ERNEST GARY GYGAX (1938-2008)
Ed Greenwood
I met a man who changed the world, and now he’s gone.
A war gamer and avid reader of fantasy, Gary Gygax pulled together a lot of what he loved from legends and swashbuckling fantasy adventure yarns—the sort penned by Robert Howard, Fritz Leiber, and Jack Vance—to craft a pathway (well, an endless labyrinth of branching pathways we could all explore and add to, to make the journey our own) into the worlds of our imaginations.
Everyone who’s ever sat down to play a game (a board-game, pencil-and-paper “role-playing” game, computer game that lives only inside their own computer, or one of the many multiplayer games played over the Internet) wherein they took on the role of a fantasy character—perhaps a long-bearded dwarf with ax in hand or a tall, shapely sorceress, her cloak swirling around her in its own arcane little magical storm—to fight monsters or evildoers and explore a dungeon, tomb, or castle, owes that opportunity to Gary Gygax.
Unwittingly or deliberately, modern gaming and most new fantasies we read, watch as movies, or play as games flow from, or were shaped and influenced by, something Gary hatched with Dave Arneson in the early 1970s, something Gary’s persistence made into a game that exploded in popularity because it came along at the right time: Dungeons & Dragons.
Tolkien’s classic The Lord of the Rings changed the dreams and fantastic musings of a generation, and the Harry Potter series did the same thing for a later generation.
The time in between, and the creative world immediately post-Potter, are under the thrall of Dungeons & Dragons and all that it has spawned. All of the labyrinth-exploring, monster-battling, treasure-winning fantasy games that unfold around gaming tables and on computer screens and across the world through the Internet.
We all live in Gary’s world now, even if we don’t realize or admit it.
Fantasy has become mainstream culture, in part because so many storytellers, artists, and writers (and gamers, readers, and just plain fans) found a way, through the game Gary Gygax created, to express themselves.
Some of us can tell stories all on our own, but most of us need encouragement (rules or some sort of guidance, and friends or an audience). A means to get us started, so we can all share in the fun, and some of us can spread our wings and become new writers, artists, and designers who spin ongoing fun for the next nervous nerds to come along.
D&D provides all of that. When it first appeared, it alone provided all of that.
It was a reason to get together with friends for an evening, with food and drink at hand, and achieve something. (Something that didn’t involve broken windows and perhaps worse, wild driving, and police.) We might have been teenage nobodies, but we could have adventures, and do something that mattered, even if it was only in a shared “let’s pretend.” Not that the word “only” really belongs in that last sentence. Using your imagination does matter, is always an achievement, and should take second place to darn near nothing.
D&D gave us all the chance to be a hero, no matter how unathletic, unhandsome, or shy we might be. It whispered to everyone who sat down at a gaming table: “Why not you? The realm needs saving; this is your chance. Want to be powerful? Noble? Do great and good deeds? Hey, it’s all up to you . . .”
The very nature of the game inspires all who are fascinated by swords and spells and lurking monsters. The rules spur creativity: the refereeing Dungeon Master must present the unfolding action (and create or adapt new adventures), but the players can have their characters not follow the intended script of the adventure . . . so everyone gets to be creative and give their imaginations a workout. Everyone, not just the popular and charismatic, because the game forces cooperation for survival and success. Gary Gygax did something that SCA and Renaissance faires and many a fantasy and sf writer and artist has also done: found a way to help “the rest of us” Live Our Dreams.
We’re not all good writers; we can’t all spin vivid fantasy novels. But now, thanks to Gary, we can all “live in our heads” inside fantasy worlds, and have some limited control over how the stories go. Through role-playing, friendships and trust can form, and we can build confidence and the ability to work with others. We can work through problems, try new things, and perhaps, just perhaps, change the directions of our lives. (Yes, life can be lived as an endless D&D campaign.) Gary opened the door to all this.
