D&D General I wish people would avoid name-dropping Gary Gygax
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Charlaquin
Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
I’m not trying to diminish his contributions. There wouldn’t be a D&D without him, and the RPG hobby would probably have looked quite different without D&D. But, the same could be said for the other folks who were involved in the game’s creation. Again, the OP wasn’t saying “don’t ever talk about Gygax in association with a particular edition of D&D,” it was saying “don’t treat Gygax as one and the same as a particular edition of D&D.”
tgmoore
Explorer
It’s difficult to overstate how utterly novel role playing games were when they emerged in the 1970s. At a time when most games had fixed objectives, rigid rules, and clear winners or losers, Dungeons & Dragons introduced something radically different. A game where players assumed ongoing roles, told collaborative stories, explored imaginary worlds, and faced challenges not determined by a board or fixed system, but by a referee interpreting outcomes in real time. This was something new.
Many of the concepts that are now foundational to modern video game; leveling up, inventories, experience points, character progression, open world exploration, even the idea of a continuing campaign were introduced to the broader public through tabletop RPGs, and D&D in particular. Today, we take these features for granted. In the 1970s, they were alien outside of a few small experimental gaming groups.
The hobby did not spring out of nowhere. There were important precursors. Dave Wesely’s Braunstein introduced the idea of player roles beyond traditional wargames. Dave Arneson’s Blackmoor brought in persistent characters and dungeon exploration. M. A. R. Barker had created the richly detailed world of Tekumel. Ed Greenwood was already developing the Forgotten Realms privately. But none of these efforts reached a national or global audience.
Gary Gygax’s contribution was not just in co-designing D&D. His real achievement was recognizing the potential of these scattered ideas, organizing and publishing them, and turning the entire concept into a product. He created a business.
Through TSR, he brought role playing games into small town bookstores, hobby shops, and eventually into mainstream awareness. He gave the hobby a structure, a voice, and a market. Without that, the RPG hobby might have stayed confined to a few university gaming clubs and convention tables.
This was before the internet. Before video games were in every home. In many parts of the country, D&D was the first exposure young people had to fantasy, to mythologies outside of what was taught in school, to the idea that they could create worlds of their own. For me, one of my favorite things about D&D was how it opened up new worlds to me. It inspired me to read new books (Appendix N) and learn more about ancient technology, history, theology, religion, mythology, etc was more than just a game. It was a new way to learn about the world.
To paraphrase Dave Wesely, without Gary Gygax, RPGs might have remained something played by Arneson and his friends in the Twin Cities. That’s not a knock on Arneson or anyone else involved. It’s a recognition of what Gygax made possible.
That said, it is also important not to conflate Gygax with every edition or evolution of D&D. He was one of several crucial figures in its origin, and many others helped shape and expand the game after it left his hands. But when people associate Gygax with D&D as a whole, they’re not wrong to see him as a defining force. He didn’t just help write the rules. He made sure the world heard about them.
Willie the Duck
Hero
Glad you included the specifier. He certainly didn't do the Dungeon&Wilderness Guides or Dragonlance/Greyhawk setting hardcovers, nor Manual of the Planes, Fiend Folio, or Deities & Demigods/Legends & Lore. It's become clear that Zeb Cook did much if not most if not all of Oriental Adventures, and Unearthed Arcana is mostly a collection of articles (some of which EGG wrote, to be fair).
I'll agree that what we'd now call the core 3 are very clearly Gary's writing (so much so that they are notable in their use of 'Gygaxian prose'). Honestly moreso than oD&D, which feels more like a (n incomplete) summation of playtest findings collected by Gygax.
I do think there's more nuance in the statement that we shouldn't treat the person and the edition as the same, though. Gygax contained multitudes, and only himself as a point in time truly aligned with 1e AD&D -- and particularly the AD&D that existed flowing from his pen (/typewriter) as he was writing these books. Even during the 1e era he vacillated wildly in thoughts on the importance of DM impartiality and other important game qualities.
Y'know, given the back and forth right before your post, I'm inclined to say, 'yes, he should be acknowledged. He was in fact there.' He was there, and things would look different without him.And hence the reason this thread even exists. You can’t even mention other designers unless you acknowledge EGG first. All praise the Great Egg.
I say that because, well, remember Gronan? One and only person who was in both Gary and Dave's playtest groups -- at least only one who then had any presence in the D&D community into the online era? He would occasionally drift into one-true-wayism or kids-these-days-isms, but in general he just wanted it acknowledged that he had this little claim to fame as being present when something big (within our trivial little pursuit) happened. He drifted away from the community during the pandemic for reasons unknown. I have mixed feelings (he did have some real self-inflicted dustups over the years), but generally miss him and think that -- of all the things he might have wanted -- acknowledgement of that small part of the story was not an unreasonable desire. I think we owed him that, and that much we owe Gary as well.
Yes, Gary is a complicated individual with a lot of (increasingly visible) flaws. However, he was there, and he did do the things he did (yes, tautologically impossible not to be true. You get my point). Yes, many of them could have been done by others (and maybe would have, perhaps even at a similar time). But he did them. He deserves acknowledgement, nothing more or less.
Where I shift back to OP's point, is the use of Gary in support (or just framing) of anything else (usually an argument in favor of/against something, or in how something ought to be). There, one should recognize just how little that acknowledgement means towards anything else. That anything past that mere acknowledgement requires a logical argument as to its relevance or support to the point at hand. The most obvious (in my mind) case would be arguing for something to be the way to play D&D 'as Gary intended it.' This ought immediately call up the two responses of 1) 'how do you figure?,' and more importantly 2) 'so what/yes, and?'
