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.

 

[Col_Pladoh]

LOL. I was just going to ask for additional details about this book, John: what else can you or Gary tell us about it, as well as how it got to be lost (and found) in the first place?

About all I can comment on is that the novel was on some old Mac + disks that JRT transferred to PC format for us some time back. When Erik Mona querried me about the Setne Inhetep fantasy mysteries, I mentioned it as being set in the same alternate earth as are those yarns. Erik said to send him a copy, so I did.

Cheerio,
Gary

 

[JohnRTroy]

Well, this was originally going to be published during the time Mythus was in print. When the lawsuit between GDW, Gary, and TSR settled out of court, I guess publishing this got put on the back burner. The protagonists will probably remind people of Gord and Chert, and their adventures are similar (although a little more Setne-like), but there are important differences in them.

Also, it became "lost" because a lot of Gary's writing from the early 90s was done on an old Macintosh Plus. It used either 400K or 800k disks. When Gary's Mac+ died and he switched to a PC, a lot of his writings for the time were lost on those disks--even programs like MacOpener can't physically open the low density MAC disks. I volunteered to copy the disks but the low-density format would not work on a PC. A few years back I acquired an old Mac from a friend with a Hard Disk that could read low and high Mac floppies and had a hard disk. I was then able to copy Gary's files to the HD, copy them back to 1.44 MB floppies, put them on PC and convert the files to the most up-to-date MS-Word for Windows.

He still has disks that need converting. We're still looking for a Lanhkmar Story Gary did featuring an adventure that Ningauble of the Seven Eyes and Sheelba of the Eyeless Face get into. I've got a handful here I haven't yet looked at, and Gary still has more somewhere.

We better get that done by 2010 or so. PC's are starting to lose the floppy disks completely now, if we wait more than a few years I think things like this can get lost like the Library of Alexandria. When people talk about obsolete electronic media they mean it!

 

[haakon1]

We better get that done by 2010 or so. PC's are starting to lose the floppy disks completely now, if we wait more than a few years I think things like this can get lost like the Library of Alexandria. When people talk about obsolete electronic media they mean it!

Interesting. I know from personal experience what a pain this stuff can be. I'm moving today, and one of the preparatory steps was to finally move all the AOL-format emails of the email based campaign I've been running since 1999 onto Word format. Worse yet, the AOL-format mails have been on a Mac, so the closest I've gotten is Word for Mac X. Hopefully, that can be opened in Word 2007 on my PC and converted once and for all to a "real format".

 

[grodog]

I've run into similar issues with many of my old campaign articles: they're all on 5.25" floppies formatted to a Commodore 128 word processing program that I forget the name of. In my case, I have printouts of most of the content, probably, so I'm a bit less concerned, but I would still like to inventory and transfer the floppies sometime....

I'm glad to hear that Gary's found this ms., and hope you'll find other lost goodies as well. Is there a chance that there's anything interesting from NIPI on those CDs?

 

[Col_Pladoh]

I've run into similar issues with many of my old campaign articles: they're all on 5.25" floppies formatted to a Commodore 128 word processing program that I forget the name of. In my case, I have printouts of most of the content, probably, so I'm a bit less concerned, but I would still like to inventory and transfer the floppies sometime....

I'm glad to hear that Gary's found this ms., and hope you'll find other lost goodies as well. Is there a chance that there's anything interesting from NIPI on those CDs?

Nothing from New Infinities. All of the files are post that time IIRR. What I am anxious about is a complete Setne Inhetep novel that was the first of a new action-adventure trilogy I planned and the long short story JTR mentioned featuring Ning' and Sheelba I wrote for a Fritz Leiber-tribute anthology that Ed Kramer was overseeing and editing.

Cheers,
Gary

 

[grodog]

What I am anxious about is a complete Setne Inhetep novel that was the first of a new action-adventure trilogy I planned and the long short story JTR mentioned featuring Ning' and Sheelba I wrote for a Fritz Leiber-tribute anthology that Ed Kramer was overseeing and editing.

That would be great to recover. Coincidentally I just wrote to Justin Leiber to see if he knew of any definitive editions of Fritz's F&GM works (he didn't, and it sounds like there's a decent opportunity to address some publishing snafus with the F&GM tales via a new, definitive texts edition...).

 

[Col_Pladoh]

I surely liked Fritz very much, loved his writing, and the lost long short story I have not yet recovered us very much a tribute to Mr. Leiber. That is why I focused on thetwo wizards as the central figures in the tale.

Cheers,
Gary

 

[grodog]

I surely liked Fritz very much, loved his writing, and the lost long short story I have not yet recovered us very much a tribute to Mr. Leiber. That is why I focused on thetwo wizards as the central figures in the tale.

Sounds great, Gary: hopefully you'll rediscover the story, and it'll see print. If you're interested, I'll keep you in the loop on my discussions with Justin re: a new edition of his father's books.

 

[francisca]

Hey Gary!

I noticed the original version of S4 was titled "Lost Caverns of Tsojconth", the spelling of S4 being Tsojcanth.

Tsojconth happens to be an anagram of "John Scott". Given your fondness of such, I was wondering if this anagram was intentional, and who John Scott might be, if this is indeed the case.

As always, thanks!

 

[The Great Bear King]

I surely liked Fritz very much, loved his writing, and the lost long short story I have not yet recovered us very much a tribute to Mr. Leiber. That is why I focused on thetwo wizards as the central figures in the tale.

Cheers,
Gary

Well then I hope you can finish it soon. That said I have a literary/Role playing question for you Gary. What type or types of villain would consider best for either stories or campaigns out of these three varieties? The first variety of villain commits horrifically evil acts for no other reason than petty spite or delight in inflicting pain and suffering on others. An example of such a villain would be Shakespeare's Richard III, in spite of his incompetence, bumbling stupidity (as far as I'm concerned) and lack of planning and foresight. Villain type number two would be the utterly selfish and ruthless type, willing to enrich themselves through dishonesty and or the sufferings of others. An example of this type of villain would be Gordon Gekko from the 1987 film Wall Street. The third and final villain category would that of the self-righteous terror, believing that their cause is so right and noble nothing they do pursuing goal is morally wrong. The kind of people who think that its acceptable for paladins to start anything resembling the Spanish Inquisition or spark wars and murder countless innocents in the name of peace. An example would include the nobleman I mentioned several posts ago.