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The Age of the Titans is ending. Farewell, Gary. You will be missed.

Page 82, 1E DMG: "When any creature is brought to 0 hit points (optionally, as low as -3 hit points if from the same blow which brought the total to 0), it is unconscious. In each of the next succeeding rounds 1 additional (negative) point will be lost until -10 is reached and the creature dies."

I often read of your running a house ruled OD&D game with the three little brown books rather than AD&D. Is there any reason for this other than simplicity? I ask mostly because I often here contradictory things about the extent to which AD&D as published represented your truest vision of the...

So then what was the origin of Yeenoghu? Or was he just another random demon lord created whole cloth for some other purpose? Thanks.

Gary, Someone recently passed along a story, supposedly about your Greyhawk campaign and the origin of one of the demon princes. The story has the ring of plausibility to it, but I'd never heard it before, so I thought I'd ask. The story goes that players in your campaign often ran afoul of...

Don't misunderstand me: I would love to see this happen; I simply don't expect it. I think it far more likely that, at some future date, the trademark "Dungeons & Dragons" will be used primarily to sell video or miniatures games and a pen & paper tabletop RPG will be a small sideline, if it even...

Would that this were possible, but so far as I can gather there are two very serious problems with this. Even assuming such a plan was of interest to a lot of D&D fans -- and I'm not convinced that it is -- WotC has neither the interest nor the institutional wherewithal to do this. They...

Ah, excellent. Thank you. I asked only because I'd run across several discussions lately where the OD&D rules were interpreted thusly, primarily because it was claimed the original text was unclear and because Phil Barker's Empire of the Petal Throne, whose rules obviously owed a lot to OD&D...

Gary, This is a rules question related to OD&D, so you may not remember the precise details. Nevertheless, I thought I'd ask. I've come across a couple of mentions recently that assert that, originally, hit dice were not strictly cumulative but were re-rolled each level with that levels...

Thanks. I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. Maybe this is a topic for a separate post but my feeling is increasingly that tabletop roleplaying in general (not just D&D) often imitates the imitators rather than embracing its own distinctiveness. This is a point often lost in many...

Very much so. Ironically, the success of Gygaxian fantasy is so pervasive that many people know it only through parodies. You need only look around at gaming forums and see the misconceptions, errors, and outright lies told about this style of fantasy to see this. It's a shame, because I hold...

QFT, as the kids say. Far too many people seem to have this idea that the flavor of D&D just naturally evolved, bubbling up from the ooze of mid-70s fantasy spontaneously, when the reality is that 95% (or more) of that flavor was the brainchild of one man and we've been living in his shadow ever...

Certainly, although I can't help but feel a slight pang of loss considering the subsequent history of the game and its various editions. As I get older, I find the feel and content of AD&D suits me very well and I think of what might have been had your revision come to pass.

Gary, I honestly can't recall if you had any plans for a revision of AD&D or a new edition of it. I have the dim recollection that what became Unearthed Arcana was in fact but what one part -- and a modified one at that -- of what was originally a much larger "expansion" of AD&D. Am I...

Very much agreed. In part, I think 1E feels this way, because Gygax was passing on a grand tradition, that of the pulp fantasies he read as a younger person, the knowledge of which was already passing from memory when 1E was new. When I began playing 1E, I felt as if I were being initiated into...

Indeed. This is a question I'd very much like to see answered as well. My feeling is that, given what we've seen so far, WotC has nothing to gain by helping to rebuild the value of the D20 "brand," so they'll just let it die a quiet death, simultaneously eliminating the stigma attached to it...

In another thread, I'm not sure if it was merely an omission on Mr. Rouse's part, but I see no reference to the D20 STL here (or anywhere else, for that matter). This makes me wonder if either there will be no D20 STL this time around or if the tiered rumor is actually in reference to the D20...

Gary, Two somewhat related questions, if I may: 1. Early portrayals of orcs in AD&D gave them decidedly porcine physical attributes. Was this done intentionally or was it simply the whim of the illustrators? 2. In Greyhawk, you often used alternate names for the various humanoid races, such...

To clarify, in case it wasn't clear, I didn't mean to suggest that you might have included Christianity in AD&D. It was always obvious you intended the game to be a fantasy and not a historical simulation. However, Professor Tolkien, a devout man himself, took the monotheism route for Middle...

Gary, Did you ever consider using a vague monotheism à la The Lord of the Rings in AD&D rather than polytheism? I'm assuming not, given things you've said in the past about angels vs. devas, etc. I ask primarily because I've always found the medieval trappings of the game somewhat at odds with...