If he were alive today, he'd prefer Game of Thrones over Lord of the Rings, and he'd despise modern fantasy

I do enjoy A Game of Thrones, tax policies and human fighters not elves and dwarves

But game of thrones is modern fantasy

If he were alive today, he'd still be a shit gamer, have shit opinions about the tabletop hobby, and still spew them all over the internet. I'm glad this fat fuck is pushing daisies and I wish he could die again for all the harm he's done to the hobby with his absolutely retarded game design concepts, if you can even dignify his hodgepodge set of dumbassed opinions as 'game design concepts'. Fuck you Gygax. Burn in the hell you deserve.

That's, dear user, is our eldest ancestor, the original nerd manchild.

or Dagon from the 10 Commandments.

>I'm glad this fat fuck is pushing daisies and I wish he could die again for all the harm he's done to the hobby
Yeah man, fuck him for creating RPGs, and shit.

I'm stealing that

If he were alive today he would be over 90 year old, so he would probably just be dead.

>if he were alive today, he'd be dead
Brilliant, user

Nice straw man amte

Worse option is that he would have gone senile and/or Alzheimer's a decade ago but his opinions would still be held in high regards because it's him.

>wrouth
Written.
Also, I assume user knew that Game of Thrones, the TV series, is not the original product. After all, he did call it "TV fanfiction" whilst stating that the original, i.e. the book series, is superior.
You'd do well to improve your reading comprehension.

who literally cares

He is comparing to lotr.

Says who? Since I, for one, don't see anything in which would imply that GoT is LotR fanfiction.

>if not our lord and saviour Gygax nobody would ever come up with an idea of playing pretend but with rules!

That was Arneson. Gary only published it. He did contribute things to it, like Chainmail and polearm tables.

Anyone who's read the books knows that they're sort of poorly written.

Anyone who watchest the TV show know that there are loads of asspulls, like bringing Jon Snow back from the dead

But modern fantasy is based on his shitty misinterpretation of pretty much everything Tolkien wrote, why would he be mad?

game of thrones is shit, so he'd fit right in there.

Made me laugh

Didn't he make D&D due to being a Tolkien fanboy?
Besides, while he had shitty opinions later in life as a bitter old man that got pushed out. I imagine as a younger man he would have preferred LoTR.

I hope it's long enough after GG's death to be able to talk truth about him. Still, I expect a lot of flame from Gygax Worshippers for this one. (They're worse than Scientologist.) Please, feel free to disagree with me, but only if you have a good argument, not a knee-jerk "How dare he dis St. Gygax the Perfect!" reaction.

Ok, here's what happened. Jeff Perren invented a miniature war game system. GG took these rules (with Perren's permission) and made a supplement for fantasy combat and released it as Chainmail. Dave Arneson, meanwhile, invented a new thing called a Role Playing Game. He used Chainmail rules as a basis for the combat system. He told GG about this, and Gygax said it was OK, and even helped him improve on the system. Mostly, he invented a lot of the spells and the monsters and play tested the game. So, Gygax was a contributor to the game, not the inventor. If you don't believe me, check Wikipedia.

Later, Gygax said he wanted to publish D&D. Arneson said it was OK, but Arneson was broke, so GG raised all the money and published it himself. He deserves a room in the RP Hall of Fame for this, publishing the first RP game. But, he put himself down as co-author instead of contributor; he even put his name in front of Arneson's. Arneson didn't get a penny.

Next he came out with Advanced D&D. Arneson's name wasn't even on the cover; Gygax claimed that, since it was Advanced, it was a whole new game and Arneson didn't deserve credit.

Also, Gygax was a jerk. Other than stealing the game, there are some other things that ol' GG pulled.

First edition had hobbits, balrogs, and other Tolkien stuff. He used this without permission, but the Tolkein family didn't make a fuss. Then, he threatened another game company (Iron Crown) for using Hobbits and Balrogs, claiming they were his property. This P.O.'d the Tolkeins so much, that they banned him from any copyrighted stuff, and AD&D had Halflings and Balors instead. Later, he pulled the same stunt with the word "Nazi".

