By the terms of his settlement with TSR, Gygax kept the rights to Gord the Rogue as well as all Dungeons & Dragons characters whose names were anagrams or versions of his own name, such as Yrag and Zagyg.

Gygax's novel Saga of Old City, released in November 1985, and Artifact of Evil, released two months after Gygax's departure from TSR, proved to be popular titles, and in 1987, TSR hired Rose Estes to continue the series, albeit without Gord the Rogue, to whom Gygax had retained all rights.

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.

Gygax also had his old maps of the city of Greyhawk, and still owned the rights to Gord the Rogue.

Since WotC still owned the rights to the name Greyhawk, Gygax changed the name of the castle to Castle Zagyg — the reverse homophone of his own name originally ascribed to the mad architect of his original thirteen level dungeon.

By the terms of his settlement with TSR, Gygax kept the rights to Gord the Rogue as well as all D & D characters whose names were anagrams or plays on his own name ( for example, Yrag and Zagyg ).

When Gygax was forced out of TSR at the end of 1985, TSR took over the creative rights to all characters mentioned in any of Gygax's articles, adventures and stories, including Robilar.

Gygax left Guidon Games in 1973 and, with Don Kaye as a partner, founded the publishing company Tactical Studies Rules ( later known as TSR, Inc .) in October.

After his death, Gygax Games, under the control of Gary's widow Gail, took over the project, but no more volumes of the Castle Zagyg project have been published.

Gary Gygax had advocated arranging a licensing agreement between TSR, Inc. and Mayfair Games for their Role Aids line of game supplements, but was outvoted in the board meeting considering the question.

** The Lost City of Gaxmoor – adventure module ( Ernie & Luke Gygax with David Moore ) Troll Lord Games, 2002

** Hall of Many Panes – ( Gary Gygax with Jon Creffield ) Campaign Adventure Module Boxed Set with d20 stats included, Troll Lord Games 2005

* Gary Gygax ’ s The Canting Crew, the Criminal Underclass, “ Gygaxian Fantasy Worlds, Volume I ”, Troll Lord Games, May 2002

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.

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.

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.

Shortly after the release of the boxed set, Gygax discovered that while he had been in Hollywood, TSR had run into serious financial difficulties.

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.

After Gygax left TSR, the continued development of Greyhawk became the work of many writers and creative minds.

In its 1986 Summer Mail Order Hobby Shop catalog, TSR had listed a new Greyhawk adventure called WG7 Shadowlords, a high-level adventure to be written by Gary Gygax and Skip Williams.

However, this adventure was canceled after Gygax left TSR, and the catalog number WG7 was reassigned to a new adventure, Castle Greyhawk, released in 1988.

In the time since Gygax had left TSR, no original Greyhawk material had been published, and many letter writers had requested ideas for new adventures.

After Gygax left TSR in 1985, he continued to write a few more Gord the Rogue novels, which were published by New Infinities Productions: Sea of Death ( 1987 ), City of Hawks ( 1987 ), and Come Endless Darkness ( 1988 ).

However, by this time, Gygax was furious with the new direction in which TSR was taking " his " world.

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.

However, Gygax and TSR published the Mars book without permission from ( or payment to ) the Burroughs estate, and soon after a cease and desist order was issued and Warriors was pulled from distribution.

Blume and Gygax, the remaining owners, incorporated a new company called TSR Hobbies, Inc., with Blume and his father, Melvin Blume, owning the larger share.

Gygax left for Hollywood to found TSR Entertainment, Inc. ( later Dungeons & Dragons Entertainment Corp .), which attempted to license D & D products to movie and television executives.

Hearing rumors that the Blumes were trying to sell TSR, Gygax returned from Hollywood and discovered the company was in bad financial shape despite healthy sales.

However, needing immediate financing to bring the new game to market before several similar products, Gygax and Kaye brought in Brian Blume in December as an equal partner.

Gygax began writing T2 soon after the publication of T1, but often stopped to work on other products, such as The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth ( Gygax 1981 ).

Five were written or co-written by Gygax, and the other three were from TSR's United Kingdom division:

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.

Gygax tried to have the sale declared illegal ; after that failed, Gygax sold his remaining stock to Williams and used the capital to form New Infinity Productions.

Cook was proud of the work he did on the new Dungeon Master's Guide, especially after Gary Gygax gave his comments to the team as feedback on the book: " He said that the material in the new DMG would help him become a better DM ... That was really cool – and satisfying in a ' completion of the circle ' sort of way.

Gary Gygax intended to incorporate the material from Oriental Adventures into revised versions of the Players Handbook and Dungeon Masters Guide, but left TSR shortly after announcing the project.

Gygax even suggested the name " Robilar ", after a minor character in The Gnome Cache, a novella Gygax was writing that eventually would be serialized in the first few issues of The Dragon starting in June 1976.

However, after Gygax was ousted from TSR in 1985, the company took over creative control of the published Greyhawk setting, and took it in directions Gygax had not envisioned, including remaking Rary into a major Greyhawk personality.