Photo Courtesy of Wikipedia
July 27, 1938-March 4, 2008
There really isn’t enough space in this paper to fully explain the importance of this man in the tabletop gaming industry. His work is epic, but I’ll try to keep it short and to the point.
You might not have even heard of Gary Gygax, but if you’re a fan of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), then let me introduce you to the father of today’s geek culture.
In the 1960s, Gygax created several wargaming clubs designed to get friends together and play tactical tabletop games. He also founded GenCon, which is a gaming convention that takes place every August in Indianapolis with an annual attendance of more than 60,000. People travel from all over the world for a three-day gathering of board and card games. There’s also a huge section for merchandise. I used to live in Indy, and we went as a family once. It’s mindblowing if you’re into games like we are.
In 1971, Gygax co-founded Tactical Studies Rules (TSR), which was used to publish his new creation, D&D. This was also the year he founded The Dragon magazine, which was the main, if not the only, magazine for fantasy art, stories, and gaming in the U.S.
1997 sees his more detailed game version in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. This truly revolutionized gaming because the AD&D system allowed for expanded stories known as modules. Now you could create a character and play through several other adventures with friends. This system is still in use today with countless modules to choose from.
And you might recall waking early on Saturday morning in 1983 to a cartoon named Dungeons & Dragons. Gygax was instrumental in getting that developed. He even wanted a movie, but it wasn’t meant to be until 2000 and was met with mixed reviews. Personally, I didn’t care for the first movie as much as the second, which went straight to DVD release.
The mid-’80s saw Gygax a very busy man … a cartoon to approve, gaming modules to create, companies to be founded, and conventions to attend. This all caused Gygax to turn his focus away from his Greyhawk world.
During this time, TSR created a new campaign world called Dragonlance, and it quickly became a hit, partly due to employing the writing team of Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman to publish novels set in this new realm. Dragonlance was so successful that Gygax thought he could revitalize Greyhawk in a similar fashion, and so he wrote some novels of his own to give more depth to his original world. He also hoped these novels would boost sales of game boxed sets that give more details for gamers to enjoy.
I don’t recall any Greyhawks novels while I was reading in the 1980s, so I’m not sure if they made any impact on sales. I only discovered these books a few months ago while shopping at Goodwill. Gygax only published 11 novels but wrote hundreds of short stories for The Dragon magazine.
There are more than 400 modules to date for AD&D alone. Not all were written by Gygax, but his influence is seen throughout the fantasy genre. In 1997, his TSR publishing company would go on to be bought by Wizards of the Coast, famous for the card game Magic: The Gathering. Wizards of the Coast has since tweaked the AD&D formula, making it even more popular today than it ever has been.
Gygax passed away in 2008, but his vision and imagination are very much alive today. More and more people are discovering his games and works and are having fun rediscovering the world of imagination.
