Gary Gygax

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Gary Gygax bigraphy, stories - American writer and game designer

Gary Gygax : biography

July 27, 1938 – March 4, 2008

Ernest Gary Gygax ( July 27, 1938 – March 4, 2008) was an American writer and game designer best known for co-creating the pioneering role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) with Dave Arneson. Gygax has been described as the father of D&D.

In the 1960s, Gygax created an organization of wargaming clubs and founded the Gen Con gaming convention. In 1971, he helped develop Chainmail, a miniatures wargame based on medieval warfare. He co-founded the company Tactical Studies Rules (TSR, Inc.) with childhood friend Don Kaye in 1973. The following year, he and Dave Arneson created D&D, which expanded on Gygax’s Chainmail and included elements of the fantasy stories he loved as a child. In the same year, he founded The Dragon, a magazine based around the new game. In 1977, Gygax began work on a more comprehensive version of the game, called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Gygax 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 on how to run a particular gaming scenario. In 1983, he worked to license the D&D product line into the successful D&D cartoon series.

After leaving TSR in 1985 over issues with its new majority owner, Gygax continued to create role-playing game titles independently, beginning with the multi-genre Dangerous Journeys in 1992. He designed another gaming system called Lejendary Adventure, released in 1999. In 2005, Gygax 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 conceived by Gygax.

Gygax was married twice and had six children. In 2004, Gygax suffered two strokes, narrowly avoided a subsequent heart attack, and was then diagnosed with an abdominal aortic aneurysm, from which he died in March 2008.

Wargames

During the 1960s, Gygax worked as an insurance underwriter for the Firemen’s Fund in Chicago. In 1967, Gygax co-founded the International Federation of Wargamers (IFW) with Bill Speer and Scott Duncan. The IFW grew rapidly, especially by assimilating several pre-existing wargaming clubs, and aimed to promote interest in wargames of all periods and provided via its newsletters and societies a forum for wargamers to form local groups and share rules. In 1967, Gygax organized a 20-person gaming meet in the basement of his home; this event would go on to be called "Gen Con 0". In 1968, Gygax rented Lake Geneva’s vine-covered Horticultural Hall for to hold the first Lake Geneva Convention, also known as the Gen Con gaming convention for short. Gen Con is now one of North America’s largest annual hobby-game gatherings.

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. Shortly therefter in 1970, Robert Kuntz and Gygax founded the Castle & Crusade Society of the IFW. Late in October 1970, Gygax lost his job at the insurance company and then became a shoe repairman, which gave him more time for pursuing his interest in game development. In 1971, he began working as editor-in-chief at Guidon Games, a publisher of wargames, for which he produced the board games Alexander the Great and Dunkirk: The Battle of France. Early that same year, Gygax published Chainmail, a miniatures wargame that simulated medieval-era tactical combat, which he had originally written with hobby-shop owner Jeff Perren. Gygax also collaborated on Tractics (WWII to c. 1965, with Mike Reese & Leon Tucker) and with Dave Arneson on the Napoleonic naval wargame Don’t Give Up the Ship!