I am not a role model. I am not paid to be a role model. I am paid to wreak havoc on the basketball court. Parents should be role models.
-The Round Mound of Rebound, his excellency, Sir Charles Barkley
I realized that while I have discussed, in depth and several times (most recently here), the issue of problematic faves and how to try and grapple with the issue of how we can approach works that we love, even if we have issues with the author of the work, I have never really spoken about my own personal feelings about (and their evolution over time) with Gary Gygax. If you've read any of my 15,986 essays before (that number is both approximate, yet completely true), you know that I have a deep and abiding love for the history of D&D, the first ten years of TSR products, and the weird and arcane rules in OD&D and 1e. Not only that, I once wrote (checking) SEVEN ?!??!? essays about the awesomeness of the Gygaxian multiverse...
What have I done with my life?
The closest I have come to dwelling on the issue is this:
What do you do when something you love (OD&D, AD&D, Greyhawk) were created by someone that had attitudes that were, at best, of his time? Well, I can't speak for everyone. For me, I think the only proper thing to do is to acknowledge it. Yes, Gygax had views that were misogynistic, and he continued to state those views into the 2000s. There is also evidence in the material- from the harlots table, to the Good Wife, to the gendered ability caps... it's there. This is a matter of historical fact, and sunlight is the best disinfectant. We can, and should, acknowledge these things. Importantly, by acknowledging these things, and being aware of them, you can then approach the material with better judgment. I still run AD&D on occasion, but when I do I make sure not to incorporate some of the elements that I believe shouldn't be in there- like the gendered ability caps, or the harlot table. And while I love my old books, I also know that the cheesecake art (which I can appreciate for what it is) isn't welcoming to female gamers and I make sure to use a neutral rules system for the table for reference that doesn't include that. Most importantly, I try to make sure that I can separate my love of the work with the historically accurate criticism of the person; when people say that Gygax had some sexist attitudes, I recognize that this is a statement that isn't about me, and doesn't attack me as a person. I can still appreciate the things that I loved about those early D&D books while still understanding that they had issues. In short, it's a problematic fave. But I certainly won't defend sexist tropes just because I happen to like the 1e illusionist and arcane rules debates.
I think it's time to take a deeper dive into how I reconcile my thoughts- my love for 1e and OD&D, my continued admiration for the good that Gygax did, as well as my acknowledgement that history is what it is, and that it's okay to understand and acknowledge that people are flawed.
A. Understanding What Gygax Meant for Grognards
Before getting into the other issues, I think it's important to have a basic understanding of the time period in question so we can at least try and understand why, for some people, Gygax is so important. If you haven't lived through a time, it can be truly impossible to fully understand what things were like back then. I mean ... imagine the world before you could just google anything. Or imagine the world before people could text and email and communicate at all times with anyone. Heck- imagine a time before ATMs, when you had to get a check cashed, and if you didn't get your money for the weekend on a Friday, you were out of luck until Monday. Of course, when I say that, I am sure that there are some people that are like, "Who uses cash now? If I can't buy it with my phone, it ain't worth buying."
Well, early D&D, for most people (not all, as I am sure some will say in the comments) was all about Gygax. He was the name on the books. He was the distinctive voice we read, especially with the main two books in 1e (the PHB and the DMG). He was responsible for many of the early classic modules. He was the column we waited to read in Dragon Magazine. He was the person who created the game that we loved so much. Without the internet, and as most people weren't fully aware of all that was going on with TSR ... Gygax and D&D were synonymous.
Just imagine you were a gamer in the first decade of the hobby. Not only was Gygax the person who "created" D&D (apologies to Arneson), he was responsible in whole or in part for Boot Hill, the PHB (1e), the Monster Manual (1e), the DMG (1e), the Greyhawk setting, the Monster Manual II (1e), UA (1e), OA (1e), Tomb of Horrors, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, the three modules of the Giants series, the three modules of the Drow/Underdark series, Village of Hommlet, Keep on the Borderlands, Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun, Dungeonland the Magic Mirror, and Temple of Elemental Evil.
Interlude- I could list more. However, I want to make the following point- if you were a gamer, this is what you saw. It was only later that we came to understand that some of these things had little or no involvement of Gygax, such as Oriental Adventures, but simply had his name.
