The American writer and game pioneer, Gary Gygax, along with Dave Arneson, co-created the groundbreaking RPG 'Dungeons & Dragons'.
Gary Gygax started developing 'Advanced Dungeons & Dragons' in 1977. The American writer and game pioneer tried to have the D&D product line licensed into the popular D&D cartoon show in 1983.
Gary Gygax continued to produce RPG titles on his own after exiting TSR in 1986 due to disagreements with the company's new majority owner, starting with the multi-genre 'Dangerous Journeys' in 1992. He also created the 1999 video game console 'Lejendary Adventure'.
Gygax worked on the 2005 RPG 'Castles & Crusades' which was designed as a combination of the third version of D&D and the original edition of the game created by Gygax. Generations of imaginative artists and gamers have been influenced by the game pioneer and American writer, Gygax.
Gary Gygax Quotes On Games
Check out what the 'Dungeons & Dragons' creator, Gary Gygax, has to say about games.
“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.”
- 'Dungeon Masters In Cyberspace', The New York Times.
“I foresee online gaming changing when there are good audio-visual links connecting the participants, thus approximating play in a face-to-face group.”
“Some of the roots of role-playing games (RPGs) are grounded in clinical and academic role assumption and role-playing exercises.”
“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 give you a chance to excel.”
“I'll take a stab at the five elements that make a game session enjoyable: Good personal relationships between all the participants. Subject matter that interests the whole group. Able GMing, including animated participation by that one. Able play, role-assumption, and roleplaying by the players. A sense of danger from the environment.”
“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.”
“When you master role-playing [gaming], you become immersed in an activity that is peerless among leisure-time pursuits.”
“Games give you a chance to excel, and if you’re playing in good company, you don’t even mind if you lose because you had the enjoyment of the company during the course of the game.”
“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.”
“The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don’t need any rules.”
“The essence of a role-playing game is that it is a group, cooperative experience.”
“Role-playing isn’t storytelling. If the dungeon master is directing it, it’s not a game.”
“Kelanan, the Sword Lord, was something I made up out of whole cloth. I do have a fighter PC that kept finding magic swords, totes a number of them around, so there was some inspiration involved from there–he needed a deity.”
“One of the things stressed in the original game of D&D was the importance of recording game time with respect to each and every player character in a campaign.”
“The worthy GM never purposely kills players’ PCs, He presents opportunities for the rash and unthinking players to do that all on their own.”
“By the end of 1975 I was very much aware of the broad appeal of the game. The appeal was to almost anyone with an active imagination, as the theme of the game is the heroic quest one of mankind's folklore and legend.”
“You are not entering this world in the usual manner, for you are setting forth to be a Dungeon Master.”
“The new D&D is too rule intensive. It's relegated the Dungeon Master to being an entertainer rather than master of the game."
"It's done away with the archetypes, focused on nothing but combat and character power, lost the group cooperative aspect, bastardized the class-based system, and resembles a comic-book superheroes game more than a fantasy RPG where a player can play any alignment desired, not just lawful good.”
Best Gary Gygax Quotes
Check out the best quotes from Gary Gygax that one must know!
“I hated school, didn’t like the discipline.”
“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.”
“The books I write because I want to read them, the games because I want to play them, and stories I tell because I find them exciting personally.”
“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.”
“The “memorize then fire and forget” principal for casting spells Jack Vance assumed in his fantasy stories seemed perfect to me for use by D&D magic-users.”
“One more thing: don’t spend too much time merely reading. The best part of this work is the play, so play and enjoy!”
“Enjoy a ‘world’ where the fantastic is fact and magic really works!”
“Actually, I am given to understand that the EPIC 3E book has come pretty close to nailing Mordie's level. I haven't seen it, so I can't comment further. As I do still play that PC now and again, I won't reveal anything else.”
“The most immediate influences upon AD&D were probably de Camp & Pratt, R. E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, H. P. Lovecraft, and A. Merritt.”
- Gary Gygax Writing in Appendix N, AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide
Motivational Gary Gygax Quotes
Check out these awesome motivational quotes from Gary Gygax!
(Check out more motivational and a
“I wasn’t popular in the home office because I wasn’t chicken. I’m just a risk-taker. I have gut instincts.”
“I think a lot of what I was taught, gathered, and learned is worth keeping. Heritage and “wisdom” and simply personal family and local history enrich the one able to tap such information. As it is I wish I had garnered more from my grandparents and parents.”
“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.”
“If you are an investor, then you are destined for blood, sweat, and tears.”
“There is no winning or losing, but rather the value is in the experience of imagining yourself as a character in whatever genre you’re involved in, whether it’s a fantasy game, the Wild West, secret agents or whatever else. You get to sort of vicariously experience those things.”
“Random chance plays a huge part in everybody’s life.”
Gary Gygax Adventure Quotes
Adventures are exciting experiences. Check out these amazing quotes from Gary Gygax on adventure!
“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.”
“Anyone wanna play Dungeons & Dragons for the next quadrillion years?”
“There’s a call to adventure. It’s something in the inner psyche of humanity, particularly males.”
“Some 30 years of living prior to actually sitting down and writing the first draft (50 pages in length) all combined to bring about the resulting game. It was a combination of much reading of imaginative fiction, a love of games, and the desire to create that enables it.”
