Gygax spent his early childhood in Chicago, but in 1946 ( after he was involved in a brawl with a large group of boys ), his father decided to move the family to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, where Gary's mother's family had settled in the early 19th century.

The Dragon debuted in June 1976, and Gygax commented on 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.

Gygax decided he would recreate something like his original thirteen level dungeon, amalgamating the best of what could be gleaned from binders and boxes of old notes.

Following yet more work, in 1978 Gygax agreed to publish his world and decided to redevelop Oerth from scratch.

After fiddling with this structure for some time, Gygax decided ( as described in the same article in Dragon # 73 ) to change the structure from a tetrahedron to a cube in which four of the six faces were the " Inner Planes " described in the Players Handbook: Earth, Fire, Air, Water, and the Negative and Positive Material Planes.

Gygax had originally devised Lejendary Adventure as a role-playing video game using a simple and rules-light system based on skill-bundles, but subsequently decided to develop the game as a printed fantasy RPG.

Dungeons & Dragons ( abbreviated as D & D or DnD ) is a fantasy role-playing game ( RPG ) originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. ( TSR ).

Although a small adventure entitled ' Temple of the Frog ' was included in the Blackmoor rules supplement in 1975, the first stand-alone D & D module published by TSR was 1978's Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, written by Gygax.

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.

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.

Barker was a Professor of Urdu and South Asian Studies at the University of Minnesota during the period when David Arneson, Gary Gygax and a handful of others were developing the first role-playing games in the Twin Cities and Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

Gygax realized that novels set in Greyhawk could have a similar benefit for his campaign world and wrote Saga of Old City, the first in a series of novels that would be published under the banner Greyhawk Adventures.

Although this was not the Castle Greyhawk of Gygax and Kuntz, it was the first serious attempt to publish details of the castle.

Although TSR and WotC had each in turn owned the official rights to the World of Greyhawk since the first folio edition was published in 1980, the two people most responsible for its early development, Gary Gygax and Rob Kuntz, still had most of their original notes regarding the fifty levels of dungeons under Castle Greyhawk.

Tactical Studies Rules ( TSR ) was formed in 1973 as a partnership between Gary Gygax and Don Kaye, who scraped together $ 2, 400 for startup costs, to formally publish and sell the rules of Dungeons & Dragons, one of the first modern role-playing games ( RPG ).

Also in 1974, TSR published Warriors of Mars, a miniatures rules book set in the fantasy world of Barsoom originally imagined by Edgar Rice Burroughs in his series of novels about John Carter of Mars, to which Gygax paid homage in the " Preface " of the first edition of D & D.

This particular image first appeared on the inside front cover the 1975 Greyhawk supplement book authored by Gary Gygax and Robert Kuntz.

The gelatinous cube is an invention of Gary Gygax, and first appeared in the Monster Manual ( 1977 ), rather than being lifted from outside sources and adapted to a roleplaying setting, as were many mythological monsters like the minotaur and dryad.

Gary Gygax, the developer of the World of Greyhawk campaign setting, realized that novels set in Greyhawk could have a similar benefit for his recently published World of Greyhawk boxed set, so he wrote Saga of Old City, the first in a series of novels that would be published under the banner Greyhawk Adventures.

The bulk of the material in the first edition came from the British gaming magazine White Dwarf, rather than being authored by Gary Gygax, the game's creator.

According to Gary Gygax ( in an interview with Dungeon # 112 ), the first dungeon crawl was part of a wargame in which the invading force entered the enemy's castle through a former escape tunnel dug from the fortress's dungeon.

The concept of a dungeon that spanned a planet was first introduced by Gary Gygax in his D-series of game modules and at the end of the G-series.

The Keep on the Borderlands is a Dungeons & Dragons module by Gary Gygax, first printed in December 1979.

In 1983, The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror was the first place to feature a lightning quasielemental, although the description says they inhabit the Positive Energy Plane and the Elemental Plane of Air, indicating that Gygax didn't expect anyone to know what the Quasielemental Plane of Lightning was.

Gary Gygax created the owlbear, which was inspired by a plastic toy made in Hong Kong, and introduced the creature to the game in the 1975 Greyhawk supplement ; the creature has since appeared in every subsequent edition of the game, including the game's first edition, second edition, third edition, and fourth edition.

Lizard men first officially appeared as part of the original D & D game in the 1975 Greyhawk supplement booklet authored by Gary Gygax and Robert Kuntz.

The yochlol was introduced in the first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game adventure module, Q1-Queen of the Demonweb Pits ( 1980 ), by David C. Sutherland III with Gary Gygax.

Celestian was first detailed for the Dungeons & Dragons game in " The Deities and Demigods of the World of Greyhawk " by Gary Gygax in Dragon # 68 ( 1982 ).

In the fictional campaign setting of Greyhawk used for the Dungeons and Dragons fantasy role-playing game, Pholtus was one of the first gods created by Gary Gygax as he and Dave Arneson developed the game of Dungeons & Dragons.

Gygax developed the game with fellow Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association ( LGTSA ) member Perren, a hobby-shop owner with whom he had become friendly, and the game was first published in 1971.

Having partnered previously with Gygax on Don't Give Up the Ship !, Arneson introduced Gygax to his Blackmoor game and the two then collaborated on developing " The Fantasy Game ", the role-playing game ( RPG ) that became Dungeons & Dragons, with the final writing and preparation of the text being done by Gygax.

Gygax maintained that he was influenced very little by The Lord of the Rings, stating that he included these elements as a marketing move to draw on the popularity of the work.

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.

Gary Gygax was born in Chicago within a few blocks of Wrigley Field on July 27, 1938.

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 ".

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!

Basing their work on Arneson's modified version of Chainmail for his Blackmoor campaign, Gygax and Arneson collaborated on The Fantasy Game, the role-playing game that later became Dungeons & Dragons.

Gygax worked on rules for more miniatures and tabletop battle games, including Cavaliers and Roundheads ( English Civil War, with Jeff Perren ), Classic Warfare ( Ancient Period: 1500 BC to 500 AD ), and Warriors of Mars.

When he unexpectedly died of a heart attack in January 1975, his share of TSR passed to his wife, a woman whom Gygax characterized as " less than personable ... After Don died she dumped all the Tactical Studies Rules materials off on my front porch.

Returning to Lake Geneva, Gygax managed to get TSR back on firm financial footing.

However, different visions of TSR's future caused a power struggle within the company, and Gygax was forced out of TSR on December 31, 1985.

Gygax also changed the name of the nearby city to " Yggsburgh ", a play on his initials E. G. G.

By the time Gygax and Kuntz had stopped working on the original home campaign, the castle dungeons had encompassed fifty levels of maze-like passages and thousands of rooms and traps.

Recreating the city was also a challenge ; although Gygax still had his old maps of the original city, all of his previously published work on the city was owned by WotC, so he would have to create most of the city from scratch while maintaining the look and feel of his original.

Under these circumstances, work on the Castle Zagyg project continued even more slowly, although Jeffrey Talanian stepped in to help Gygax.