In addition, after Gygax left TSR, he became a regular at conventions. He was always ready to regale people with a tale (or three) about D&D. He was viewed with admiration. Gygax was the man who created D&D and many of its most beloved products. In short, for many gamers that grew up with OD&D and AD&D, as well as younger gamers who heard the stories, Gygax was both the founder and a somewhat mythic figure. Heck, you'd often hear older gamers lament how Gary was forced out of TSR, and if he had only stayed, D&D would have remained forever awesome, and those pesky magic users would have stuck to daggers and d4 hit points.
B. Gygax and Arneson, or Gygax v. Arneson
Always related to Gygax is the topic of Dave Arneson. I've discussed Arneson before, and this is more about Gygax, so I will be brief. There have been various competing narratives about Arneson over time. For a good period of time, his contributions to D&D were marginalized (at least in the mainstream, there were always those who knew the story). Then came, for lack of a better term, the Arnessaince- the reevaluation of Arneson, and the idea that Arneson was the true spark of D&D, while Gygax merely was the person who made it a commercial product. Along with this were the stories, so many stories, about the Arneson/TSR lawsuit, and what happened, and what it meant.
I don't have an answer to all of this, but this quote from Jon Peterson sums up my view as to the credit for D&D-
"...Gygax and Arneson were co-creators of D&D, in at least the crucial sense that Gygax would never have worked toward such a game without incorporation of Arneson's vision, and Arneson would never have realized the publication of such a game without the structure that Gygax provided it."
C. The Golden Age of D&D History
We are now in what can only be described as a golden age for D&D history. We have Jon Peterson, Shannon Appelcline, Ben Riggs, and others putting in the work to give us the real facts about what happened back in the day. And that history? Well, it can be messy. And messiness isn't kind to legends.
Arneson, for example, doesn't come off well in the historical narrative. Over and over again we see that Arneson couldn't or wouldn't put together rules. That he continually hurt potential business partners by promising things he wouldn't deliver. And that he made a ton of money off of D&D despite what appears to be ... well, both a minimal contribution in the original rules (as opposed to the concept), and an active campaign against D&D for some time. The idea that Gygax stole Arneson's ideas and tried to steal his royalties ends up being, if not completely inaccurate, at least a lot more nuanced. Arneson, with the historical facts, looks like a person who was a great gamer, and someone who had a great innovation (or, at least, iteration) ... but he repeatedly burned his business partners, and was unable to put out actual products ... at least, without someone to edit / write for him.
This doesn't make him a bad person, by the way- just human. As we all are. But I think that the pendulum might have swung too far in that some people began to view Gygax as stealing all of Arneson's idea and just "copyediting them" and then trying to steal all of Arneson's royalties, whereas the histories we have been getting presents a more nuanced picture- it doesn't exonerate Gygax, but it does show that Arneson kept biting the hand that fed him. Arneson was singularly interested in the credit and the money, but not as interested in the work- and he continually complained that the D&D that Gygax wrote wasn't close to what he envisioned. Understanding the actual history, you begin to see that while Arneson should always be credited to that singular moment of vision (translating what he saw in Braunstein with David Wesley into Blackmoor), the game of D&D is very much a Gygaxian product. From the LBBs (the original three booklets of OD&D) on through the AD&D books, along with all of those modules, early D&D is imprinted with Gygax.
And Gygax? Well, the facts aren't that kind to him either. But I won't go into detail, because, ahem I do not come to bury Gygax, but to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones. But the full historical recounting shows that while he did an amazing job with D&D as a product, and created or was involved in the creation of so many of the aspects of D&D that we still use today (classes, alignments, monsters, magic items, the whole zero-to-hero level loop, etc. etc. etc.), he pretty much was a mess after he went to Hollywood. All of the classic Gygax works that we all know and love are from that early period- later, we see Unearthed Arcana (a cash grab of Dragon Magazine articles) and Oriental Adventures (a book with Gygax's name on it, but it was written by Zeb Cook).
In short, Gygax had his faults. In addition, and as we had pointed out in another thread, he had attitudes about gender roles that aren't exactly great- and these continued through the 2000s. As a businessman, while he did promote D&D and TSR and GenCon amazingly well early on, he wasn't particularly competent, and toward the end was more interested in enriching himself than running a successful company. Finally, while he certainly changed after the fall of TSR, he did burn a lot of bridges with friends when he became a big deal. Not a great track record.