Gygax was a war game designer, not a role playing designer. Even though it was supposedly a role playing game, D&D first edition had little-to-no role playing in it. D&D and AD&D never told us how to role play or that we were supposed to role play, other than a short note that we would go by the name of our character on page 5 of the blue book version. (I don't have the brown cover version, anyone can read through them and check for me). Instead, he taught us that RPing was just kicking in doors, killing things, and collecting treasure. All the books were devoted to combat, treasure, traps, and monsters. All adventures started with a bunch of people meeting in a tavern because he never told us how to form a party or make plot hooks. The example of play showed a bunch of players kicking in a door and killing monsters. The whole first generation of role players were taught to play it like a war game. Most still do. I didn't realize, myself, that there was more to it than collecting treasure until some friends introduced me to Traveller and RuneQuest.

Even though the game had a lot of flaws and downright stupid rules in it (which give Dave Burlew fodder for his strip), he refused to update or change the game in any way. In fact, he was famous for ripping into gamers and publishers for suggesting improvements. They didn't correct any of the stupid rules until long after GG had been driven out of TSR.

GG would often not show up to conventions; instead he would send his little brother. Little Brother was a nice guy, but people payed the money to see him, not his brother. He still insisted on being paid, though.

GG was a sadistic GM. He came up with improbable and intricate ways to kill of players. Look at some of the monsters in the Fiend Folio and traps in the Tomb of Horrors.

I wonder if he, or you, know that George R.R. Martin actually originally WANTED it to be a TV series, but was told no by every studio he asked due to how much it would cost, so he wrote the books instead.

This was actually around the same time that J. Michael Straczynski was shopping Babylon 5 around to different studios looking for a buyer. Both of them had basically the same problem: no one was interested in picking up a series that would have a set beginning, middle, and end. And in GRRM's case, the cost, too.

Modern fantasy uses Tolkienesque aesthetics. It really owes way more to Robert E. Howard in detail.

>Look at some of the monsters in the Fiend Folio
The Fiend Folio is mostly White Dwarf stuff

>You must like one or the other
>You can't like both

Gary wasn't a huge fan of Tolkien's work, but he *did* put it on his recommended readings list.
A Game of Thrones came out 12 years before Gary's death, and 6 years after it came out Gary noted that the additions he would make to Appendix N were Pratchett's Disk World series, Cooks "Black Company" series, and Wolfe's The Knight and The Wizard.

>but he *did* put it on his recommended readings list
To be fair; OP is asking about LotR and, while Gary does recommend it, he recommends The Hobbit above it.

Wasn't tomb of horrors meant to be a tournament module though? Something above and beyond meant for large conventions, not something meant for your average group to run on a Sunday night.

TOA was quite literally intended for players who needed to be knocked down a peg. It warns you.

Can confirm, was talking about books being better

>Pratchett's Disk World
*Discworld

I caught Gary's misspelling of Prachett, so I feel kind of dumb for missing that one.

...because it comes first alphabetically?

Tomb of Annihilation is as overrated as it is not written by Gygax.

Tomb of Horrors *was* written for tournament play (which party can get the farthest in a limited timeframe) and as a consequence it (a) is incredibly linear so that blind choices don't rig the outcome and it (b) blatantly telegraph every trap on handouts as insurance against bad DMs not dropping hints well enough.
Gary famously never killed any of his regular players in the Tomb, and several of them soloed it.

>Vance, Jack: THE EYES OF THE OVERWORLD; THE DYING EARTH; et al
D comes after E?

I'll admit I don't have the page on hand, but I'm assuming it looks something like:

Tolkien, JRR: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, etc.

"H" comes before "L".

but he's not alive, he's a rotted corpse and no one cares.

Yes, we know he'd have shit taste.

digital-eel.com/blog/ADnD_reading_list.htm
Authors are alphabetical. Works are neither alphabetical nor chronological.

Arneson adopted it from the Braunsteins.

Blackmoor had Hobbits before CHAINMAIL.

He'd enjoy both for what they were, user.

