Ernest Gary Gygax (July 27, 1938 – March 4, 2008) was an American game designer and author best known for co-creating the pioneering role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) with Dave Arneson.
In the 1960s, Gygax created an organization of wargaming clubs and founded the Gen Con gaming convention. In 1971, he helped develop Chainmail, a miniatures war game based on medieval warfare. He co-founded the company Tactical Studies Rules (TSR, Inc.) with childhood friend Don Kaye in 1973. The following year, he and Arneson created D&D, which expanded on Gygax's Chainmail and included elements of the fantasy stories he loved as a child. In the same year, 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. Gygax designed numerous manuals for the game system, as well as several per-packaged adventures called "modules" that gave a person running a D&D game (the "Dungeon Master") a rough script and ideas on how to run a particular gaming 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 issues 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 called Lejendary Adventure, released in 1999. 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.
In addition to designing games, Gygax wrote 10 solo novels and co-authored four others.
Gygax was married twice and had six children. He died in March 2008.
From the original event announcement:
THE FORUM IN PSYCHIATRY AND HUMANITIES OF THE WASHINGTON PSYCHOANALYTIC ASSOCIATION
A DIALOGUE WITH GARY GYGAX, THE INVENTOR OF DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS
A SEMINAR October 5, 1985 on CREATIVITY IN GAMES, sponsored by THE FORUM IN PSYCHIATRY AND HUMANITIES OF THE WASHINGTON SCHOOL OF PSYCHIATRY AND THE WASHINGTON PSYCHOANALYTIC ASSOCIATION
Dungeons and Dragons: millions of American children have made those household words by dedicating themselves to the game with feelings of greatest intensity. A game and a phenomenon, D & D has the power to stir profound depth of feeling and the scope for enduring preoccupation and elaboration. The game appealed to latency and adolescent children but is attracting increasing attention from adults who are participating in game activities and international D & D conferences.
How does such a phenomenon come about? The inventor of the game and the president of Dungeons Entertainment Corporation, Gary Gygax, will be able to tell us the history of this creation and answer at least some of the questions e have. An engaging and friendly American from Chicago and Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, he has been an avid game player since his late childhood. Military simulation "war games" have been a hobby since his late teens...
Gary Gygax pursued his own path in late adolescence. Working his way through Chicago Junior College night school, he rejected the expectable path of studying psychology and anthropology at the University and went to work as an insurance underwriter. It took nine years for him to abandon that path to fame and fortune, particularly because his innovative ideas were ignored in the conservative atmosphere of the insurance business. He quit to become a writer and game designer. Active in creating and playing games as a hobby, he was prepared to commit himself to an independent vocation. Dungeons and Dragons was an inspiration by a game session in which he staged a medieval rather than a modern or historical battle. He introduced the fantasy element by placing a troll under a bridge. D & D was off and running and continues today.
Discussion with Gary Gygax will be led by Wolfgang Weigert, M.D. and Gordon Kirschner, M.D., psychoanalysts studying creativity. They organized this series to create an opportunity for discovery of the nature of the creative process through the experience of creative people.
Place: SULLIVAN HALL, Washington School of Psychiatry, 1610 New Hampshire Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C.
Time: From 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 5, 1985.