D&D General The First Demise of TSR: Gygax's Folly

[Snarf Zagyg]

TSR settled. Sure, Arneson probably would have won, but technically he didn't.

I disagree.

 

[Some Dude]

I disagree.

Well, that's eye opening. Thanks for sharing that.

(not being sarcastic, by the way, just in case that isn't coming through)

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

That having been said, the part with Mordenkainen trying to make a movie and being in a hot tub with his secretary is clearly a dig at Gygax.

Should have added a mirror with lines of a white powdery substance on it.

 

[billd91]

WG7 Castle Greyhawk is a better adventure than it gets credit for, though it's a terrible "Greyhawk" adventure. There's a veritable who's who of RPG talent involved. And though the whole may be less than the sum of the parts, I think this would have been more highly regarded if it hadn't been a "Greyhawk" adventure in name.

That having been said, the part with Mordenkainen trying to make a movie and being in a hot tub with his secretary is clearly a dig at Gygax.

I agree that it's a stretch to call it WG7 malice, but I also think there was more to it than just grabbing any old campaign setting as in Mike's reply. Given the obsession people have over stories of the original Castle Greyhawk dungeon stories, I think there was some teasing of people affected by that obsession that was deliberate. I wouldn't consider that malicious and, in my opinion, the attribution of malice kind of justifies the teasing. Humor has always been present in RPGs, in quite a variety of D&D publications, and I think people do need to be reminded to not be so serious, even obsessively serious.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I agree that it's a stretch to call it WG7 malice, but I also think there was more to it than just grabbing any old campaign setting as in Mike's reply. Given the obsession people have over stories of the original Castle Greyhawk dungeon stories, I think there was some teasing of people affected by that obsession that was deliberate. I wouldn't consider that malicious and, in my opinion, the attribution of malice kind of justifies the teasing. Humor has always been present in RPGs, in quite a variety of D&D publications, and I think people do need to be reminded to not be so serious, even obsessively serious.

I cannot speak for everyone, but I can say that as a person who saw WG7 in the store and bought it immediately because it was the long awaited Castle Greyhawk ...

I still get angry thinking about it. At the time it was released, it was seen by people who followed those things as a giant middle finger to fans- not just because it contained barely-veiled shots at Gygax and gamers, but because the material itself was transparently insulting.

I guess you had to be there. The closest analogy might be this. But the difference was that was South Park, not Castle Greyhawk.

 

[Some Dude]

I cannot speak for everyone, but I can say that as a person who saw WG7 in the store and bought it immediately because it was the long awaited Castle Greyhawk ...

I still get angry thinking about it. At the time it was released, it was seen by people who followed those things as a giant middle finger to fans- not just because it contained barely-veiled shots at Gygax and gamers, but because the material itself was transparently insulting.

I guess you had to be there. The closest analogy might be this. But the difference was that was South Park, not Castle Greyhawk.

Yeah it must have seemed like a rug pull at the time...

 

[Nikosandros]

Yeah it must have seemed like a rug pull at the time...

Yes, I can fully empathize. However, I must admit, that back when I bought it, I really didn't have a clear idea of what Castle Greyhawk was supposed to be. I was still very disappointed in the module and I thought that it was extremely lame. I've never used it.

 

[billd91]

I cannot speak for everyone, but I can say that as a person who saw WG7 in the store and bought it immediately because it was the long awaited Castle Greyhawk ...

I still get angry thinking about it. At the time it was released, it was seen by people who followed those things as a giant middle finger to fans- not just because it contained barely-veiled shots at Gygax and gamers, but because the material itself was transparently insulting.

I guess you had to be there. The closest analogy might be this. But the difference was that was South Park, not Castle Greyhawk.

I was there. I had a copy. But did nobody read the blurb on the back of it? "The common theme of this dungeon is that no joke is so old, no pun so bad, and no schtick is so obvious it can't be used to confuse and trip up PCs!" Doesn't sound like the classic dungeon to me - not even an homage to it unless Gygax's campaign was really for Toon.