It was Gary who hit upon expressing characters and other creatures through ability statistics, so we not only knew if Saint George or the Dragon was tougher or more deadly; we knew exactly how. That let us get on with the storytelling—collaborative storytelling. Not competition for fantasy fiction, but something to augment it. Gary didn’t stand in the way of us telling our own stories the way a printed book inevitably does; he gave us the keys to the car—our mind—and showed us how to get out there in it on a highway with others.
J. R. R. Tolkien may have spread out the glories of fantasy worlds for many of us to gaze out over, but Gary Gygax showed us the paths we could take down from our lookouts and step into those worlds to explore them for ourselves. And be someone else for a few hours while doing so, if we wanted to.
In doing so, Gary deliberately fostered interactive game play, and made possible today’s “nerd” or “geek” culture, shaping the dreams of the geeks who created video games, the Internet, and its various social networking sites. How and where the programmers, writers, artists, and other creatives who change and build our social world work was shaped by D&D, even if they never played the game.
So it’s not a stretch to say that Gary Gygax inspired many creatives to make the world better. Richer and more interesting, creating hours of fun for gamers along the way, and making most of them a little better because of that play. That’s an epitaph very few of us will be able to come anywhere near.
Gary Gygax was the wizard. Oh, he could be cantankerous when irked. He was a man who held strong opinions and defended them passionately. Yet he was usually affable and had endless patience and generosity with many, many young gamers down the years at conventions I attended and dozens more I did not.
Yes, I was one of those gamers. We got to really sit and talk together perhaps a dozen times in all, but even in those brief times we became fast friends, and joked and tossed ideas back and forth for this possible story or game or that. I could tell Gary stories (boy, could I tell stories!) but there’s something more important I have to say.
Ahem. I could go all quasi-medieval corny and say, “Master fallen, we salute you!” Yet that seems such a paltry phrase. I feel I can do better. Something like this:
Gary, we’re still playing. Still telling stories together. Still making shiny new games. Thanks to you.
So, Gary, wherever you are now, I hope you hear this:
Thank you.
Also In Memoriam
Brian M. Thomsen passed away on September 21, 2008.
Author, editor, and game designer he was a sweet,
friendly, wonderful, and intelligent man who left be
hind a wealth of good friends and family.
He will be missed.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Donald J. Bingle was ranked by the RPGA as the world’s top player of classic role-playing games for more than fifteen years, having played more than five hundred different characters in sanctioned tournaments (in more than fifty different game worlds/systems) and attended more than one hundred thirty-five gaming conventions (including twenty-nine years at GenCon). He also has been a ranked player in board games, collectible card games, and rail games. His career as an author has moved from writing convention tounaments to writing product for game companies to writing short fiction for shared worlds to writing movie reviews, short stories, screenplays, and books. He is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers, the GenCon Writers Symposium, and the St. Charles Writers Group. His latest novel, Greensword, is a dark comedy about global warming. You
can contact Don, buy his books, or read about his writing or gaming history at www.donldjbingle. For another story about gamers, see his tale, “The Quest.” in Fellowship Fantastic.
Richard Lee Byers is the author of over thirty fantasy and horror novels, including Unclean, Undead, Unholy, The Rage, The Rite, The Ruin, and Dissolution. His short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. A resident of the Tampa Bay area, the setting for a good deal of his horror fiction, he spends much of leisure time fencing and playing poker. Visit his Website at richardleebyers.com.
Bill Fawcett has been a professor, teacher, corporate executive, and college dean. He is one of the founders of Mayfair Games, a board and role-play gaming company and designed award winning board games and role-playing modules. He more recently produced and designed several computer games. As a book packager he has packaged over two hundred fifty books. The Fleet science fiction series he edited and contributed to with David Drake has become a classic of military science fiction. He has collaborated on several mystery novels as “Quinn Fawcett.” His recent works include Making Contact: A UFO Contact Handbook, and a series of books about great mistakes in history: It Seemed Like a Good Idea, You Did What?, How to Lose a Battle, and How to Lose a War.
