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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 9217214" data-attributes="member: 7023840">Briefly on this ...I love Gygax. His purplish and overwrought verbiage, to this day, are "D&D" to me. It always will be. And his output from 1973 - 1982 (roughly from the genesis of OD&D through, um, going to Hollywood) is right up there with any person's contributions to this hobby; looking back, it is truly staggering the amount of work he put in and the amount of classic material he developed (or that he helped develop) that we still use today. But ... look. He contained multitudes. If you want to find something to contradict what Gygax wrote, you won't have to look far. Because Gygax contradicted himself. Often. Often in the same lengthy paragraph. And he also lied. Sometimes it was because he was exaggerating. Sometimes it was because he was being defensive. Sometimes it was because he was involved in litigation. Sometimes it was because he was trying to play up (or play down) his own, or other people's, contributions.Gygax was all over the place. Hit points represented all sorts of things, except when they represented the damage you took. In the same section that he talks about hit points not representing the actual ability to sustain physical damage, he also discusses how hit points do reflect physical damage- it's just that higher levels, you turn the sword through the heart to a hit that grazes you and nicks you (which makes the poison effects make sense). When talking about the lengthy time for physical hearing, he just kind of ... I dunno, says that it takes that long to get to your peak physical and metaphysical ability. Or take the section about not being a simulation. Sure! He was probably feeling a little defensive about that. But this in the DMG- the same book filled with complicated rules for making combat more realistic (that were largely ignored). That had table upon tables for generating everything from diseases to government types to the distances various races could tunnel through rock. I think it is more accurate to say that Gygax started D&D on the original path of providing ... well, something for everyone (but not really being the best at any one thing). You can always find what you're looking for, and it's always a reflection of what you want.</blockquote>

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