Gygax wasn't a man off taste. He was a man of broad readign habits and didn't judge things by the basis of other things, instead judging them on their own mrits. Have you even looked at the rcommended readign and watchign lists in AD&D? Som,e of that stuff was crap. Some of it was amazing. But it was always and totally broad in scope and included as things to reaad and look at above aand beyond merely beign 'good' or 'not good'.

You do the man a disservice by deciding what he liked and didn't like when it is very clear he appreciated creativity for it's own sake.

>instead judging them on their own mrits.
>Most contemporary fantasy is IMO the flacid sort, not good old Swords & Sorcery full of action and adventure.

WITNESSED

>I wish he could die again for all the harm he's done to the hobby with his absolutely retarded game design concepts

Um there wouldn’t be a hobby without Gygax so it’s a bit of a catch 22.

>with his absolutely retarded game design concepts,
Explain why a few examples are objectionable.

>gygax
>tolkien fanboy
lol

NAYRT
That's not a strawman. He didn't misrepresent your argument, he gave a counterpoint.

>when some homo decides to speak for the deceased

Alexander would have employed Praxiteles over Lysippos, had he still been in practice.

...

I would dare say shit predates Gygax by several billion years

it happens every day, all around the world, in very organized way

>Wolfe and Cooke instead of Martin
Say what you will about Gygax, but he had some damn good taste in books.

He was never big on Tolkien, but I doubt he'd be a fan of either today.

Three 8s say your joke was just.

...

>creator of generic fantasy
>hating european fantasy
Yep, seems right.

Fucking hell, he seems assholeish. Make you wonder all that TSR business with him getting basically kicked out was just karma hitting back at him.

One positive thing might be the fact that rpgs began to deviate from tolkien even a little bit due to his retarded behavior. I still love how "halflings" are a bit different than hobbits of tolkien.

>began to deviate
They started different.

well of course there were unique rpgs worlds from start, Glorantha for one.

but I do believe if it wasnt for the Tolkien copyright battle and devil worship scare in 80s which forced the "generic" branch of rpgs (dragonlance, forgotten realms and all that tsr jazz) we would have more tolkienish settings.

just a small positive, I know. Tolkiens effects are quite strong in some settings but I still love my cannibal halflings of darksun and strongheart halflings of faerun.

Appendix N, look it up

Excellent digits anonymous.

Dragonlance was the closest TSR ever got to Tolkien, and that's saying something.

History student going for my Master's. This is standard procedure in the historical field. Apparently it's totally acceptable now to psychoanalyze dead people and talk about their "real" motivations (that they never mentioned in any of their diaries or personal letters), then use that to essentially slander them. Or, even better, take what someone else said and attribute that motive to people who didn't cite it, on the grounds that they MUST have had the same motivations.

Going into this profession was a mistake.

Who gives a shit about some basement dwelling retard's opinion of literature? Any setting this idiot created was doomed to mediocrity from the beginning.

I feel you.
I really do.
i want to back the fuck out of my major because communist wanking i've seen in modernist history.
that and the
>LET US ASSUME THE MOTIVES
crap

>communist wanking
That's not so much history as it is non-STEM.

was clearly a dig at how OP used the name of the tv series rather than the name of the book series.

Oh yeah gary was an absolute cunt. My favorite bit of ad&d dm advice (located right in the book), is that if players are listening to the other side of doors too often, fuck them as hard as possible.
Make sure they know it takes like 10 minutes to doff a helmet so that's a wandering monster check, and if they keep doing it have a fucking weevil crawl up their ear, lay eggs that require a cure disease spell to get rid of, and then kill them with no save.

Like why even have the mechanic if you're going to give advice for how to be a cunt if players dare use if? Same goes for the what entire page of how to fuck players that think the invisibility spell worked?

>is that if players are listening to the other side of doors too often,
If players listen at every door at every opportunity, the game grinds to a halt.
Invent 's as needed is an odd sort of game balance, but it *is* balanced.

>If players listen at every door at every opportunity, the game grinds to a halt.
I doubt a single d6 roll from each player would grind anything to a halt. Perhaps have you considered that your dungeons have way too many doors (this is ad&d and gygax we're talking about here this rule is 100% designed for a dungeon environment), or you keep ass fucking your players as hard as possible when they go through said doors?

