Gygax decided to concentrate his first efforts on the continent of Oerik and asked TSR's printing house about the maximum size of paper they could handle ; the answer was 34 " x 22 " ( 86 cm x 56 cm ).

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.

Gygax, who at that time owned only about 30 % of the stock, requested that the board of directors remove the Blumes as a way of restoring financial health to the company.

With more room for content, Gygax was able to include the information about the 19 deities, including Pholtus.

* E. Gary Gygax

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.

These were expanded by Gary Gygax, whose additions included a fantasy supplement, before the game was published as Chainmail.

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.

* Gygax, Gary.

* Gygax, Gary.

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 Dungeons & Dragons.

In the 1960s, Gygax created an organization of wargaming clubs and founded the Gen Con gaming convention.

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.

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.

In 2005, Gygax was involved in the Castles & Crusades role-playing game, which was conceived as a hybrid between D & D's third edition and the original version of the game conceived by Gygax.

Gygax was married twice and had six children.

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

He was the son of Swiss immigrant and Chicago Symphony Orchestra violinist Ernst Gygax.

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.

His interest in games, combined with an appreciation of history, eventually led Gygax to begin playing miniature war games in 1953 with his best friend Don Kaye.

As teenagers Gygax and Kaye designed their own miniatures rules for toy soldiers with a large collection of and figures, and they used " ladyfingers " ( small firecrackers ) to simulate explosions.

Gygax dropped out of high school in his junior year and worked at odd jobs for a while, but he moved back to Chicago at age 19 to attend night classes in junior college.

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

Edgar W. Bethany, Karl M. Gygax, Helen B. Stewart, and Myrtle G. Eason composed the original faculty.

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.

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

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 encountered the Middle English word dweomercræft in Susan Kelz Sperling's book Poplollies & Bellibones: A Celebration of Lost Words ( 1977 ), where it is defined as " the art of magic or juggling.

* A creature called a nightripper appears in Sagard The Barbarian # 2: The Green Hydra game book by Gary Gygax.

A 2004 edition of the book published by Skirmisher Publishing LLC includes an introduction by game designer Michael J. Varhola and a foreword by Gary Gygax.

AC4-The Book of Marvelous Magic is a 76 page book by Frank Mentzer and Gary Gygax published in 1985 by TSR, Inc.

AC4 The Book of Marvelous Magic was written by Frank Mentzer and Gary Gygax, with a cover by Clyde Caldwell and interior art by Doug Watson, and was published by TSR in 1984 as an 80-page book.

Gygax became active in fandom and became involved in play-by-mail Diplomacy games, for which he designed his own variants.

Gygax later looked for innovative ways to generate random numbers, and he used not only common, six-sided dice, but dice of all five platonic solid shapes, which he discovered in a school supply catalog.

During the 1960s, Gygax worked as an insurance underwriter for the Firemen's Fund in Chicago.

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.

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.

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.

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 wrote the supplements Greyhawk, Eldritch Wizardry, and Swords & Spells for the original D & D game.

Role-playing campaign settings like Greyhawk by Gary Gygax, Dragonlance by Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis and Forgotten Realms by Ed Greenwood are a common basis for many fantasy books and many other authors continue to contribute to the settings.

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.

Gygax then provided some errata for the boxed set in the September 1985 issue, which was the last mention of the Greyhawk world in Dragon for almost two years.

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.

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.

However, in 2003, Gygax announced that he was working with Rob Kuntz to publish the original castle and city in six volumes, although the project would use the rules for Castles and Crusades rather than Dungeons & Dragons.

Gygax designed a set of dungeons underneath the ruins of Castle Greyhawk as a testing ground for new rules, character classes and spells.

In a 1984 interview for Polyhedron Newszine, Gary Gygax revealed several " alternate Oerths " while explaining the setting for his HEROES CHALLENGE game books, co-written with author Flint Dille and published under the aegis of the Dungeons & Dragons Entertainment Corporation by the Wanderer Book division of Simon & Schuster.