And that's the abridged version which is leaving things out. Again, though, he is human. It's not like he killed his ex-wife and a waiter, like those unidentified scoundrels that O.J. Simpson never found.
D. Why the Old Gygaxian Magic Still Has a Hold On Me
I have an abiding love of the history ... the actual facts ... of D&D. And (as detailed above and in other threads I have written) the actual facts aren't kind to legends. The other day, I was listening to a podcast (Revisionist History, natch) and they detailed the story of Jesse Owens and Luz Long. The version we all know (of how Luz helped Jesse in defiance of Hitler, sparking a friendship that lasted until Luz's death) is a story that is meaningful and makes you feel warm fuzzies for humanity. Except ... it isn't true. At all. As usual, the actual facts aren't kind to the legend.
So my love of history, of the actual facts, has led me to revise some of my beliefs about Gygax as a person- I can't view him as some legendary, mythical hero. Of course, I really never should have. It's also caused me to revise things I thought I knew- I have a better understanding that while Gygax did, in fact, do an amazing amount of creative work, not all of the books that were credited to him were written by him (Oriental Adventures, Zeb Cook), and even things that he wrote had input from other figures in TSR. No man is an island.
Knowing what I know now, I can't view Gygax as the singular person who was D&D and was the mythic voice that I hoped would be writing a column in Dragon every month.
...and yet. If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you. To concentrate solely on the revisions and the personal flaws of Gygax would leave me ignoring the reason why people care enough about him to write these histories. So yes, he had flaws.
But he is also the singular force that brought D&D, and RPGs, to the mainstream. Most of what we think of as D&D has its origins in that first amazingly fertile decade, and that is largely Gygax. I am fully cognizant that nostalgia is a helluva drug, but I can never separate out those feelings of awe and wonder I had when first reading the Greyhawk campaign setting, or the 1e DMG, with the person who wrote it.
And while I will often make fun of his purplish prose ("High Gygaxian"), I have to acknowledge that his idiosyncratic and distinctive voice still resonates with me. Even his choices that I lovingly joke about (SO MANY TABLES! or my deep dives into the arcane rules and rules conflicts) had a profound impact on me, and so many others of the time. When I think back to the people that I knew who played D&D at the time, I see people that became coders, and engineers, and lawyers, and history professors, and creatives in Hollywood. I know correlation doesn't imply causation, but I have to wonder if that combination of imagination, verbiage, and rules made a difference.
As a person, Gygax was like the rest of us- far from perfect. And it's okay to acknowledge that. But it's also okay to remember that unlike most of us, he brought forth (with, as noted above, Arneson) a game that is loved and played today. He's not a hero, he's not a role model. But he will always be the voice that I think of when I play D&D.
D3, Vault of the Drow:
The true splendor of the Vault can be appreciated only by those with infravision, or by use of the roseate lenses or a gem of seeing. The Vault is a strange anomaly, a hemispherical cyst in the crust of the earth, an incredibly huge domed fault over 6 miles long and nearly as broad. The dome overhead is a hundred feet high at the walls, arching to several thousand feet height in the center. When properly viewed, the radiation from certain unique minerals give the visual effect of a starry heaven, while near the zenith of this black stone bowl is a huge mass of tumkeoite -- which in its slow decay and transformation to lacofcite sheds a lurid gleam, a ghostly plum-colored light to human eyes, but with ultravision a wholly different sight.
The small "star" nodes glow in radiant hues of mauve, lake, violet, puce, lilac, and deep blue. The large "moon" of tumkeoite casts beams of shimmering amethyst which touch the crystalline formations with colors unknown to any other visual experience. The lichens seem to glow in rose madder and pale damson, the fungi growths in golden and red ochres, vermillions, russets, citron, and aquamarine shades. (Elsewhere the river and other water courses sheen a deep velvety purple with reflected highlights from the radiant gleams overhead vying with streaks and whorls of old silver where the liquid laps the stony banks or surges against the ebon piles of the jetties and bridge of the elfin city for the viewers' attention.) The rock walls of the Vault appear hazy and insubstantial in the wine-colored light, more like mist than solid walls. The place is indeed a dark fairyland.
