The great DM has reached a higher level

[Duncan_Idaho]

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, and co-founding the company Tactical Studies Rules with Don Kaye in 1974. Gygax is generally acknowledged as the father of the role-playing game.

On March 4th, the Associated Press confirmed reports of Gygax's passing that originally were made by Troll Lord Games, a small role playing game company Gygax had been working with.He had been in poor health, suffering multiple strokes and a near-heart attack.

Biography

Gygax was the son of Swiss immigrant Martin Gygax and an American mother. His gaming experiences began at the age of five and six with playing pinochle and chess as well as the usual pretend games of any child that could be likened to live action role-playing together with Jim Rasch as referee/game master, John Rasch and Don Kaye as fellow participants. At about the same time Gygax began educating himself in science fiction novels with Ray Bradbury's The Veldt in Bluebook and Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Conqueror.

"I've been reading fantasy since 1950."

In 1953 Gygax first started playing miniature war games with Don Kaye.

The game Gettysburg from the Avalon Hill company captured Gygax's attention. It was from the same company that he placed an order for the first blank hexagon mapping sheets that were available. He was also looking for new ways to generate random numbers. To that end, he used not only the usual cubical (six-sided) dice, but dice of all five platonic solid shapes.

In 1966, the International Federation of Wargamers (IFW) was created by Gygax and others.

In 1967, a 20-person gaming get-together was organized by Gary Gygax at his home including the basement sand table. This was later called "Gen Con 0" as it led to the start of the annual Gen Con gaming convention the following year, which is now the world's largest annual hobby-game gathering. Gen Con is also where Gary Gygax would meet Brian Blume and Dave Arneson. Brian Blume would later enter into TSR as partner with Don Kaye and Gary.

"I'm very fond of the Medieval period, the Dark Ages in particular. We started playing in the period because I had found appropriate miniatures. I started devising rules where what the plastic figure was wearing was what he had. If he had a shield and no armor, then he just has a shield. Shields and half-armor = half-armor rules; full-armor figure = full armor rules. I did rules for weapons as well."

Together with Don Kaye, Mike Reese and Leon Tucker, a military miniatures society would be created under the name Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association (LGTSA) which at the time also met in Gary's basement.

Gygax and Jeff Perren wrote Chainmail, a miniatures wargame from which D&D was developed, in 1971.

Gygax and Kaye then founded the publishing company Tactical Studies Rules (TSR) and published the first version of D&D in 1974. For the spell systems, Gygax would be inspired by Jack Vance, but also draw upon such renowned fantasy authors as Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp and Fritz Leiber. The hand-assembled print run of 1000 copies sold out in nine months. In the same year, Gygax hired Tim Kask to help make the transition of The Strategic Review to the fantasy periodical today known as Dragon Magazine with Gygax as author and later as columnist.

After the death of Kaye in 1976, his widow sold her shares to Gygax. Gygax then owned a controlling share of the whole partnership Tactical Studies Rules, and created TSR Hobbies, Inc. He sold it soon after to Brian Blume and his brother Kevin because of money problems. The Blume family owned roughly two-thirds of TSR Hobbies by late 1976.

Tactical Studies Rules published the two first printings of the original D&D and TSR Hobbies, Inc. went on with the game.

A few years later a new version of D&D was created, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) (1977–9). The Monster Manual would be the first rule book of the new system. The new rules were not compatible with D&D. As a result, the D&D and AD&D had distinct product lines and expansions.

Gary Gygax left TSR in 1985 during changes in TSR's management. This development arose while Gary was preoccupied with making the CBS cartoon series Dungeons & Dragons.

