Memorials/Gary Gygax

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IGDA Memorials
Ernest Gary Gygax
b. July 27, 1938

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d. March 4, 2008

Mobygames page
Wikipedia page

Gary Gygax passed away on March 4th, 2008 at the age of 69. He co-created the original Dungeons and Dragons and designed many games, supplements and books and inspired many computer based role playing games.

Contents

Biography

There are rare times in history when a figure emerges who is of such great imagination and productivity that their influence spreads not only throughout a profession but across multiple disciplines. Their work inspires many through the developmental stages of their lives and careers and becomes a fundamental principle of their philosophies. The game design profession is blessed to have had one such individual, a man who helped create a genre that has not only profoundly influenced our profession in design and storytelling, but has also provided millions of people with friendships and experiences that continue to shape their lives and work outside of the games industry to this day. This man was the impeccable Gary Gygax, a game designer, a storyteller, and the original Dungeon Master.

Gary Gygax is one of the legends of our profession. Though he did not single-handedly invent the role-playing game (RPG) genre (he collaborated to this end with many others, most notably Dave Arneson), he is often credited as such and is certainly one of the most well-known names in the field. And yet at the same time, many underestimate his importance to the game design profession as a whole, believing his influence to be limited solely to the production of pen and paper RPGs and the forms of play and storytelling most closely associated with them. However, the RPG, particularly Dungeons & Dragons, has an influence that stretches deep into the realms of the digital, through interactive fiction, into Ultima and Neverwinter Nights and the modern day Oblivions, Dragon Quests and Worlds of Warcrafta. And with an influence like that, it's difficult to talk about Gygax without becoming overcome by the myth and the legend.

A son of a Swiss immigrant, Ernest Gygax, Gary Gygax was a game player and a wargaming hobbyist from the start. It was through his interests in miniatures wargaming and speculative fiction – particularly those genres that appealed to his fascination with the Medieval and Dark Ages aesthetic – that eventually lead to the creation of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). Wargames are about developing strategy arising from relationships between rules and statistics and tables; they are simulations of real-world combat influenced by the Kriegsspiel of the 19th Century, which themselves arose from the Age of Enlightenment and the belief that the world could be entirely represented by numbers and formulae. The genre's ubiquitous combat results table (CRT) – a system that was adapted for D&D - is a direct product of this belief. To simulate interaction between characters of a Medieval fantasy world, Gygax and his friend Jeff Perren designed Chainmail (1971), a wargame that used Dark Ages miniatures along with strange creatures and magic to produce a world unlike the strictly historical wargames that had preceded it.

Yet it wasn't simply the concept of simulating a fantastic Medieval world but rather the innovation of Dave Arneson, who used Chainmail to control a single character instead of an army, and the potential for storytelling that arose from this, that Dungeons & Dragons emerged from in 1974 – along with the entire genre it spawned. Being able not only to narrate stories that occur in fantasy worlds inspired by the works of authors like Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Jack Vance, but more importantly to take on the persona of a character who exists in this world and is a key player within that narrative is a leap in communal storytelling and imaginative play that is the main draw of the RPG. Not only is the world rule-based and simulated in detail, but it is also consistent and allows both player and storyteller (or game master or dungeon master) to explore the possibilities of this world by performing actions, building worlds, and telling stories.

Dungeons & Dragons received updates in 1977 with the publication of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) and three additional rulebooks such as the Monster Manual, which were largely written and compiled by Gygax. AD&D contained a ruleset that was incompatible with D&D due to the large number of additions, extensions, and revisions, making it a game all its own. Gygax also wrote many adventure modules to expand on the D&D universe, beginning with Descent Into the Depths of the Earth (1978), that provided players with pre-designed dungeons for their heroes to explore, building off concepts originated by the Castle Greyhawk setting of the original D&D, a setting that Gygax would eventually return to in 2005. His storytelling ability eventually found its way into the authorship of many fantasy novels series including Greyhawk and Gord the Rogue. Gygax also helped produce and write for The Dragon, a fantasy periodical that had been converted over from the wargaming magazine The Strategic Review with the help of Tim Kask, and was also instrumental in the production of the Dungeons & Dragons CBS cartoon series.