PHB, 1e, Assassin-
Just as do thieves, assassins have six-sided dice (d6) for determining the number of hit points (q.v.) they can sustain. Assassins are evil in alignment (perforce, as the killing of humans and other intelligent life forms for the purpose of profit is basically held to be the antithesis of weal). They can, of course, be neutral as regards lawful and chaotic evil. As mentioned above, assassins have thieving capabilities and their own ability functions. Because they can use any sort of shield and weapon, they are generally superior to thieves in combat.
DMG, 1e, Heward's Mystical Organ-
In the pages of the Fables of Burdock there is mention of a musical instrument of large size, an organ of such power that the mighty and terrible enchantments possible to cast by playing upon it are only hinted at. Heward’s Organ has 77 great and small pipes, a console with many keys of black and white beneath 13 ivory stops, and 3 great foot pedals. The bellows which sends a rush of wind to the pipes is said to be worked by a conjured and chained air elemental of huge size. Each stop causes the pipes to sound in a different voice, while the keys vary the notes, of course. No one is certain what purpose the foot pedals serve. Despite the ravages of time which have silenced some of its pipes, and abuse and neglect which have supposedly mode some keys and stops unworkable, the Organ can still work mighty magicks when properly played.
The would-be conjurer must be most careful, however, when attempting to work this relic/artifact, for pulling the wrong stops can cause the summoning of something undesired or the casting of the wrong type of spell. If the wrong keys are depressed - or the right ones are not - something called up might be unbound or the magic might backfire. Similarly, the alignment of the caster or manipulator of the Organ might be changed by improper playing.
After the powers and effects of the Organ have been determined by you, decide which stops and what key sequence/combinations will do what. (If you are conversant with musical notation, you can write tunes if you like, and make your players actually perform them on a piano or other instrument. Otherwise, pick some appropriate songs and give clues so that the player character can hum different ditties, i.e. "Fly Me to the Moon", "That Old Black Magic", "Thot Old Devil Moon", "You've Got Me in Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea", "The Monster Mash", etc.).
That. And you think I am wordy!
-The Round Mound of Rebound, his excellency, Sir Charles Barkley
I realized that while I have discussed, in depth and several times (most recently here), the issue of problematic faves and how to try and grapple with the issue of how we can approach works that we love, even if we have issues with the author of the work, I have never really spoken about my own personal feelings about (and their evolution over time) with Gary Gygax. If you've read any of my 15,986 essays before (that number is both approximate, yet completely true), you know that I have a deep and abiding love for the history of D&D, the first ten years of TSR products, and the weird and arcane rules in OD&D and 1e. Not only that, I once wrote (checking) SEVEN ?!??!? essays about the awesomeness of the Gygaxian multiverse...
What have I done with my life?
The closest I have come to dwelling on the issue is this:
What do you do when something you love (OD&D, AD&D, Greyhawk) were created by someone that had attitudes that were, at best, of his time? Well, I can't speak for everyone. For me, I think the only proper thing to do is to acknowledge it. Yes, Gygax had views that were misogynistic, and he continued to state those views into the 2000s. There is also evidence in the material- from the harlots table, to the Good Wife, to the gendered ability caps... it's there. This is a matter of historical fact, and sunlight is the best disinfectant. We can, and should, acknowledge these things. Importantly, by acknowledging these things, and being aware of them, you can then approach the material with better judgment. I still run AD&D on occasion, but when I do I make sure not to incorporate some of the elements that I believe shouldn't be in there- like the gendered ability caps, or the harlot table. And while I love my old books, I also know that the cheesecake art (which I can appreciate for what it is) isn't welcoming to female gamers and I make sure to use a neutral rules system for the table for reference that doesn't include that. Most importantly, I try to make sure that I can separate my love of the work with the historically accurate criticism of the person; when people say that Gygax had some sexist attitudes, I recognize that this is a statement that isn't about me, and doesn't attack me as a person. I can still appreciate the things that I loved about those early D&D books while still understanding that they had issues. In short, it's a problematic fave. But I certainly won't defend sexist tropes just because I happen to like the 1e illusionist and arcane rules debates.
