Ernest Gary Gygax ( ; July 27, 1938 – March 4, 2008) was an American game designer and author best known for co-creating the pioneering tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) with Dave Arneson.

In the 1960s, Gygax created an organization of wargaming clubs and founded the Gen Con tabletop game convention. In 1971, he co-developed Chainmail, a miniatures wargame based on medieval warfare with Jeff Perren. He co-founded the company TSR (originally Tactical Studies Rules) with childhood friend Don Kaye in 1973. The next year, TSR published D&D, created by Gygax and Arneson the year before. In 1976, he founded The Dragon, a magazine based around the new game. In 1977, he began developing a more comprehensive version of the game called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. He designed numerous manuals for the game system, as well as several pre-packaged adventures called "modules" that gave a person running a D&D game (the "Dungeon Master") a rough script and ideas. In 1983, he worked to license the D&D product line into the successful D&D cartoon series.

Gygax left TSR in 1986 over conflicts with its new majority owner, but he continued to create role-playing game titles independently, beginning with the multi-genre Dangerous Journeys in 1992. He designed the Lejendary Adventure gaming system, released in 1999. In 2005, he was involved in the Castles & Crusades role-playing game, which was conceived as a hybrid between the third edition of D&D and the original version of the game.

In 2004, he had two strokes and narrowly avoided a subsequent heart attack. He was diagnosed with an abdominal aortic aneurysm and died in March 2008 at age 69. Following Gygax's funeral, many mourners formed an impromptu game event which became known as Gary Con 0, and gamers celebrate in Lake Geneva each March with a large role-playing game convention in Gygax's honor.

Early life and inspiration

Gygax was born in Chicago, the son of Almina Emelie "Posey" Burdick and Swiss immigrant and former Chicago Symphony Orchestra violinist Ernst Gygax. that he could hear the roar of the crowds watching the Chicago Cubs play. his father decided to move the family to Posey's family home in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, where Posey's family had settled in the early 19th century, and where Gary's grandparents still lived.

In this new setting, Gygax soon made friends with several of his peers, including Don Kaye and Mary Jo Powell. During his childhood and teen years, he developed a love of games and an appreciation for fantasy and science fiction literature. When he was five, he played card games such as pinochle and then board games such as chess. His father introduced him to science fiction and fantasy through pulp novels. His interest in games, combined with an appreciation of history, eventually led Gygax to begin playing miniature war games in 1953 with his best friend, Don Kaye.

By his teens, Gygax had a voracious appetite for pulp fiction authors such as Robert E. Howard, Jack Vance, Fritz Leiber, H. P. Lovecraft, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. It was also from Avalon Hill that he ordered the first blank hex mapping sheets available, which he then employed to design his own games.

About the same time that he discovered Gettysburg, his mother reintroduced him to Mary Jo Powell, who had left Lake Geneva as a child and just returned. Gygax was smitten with her and, after a short courtship, persuaded her to marry him, despite being only 19. This caused some friction with Kaye, who had also been wooing Mary Jo. Kaye refused to attend Gygax's wedding. Kaye and Gygax reconciled after the wedding. after his divorce, and his time in Hollywood while he was the head of TSR's entertainment division, Lake Geneva was his home for the rest of his life.

By 1966, Gygax was active in the wargame hobby world and was writing many magazine articles on the subject. which he discovered in a school supply catalog.

Wargames

In 1967, Gygax co-founded the International Federation of Wargamers (IFW) with Bill Speer and Scott Duncan. Gygax met Dave Arneson, the future co-creator of D&D, at the second Gen Con in August 1969.

Together with Don Kaye, Mike Reese, and Leon Tucker, Gygax created a military miniatures society called Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association (LGTSA) in 1970, with its first headquarters in Gygax's basement. The Chainmail medieval miniatures rules were originally published in the Castle & Crusade Society's fanzine The Domesday Book. Guidon Games hired Gygax to produce a game series called "Wargaming with Miniatures", with the initial release for the series being a new edition of Chainmail (1971). The first edition of Chainmail included a fantasy supplement to the rules. For a small publisher like Guidon Games, Chainmail was relatively successful, selling 100 copies per month. Gygax and Arneson immediately started to collaborate on creating "The Fantasy Game", the role-playing game that evolved into Dungeons & Dragons.

Following Arneson's Blackmoor demonstration, Gygax requested more information from Arneson and began testing ideas for the game on his two oldest children, Ernie and Elise, in a setting he called "Greyhawk". This group rapidly expanded to include Kaye, Kuntz, and eventually a large circle of players. Gygax and Arneson continued to trade notes about their respective campaigns as Gygax began work on a draft. Several aspects of the system governing magic in the game were inspired by fantasy author Jack Vance's The Dying Earth stories (notably that magic-users in the game forget the spells that they have learned immediately upon casting them and must re-study them in order to cast them again), and the system as a whole drew upon the work of authors such as Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp, Michael Moorcock, Roger Zelazny, Poul Anderson, Tolkien, Bram Stoker, and others. The final draft contained changes not vetted by Arneson, and Gygax's vision differed on some rule details Arneson had preferred.