Ed Greenwood is the creator of The Forgotten Realms (arguably the largest and most detailed fantasy world setting ever). Over more than thirty years, the Realms became the top-selling Dungeons & Dragons product line, selling tens of millions of novels, computer games, and game sourcebooks worldwide. Ed is an award-winning gamer, writer, and game designer (winning several ORIGINS and Gamer’s Choice awards and elected to the GAMA Hall of Fame). He has been an editor of Dragon magazine, a columnist for several other magazines, and has published over twenty-five novels (including the New York Times best-selling Spellfire and Elminster: The Making of a Mage), and more than fifty short stories. Ed has been hailed as “the Canadian author of the great American novel” (J. Robert King), “an industry legend” (Dragon Magazine), and “one of the greats” (GAMES magazine). His writings have sold millions of copies in over a dozen languages. Ed also scripts comics and radio plays, and writes horror, pulp adventure, and Arthurian fantasy. Ed’s most recent books include The Sword Never Sleeps (third in the Knights of Myth Drannor trilogy), Arch Wizard (second in the Falconfar trilogy), and Dark Vengeance (second in the Nilfheim series).
Jim C. Hines started gaming back when Dungeons & Dragons came in a box, and you had to use a white crayon to fill in the numbers on your dice. His gaming roots had a strong influence on his first novel Goblin Quest, a humorous tale about a nearsighted goblin named Jig and his pet fire-spider Smudge. He’s published three other novels (including two more goblin books), as well as roughly forty short stories. He lives in Michigan with his family, and believes his eight-year-old daughter has the makings of a good druid. As for his four-year-old son, he’s a barbarian all the way.
Stephen Leigh, a.k.a. S. L. Farrell, lives in Cincinnati. Steve has published twenty-one novels and several dozen short stories. His most recent book is A Magic of Nightfall (as S.L. Farrell), the second novel of the Nes santico Cycle, which Publishers Weekly called “a rich and complex story.” His work has been nominated for several awards. Steve is married to his best friend Denise. His other interests include music, aikido, and fine art. He was once half of a juggling act. He currently teaches creative writing at Northern Kentucky University and is a frequent speaker to writers groups. At http://www.far rellworlds.com, you’ll find his blog and several articles on the subject of writing.
David D. Levine is a lifelong sf reader whose midlife crisis was to take a sabbatical from his high-tech job to attend Clarion West in 2000. It seems to have worked. He made his first professional sale in 2001, won the Writers of the Future Contest in 2002, was nominated for the John W. Campbell Award in 2003, was nominated for the Hugo Award and the Campbell again in 2004, and won a Hugo in 2006 (Best Short Story, for “Tk’Tk’Tk”). His “Titanium Mike Saves the Day” was nominated for a Nebula Award in 2008, and a collection of his short stories, Space Magic, is available from Wheatland Press (http://www.wheatlandpress.com). He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife, Kate Yule, with whom he edits the fanzine Bento. Their Web site is at http://www.BentoPress.com.
Jody Lynn Nye lists her main career activity as “spoiling cats.” She lives northwest of Chicago with two of the above and her husband, author and packager Bill Fawcett. She has published more than thirty-five books, including six contemporary fantasies, four sf novels, four novels in collaboration with Anne McCaffrey, including The Ship Who Won; edited a humorous anthology about mothers, Don’t Forget Your Spacesuit, Dear!: and written over a hundred short stories. Her latest books are A Forthcoming Wizard, and Myth-Fortunes, cowritten with Robert Asprin. And, yes, she does believe in magic.
Chris Pierson was born in Canada, and now lives in Boston, Massachusetts, with his wife Rebekah and their amazing daughter Cloe. He works as a writer and designer of online games, including Lord of the Rings Online, and is the author of eight novels set in the Dragonlance world, including the Kingpriest Trilogy and the Taladas Trilogy. His short fiction has recently appeared in the anthologies Time Twisters, Pandora’s Closet, Fellowship Fantastic, The Dimension Next Door, and Terribly Twisted Tales.