I think it's time to take a deeper dive into how I reconcile my thoughts- my love for 1e and OD&D, my continued admiration for the good that Gygax did, as well as my acknowledgement that history is what it is, and that it's okay to understand and acknowledge that people are flawed.
A. Understanding What Gygax Meant for Grognards
Before getting into the other issues, I think it's important to have a basic understanding of the time period in question so we can at least try and understand why, for some people, Gygax is so important. If you haven't lived through a time, it can be truly impossible to fully understand what things were like back then. I mean ... imagine the world before you could just google anything. Or imagine the world before people could text and email and communicate at all times with anyone. Heck- imagine a time before ATMs, when you had to get a check cashed, and if you didn't get your money for the weekend on a Friday, you were out of luck until Monday. Of course, when I say that, I am sure that there are some people that are like, "Who uses cash now? If I can't buy it with my phone, it ain't worth buying."
Well, early D&D, for most people (not all, as I am sure some will say in the comments) was all about Gygax. He was the name on the books. He was the distinctive voice we read, especially with the main two books in 1e (the PHB and the DMG). He was responsible for many of the early classic modules. He was the column we waited to read in Dragon Magazine. He was the person who created the game that we loved so much. Without the internet, and as most people weren't fully aware of all that was going on with TSR ... Gygax and D&D were synonymous.
Just imagine you were a gamer in the first decade of the hobby. Not only was Gygax the person who "created" D&D (apologies to Arneson), he was responsible in whole or in part for Boot Hill, the PHB (1e), the Monster Manual (1e), the DMG (1e), the Greyhawk setting, the Monster Manual II (1e), UA (1e), OA (1e), Tomb of Horrors, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, the three modules of the Giants series, the three modules of the Drow/Underdark series, Village of Hommlet, Keep on the Borderlands, Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun, Dungeonland the Magic Mirror, and Temple of Elemental Evil.
Interlude- I could list more. However, I want to make the following point- if you were a gamer, this is what you saw. It was only later that we came to understand that some of these things had little or no involvement of Gygax, such as Oriental Adventures, but simply had his name.
In addition, after Gygax left TSR, he became a regular at conventions. He was always ready to regale people with a tale (or three) about D&D. He was viewed with admiration. Gygax was the man who created D&D and many of its most beloved products. In short, for many gamers that grew up with OD&D and AD&D, as well as younger gamers who heard the stories, Gygax was both the founder and a somewhat mythic figure. Heck, you'd often hear older gamers lament how Gary was forced out of TSR, and if he had only stayed, D&D would have remained forever awesome, and those pesky magic users would have stuck to daggers and d4 hit points.
B. Gygax and Arneson, or Gygax v. Arneson
Always related to Gygax is the topic of Dave Arneson. I've discussed Arneson before, and this is more about Gygax, so I will be brief. There have been various competing narratives about Arneson over time. For a good period of time, his contributions to D&D were marginalized (at least in the mainstream, there were always those who knew the story). Then came, for lack of a better term, the Arnessaince- the reevaluation of Arneson, and the idea that Arneson was the true spark of D&D, while Gygax merely was the person who made it a commercial product. Along with this were the stories, so many stories, about the Arneson/TSR lawsuit, and what happened, and what it meant.
I don't have an answer to all of this, but this quote from Jon Peterson sums up my view as to the credit for D&D-
"...Gygax and Arneson were co-creators of D&D, in at least the crucial sense that Gygax would never have worked toward such a game without incorporation of Arneson's vision, and Arneson would never have realized the publication of such a game without the structure that Gygax provided it."
C. The Golden Age of D&D History
We are now in what can only be described as a golden age for D&D history. We have Jon Peterson, Shannon Appelcline, Ben Riggs, and others putting in the work to give us the real facts about what happened back in the day. And that history? Well, it can be messy. And messiness isn't kind to legends.
Arneson, for example, doesn't come off well in the historical narrative. Over and over again we see that Arneson couldn't or wouldn't put together rules. That he continually hurt potential business partners by promising things he wouldn't deliver. And that he made a ton of money off of D&D despite what appears to be ... well, both a minimal contribution in the original rules (as opposed to the concept), and an active campaign against D&D for some time. The idea that Gygax stole Arneson's ideas and tried to steal his royalties ends up being, if not completely inaccurate, at least a lot more nuanced. Arneson, with the historical facts, looks like a person who was a great gamer, and someone who had a great innovation (or, at least, iteration) ... but he repeatedly burned his business partners, and was unable to put out actual products ... at least, without someone to edit / write for him.
