TSR Q&A with Gary Gygax

This is the multi-year Q&A sessions held by D&D co-creator Gary Gygax here at EN World, beginning in 2002 and running up until his sad pasing in 2008. Gary's username in the thread below is Col_Pladoh, and his first post in this long thread is Post #39.

 

[Mycanid]

Hmm ... I have also been under the weather with a sore throat and what not the past few days.

Maybe partly a seasonal thing for me. Ah well.

I hope you get better soon my good sir!

[The fungus is unbearably cheerful today for some reason... ]

 

[gideon_thorne]

I might assist in the development of some new character classes for the C&C system if the Trolls ever begin such a project. However, time is most precious, and I do not think I would spend a great deal of it thus. If I could fine my old notes in the Jester, Mountebank, Mystic, and Savant I would gladly pass them along to Steve and company. There was another possible class I was considering adding, but blamed if I can recall it now

Cheers,
Gary

Welp, at some point I'll get that Mountebank I did with your assistance polished up. ^_^

 

[Col_Pladoh]

Hmm ... I have also been under the weather with a sore throat and what not the past few days.

Maybe partly a seasonal thing for me. Ah well.

I hope you get better soon my good sir!

[The fungus is unbearably cheerful today for some reason... ]

Maybe the light-hearted feeling is because the shaggy mane mushroom season is soon to be upon us...

Springtime weather here in Wisconsin is so variable that many persons do contract URIs. Today's high will be c. 58 degrees F., tomorrow is predicted to be 80.


Gary

 

[Col_Pladoh]

Welp, at some point I'll get that Mountebank I did with your assistance polished up. ^_^

Well stop posting and hop to it!


Gary

 

[gideon_thorne]

Well stop posting and hop to it!


Gary

Thats me, typing my fingers off.

I was hanging around buxom wenches this weekend, a far more useful activity for active fingers.

 

[Anson Caralya]

As for your questions, I fear must disappoint you. After all these years, over 20 since I have ceased playing the AD&D game save for rare occasions, and never being concerned with the rules since 1984, there is no way, save perhaps under hypnosis, that I can recall the circumstances regarding the change in Psionics (which I never allowed in my campaign anyway) ot the reasoning behind what sttributes U assigned to those quasi-deities. I can state with certainty though that I intended those three to associate together.

OK, I'll get to work on the hypnosis emoticon straight away! Let's see, Wikipedia is usually a good place to start...

 

[Col_Pladoh]

Thats me, typing my fingers off.

I was hanging around buxom wenches this weekend, a far more useful activity for active fingers.

My friend tom Keogh was wont to call me the Inexorable Claw that always struck to the bottom of things

Cheerio,
Gary

 

[Col_Pladoh]

OK, I'll get to work on the hypnosis emoticon straight away! Let's see, Wikipedia is usually a good place to start...

Rotsa ruck

The best way for me to remember otherwise is to work on something similar for a few days. I have found that this usually brings back a good bit of the original work even though i do not realize it until the now is compared to the old.

Cheers,
Gary

 

[Mycanid]

Maybe the light-hearted feeling is because the shaggy mane mushroom season is soon to be upon us...

Springtime weather here in Wisconsin is so variable that many persons do contract URIs. Today's high will be c. 58 degrees F., tomorrow is predicted to be 80.


Gary

Oooooo ... shaggy manes! We don't get them too often out here. Right now we have amanitas (yes - the destroying angels! ) and boletes - mostly butter and bitter boletes - popping up all over the forest. Had blewits just a few days back too. Instantly dry-sauteed with butter, garlic, sea salt and lemon pepper. Mmmmmmm!

Anyhoo ... sorry for the OT stuff.

Back to the thread, hey what?

 

[thedungeondelver]

Heyo, Gary!

I'd emailed you a few weeks back about running S1 TOMB OF HORRORS at a con and I thought for your amusement (and that of the enworlders) here I'd fill in on the salient points:

The party first went into the collapsing false entrance on the right and I was treated to the worst 5d10 roll I've ever made: 11 puny points of damage. A bunch of 4th levelers could've taken such!

Undaunted the party sought out the next false entrance, dug it out, but then went over and searched for another and found the correct entrance.

The party magic-user found the runes embedded in the red tiles, but one of the thieves in insisted on searching the hall for traps and kept him out of the pits; the other nearly dropped herself into the trapdoor beneath the handle on the wall. I was ashamed of myself: I'd sent eight players in and no deaths in the first hall!

The party broke down the false door leading to the room of secret doors, fought the four-armed gargoyle, and pressed on. Once they were in the hall of sphere murals, the mage and a pair of fighters (one fighter/thief) went back into the main hall to try and find out if the misty portal did anything or went anywhere - they followed the red tile path up the middle and teleported to area 11 where they proceeded to crack the riddle of the gargoyle statue.

Then just when it appeared that they'd figured things out, stuff started going awry: one of the fighters and one of the clerics tried the misty portal in the hallway with the spheres and (of course) got spat out naked in the entry hall. The fighter tried the misty portal but was incautious about how she entered and found herself in the forsaken prison. One wrong flip of the levers later and the party was a fighter short. The cleric approached the demon face on the wall and thought "surely, my stuff must've wound up in this hole here..." FOOP. Cleric, gone!

By now the party in the spheres hall had found the way to the Chapel of Evil. The paladin, the dwarven fighter and one of the thieves (the pesky one who'd found all the traps in the entry hall) entered the misty archway there and came out as two females and a male, mostly evil (CE for the paladin, NE for the thief, CN for the fighter). The thief immediately went insane and attacked the other thief. The Paladin, attempting to cover up "his" transmogrification, fought the now-evil thief. In the meantime, the remaining cleric had touched the altar and been zapped (along with one of the other fighters).

Once the melee had ended, the now CN dwarf threw "his" warhammer at the altar. The paladin ran back into the misty portal and was changed back to LG, but still female (and not a paladin any longer).

The dwarf went to the altar to retrieve his hammer and was, along with the paladin, blown to bits when he touched the altar to pick up the weapon.

At this point the party was fairly badly injured and elected to - get this - sleep inside the Tomb!.

Well, ol' Acaerack isn't one to let such a juicy opportunity go by, so three hours in to their beauty rest a Type V demon showed up to roust them. Despite my best attempts though it couldn't cut that pesky party down. The magic-user, wisely hanging back, threw up a wall of iron between the party and the demoness and teleported the rest of the group out.

While I was disappointed that they'd made it out alive, they got no treasure (except for the remains of the trifling necklace the gargoyle had worn, and the gem of seeing they "spent" 300GP of value from the necklace to gain) and took plenty of casualties doing so. Plus it was super cool to see the whole dungeon laid out in DWARVEN FORGE terrain (or subterrene as the case may be...!)