At every door there is

discussion about how many should
a roll for each
an invented response by the ref
time keeping, et al.
discussion about what to do next

Not to mention the mandatory trap checking procedure and thief actually rolling for it, and the elf asking if there are any secret doors at any and all opportunities, and the dwarf constantly asking about the slope of every hallway he's entered.

It's d&d as run by gygax user. If you don't do any of this shit he and any dm that took his advice had carte blanche to fuck you up as hard as possible.

Hint hint, if people are this paranoid, it's a learned response. It is also 100% appropriate and expected in the system they're playing. Because at any moment. For any reason. They can and will be instantly killed. Gygax's balance strategy for dealing with people doing things that didn't get them instantly killed was to invent a new way for that strategy to lead to you being instantly killed because he was a cunt. A dorks of yore interview outright confirms that was the driving force behind quite a few monster and trap designs.

If a specific aspect of the game was being used in a way gare gare didn't like he'd literally publish a fuck you to it. youtu.be/kPepszyjh3g?t=108
You can blame the players for that all you like.
Just makes you a daft cunt.

>no one was interested in picking up a series that would have a set beginning, middle, and end
Joke's on them, the series doesn't HAVE an end!

saved

But Game of Thrones IS modern fantasy?

Look, what's important is this:
We are superior to the dead.
We owe them nothing.
We are the best. Clearly.
Because we're here, right?
Fuck people who aren't us, especially if they're dead and can't fight back.

Modern fantasy is a shitty misinterpretation of Conan full of WoW and GoT references protagonized by some creatures that were popularized thanks to LotR.

My question, why did he enjoy killing players so much?

Killing players gives a sense of risk and encourages the sort of careful play he intended.
His content is so thoroughly pepperred with gotchas because they usually whiffed, his players were wise to his tricks.

There's also a big difference between what a character is now and what a character was then.
"Narrative adventures" weren't a thing until a decade after the game published and death in the Blackmoor and Greyhawk campaigns meant "increment the number after your name, reroll stats, and go to level 1"

The powertrip? The fact that he hated people playing the game in ways he didn't like (but still included means for them to do so). Is proof enough of that.

Like there is an entire chapter of dm specific spell information. Because magic users weren't even allowed to know exactly what their spells did. Oh you thought heat metal would work against this elf? This spell you have that says it heats metal? Nah fuck you his shit's immune.

Oh you as a dm gave the magic user the invisibility spell, and you regret it

""Now I'll sneak up on the monster invisibly!" How often has this cry rung
forth from eager players in your campaign? Haw often have you cursed
because of it? Never fear, there are many answers to the problem of invisibility,
and most difficulties will be resolved after you read the following
rules and suggestions regarding the subiect."

I'm more curious about how involved he was in his players gambling over levers.

user, it is literally how he opens the dmg section on listening to doors

In addition to the simple exercise of observation, many times characters
will desire to listen, ear pressed to a portal, prior to opening and entering
This requires a speciol check, in secret, by you to determine if any sound is
heard. Because of this, continual listening becomes a great bother to the
DM. While ear seekers will tend to discourage some, most players will
insist on having their characters listen at doors at every pretense. First
make certain that you explain to players that headgear must be
removed in order to listen. Those wearing helmets will probably hove to
remove o mail coif and padded cap as well, don't forget. The party must
also be absolutely silent, and listening will take at least one round.

Other segments
During the course of adventuring, great noise might cause hearing loss
Handle this as you see fit. A loss of hearing might negate the chance to
hear something behind a door without any other noticeable effects

Maximum Number Of Listeners: Each listener will take up about 2%' of
space, so up to three can listen at a typical dungeon door

Maximum Length Of Time For Listening: Only three attempts can be made
before the strain becomes too great. After the third attempt, the listeners
must cease such activity for at least five rounds before returning to listening
again

All of this. All of this because he didn't like people getting "imprecise and vague hints"
Oh and the highest chance of success is 30% for an especially keen eared (determined not at chargen but at the time that you first go to listen to a door) gnome. Normally you're looking at 10% odds
Why even bother with the system if you're going to punish someone this hard, and get this fiddly, with an average 10-15% success option? Why even have that option?
Autism speaks user, and it fucking hates ears

Again keep in mind a round in dungeon time was 10 minutes and moved the random encounter timer

as much as I like AD&D (2E is still my favourite system) I recently (well, a couple of months ago) picked up the original .pdfs of 0E (from dtrpg).