To publish Dungeons & Dragons, Gygax and his friend Don Kaye founded Tactical Strategy Rules (TSR), in 1973. After Kaye's death from a stroke in 1976, TSR became TSR Hobbies, Inc., which published all Dungeons & Dragons materials from that time until its purchase by Wizards of the Coast in 1997. Gygax later sold TSR Hobbies to Brian and Kevin Blume, but by 1984 TSR Hobbies had become poorly managed and Kevin Blume was removed from the company as CEO through Gygax's urgings. After further disagreements over company management and the distribution of royalties between TSR and original creators Gygax and Arneson, Gygax decided to sell his shares and left the company in 1985.

After leaving TSR, Gygax worked on many other RPGs, including Dangerous Journeys and Lejendary Adventure. Though these games garnered substantial followings, none was ever as successful as Dungeons & Dragons. The rule system and genre format using dice, customizable character record sheets, numerical attributes, and storytelling components of D&D inspired the production of many other RPGs, including Call of the Cthulhu (1981), Star Wars (1987), and Vampire: The Masquerade (1992). D&D has also strongly influenced miniatures wargaming, as seen in Warhammer Fantasy Battles.

D&D's influence on digital games has been even more significant, originating with text-based adventure games, interactive fiction, multi-user dungeons, and early computer RPGs such as dnd and Rogue and on through the now long tradition of today's latest role-playing games like Oblivion and massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft. Some games in other genres, such as Castlevania, have even incorporated RPG-elements such as character statistics and equipment upgrades, to enhance their existing action gameplay modes. In all, many game designers have sought ways of replicating the experiences they had with D&D, either in whole or in part, in digital game format, or adopting them to fit their needs, and the success of the RPG genre and its influence on other game forms is merely one testament to the game's success and influence.

Yet at his heart, Gygax was always more than a game designer. Though he loved games, game design, and storytelling, he also enjoyed the benefits of a large family, being father to six children and grandfather to seven, though this was across two marriages. He also enjoyed sharing his games and his stories with others, and until his final days he continued to act as a Game Master of Dungeons & Dragons at conventions and providing Q&A on forums and gaming websites such as Dragonsfoot and EN World. And Gygax would always feel great pride from the stories he would hear from players who told him how much Dungeons & Dragons meant to them and how it had improved their lives and inspired their work as professionals. It was about being able to positively touch the lives of millions of people and the humble and heartfelt satisfaction he received from the knowledge that he had made the world a better place by adding that little spark of imagination and adventure to an otherwise mundane world.

And once you get down to it, past the legend and the myth, and even the man whom you may not have ever met or even heard about before today, but whose works have touched you nonetheless, that's really one of the best things we can ever hope for in this world.

- Devin Monnens (Editing; Henry Lowood)

Works

Video games

  • Thanked in several video game credits.

Books

Links

Comments


“Though I didn't meet him myself, one of my friends online accidentally misdialed his number one day while enthusiastically calling his parents up to let them know he had finished graduate school. When Gygax gave his name, and confirmed himself to be the man behind Dungeons & Dragons, they got into this great conversation that made both of their days so much better because my friend has just been congratulated by a legend and the legend in turn has had the gratitude of knowing his works have made someone else's life better, someone he had never known existed until that day. Any other person would have just hung up the phone, but not Gary. He was the kind of guy who would do this sort of thing, congratulate a complete stranger he had never even seen before. When I think of him I think that's the kind of guy he was.” - Devin Monnens
“The books I write because I want to read them, the games because I want to play them, and stories I tell because I find them exciting personally. When you finish one you feel great.” - Gary Gygax
"GameSpy: Last question. I hope this doesn't sound morbid, but what would you like to have written on your tombstone? How do you want the world to remember you?
Gygax: I was gonna say, "Better here than Philadelphia," but I think somebody already did that. [Laughs] I would like the world to remember me as the guy who really enjoyed playing games and sharing his knowledge and his fun pastimes with everybody else." - Gamespy Interview
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