Quote from: Settembrini;951958Back in 2007, during the fledgling days of this here forum, we sort of had the consensus that Gary was doing cocaine during his Hollywood times, even some hints of hanging out at the Playboy mansion were given. Was this ever substantiated? Or an embellishment that I took for real, but was ultimately bogus?

Dwalt reports that in his book on D&D. Believe family and friends have subsquently claimed it to be untrue. But Dwalt seems to be a legit enough of a writer that he wouldn't have included it without some solid sourcing.

Never understood why this was such a controversial story, sometimes gamers can be a surprisingly puritan lot.

Perhaps some fear it brings Gygax's business acumen into doubt. But anyone who has read the excerpts of the film script that he was peddling back then already has lots of reason to doubt his business acumen.

Quote from: Xanther;951962Well Gary, like most of us, used Charisma as a dump stat.

we need the rolling laugh smiley back

Quote from: CRKrueger;951963As is the tired jihad against Gary and the "Cult of Gygax" the "OSR Taliban" and the other bullshit that doesn't exist.

Never visited Dragonsfoot or K&K then? Two forums is a lot for something that doesn't exist. RPGNet is not the only forum with an oppressively enforced groupthink.

Almost all of us on this thread would be banned there for what we've said: including Gronan!

Quote from: Settembrini;951965@voros: I love DCO, but not as much as to make it part of my online identity. That is reserved for wargames;-)

Just wanted to go with a good monster pic. Shoulda gone with something from 1e MM to maintain my OSR cred.

I am a big fan of Gene Weigel. If there is a Gygax puritan, he's the real deal. Still I do take everything he say with a grain of salt.
T.Foster too, love them both.

QuoteJust wanted to go with a good monster pic. Shoulda gone with something from 1e MM to maintain my OSR cred.

Well, it woulda been more conventional. If you individualize with something recent and hip, you might be a hipster! You can't have it both, either hip or square. And yes, there is no way to win in pop culture.

Quote from: Settembrini;951971I am a big fan of Gene Weigel. If there is a Gygax puritan, he's the real deal. Still I do take everything he say with a grain of salt.
T.Foster too, love them both.

I only know Weigel from some thread when a former TSR employee showed up to defend Zeb Cook from the edition warriors and exposed Gene as making false claims based on his late association with Gygax.

So, I guess my original question would be answered, "EGG most often played 'something else." At least, I think it is. Hard to say at this point.

Quote from: cranebump;951975So, I guess my original question would be answered, "EGG most often played 'something else." At least, I think it is. Hard to say at this point.

I refrained from answering as we have a couple posters here who actually played with Gary, but from all I've read (I think even from him) his home game was never really by-the-AD&D-book.  Which to me doesn't mean anything one way or another; especially as I've read his home games were great fun.

Quote from: Xanther;951976...especially as I've read his home games were great fun.

This was my impression, as well.

If you do a read through of OD&D with Greyhawk supplement and then B/X back to back, B/X is everything that OD&D is, just well written, organized, and edited.

Quote from: Voros;951717To repeat: there are nerds to this day who treat everything Gygax said as Holy Writ. There are two forums commited to this way of thinking. He strongly encouraged rules lawyers with his pronouncements.

On balance this stupidity is minor compared to his other achievements but it is always good to remind people that he was a man, who often contradicted himself and was even clearly full of shit on occasion, just like anyone else.

Quote from: Voros;951705Because adults are usually held accountable for what they say and there are nerds to this day who treat everything Gygax said as Holy Writ? Just visit Dragonsfoot sometime.

To clarify, is this all because you are worried that there might be people around here who somehow* doesn't know that Gygax was a flawed individual? Or that the people from DF or K&K are all also here and will be hurt/enlightened/taken down a peg?

I am aware that I'm probably outspoken here in my belief that the constant focus on TBP has been detrimental to this place's overall development, however, I think I'd find agreement with others that this place is more than just a place where people come to vent their dissatisfaction with other boards.

As for Gygax himself, I've said it before and I'll say it again. Why does he have to be either hero or villain, why can't he just be a real person? He found he could earn a living doing something he loved and ran with it straight into uncharted territory. Isn't that story good enough without trying to put a white or black cowboy hat on top of it?


*and as corollary, would have to be the one D&D gamer active enough to visit a forum like this who hasn't read Playing at the World

"But it is always good to remind people that he was a man..." That's putting a black hat on him? And I praised his work, the stuff that matters. Everything else has been a matter of record or his own words. It's only the typical rush of apologists that derails these threads. 'Hey, stop replying to our posts!! What's the matter with you man?!'