Jean Rabe is the author of two dozen books, including several in the bestselling Dragonlance game world and more than four dozen short stories. When not tugging on old socks with her dogs, she edits anthologies, magazines, and newsletters, and dangles her toes in her goldfish pond. Visit her Web site at www.jeanrabe.com.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch is an award-winning mystery, romance, science fiction, and fantasy writer. She has written many novels under various names, including Kristine Grayson for romance and Kris Nelscott for mystery. Her novels have made the bestseller lists—even in London—and have been published in fourteen countries and thirteen different languages. Her awards range from the Ellery Queen Readers Choice Award to the Romantic Times Book Reviews Reviewer’s Choice Award. She is the only person in the history of the science fiction field to have won a Hugo Award for editing and a Hugo Award for fiction. Her short work has been reprinted in fifteen Year’s Best collections. Her current novel, Duplicate Effort, is part of her Retrieval Artist series—stand-alone mystery novels set in a science fiction universe.
Born in Wisconsin in 1967, Steven Schend fell into the world of fantasy quite quickly, growing up on L. Frank Baum’s Oz books, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan and Barsoom novels, and Ray Harryhausen movies. It was only a matter of time before comic books and other fantasy and science fiction corrupted his brain permanently . . . but in a good way. For the past nineteen years, Steven worked full-time or freelance as an editor, developer, designer, writer, or assistant manager for TSR, Inc., Wizards of the Coast, Bastion Press, Green Ronin, and the Sebranek Group. Steven has written scores of magazine articles and role-playing game products, though he hopes to match that track record with his current stint as a fiction author and freelance novelist. Steven’s called various places in Wisconsin and Washington home over the years; he now hangs his hat in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he teaches writing at a local college and works feverishly on novels and stories of his own.
Brian M. Thomsen was the author of more than sixty short stories and articles and two fantasy novels, as well as such nonfiction works as Ireland’s Most Wanted, The Awful Truths, and Man of Two Worlds. He also edited Shadows of Blue and Gray, The Civil War Writings of Ambrose Bierce, Commanding Voices of Blue and Gray, the critically acclaimed The American Fantasy Tradition, and The Man in the Arena: Selected Writings of Theodore Roosevelt, as well as co-edited with Eric Haney Beyond Shock and Awe, and with Bill Fawcett You Did What? His two most recent works were Pasta Fazool for the Wiseguy’s Soul and Oval Office Occult. He grew up in Rockaway Beach, attended Regis High School in New York City, and resided in Brooklyn with his loving wife Donna and the two extremely talented cats, Sparky and Minx.
Margaret Weis was born and raised in Independence, Missouri. She graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1970 with a bachelor’s of arts in Creative Writing/American and English literature. She worked for Herald Publishing House in Independence, Missouri, from 1970 to 1983, where she was advertising director and editor for Independence Press. In 1983, Weis left Missouri to move to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, to take a job as book editor at TSR, Inc., producers of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. At TSR, Weis became part of the Dragonlance design team. Created by Tracy Hickman, the Dragonlance world has continued to intrigue fans of both the novel and the game for generations. In 2004, Dragonlance Chronicles, which has sold over twenty million copies worldwide, celebrated its twentieth anniversary. She is also the author/co-author of several other best-selling series, including Darksword, Rose of the Prophet, Star of the Guardians, The Death-gate Cycle, Sovereign Stone, and Dragonvarld.
Weis is the former owner of Sovereign Press Inc., the publisher of the Dragonlance D20 RPG products licensed from Wizards of the Coast. She is also the owner of Margaret Weis Productions, Ltd, publisher of the role-playing game Serenity, based on the motion picture screenplay written and directed by Joss Whedon. Currently she is working on the new series Dragonships, co-authored with Tracy Hickman.
ABOUT THE EDITORS
Martin H. Greenberg is the CEP of Tekno Books and its predecessor companies, now the largest book developer of commercial fiction and nonfiction in the world, with over two thousand published books that have been translated into thirty-three languages. He is the recipient of an unprecedented three Lifetime Achievement Awards in the Science Fiction, Mystery, and Supernatural Horror genres—the Milford Award in Science Fiction, the Bram Stoker Award in Horror, and the Ellery Queen Award in Mystery—the only person in publishing history to have received all three awards.
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