 

[Warren]

Also, Mr. Gygax was not really a fan of the creativity of the community's creativity. He begrudgingly accepted non-humans, but he got downright vicious about the concept of a critical hit or non-Vancian magic (ie, spell points) and quite nasty to the people experimenting with them.

Did Gygax come up with the original AD&D psionics? Those were points based. Or did that not count?

 

[Mannahnin]

Another problem with TSR evident right there. Self publishing those comics. Sheer speculation: I'm imagining DC not wanting to.licencd them (they were publishing D&D and Forgotten Realms comics) so TSR went ahead and did it. Needlepoint lesson never learned.

The comic books were a story in Slaying the Dragon. TSR West (under Flint Dille, as I recall) was working on multiple different media properties, none of which worked out. DC was uninterested in doing Buck Rogers, so TSR tried doing it themselves. They came up with the concept of a "comic book module" as a combined story plus game content in comic book form, to be distributed in comic shops and anywhere a comic could be. They tried to justify this as not being the same thing as a comic book and thus not in conflict with their licensing agreement with DC, but DC was unhappy and that experiment wound up crashing their relationship.

The forgotten story of D&D creator TSR’s failed attempt to break into comics and become the next Marvel or DC

The Dungeons & Dragons maker tried to take on the creator of Batman - and lost.

www.dicebreaker.com

Also, Mr. Gygax was not really a fan of the creativity of the community's creativity. He begrudgingly accepted non-humans, but he got downright vicious about the concept of a critical hit or non-Vancian magic (ie, spell points) and quite nasty to the people experimenting with them.

In 1974 and 1975 he was famously a cheerleader for the community's creativity.

He said in the original 1974 rules there was no reason a player couldn't play as a dragon, as long as the referee made them start small/young and worked up advancement charts. In letters to Alarums & Excursions in '75 he opined that it would be boring if everyone's campaigns were similar, and gushed about how playing in Dave Arneson's campaign was fun because he didn't know how everything worked and it kept him on his toes. He also talked about how spell points would be a more flexible and logical system, but would be too complex and detailed, so they went with the simpler "Vancian" system for ease of use and playability.

In columns in Dragon years later, after he started getting territorial and concerned that other publishers were ripping him off, he got negative about variants like Warlock, or Dungeons & Beavers, as the Cal-Tech house rules were sometimes called. In the AD&D DMG he expressed pessimistic views about monster PCs and advised DMs to strictly enforce limits and downsides for them. He also expressed a pretty firm opinion that critical hits were a bad idea for D&D, but I wouldn't call him vicious about it. See the text on page 61:

As has been detailed, hit points are not actually a measure of physical damage, by and large, as far as characters (and some other creatures as well) are concerned. Therefore, the location of hits and the type of damage caused are not germane to them. While this is not true with respect to most monsters, it is neither necessary nor particularly useful. Lestsome purist immediately object, consider the many charts and tables necessary to handle this sort of detail, and then think about how area effect spells would work. In like manner, consider all of the nasty things which face adventurers as the rules stand. Are crippling disabilities and yet more ways to meet instant death desirable in an open-ended, episodic game where participants seek to identify with lovingly detailed and developed player-character personae? Not likely! Certain death is as undesirable as a give-away compaign. Combat is a common pursuit in the vast majority of adventures, ond the participants in the campaign deserve a chance to exercise intelligent.choice during such confrontations. As hitpoints dwindle they can opt to break off the encounter and attempt to flee. With complex combat systems which stress so-called realism and feature hit location, special damage, and so on, either this option is severely limited or the rules are highly slanted towards favoring the playercharocters at the expense of their opponents. (Such rules as double damage and critical hits must cut both ways ~ in which case the life expectancy of player characters will be shortened considerably - or the monsters are being grossly misrepresented and unfairly treated by the system. I am certain you can think of many other such rules.)