Quote from: Voros;951865I have no idea what 'Gygaxian' mode of play means and doubt I want to know.

The Holmes set was released before AD&D, that is a simple fact you can look up and it refers to AD&D because it was trying to pre-sell AD&D.

Apparently either Holmes was instructed to include the references to AD&D and went back and inserted them into the completed manuscript or Gygax inserted the references himself.

Yes, the Holmes Bluebook was a re-write of the Original Dungeons & Dragons white book set. Bx was condensed, refined, and an improved version of the basic game where some of the earlier ambiguities were omitted, and additional sections added to streamline play. It only included advancement for characters level 1-3 though. In 1977,  I bought this brand new, even before getting the white bookset. I bought the Judges Guild Ready-Ref sheets for $2.99. Then A few weeks later I bought the Holmes D&D Basic Boxed Set, for $8. I would have bought a White Bookset at that time, but didn't have the other $4 to spend, and had to wait until early summer to pickup the white bookset. Bluebook, B1, and the Ready Ref sheets kept me quite busy until the summer time. BXD&D had instructions for how to build Dungeons, and B1 was a great example to work from, but there was really no Wilderness rules at all in Bluebook. Judges Guild really helped out with learning how to build a wilderness campaign with the Campaign Hexagon System, which originally retailed for $2.50, and was published in the latter half of 1977 (at least that's when I first remembered seeing it, and bought it right away too, As the Wilderlands of High Fantasy was significantly more expensive at $7.95).

Eight times AD&D is mentioned in Bluebook BXD&D as an upsell, Four times within the first eight pages. Random House was the distributor for Holmes Bluebook D&D. The Fifth time it is mentioned in the combat tables, stating that "Full tables are given in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. The tables below are deliberately simplified, but will take some practice to use them with facility." The Sixth and Seventh time AD&D is mentioned is in the monster rules with "...and many more can be found in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons." and concerning Dragons: "of the dozen different kinds found in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons only four will be covered here." The last time AD&D is mentioned is in the treasure tables on page thirty-four. "There are many more magical and wondrous items described in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, and the Dungeon Master can easily invent treasure items of his own."

J. Eric Holmes was the Editor, so he was the one that included the upsell notes in Bx, probably as requested by Gary though.

Now here's the thing about AD&D back then. It wasn't published yet. AD&D Monster Manual wasn't released until just before Christmas in 1977. It was another whole year(1978) before the AD&D Player's Handbook was released. and then another year later (1979) before the DMG was released. AD&D back then was what we call vaporware today. There were no pre-announced publication dates. We found out about AD&D actual release dates via ads in Dragon Magazine, usually only a month or two before the Holidays. This is why I bought the White Bookset in the summer of 77, so I would have the most complete set of rules available (at that time).

In 1978 everyone was still playing 0D&D or BXD&D, at least until around Christmas or so, and it would really be the end of 1979 or early 1980 before most gamers first saw the DMG, and finally the full version of AD&D had been released.

While I bought the AD&D books, I ran 0D&D games with many of the monsters from AD&D MM, and some (actually, ...just a few) of the best rules of AD&D PHB cherry picked out to suit my home campaign. AD&D seemed to start a lot of arguments where none had existed before, and that was in the rigid interpretation of the rules to the point of ridiculousness on the part of some DM's. The D&D supplements and the AD&D books also promoted a power level creep upward in the game, where the players competed to see what   better treasures and magic and rewards they could get. With the 1 GP spent equals 1 EXP earned model players were unduly rewarded for looting the enemy whenever possible, and further encouraged the players to do whatever was necessary to obtain gold. Actual Roleplaying for Exp opportunities were trampled by the jun horde rushing to find the next bandit camp or dragon lair to loot, and that pushed the game into a direction as a GM, that I wasn't (Even back then) much interested in seeing it go.

One other book that I'll mention that I picked up very early on that had a great influence on my games was The Complete Warlock from Balboa Game Company in 1978. I never really did use the spellpoint system in it for my D&D games, but we definitely did convert/steal a bunch of spells out of that book, and adopted the Thieves character class from there as well, as our gaming group really liked having more options when it came to doing nefarious things in game...

Quote from: Willie the Duck;951986*and as corollary, would have to be the one D&D gamer active enough to visit a forum like this who hasn't read Playing at the World[/SIZE]

Actually most of my references to Peterson are to his work outside of Playing at the World as that book doesn't include anything after the first release of OD&D.

And ironically, last I saw the Pundit himself had not read Playing at the World yet. I think he suspected Peterson was some kind of Swinish hipster.