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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8375377" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Gary had a complicated relationship with this.I'm sure most of us have at some point read the official rules text that rather condescendingly instructs DMs to heap unfair extra burdens onto non-human characters (especially "the stronger types of undead" or some phrase similar to that), and that the smart players will figure it out and start playing the correct race (humans), while the "less-intelligent" (IIRC that's the phrase actually used) will keep flinging themselves at the bad things until they eventually leave in disgust. I don't think anyone actually wants to uphold such passive-aggressive dickishness as the way the game should be run.On the flipside, I know for a fact that I have read other things in Gygax's own hand that talk about permitting players to play balrogs, or dragons, or any number of other fantastical creatures...as long as they accept that their power must be earned. So if you're a dragon, you're a juvenile dragon, still coming into your powers, perhaps hoping that adventure will quicken the powers within you. If you're a balrog (as an actual player legitimately, honestly was at one of Gary's tables--I knew someone on a different forum who played in that very game), you're a weakened balrog who must reclaim their powers or throw off the curse preventing you from using your full might. Or consider Sir Fang, from the Blackmoor game, who had been a warrior in life and then became a terrifying villain in (un)death.Point being: in actual, live-action play, Gary seemed to be not only permissive, but actively working with players to achieve a feel or goal or purpose that that player thought was cool. Likewise with the addition of the Barrier Peaks, which injected lasers and LGMs and a bunch of other things--a module written by Gary himself, specifically for his world, Greyhawk (it was originally set in the Grand Duchy of Geoff.) He very much used the Rule of Cool when it suited him, and he also used tight themes when it suited him--it would be factually inaccurate to say that he belonged to any particular camp exclusively.And that's sort of the problem with quoting Gygax about anything. He had very different attitudes in different contexts, and spoke authoritatively in very different ways over the course of his life and works. But if your goal is to assert that Gygax consistently depended on the purity of a single vision or upon rigorous curation of every concept, well, I'm afraid his actual behavior and work fail to conform to that assertion. In practice, he was much more like...what most people are going to argue for: a blend of pursuing a creative vision and the Rule of Cool, each in its appropriate place--and that figuring out what "the appropriate place" means is an ever-evolving task, always dependent on the specific context each GM finds herself in.</blockquote>

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