Gary Gygax Quotes

Gary Gygax shares funny, friendly insights about gaming, rules and teamwork.

32 quotes

1. While it is possible to play a single game, unrelated to any other game events past or future, it is the campaign for which these rules are designed. It is relatively simple to set up a fantasy campaign, and better still, it will cost almost nothing. In fact you will not even need miniature figures, although their occasional employment is recommended for real spectacle when battles are fought. A quick glance at the Equipment section of this booklet will reveal just how little is required. The most extensive requirement is time. The campaign referee will have to have sufficient time to meet the demands of his players, he will have to devote a number of hours to laying out the maps of his 'dungeons' and upper terrain before the affair begins.

2. Hello Fry, it's a ... [stops mid-sentence, throws a twenty sided die] pleasure to meet you.

3. One more thing: don't spend too much time merely reading. The best part of this work is the play, so play and enjoy!

4. 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.

5. The idea that a game is anything more than a game: You know, there are people who are basically unbalanced who are going to misuse a game and have bad results. If a golfer who insists on playing during a lightning storm gets hit by a stroke of lightning and is killed nobody says, 'There's golfers dying by the droves being hit by lightning!' You can overdo what you really like, and if you're unbalanced you go overboard.

6. In many ways I still resent the wretched yellow journalism that was clearly evident in (the media's) treatment of the game - 60 Minutes in particular. I've never watched that show after Ed Bradley's interview with me because they rearranged my answers. When I sent some copies of letters from mothers of those two children who had committed suicide who said the game had nothing to do with it, they refused to do a retraction or even mention it on air. What bothered me is that I was getting death threats, telephone calls, and letters. I was a little nervous. I had a bodyguard for a while.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. The essence of a role-playing game is that it is a group, cooperative experience. 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.

12. There is no intimacy; it's not live. [he said of online games] It's being translated through a computer, and your imagination is not there the same way it is when you're actually together with a group of people. It reminds me of one time where I saw some children talking about whether they liked radio or television, and I asked one little boy why he preferred radio, and he said, 'Because the pictures are so much better.'

13. 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.

14. A DM only rolls the dice because of the noise they make.

15. Anyway, I am not a fearful person, don't suffer from angst, and game fans don't bother me in the least. Back in the early 80s when there was a lot of sensationalist press about D&D, and the rabid jerks were whipped up to a frenzy against the game thus, I used to get a lot of very nasty letters and phone calls from non-gamers, and even a few death threats.

16. 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.

17. The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules.

18. It really meant a lot to him to hear from people from over the years about how he helped them become a doctor, a lawyer, a policeman, what he gave them ... He really enjoyed that.

19. Anyone wanna play Dungeons & Dragons for the next quadrillion years?

20. If you are an inventor, then you are destined for blood, sweat and tears.

21. I hated school, didn't like the discipline.

22. Some of the roots of role-playing games (RPGs) are grounded in clinical and academic role assumption and role-playing exercises.

23. I foresee online gaming changing when there are good audio-visual links connecting the participants, thus approximating play in a face-to-face group.

24. Role-playing isn't storytelling. If the dungeon master is directing it, it's not a game.

25. When you master role-playing [gaming], you become immersed in an activity that is peerless among leisure-time pursuits.

26. 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.

27. I wasn't popular in the home office because I wasn't chicken. I'm just a risk taker. I have gut instincts.

28. 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 agenst or whatever else. You get to sort of vicariously experience those things.

29. I'm just a risk taker. I have gut instincts.

30. The worthy GM never purposely kills players' PCs, He presents opportunities for the rash and unthinking players to do that all on their own.

31. You are not entering this world in the usual manner, for you are setting forth to be a Dungeon Master. Certainly there are stout fighters, mighty magic-users, wily thieves, and courageous clerics who will make their mark in the magical lands of D&D adventure. You however, are above even the greatest of these, for as DM you are to become the Shaper of the Cosmos. It is you who will give form and content to the all the universe. You will breathe life into the stillness, giving meaning and purpose to all the actions which are to follow.

32. 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.