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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 9503041" data-attributes="member: 7026594">You should read The Elusive Shift.  And really any primary source material about the development of RPGs in the 70sThat wasn't Gary's innovation.  That was a baseline assumption of the wargaming and Diplomacy culture he came up in and in which Dave Wesely, Dave Arneson, and Gygax created their role-playing games.In his letters to Alarums & Excursions in 1975 Gary was very encouraging of folks making the game their own, when he was trying to sell the game to an existing culture of wargamers and sci-fi fans.  As Gus points out, a few years later once other publishers got in on the act and folks started making variants and playing D&D ways he disapproved of, Gary got super prescriptive and territorial*.*EDIT: One of the things that When We Were Wizards makes distressingly clear is how much Gary felt and acted like he owned the concept of RPGs and D&D in particular.  Like he deserved all the royalties (even when they were a crushing burden to the company) and fame, but actively worked to prevent other people, especially younger designers working at his own company, from getting the same kind (even to a lesser degree) of financial reward from it.  How disingenuous he was in signing an agreement to assign his rights to TSR and requiring everyone else to do so, while later making it clear that he never intended to be bound by it himself.</blockquote>