This doesn't make him a bad person, by the way- just human. As we all are. But I think that the pendulum might have swung too far in that some people began to view Gygax as stealing all of Arneson's idea and just "copyediting them" and then trying to steal all of Arneson's royalties, whereas the histories we have been getting presents a more nuanced picture- it doesn't exonerate Gygax, but it does show that Arneson kept biting the hand that fed him. Arneson was singularly interested in the credit and the money, but not as interested in the work- and he continually complained that the D&D that Gygax wrote wasn't close to what he envisioned. Understanding the actual history, you begin to see that while Arneson should always be credited to that singular moment of vision (translating what he saw in Braunstein with David Wesley into Blackmoor), the game of D&D is very much a Gygaxian product. From the LBBs (the original three booklets of OD&D) on through the AD&D books, along with all of those modules, early D&D is imprinted with Gygax.
And Gygax? Well, the facts aren't that kind to him either. But I won't go into detail, because, ahem I do not come to bury Gygax, but to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones. But the full historical recounting shows that while he did an amazing job with D&D as a product, and created or was involved in the creation of so many of the aspects of D&D that we still use today (classes, alignments, monsters, magic items, the whole zero-to-hero level loop, etc. etc. etc.), he pretty much was a mess after he went to Hollywood. All of the classic Gygax works that we all know and love are from that early period- later, we see Unearthed Arcana (a cash grab of Dragon Magazine articles) and Oriental Adventures (a book with Gygax's name on it, but it was written by Zeb Cook).
In short, Gygax had his faults. In addition, and as we had pointed out in another thread, he had attitudes about gender roles that aren't exactly great- and these continued through the 2000s. As a businessman, while he did promote D&D and TSR and GenCon amazingly well early on, he wasn't particularly competent, and toward the end was more interested in enriching himself than running a successful company. Finally, while he certainly changed after the fall of TSR, he did burn a lot of bridges with friends when he became a big deal. Not a great track record.
And that's the abridged version which is leaving things out. Again, though, he is human. It's not like he killed his ex-wife and a waiter, like those unidentified scoundrels that O.J. Simpson never found.
D. Why the Old Gygaxian Magic Still Has a Hold On Me
I have an abiding love of the history ... the actual facts ... of D&D. And (as detailed above and in other threads I have written) the actual facts aren't kind to legends. The other day, I was listening to a podcast (Revisionist History, natch) and they detailed the story of Jesse Owens and Luz Long. The version we all know (of how Luz helped Jesse in defiance of Hitler, sparking a friendship that lasted until Luz's death) is a story that is meaningful and makes you feel warm fuzzies for humanity. Except ... it isn't true. At all. As usual, the actual facts aren't kind to the legend.
So my love of history, of the actual facts, has led me to revise some of my beliefs about Gygax as a person- I can't view him as some legendary, mythical hero. Of course, I really never should have. It's also caused me to revise things I thought I knew- I have a better understanding that while Gygax did, in fact, do an amazing amount of creative work, not all of the books that were credited to him were written by him (Oriental Adventures, Zeb Cook), and even things that he wrote had input from other figures in TSR. No man is an island.
Knowing what I know now, I can't view Gygax as the singular person who was D&D and was the mythic voice that I hoped would be writing a column in Dragon every month.
...and yet. If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you. To concentrate solely on the revisions and the personal flaws of Gygax would leave me ignoring the reason why people care enough about him to write these histories. So yes, he had flaws.
But he is also the singular force that brought D&D, and RPGs, to the mainstream. Most of what we think of as D&D has its origins in that first amazingly fertile decade, and that is largely Gygax. I am fully cognizant that nostalgia is a helluva drug, but I can never separate out those feelings of awe and wonder I had when first reading the Greyhawk campaign setting, or the 1e DMG, with the person who wrote it.
