Gary Gygax
Gary Gygax
Ernest Gary Gygax was an American game designer and author best known for co-creating with Dave Arneson the pioneering role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. Gygax has been described as the father of D&D...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionGame Designer
Date of Birth27 July 1938
CountryUnited States of America
years play dragons
Anyone wanna play Dungeons & Dragons for the next quadrillion years?
art games rpgs
Send anyone claiming that their RPG activity is an art form my way, and I'll gladly stick a pin in their head and deflate it just to have the satisfaction of the popping sound that makes. One might play a game artfully, but that makes neither the game nor its play art.
games play people
Pen-and-paper role-playing is live theater and computer games are television. People want the convenience and instant gratification of turning on the TV rather than getting dressed up and going out to see a live play. In the same way, the computer is a more immediately accessible way to play games.
school discipline hated
I hated school, didn't like the discipline.
games ideas people
The idea that a game is anything more than a game... You know, there are people who are basically unbalanced who are going to misuse a game and have bad results. If a golfer who insists on playing during a lightning storm gets hit by a stroke of lightning and is killed nobody says, 'There's golfers dying by the droves being hit by lightning!' You can overdo what you really like, and if you're unbalanced you go overboard.
risk instinct gut-instinct
I'm just a risk taker. I have gut instincts.
home office risk
I wasn't popular in the home office because I wasn't chicken. I'm just a risk taker. I have gut instincts.
player ambitious gains
As a typically ambitious player, I did what all others of that ilk do: Everything I could do to gain advantage for my PCs and rise in level as rapidly as possible.
men thinking games
Gaming in general is a male thing. It isn't that gaming is designed to exclude women. Everybody who's tried to design a game to interest a large female audience has failed. And I think that has to do with the different thinking processes of men and women.
thinking people able
Outside of the mindless sitcoms that the networks thrive on, people able to think generally consider most entertainment is escape in one form or another.
real dragons games
Somebody said they threw their copy of Dungeons and Dragons into the fire, and it screamed. It's a game! The magic spells in it are as real as the gold. Try retiring on that stuff.
fun games guy
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.
adventure humanity males
There's a call to adventure. It's something in the inner psyche of humanity, particularly males.
encouragement children culture
Of course as children, we all, in all cultures and societies, learn behavior from observation, imitation, and encouragement of various kinds. So by the suggestion made, we all 'pretend' most of the time.