel to where the inter-unicerse game was still operational.

Eggcellent! The through-the-gates to London in the 1980s adventure in Dragon was one of my very favorites, though I've wanted to save it as a campaign capper.

 

[haakon1]

An agathocacological plane of insubstantial stuff has always fascinated me since I began contemplating additional realms. So the shadows from A. Merritt's Creep Shadow, Creep novel were included in the AD&D game, and new and similar monsters added to the projected plane betweem light and darkness. Skip Williams was going to co-author a long adventure module and sourcebook for the place, but he decided to remain a loyal employee of Lorraine Williams instead. I have my notes, but his are amons=gst them, so doing such a worrk now is pretty much unlikely.

When I read about the shadows and shades in the MMII, I had the idea that the Mage of the "Valley of the Mage" was one. I'm going to guess that was not your intent?

 

[Col_Pladoh]

Not to mention one, where in its current incarnation, you haven't read.

Quite so.

In general, though, I dislike having magazines arrive when I am not in the mood to read them, and after a couple sit in the to be read stack for a time I feel guilty...

Cheers,
Gary

 

[Col_Pladoh]

wow, tx gary!

so simple and and feel so right!
also, if you see a 80 years old mage, maybe you are in big trouble!
but if you see a 80 yo fighter....

OTOH,

If you see a gaggle of young, fresh-faces chaps in pointy hats it is also a good idea to beat feet immediately, as one is sure to fail at least one saving throw against charm person

Cheerio,
Gary

 

[Col_Pladoh]

That's interesting; I don't believe I've ever heard mention of the Odo of Bayeaux connection. It makes sense in retrospect, although Odo doesn't have the best reputation historically, being something of a schemer, even against his own kin.

I take it then, from published sources such as Greyhawk materials, that you envisioned clerics (the character class) working as priests as well as semi-warriors? Hommlet, for example, is serviced by clerics at its temple to St. Cuthbert. I presume this means you saw no need for a non-cleric "priest" class or something similar?

As far as I am concerned the terms cleric and priest are interchangable for the AD&D class. Consider many of the spells available to the cleric--clearly meant to provide for the general population.

As a matter of fact in more recent times I have reconsidered the role of the cleric in a fantasy milieu with active deities. The ecclesiastics are much undervalued in most FPPG systems. They should be as prevalent and iat least as nfluential as were the churchmen in early medieval Europe. Not only do they guarantee much in regards social continuity, teaching, community health, weather, husbandry, and agriculture; but they provide a working link to higher powers that interact with humanity regularly and often not benignly save through their good offices.

If you happen to see my book, Living Fantasy, have a look at what I have to say about the rile of clerics therein.

 

[Col_Pladoh]

What? No "Prisoner of Zenda", "White Fang", or "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" for you? (I'd forgotten I'd read these classic adventure tales as a kid!)

Or are you referring to heavy-weight classics, like Shakespeare (he was a pretty good writer!), "War and Peace", and "Moby-Dick".


"It doesn't have to be old to be classic." -- Slogan of "I-95" radio (WRKI), Brookfield, CT in the mid-1990s.

"It doesn't have to be classic to be old." -- Slogan of a competitor station who's not good enough to remember the call letters of.

I read all of those young reader classics, but I preferred Tarzan and the Jewels of Ophir, Kit Carson and the Golden Canyon, Jerry Todd and the Whispering Mummy, and Waab, the Biography of a Grizzly.

I enjoy Shakespeare well enough, aced the course in college, and I have written a fairly good Shakesperian sonnetfor a pal to use in impressing the lady with whom he was smitte, They later married.

The Russian and French classics, as well as most of the English and American ones are what I was referring to, including Moby Dick and War and Peace. OTOH, if one considers Sherlock Holmes stories classic, I am quite fond of such classics.

I thought the "Topper" stories great as a youngster but was bored to tears reading Anthony Adverse. All of those books mentioned above and many others such as the complete works of Shakespeare, Twain, Poe, and Balzac were in the family library at home, and whenever I was out of comic books and later pulp zines and paperbacks I would read them. Sometimes in bad weather I'd burn through three pulp zines a day, or a couple of average novels or a long one. My reading speed back then was near to 600 words a minute with c. 95% comprehension. College studying slowed my speed down a good deal, and I never attempted to regain what was lost as that made the books I enjoyed reading last longer.

Cheers,
Gary

 

[Col_Pladoh]

The DMG makes mention of The Tempest in the play sample....surely you can't be against Shakespeare!

What about The Count of Monte Cristo and writers like H.G. Wells?

See above

Prospero and Caliban were interesting certainly.

Rafael Sabatini wrote more interesting historical yarns than did dumas.

H.G. Wells was less interesting to me than Jules Verne.

Cheers,
Gary

 

[Col_Pladoh]

Eggcellent! The through-the-gates to London in the 1980s adventure in Dragon was one of my very favorites, though I've wanted to save it as a campaign capper.

Whoa!

You made sense of my sloppy, typo-ridden statement. congratulations

Cheerio,
Gary

 

[Col_Pladoh]

When I read about the shadows and shades in the MMII, I had the idea that the Mage of the "Valley of the Mage" was one. I'm going to guess that was not your intent?

No, the spell-worker ruling the Valley of the Mage was envisioned by me as a demi-urge in retirement rather akin to Tom Bombadil.

Cheerio,
Gary

 

[JamesM]

As far as I am concerned the terms cleric and priest are interchangable for the AD&D class. Consider many of the spells available to the cleric--clearly meant to provide for the general population.

I assumed that was your intention. I ask mostly because there are some differences between the D&D cleric archetype and the more usual priestly one, specifically the combat puissance of the cleric.

If you happen to see my book, Living Fantasy, have a look at what I have to say about the rile of clerics therein.

I shall keep an eye out for it, but it does not seem to have made its way into my neck of the woods.