And while I will often make fun of his purplish prose ("High Gygaxian"), I have to acknowledge that his idiosyncratic and distinctive voice still resonates with me. Even his choices that I lovingly joke about (SO MANY TABLES! or my deep dives into the arcane rules and rules conflicts) had a profound impact on me, and so many others of the time. When I think back to the people that I knew who played D&D at the time, I see people that became coders, and engineers, and lawyers, and history professors, and creatives in Hollywood. I know correlation doesn't imply causation, but I have to wonder if that combination of imagination, verbiage, and rules made a difference.
As a person, Gygax was like the rest of us- far from perfect. And it's okay to acknowledge that. But it's also okay to remember that unlike most of us, he brought forth (with, as noted above, Arneson) a game that is loved and played today. He's not a hero, he's not a role model. But he will always be the voice that I think of when I play D&D.
D3, Vault of the Drow:
The true splendor of the Vault can be appreciated only by those with infravision, or by use of the roseate lenses or a gem of seeing. The Vault is a strange anomaly, a hemispherical cyst in the crust of the earth, an incredibly huge domed fault over 6 miles long and nearly as broad. The dome overhead is a hundred feet high at the walls, arching to several thousand feet height in the center. When properly viewed, the radiation from certain unique minerals give the visual effect of a starry heaven, while near the zenith of this black stone bowl is a huge mass of tumkeoite -- which in its slow decay and transformation to lacofcite sheds a lurid gleam, a ghostly plum-colored light to human eyes, but with ultravision a wholly different sight.
The small "star" nodes glow in radiant hues of mauve, lake, violet, puce, lilac, and deep blue. The large "moon" of tumkeoite casts beams of shimmering amethyst which touch the crystalline formations with colors unknown to any other visual experience. The lichens seem to glow in rose madder and pale damson, the fungi growths in golden and red ochres, vermillions, russets, citron, and aquamarine shades. (Elsewhere the river and other water courses sheen a deep velvety purple with reflected highlights from the radiant gleams overhead vying with streaks and whorls of old silver where the liquid laps the stony banks or surges against the ebon piles of the jetties and bridge of the elfin city for the viewers' attention.) The rock walls of the Vault appear hazy and insubstantial in the wine-colored light, more like mist than solid walls. The place is indeed a dark fairyland.
PHB, 1e, Assassin-
Just as do thieves, assassins have six-sided dice (d6) for determining the number of hit points (q.v.) they can sustain. Assassins are evil in alignment (perforce, as the killing of humans and other intelligent life forms for the purpose of profit is basically held to be the antithesis of weal). They can, of course, be neutral as regards lawful and chaotic evil. As mentioned above, assassins have thieving capabilities and their own ability functions. Because they can use any sort of shield and weapon, they are generally superior to thieves in combat.
DMG, 1e, Heward's Mystical Organ-
In the pages of the Fables of Burdock there is mention of a musical instrument of large size, an organ of such power that the mighty and terrible enchantments possible to cast by playing upon it are only hinted at. Heward’s Organ has 77 great and small pipes, a console with many keys of black and white beneath 13 ivory stops, and 3 great foot pedals. The bellows which sends a rush of wind to the pipes is said to be worked by a conjured and chained air elemental of huge size. Each stop causes the pipes to sound in a different voice, while the keys vary the notes, of course. No one is certain what purpose the foot pedals serve. Despite the ravages of time which have silenced some of its pipes, and abuse and neglect which have supposedly mode some keys and stops unworkable, the Organ can still work mighty magicks when properly played.
The would-be conjurer must be most careful, however, when attempting to work this relic/artifact, for pulling the wrong stops can cause the summoning of something undesired or the casting of the wrong type of spell. If the wrong keys are depressed - or the right ones are not - something called up might be unbound or the magic might backfire. Similarly, the alignment of the caster or manipulator of the Organ might be changed by improper playing.
After the powers and effects of the Organ have been determined by you, decide which stops and what key sequence/combinations will do what. (If you are conversant with musical notation, you can write tunes if you like, and make your players actually perform them on a piano or other instrument. Otherwise, pick some appropriate songs and give clues so that the player character can hum different ditties, i.e. "Fly Me to the Moon", "That Old Black Magic", "Thot Old Devil Moon", "You've Got Me in Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea", "The Monster Mash", etc.).
That. And you think I am wordy!