By 1974, Gygax's Greyhawk group, which had started off with himself, Ernie Gygax, Don Kaye, Rob Kuntz, and Terry Kuntz, had grown to over 20 people, with Rob Kuntz operating as co-dungeon-master so that each of them could referee smaller groups of about a dozen players. The two men each invested $1,000 in the venture—Kaye borrowed his share on his life insurance policy They also tried to raise money by immediately publishing a set of wargame rules called Cavaliers and Roundheads, but sales were poor; when the printing costs for the thousand copies of Dungeons & Dragons rose from $2,000 to $2,500, Sales of the hand-assembled print run of 1,000 copies, put together in Gygax's home, Gygax relocated TSR from the Kaye dining room to the basement at his own house. In addition, Brian bought another 140 shares. The Dragon debuted in June 1976, and Gygax said of its success years later: "When I decided that The Strategic Review was not the right vehicle, hired Tim Kask as a magazine editor for Tactical Studies Rules, and named the new publication he was to produce The Dragon, I thought we would eventually have a great periodical to serve gaming enthusiasts worldwide ... At no time did I ever contemplate so great a success or so long a lifespan."

In 1979, Michigan State University student James Dallas Egbert III allegedly disappeared into the school's steam tunnels while playing a live-action version of D&D. In fact, Egbert was discovered in Louisiana several weeks later, that aired in 1985. Death threats started arriving at the TSR office, so he hired a bodyguard.

Brian Blume persuaded Gygax to allow Brian's brother Kevin to purchase Melvin Blume's shares. This gave the Blume brothers a controlling interest, Several of his projects were immediately shelved. Gygax took TSR to court in a bid to block the Blumes' sale of their shares to Williams, but he lost.

Sales of D&D reached $29 million in 1985,

After TSR

1985–1989: New Infinities Productions, Inc.

thumb|right|Members of the Gygax family pose on the Throne of Reading at the Lake Geneva Public Library.

Immediately after leaving TSR, Gygax was approached by a wargaming acquaintance, Forrest Baker, who had done some consulting work for TSR in 1983 and 1984.

With the Gord the Rogue novels finished, NIPI's main source of steady income dried up. The company needed a new product. Gygax announced in 1988 in a company newsletter that he and Rob Kuntz, his co-Dungeon Master during the early days of the Greyhawk campaign, were working as a team again. This time they would create a new multi-genre fantasy role-playing game called "Infinite Adventures", which would receive support through different gamebooks for each genre.

The marketing strategy for Dangerous Journeys: Mythus was multi-pronged. The RPG and setting were to be published by Game Designers' Workshop, and the Mythus computer game was being prepared by NEC and JVC. There would also be a series of books based on the Mythus setting written by Gygax. He wrote three novels published by Penguin/Roc and later reprinted by Paizo Publishing: The Anubis Murders, The Samarkand Solution, and Death in Delhi. but TSR immediately applied for an injunction against the entire Dangerous Journeys RPG and the Mythus setting, arguing that Dangerous Journeys was based on D&D and AD&D. The injunction failed, but TSR moved forward with litigation. Gygax believed that the legal action was without merit and fueled by Lorraine Williams's personal enmity,

1995–2000: Lejendary Adventures

thumb|left|Gary Gygax at ModCon Game Fair in 1999, [[:it:Modena|Modena, Italy. His t-shirt advertises the third edition of D&D, which was to be released the following year.]]

In 1995, Gygax began work on a new computer role-playing game called Lejendary Adventures. He also returned to the pages of Dragon Magazine, writing the "Up on a Soapbox" column which was published from Issue #268 (January 2000) to Issue #320 (June 2004). which also included the voices of Al Gore, Stephen Hawking, and Nichelle Nichols.

During his time with TSR, Gygax had often mentioned the mysterious Castle Greyhawk which formed the center of his own home campaign, but he had never published details of the castle. In 2003, he announced that he was again partnering with Rob Kuntz to publish the original details of Castle Greyhawk and the City of Greyhawk in six volumes, although the project would use the rules for Castles and Crusades rather than D&D. As Gygax wrote in an on-line forum:

Wizards of the Coast had bought TSR in 1997 and still owned the rights to the name "Greyhawk", so Gygax changed the name of Castle Greyhawk to "Castle Zagyg" and also changed the name of the nearby city to "Yggsburgh", a play on his initials "E.G.G." by amalgamating the best of what could be gleaned from binders and boxes of old notes. However, neither Gygax nor Kuntz had kept comprehensive plans because they had often made up details of play sessions on the spot. They usually just scribbled a quick map as they played, with cursory notes about monsters, treasures, and traps. These sketchy maps had contained just enough detail that the two could ensure that their independent work would dovetail. All of these old notes now had to be deciphered, 25-year old memories dredged up as to what had happened in each room, and a decision made whether to keep or discard each new piece. Recreating the city too would be a challenge. Gygax still had his old maps of the original city, but all of his previously published work on it was owned by WotC, so he would have to create most of it from scratch while still maintaining the "look and feel" of his original.

