Gary Gygax
Ernest Gary Gygax, born on July 27, 1938, in Chicago, Illinois, was a pivotal figure in the development of role-playing games. His early interests in card games and chess, along with his involvement in the Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association in the late 1960s, set the stage for his groundbreaking work in gaming. Gygax co-created the influential role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) in 1974, alongside Don Kaye and with contributions from Dave Arneson. This game catalyzed the emergence of an entire industry and significantly shaped the landscape of fantasy fiction and gaming culture.
After Kaye's death in 1976, Gygax took control of Tactical Studies Rules (TSR) but faced financial challenges, leading to a partnership with Brian Blume. He later developed Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, which became the definitive version of D&D and bolstered the company’s success. In the 1980s, Gygax attempted to expand the D&D brand through various media, including an animated series. However, as TSR encountered financial difficulties, Gygax left the company in 1986 and continued to innovate within the gaming realm, creating new role-playing games and novels. His later years included work on projects like Lejendary Adventures, though health issues forced him into semi-retirement after a stroke in 2004. Gygax's contributions laid the foundation for modern role-playing games and continue to influence the genre today.
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Gary Gygax
- Born: July 27, 1938
- Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois
- Died: March 4, 2008
- Place of death: Geneva, Wisconsin
Biography
Ernest Gary Gygax was born on July 27, 1938, in Chicago, Illinois, the son of German immigrants. He was a keen game-player from an early age, initially devoting most of his time to card games and chess. He dropped out of high school, although he briefly attended college thereafter. In the late 1960’s, he belonged to a group of Wisconsin war-gamers who called themselves the Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association, coediting the group magazine Chainmail—named after a medieval war game of their own design—with Jeff Perren. In a supplement to Chainmail, Gygax laid down the seeds of a game employing fantasy creatures like elves and orcs, syncretized from the key works of U.S. writers of heroic fantasy, including Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, and Jack Vance, with inevitable (but mostly indirect) influence from J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.
In 1973, Gygax and Don Kaye formed Tactical Studies Rules (TSR) to market a role-playing game developed around this scenario, named Dungeons and Dragons. The game, to whose development Dave Arneson had also conributed, was launched in 1974, shortly before the company became a three-way partnership with Brian Blume. It was a spectacular success, giving rise to an entire industry and a new medium of fiction. Gygax assumed control of TSR when Kaye died in 1976. Gygax bought his shares, but he overextended hs finances in so doing and was forced to sell a majority holding to Blume, who was bankrolled by his father. Shortly thereafter, they incorporated as TSR Hobbies Inc., and the company sold Gygax’s new and improved version of D&D, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons was marketed from 1977 to 1979, became the definitive version of the game, and took the company to greater heights of success; it was this version whose gaming manuals were supplemented by—or, in a sense, hybridized with—illustrative novels. TSR’s subsequent acquisitions included the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, whose fortune TSR made several valiant efforts to renew.
In 1983 Gygax set up the Dungeons and Dragons Entertainment Corporation in California, spinning off an animated TV series, but TSR ran into financial trouble as its initial impetus declined; Gygax sold his shares and left the company in 1986, not long after publishing the first of a long series of game-based heroic fantasy novels in the Greyhawk series, Saga of Old City. He continued this series while attempting to market a new role-playing game, Dangerous Journeys, through Games Designers Workshop. TSR sued and eventually took over the latter game, although Gygax was allowed to continue marketing novels using its basic scenarios.
Gygax went on to write yet another role-playing game in the same vein in the mid-1990’s, Lejendary, which was intended to operate in the burgeoning market of computerized role-playing games using MUDS (Multi-User Dungeons). However, that market was already lost to such products as EverQuest; Gygax’s new game was ultimately launched in conventional format in 1999 as Lejendary Adventures. He then began work on Gygaxian World Builders, but was forced into semi-retirement after suffering a stroke on May 4, 2004, making strenuous efforts thereafter to reduce his weight and quit smoking.