That's the thing: I'm not trying to make an argument or be "clever". And if I want to quote the late Gary Gygax until my last breath, I will - and there's nothing you people can do about it.
He created and produced Dungeons & Dragons, and there's nothing you can do about it. Except complain, of course
The last few episodes of When We Were Wizards make it very clear that he was unhappy when his name wasn't used. He was like a reverse demon prince. (Tell me I didn't have the only table where saying the name of a demon prince three times summoned them to wreck your campaign.)
It is an appeal for clarity and accuracy, not the same thing. @Deset Gled has no authority to police anything in these forums, so it is simply a request for truth in reporting.
Mod note:
Alas, having authority is absolutely no bar to attempts to police language. Nor is it clear that appeals for clarity are always disparate from policing.
And folks often don't react well to even the appearance of the attempt to police language.
So, everyone, keep your cool in this thread, or your cool will be kept for you.
The following does not describe all players of D&D during a time period, or even a majority of them. Most like a small minority of them...but..
Anti-Authority was one of the leading edges of some of the groups of people that chose to listen to Heavy Metal and play D&D in the 80s. I can see the request going over well with them (sarcasm).
People who didn't fit in and purposefully avoided the norms were popular in the early aughts with D&D. I can see this thread's request going over well with them (sarcasm).
Today, there are many who are wending their own way, trying to be an individual and be unique in playing D&D with unique characters and unique mannerisms. I can see the idea of the first post of this thread being something that they will want to conform to (sarcasm).
The anti-authority, avoiding the norms, and wanting to be unique individual within me wanted to go and write a post marking all the things I was not supposed to do in one singular post, but for the sake of conformity, I think the above will do.
(That post was written tongue in cheek and with a humorous kick, try not to be too offended by it lest you go raving into the night like a mad person).
I think the most Gygaxian thing of all would be to just do whatever you want. I do think I agree in broad strokes with Gygax's vision for D&D far more than what has been in the 21st century but so what. If I didn't I sure wouldn't be changing my playstyle. Play is a voluntary activity meant to be fun. If you are having fun and your group is too then you all are doing well. When I advocate for old things it is mainly because to me they were better. Not everything. I'm not arguing for THAC0. But some things were better TO ME.
Exactly. And it isn't even like "well I chose to reinterpret X". This is straight-up "I know I wrote that you should passive-aggressively punish people who play non-humans, but how I run things, anyone can play anything they like, so long as they accept starting out weak and growing into their power over time."
Like...it's literally a full 180 degree reversal, directly and explicitly opposite what was written in the text. Hence why I mentioned that on many things you can cite Gygax both for and against any given position, sometimes back and forth over time. Official books often differed wildly from his personal approach on things, to the degree that it can be difficult to actually tell what, if anything, he believed personally on any given game topic. (I make no claims about any of his personal beliefs...though he definitely didn't do himself any favors on that front.)
For the record, he started out (in 1974) saying there's no reason you can't play a dragon or whatever as long as you start out weak and advance over time, then five years later in the 1979 DMG he was giving the more negative instructions, cautioning DMs to make any such PCs have big drawbacks, and warning of powergaming, etc. I think he was already a bit jaded by then.
In 1974 he was trying to sell the game to the broadest possible audience of homebrewing wargamers, any of whom he expected would naturally change things.
By 1979 he was trying to fend off other competing RPGs, stake out territory, keep others from cutting into his profits, and trying to standardize the game for consistent tournament play. (Monsters, Monsters was in '76, for reference). Luke Gygax reports that in their home games in the 1e years he was running basically by-the-book AD&D. *
And then decades later in life after his new RPGs outside TSR had crashed and burned and he had been paid off by WotC and given work writing editorials and doing voice acting on D&D Online and he was being the avuncular wizard alumnus at conventions he unsurprisingly ran OD&D-style in a more casual manner again (one which wouldn't necessitate trying to remember or look up arcane 1E rules)**.
*(I infer, especially given the rules for Wishes in the DMG among other evidence, that Gary's own games and those of his friends, especially Jim "Monty Haul" Ward, were much more generous in those first five years than his advice in the 1E DMG. And that he gave that tight-fisted and conservative and adversarial advice in reaction to deciding he had made mistakes, as well as his wish that players not emulate Jim, or the Cal-Tech gamers with their hundred level dungeons and 90th level characters.)
**(When I played high level AD&D with Frank Mentzer at a con 15 years ago even he couldn't remember a lot of details of AD&D spells; and he's a guy who continued to run high level AD&D for decades after leaving TSR).
*Okay, the first one was almost cromulent. After that they barely aspire to be bad, yet aren't even bad enough to be entertaining. Gotta say I would love to see Chuck Tingle's take on the Gord series.
....Pounded By the Artifact of Evil: Turned Gay by the Existential Dread that Anthraxus the Oinodaemon Put the Horn in Horned Society
The first and second ones are cromulent pastiche on the levels of original 2nd or 3rd rate pulp swords & sorcery (John Jakes' Brak the Barbarian, say, Lin Carter's Thongor, or L. Sprague de Camp's Conan stories). The third one has some decent material adventuring around the Sea of Dust. But yeah, overall they start out pretty dubious in quality and descend to abyssal levels.
Chuck Tingle doing Gord stories like de Camp did Conan is one of the best ideas I've heard in a while.
*(I infer, especially given the rules for Wishes in the DMG among other evidence, that Gary's own games and those of his friends, especially Jim "Monty Haul" Ward, were much more generous in those first five years than his advice in the 1E DMG. And that he gave that tight-fisted and conservative and adversarial advice in reaction to deciding he had made mistakes, as well as his wish that players not emulate Jim, or the Cal-Tech gamers with their hundred level dungeons and 90th level characters.)
I think what he wrote in the books was good advice most of the time. I think even he would streamline his game if he were around and rewrote it today. His advice concerning how to handle players though has served me very well over the years. And I think Monty Haulism was a blight upon the game in those days.