It's kind of silly that you first need a chart (cross referencing your level with target's armour class) to find the number you need to hit, then another chart, cross referencing target's AC with your weapon type, to find the bonus/penalty to your roll, then ANOTHER chart where you check your weapon type against the size of the monster to find out how much damage you will do (thankfully, figuring out what combination of dice does 3-18 damage is pretty straightforward).

And somehow, they came up with a system where combat can SIMULTANEOUSLY take several successful attacks to conclude, and have a character with full HP, wearing plate armor, die to a single attack due to an unlucky roll.
AND the system works nothing like real combat.

Around the same time I wrote (for my own use) rules for combat in a fantasy game, and the whole thing takes one page, and is basically future-proof.

From what I've been able to gather, he actually didn't.

Yes, he'd write adventures that had nigh-impossible to beat challenges in them and numerous encounters that if a DM read it and ran it straight as written while their players went about taking on the challenge the way it seems most likely that they would (i.e. fight the monsters that just ambushed you upon entering their room) would probably kill the whole party...

but then he'd write advice like making sure the characters have high enough ability scores that the players enjoy playing them (AD&D 1e suggested 4d6 drop lowest, arrange how you like, for stats and told the DM to try to have PCs get at least two 15+ scores - the 3d6 straight down the list method being default was the non-Gary versions of the game, including 2nd edition), and in running his games would always manage to end up with the story being shit like Robilar and his henchmen roflstomping the dungeon and Gary supposedly being mad about it - but if he was seriously a killer DM and was going to be pissy if the character survived, all he had to do was just let them die on the impossible-as-written-no-save-you-die bullshit he was clearly capable of thinking up because he put it in the published version of his adventures.

I cannot speak for his reasons, but he was a wargamer to begin with, and wargamers love their charts (If you played any brigade-level simulation of the battle of Gettysburg in the 1970s, you'd be used to tallying combat factors and then rolling on a chart to see what the outcome was).

And OD&D, as written, was a fairly rules-heavy system (even if the rules themselves were quite vague). I'll put it this way:
I'm Polish. I speak English, but I think in Polish.
GG was a wargamer. He spoke English, but he thought in Rules. Precise rules with charts for everything, to determine the exact odds/effect of every action.

Like the "rules lawyer" player type, this kind of people gets very upset whenever the DM just "makes a call".

Also - I suspect that his over-reliance on charts and tables stemmed from being a rather poor dungeon master, and uncomfortable with making snap judgments (If his combat rules are anything to go by, he had no clue how swords actually work. A two handed sword requiring 6 feet of clear space on either side of the character is a good example).

Hate to break it to you my polish brother, but I've no issue with charts and was not in the slightest making a point about them. I also disagree with you. Gary was quite famously known to answer gm questions about judgement calls, by encouraging them to make their own so long as it all works out for the group.

But if you were in his game, you damn well better play it like he wanted you to play it.

Like the whole hearing thing. The chart's only factor is racial hearing odds, it's there for chargen or for a little note on the gm's screen. Everything else is there to limit or outright punish the players dare make you use that chart, because it's bothersome. When the creator of the game is calling a mechanic bothersome in the rules section for the mechanic, you'd think that might lead to some introspection, maybe a rewrite. Nah just punish or outright kill the players if they try to use it while making it functionally worthless. That'll teach the fuckers.

In the end all it does is make the mechanic even more bothersome. Because the second you insta kill a character for listening to a door, all further listening attempts are going to take much longer as precautions are made against you being a cunt. Like all the weevil thing does is piss a player off, and result in all future listening attempts beginning with the phrase "First I meticulously check for signs of those weevils" while they stare daggers at you.