Gary Gygax: Lost Talent?

It’s strange to talk of Gary Gygax as a “lost talent” of roleplaying games. Indeed, looked at from one direction, it’s absurd. This is because there are two Gary Gygaxes to consider when it comes to writing for roleplaying games: there is Gary The Systems Wizard, and Gary The Module Designer. In the former role Gygax is the most important game designer in any format in the modern era; in the latter, he is the original and in many ways the best, but still, somehow, frustratingly elusive.

In terms of systems design – both in terms of mechanics but also theme – Gary is unsurpassed in roleplaying games. OD&D and 1^st Edition are not outdated experiments, improved by experience; they are a vision of the game. Though Dave Arneson is (quite properly) credited on the front of the OD&D little books, it doesn’t take a consulting detective to see the particular thread of genius that runs from Chainmail, through OD&D, culminating in the 1^st Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide. When one hears Dave’s players talk of his campaign (with enormous affection), one can hear a different, alternative vision of D&D – that never quite was. Dave’s 3-4 published modules for OD&D and AD&D are interesting, quixotic, and often fun, but they are not the peak of the mountain – and though we have him to thank for the Illusionist and Assassin, we shouldn’t look to him for a coherent mechanical execution of them.

No – it was Gary who loved the eponymous Dungeon. It was Gary who mashed together the influences that determined the classes and races of the Player’s Handbook, and of the array of beasties in the various Monster Manuals – not just his two, but also the Fiend Folio and Deities and Demigods. The legally troublesome inclusion of the Cthulhu Mythos in the latter book fits a game with the Elder Elemental Eye spreading its tentacles across multiple series of modules. It was Gary who created the “dense and deep” mechanics of 1e – where, as Anthony Huso of the Blue Bard puts it, rolls often determine in one number both the QUALITY but also the QUANTITY of the result; where detailed information about hiring small armies is given; where seemingly absurd subchapters on aerial and waterborne combat are provided – absurd until those situations inevitably arise! There is a scope of vision and deep gaming wisdom on show in the 1^st Edition books by Gary, especially, of course, the DMG. And I need say nothing of the scope of his cultural influence – in many ways sparring with Lord of the Rings as the key Western fantasy influence, whether conscious or not, of our times.

But it is as module designer that I want to lament something lost. My basic contention is this: though Gary’s module designing career (for D&D – see postscript) needs no justification or defence, it is reasonable for the fan to identify the pattern of drama and partial failure in his “prestige” modules, and wonder what happened.

The point I make about “no justification or defence” being required is salient: Gary designed B2 and T1 (for starting parties), WG4 and S4 (for mid-level parties), S3, G1-3, and D1-3 (for high level parties), and S1 (for the very crème de la crème). That is a catalogue of modules which brooks no comparison. There were some other early designers with multiple real successes under their belt (Zeb Cook, Douglas Niles, Tom Moldvay, and even Tracy Hickman come to mind, as does the UK team), but I’ve just listed 12 modules of the highest quality, and I can think of at least 8 other modules (by one calculation) bearing his name that came out during 1^st Edition. So what’s the problem? He designed the key modules at every party level, and is by any measure the most prolific great designer in D&D history. (On top of those previously mentioned, I might add Jaquays, Smedman, Wetmore, Huso, Lux, Kutalik, and others...but none are as prolific as Gygax was in a single decade of work.)

The problem is, of course, what should have been the crowning glories of his career are, to lesser or greater degree, failures. T2(-4), the megadungeon promised by the iconic T1, is clearly actually keyed and planned by Gary, but the finish is Mentzer – workmanlike, respectable, but pedestrian. Q1, the great planar adventure to finished off the G and D series, was written by Gary’s favourite artist (?!) in lieu of him, with the Dungeon Master himself only carrying a co-credit – and it’s not a well-loved module. Castle Greyhawk, Gary’s own campaign-in-a-box city-and-megadungeon, never truly came out in D&D colours – with a bizarre parody released not longer after he left TSR, and then a later, more respectable tribute act by some of his friends. So his two megadungeons, his campaign-in-a-box, and his planar adventure – the things that really sum up his table and/or his aspirations – never came out in adequate form. He put in stellar performances on the minor forms of the art, from starting modules to weird diversions with aliens to base assaults on the mighty, but never quite stuck the landing on the big moves.

Why? Well, some think it’s more or less the yips – Gary didn’t want to finish them. They were beyond his creative capacity. The same people often think nothing could have been (or could now be) released that would satisfy, given the legend attached to Castle Greyhawk, particularly. I disagree syrongly on both points. The reason those modules weren’t finished to his usual standards was simple busyness (as often reported). With so few people at the company in the early days, and Gary prone to getting involved in just about everything – including a bizarre, lengthy essay in Dragon ranting about how he hated Origins – he didn’t discipline himself to the task of completing those big, rambling modules. The co-authorships give the game away: T2 and Q1 became white whales for Gary not because of artistic angst (I find no trace of that in any of his work, even as he experienced professional angst) but because he was too busy and so dumped the work on other people.

I also disagree that, at this point, nothing could possibly satisfy. I don’t think anyone could honestly read any of the great Gygax modules and think that if – somehow – a fully polished, signed in his own hand, 1980-vintage Castle Greyhawk came out, that it wouldn’t instantly be one of the best modules ever written. Sometimes, things do live up to expectation - the reputation of S1 or G1-3 does not stop them being magnificent. Even minor flaws cannot take the lustre off B2 or T1. CG1-10, a true T2-4, a Gygax Planar Adventure to replace Q1 – these would all be about as good as ever wanted them to be. That is not to be, of course, but there’s no use pretending.

And on that basis, we can look at the highest mountain of them all in module design – Mount Gygax, of the killer slopes and hidden caves – and see that the peak is missing. The other mountains still tremble in their millennia-long movements, though, as they go under the shadow of the giant.

POSTSCRIPT: A strange complexity of Gary’s module-writing career is that it did not end in 1985. His later works are still essentially written for D&D – very obviously when written for Swords & Sorcery, or Castles & Crusades, but just as much when written for Dangerous Journeys or Lejendary Adventures, his own successor games. And his later works are not solely edits or slight expansions of his early hits (as is mostly the case with his co-DM Rob Kuntz). Necropolis was published in the early 90s and published for DJ; his LA adventures come out as new cloth in the early 00s; and though Castle Zagyg is plainly a new take on Castle Greyhawk (with a tragicomic note, its publication never got beyond the Upper Works due to Gary’s death) and is indeed a co-written project, that was something Gary was working on in the last couple of years of his life.

I think I may spend some time on reviewing these later works, dressed up for different games, representing the changes in Gary’s own philosophy, but nonetheless recognizably the work of the author of that iconic introduction to B2: “...your fate is in your hands, for better or worse.”