Gary Gygax

Ernest Gary Gygax (July 27, 1938 – March 4, 2008) was an American game designer and author best known for co-creating the pioneering tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) with Dave Arneson.

In 1946, after the Kenmore Pirates were involved in a fracas with another gang of boys, his father decided to move the family to Posey's family home in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, where Posey's family had settled in the early 19th century, and where Gary's grandparents still lived.

In this new setting, Gygax soon made friends with several of his peers, including Don Kaye and Mary Jo Powell.

During his childhood and teen years, he developed a love of games and an appreciation for fantasy and science fiction literature.

When he was five, he played card games such as pinochle and then board games such as chess.

At age ten, he and his friends played the sort of make-believe games that eventually came to be called "live action role-playing games", with one of them acting as referee.

His father introduced him to science fiction and fantasy through pulp novels.

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 54 mm and 70 mm figures, where they used "ladyfingers" (small firecrackers) to simulate explosions.

By his teens, Gygax had a voracious appetite for pulp fiction authors such as Robert E. Howard, Jack Vance, Fritz Leiber, H. P. Lovecraft, and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

He was a mediocre student, and in 1956, a few months after his father died, he dropped out of high school in his junior year.

He joined the Marines, but after being diagnosed with walking pneumonia, he received a medical discharge and moved back home with his mother.

From there, he commuted to a job as a shipping clerk with Kemper Insurance Co. in Chicago.

Shortly after his return, a friend introduced him to Avalon Hill's new wargame Gettysburg. Gygax was soon obsessed with the game, often playing marathon sessions once or more a week.

It was also from Avalon Hill that he ordered the first blank hex mapping sheets available, which he then employed to design his own games.

About the same time that he discovered Gettysburg, his mother reintroduced him to Mary Jo Powell, who had left Lake Geneva as a child and just returned.

Gygax was smitten with her and, after a short courtship, persuaded her to marry him, despite being only 19.

This caused some friction with Kaye, who had also been wooing Mary Jo.

Kaye refused to attend Gygax's wedding.

Kaye and Gygax reconciled after the wedding.

The couple moved to Chicago where Gygax continued as a shipping clerk at Kemper Insurance.

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

In 1971, he co-developed Chainmail, a miniatures wargame based on medieval warfare with Jeff Perren.

He co-founded the company Tactical Studies Rules (TSR, Inc.) with childhood friend Don Kaye in 1973.

The next year, he and Dave Arneson created D&D, which expanded on Gygax's Chainmail and included elements of the fantasy stories he loved as a child.

In 1976, he founded The Dragon, a magazine based around the new game.

In 1977, Gygax began work on a more comprehensive version of the game, called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

He 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 for how to run a game scenario.

In 1983, he worked to license the D&D product line into the successful D&D cartoon series.

After leaving TSR in 1986 over conflicts with its new majority owner, Gygax continued to create role-playing game titles independently, beginning with the multi-genre Dangerous Journeys in 1992.

He designed another gaming system, Lejendary Adventure, released in 1999.

In 2004, he had two strokes and narrowly avoided a subsequent heart attack; he was then diagnosed with an abdominal aortic aneurysm, and died in March 2008 at 69.

Following Gygax's funeral, many mourners adjourned to the nearby American Legion hall to play games.

This impromptu game event has become known since as Gary Con 0, and since then gamers celebrate in Lake Geneva each March with a large role-playing game convention in Gygax's honor.

Gygax was born in Chicago, the son of Almina Emelie "Posey" (Burdick) and Swiss immigrant and former Chicago Symphony Orchestra violinist Ernst Gygax.

He was named Ernest after his father, but was commonly known as Gary, the middle name given to him by his mother after the actor Gary Cooper.

The family lived on Kenmore Avenue, close enough to Wrigley Field that he could hear the roar of the crowds watching the Chicago Cubs play.

At age 7, he became a member of a small group of friends who called themselves the "Kenmore Pirates".

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

Gygax was married twice and had six children.