Due to creative differences, Kuntz backed out of the project but created an adventure module that would be published at the same time as Gygax's first book. Gygax continued to put Castle Zagyg together on his own, but this came to a complete halt when he had a serious stroke in April 2004 and then another one a few weeks later. Castle Zagyg Part I: Yggsburgh finally appeared in 2005, the first book in the six-book series. He divorced Mary Jo in 1983 and married Gail Carpenter, one of his former accountants, on August 15, 1987. Their son, Alex, was born in 1986.

Gygax was an avid hunter and target shooter from an early age with both bow and gun. He collected guns and owned a variety of rifles, shotguns, and handguns at various times. He was a keen supporter of the Chicago Bears. He described himself as a "biological determinist" and believed gaming in general to be a male pursuit, stating in 2004 that "it isn't that females can't play games well, it is just that it isn't a compelling activity to them as is the case for males".

Awards and honors

Immediately after Gygax's 2008 funeral, mourners adjourned to Lake Geneva's American Legion Hall to play games in the deceased's honor. Members of his family served refreshments and played games with friends. This event inspired Luke Gygax to create a locally hosted game event around the date of his father's death. Years later, Gary Con is so well-attended a dozen Lake Geneva hotels must be utilized in order to serve the demand. The funeral day event is now regarded as Gary Con 0.

As the "father of role-playing games", Gygax received many awards, honors, and tributes related to gaming:

  • He was inducted into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design Origins Award Hall of Fame, also known as the Charles Roberts Awards Hall of Fame, in 1980.
  • Sync magazine named Gygax number one on the list of "The 50 Biggest Nerds of All Time".
  • SFX magazine listed him as number 37 on the list of the "50 Greatest SF Pioneers".
  • In 1999, Pyramid magazine named Gygax as one of "The Millennium's Most Influential Persons" "in the realm of adventure gaming".
  • Gygax was tied with J. R. R. Tolkien for number 18 on GameSpy's "30 Most Influential People in Gaming".
  • A strain of bacteria was named in honor of Gygax, "Arthronema gygaxiana sp nov UTCC393".
  • He was inducted into the Pop Culture Hall of Fame Class of 2019

In 2008 Gail Gygax, the widow of Gary Gygax, began the process to establish a memorial to her late husband in Lake Geneva. On March 28, 2011, the City Council of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, approved Gail Gygax's application for a site of memorial in Donian Park; however, the Gygax family was unable to raise the money at the time to complete the memorial during a 2012 funding campaign.

In 2014, with the approval of Gary's eldest son, Ernie, Epic Quest Publishing started a Kickstarter campaign to raise the initial funding for a museum dedicated to Gary featuring a gaming and event center and hall of fame for authors, artists, designers and game masters.

Lake Geneva mayor Charlene Klein proclaimed July 27, 2023, as "Gary Gygax Day", and on that day dedicated a lakeside park bench in his honor. In her proclamation she reminds residents that in 1983 TSR employed over 400 people, "over 6% of Lake Geneva's population at the time."

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File:Gen Con Indy 2008 - Gary Gygax memorials 04.JPG|A plaque dedicated to Gary Gygax at Gen Con 2008 reading: "The first DM, He taught us to roll the dice. He opened the door to new worlds. His work shaped our industry. He brought us Gen Con, For this we thank him. In fond memory of Gary Gygax and in celebration of his spirit and accomplishments."

File:GygaxMemorial_(2).jpg|Public memorial to Gary located at the Lake Geneva waterfront erected by his family

File:Geneva Lake Museum April 2025 24 (The Wizard of Lake Geneva).jpg|The "Wizard of Lake Geneva" exhibit at the Geneva Lake Museum

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In 2000, Gygax voiced his cartoon self for the Futurama episode "Anthology of Interest I", Stephen Colbert, an avid D&D gamer in his youth,

Numerous names in D&D, such as Zagyg, Ring of Gaxx, and Gryrax, are anagrams or alterations of Gygax's name.

See also

  • Gary Gygax bibliography

References

  • Dungeons & Dragons Creator Gary Gygax Passes Away; Interview on BoingBoing Gadgets
  • Gygax Magazine
  • Tribute to Gary Gygax at Black Gate