"I was pretty much boxed out of the running of the company because the two guys, who between them had a controlling interest, thought they could run the company better than I could. I was set up because I could manage. In 1982 nobody on the West Coast would deal with TSR, but they had me start a new corporation called "Dungeons and Dragons Entertainment." It took a long time and a lot of hard work to get to be recognized as someone who was for real and not just a civilian, shall we say, in entertainment. Eventually, though, we got the cartoon show going (on CBS) and I had a number of other projects in the works. While I was out there, though, I heard that the company was in severe financial difficulties and one of the guys, the one I was partnered with, was shopping it on the street in New York. I came back and discovered a number of gross mismanagements in all areas of the company. The bank was foreclosing and we were a million and a half in debt. We eventually got that straightened out, but I kind of got one of my partners kicked out of office. (Kevin Blume, who was removed as TSR CEO in 1984 - ed.). Then my partners, in retribution for that, sold his shares to someone else (Lorraine Williams - ed.). I tried to block it in court, but in the ensuing legal struggle the judge ruled against me. I lost control of the company, and it was then at that point I just decided to sell out."

After leaving TSR Gary Gygax created Dangerous Journeys, an advanced RPG spanning multiple genres containing almost every rule that Gary could think of. He began work in 1995 on a major new RPG, originally intended for a computer game, but in 1999 released as Lejendary Adventure which some consider to be his best work to date. A key part of its design was to keep the gaming rules as simple as possible, as Gygax felt that role playing games were becoming too complex and discouraged new users.

At the time of his death, on March 4th, 2008 Gygax was in semi-retirement, having almost suffered a heart attack after receiving incorrect medication to prevent further strokes after those on April 1 and May 4, 2004. He was diagnosed with an inoperable abdominal aortic aneurysm. However, gaming remained very much a part of his life. Gygax was still active in the gaming community and had active Q & A forums on gaming websites such as Dragonsfoot and EN World.

In 2005, Gygax returned to the Dungeons and Dragons RPG with his involvement in the creation of the Castles & Crusades system with Troll Lord Games. Troll Lord Games has published Castle Zagyg, the previously unreleased, original version of Gygax's Castle Greyhawk, the original dungeon setting for D&D.

"I would like the world to remember me as the guy who really enjoyed playing games and sharing his knowledge and his fun pastimes with everybody else."

In 2007, Gygax had a special guest appearance as himself on the G4TV show Code Monkeys, when Todd sought him out and offered actress Molly Ringwald as a "virgin sacrifice" to Gygax to get him to restore Todd's charisma points.

Personal

Gygax married Gail Carpenter on August 15, 1987, which was the same day as his parents' 50th anniversary. As of 2005, he was father to six children and grandfather to seven children. His first five children are from his first marriage to the former Mary Jo Gygax. His last was through his second marriage. Gygax resided in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Gary described his studio in his typical narrative fashion as,

a small but sunny upper room—cluttered with books, magazines, papers, and who-knows-what else. Right now, pending the redecorating of that room, I am lodged in the downstairs dining room at a long table that holds two computers and a scanner, with the printer hiding to one side below it. The radio there in the studio was usually tuned to a classical music station, but the station was sold, programming changed, so now I work sans music, or now and then with a CD playing through the computer. While there are bookcases in the upper studio, elsewhere on the second floor, and on the first floor, the main repository of printed lore (other than that piled here and there) is my basement library which includes thousands of reference works, maps, magazines, and works of fiction.

Awards

Gary Gygax had received several awards related to gaming:

* Strategists Club's "Outstanding Designer & Writer" — for creating D&D

* Origin Game Convention's "Adventure Gaming Hall of Fame"

* Origins Award, Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design Hall of Fame Honors (2004)

* Four time winner of Games Day's "Best Games Inventor" (1979–82)

* GenCon 2007 (40th Anniversary), Premiere Guest of Honor

Gary Gygax was tied with J. R. R. Tolkien for #18 on "GameSpy's 30 Most Influential People in Gaming" (Gamespy Magazine, March 2002).

As of March 13, 2003, Gygax was listed under the entry Dungeons and Dragons in the Oxford English Dictionary.

A strain of bacteria was named in honor of Gary Gygax, namely "Arthronema gygaxiana sp nov UTCC393".

Sync Magazine named Gary Gygax #1 on the list of "The 50 Biggest Nerds of All Time".

SFX Magazine listed him as #37 on the list of the "50 Greatest SF Pioneers".

In 1999 Pyramid magazine named Gary Gygax as one of The Millennium's Most Influential Persons "at least in the realm of adventure gaming."

Weiteres über Gygax erfährt man hier: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Gygax