Gary Gygax
Game designer
1938 – 2008
Who was Gary Gygax?
Ernest Gary Gygax was an American writer and game designer best known for co-creating the pioneering role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons with Dave Arneson. Gygax has been described as the father of D&D.
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 wargame based on medieval warfare. He co-founded the company Tactical Studies Rules with childhood friend Don Kaye in 1973. The following 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 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 pre-packaged adventures called "modules" that gave a person running a D&D game 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.
Famous Quotes:
- 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.
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- Born
- Jul 27, 1938
Chicago - Also known as
- Ernest Gary Gygax
- Gygax, Gary
- E. Gary Gygax
- Garrison Ernst
- EGG
- Parents
- Spouses
- Mary Jo Powell
(1958 - 1983/03) - Gail Carpenter Gygax
(1987/08/15 - 2008/03/04)
- Mary Jo Powell
- Children
- Ethnicity
- Swiss American
- Nationality
- United States of America
- Profession
- Education
- University of Chicago
- Employment
- Editor in Chief, Guidon Games
(1970 - 1973) - Insurance Underwriter, Fireman's Fund Insurance Company
( - 1969) - TSR
- Editor in Chief, Guidon Games
- Lived in
- Lake Geneva
(1946 - 2008) - Chicago
(1938 - 1946)
- Lake Geneva
- Died
- Mar 4, 2008
Lake Geneva
Submitted
on July 23, 2013
Citation
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"Gary Gygax." Biographies.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 25 Apr. 2024. <https://www.biographies.net/people/en/gary_gygax>.
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