Gygax interview, August 1979

Gary Gygax Interviewed,Thoughts on AD&D and the DMG

Q. With the completion of, printing of, and now, the final release of, the Dungeon Masters Guide, is Advanced Dungeons and Dragons finished? Is the work complete; has the game reached the final stage of evolution and polish that you envision for it?

A. Yes, and no. Yes, insofar as everything we can see currently is well covered and any other material additions to the game system will be done in modular form, where it is expanding the system as far as what players can do to have adventures. No, in respect to what the cleverness of the DMs and players will uncover in the rules. Certainly they are going to find areas that are not as fully covered as we’d like, and quite likely they’re going to find areas which need either further rule refinement or whole new rules written, because AD&D is an ongoing and growing entity upon which I hope we can improve still further over the years.

Q. Suppose it is game night at your house; you have a bunch of “normal” D&D players, you’ve invited them all over for their first AD&D adventure, in the new, modified AD&D campaign. What kind of pep talk or briefing would you give them before they sat down and actually adventured? What do you feel that you would point out, what would you warn them about, etc.?

A. The first thing I’d do. . . would be warn them that the party is over. Things are tougher, more controlled. They really needn’t worry if they are experienced players; role-playing is one thing and fantasy games are another thing, and with D&D or any similar game, for that matter, whether it be something as basically non-complicated as perhaps Tunnels and Trolls, or something as detailed and complex as Chivalry and Sorcery. They have the basic ideas of the game down. They would have to roll whole new characters—they’d have to begin afresh. Their background experience, of course, would be useful to them. And what would they find? A game where the DM is far more able to handle situations as they arise; AD&D provides the DM with a far stronger framework that answers his questions and needs far more explicitly and more extensively than the other systems do.

Q. Along the same lines, then, if someone were to ask you, “Why did you do AD&D?”, is that what you would answer them? Why did you feel that it was necessary to “re-do” D&D?

A. I didn’t really “rewrite” D&D per se. I looked at D&D and said, “This is a game form designed for a much different audience than is actually playing D&D.” So what we want to do is to provide a quarter-million, or a half-million, or whatever the number of players and referees is, with a game form that is really usable to them. D&D is only a loose structure and doesn’t answer many of the needs of the DM. AD&D is a much tighter structure which follows, in part, the same format D&D does, but it is a much stronger, more rigid, more extensive framework around which the DM can build his or her campaign. The whole of D&D was built to make the game, the adventure campaign, more  viable for the DM who had to put all these hours and hours of work into structuring the whole thing. With D&D, the DM can find that unless he or she had been extremely careful, one winds up with a campaign that lasts six weeks, or maybe even six months, but then everybody is beyond the parametersof the rules. With AD&D, growth is slower, it’s more structured, and it’s designed so that you won’t run out of game in six weeks, or six months. Perhaps in six years you will, but that’s a whole different story.

Q. lf you could predict the future, see into your crystal ball where the letters and responses are at, what do you expect the response to AD&D to be? From the old D&Ders? From the new, unexposed to- fantasy-game players? What do you think it’s going to do for fantasy gaming? For TSR?

A. Well, we’ve had some response already from D&D players with regard to AD&D. The letters have basically been: “Gee, this is all different from D&D! Why didn’t you warn us?’ And John Mansfield, in his magazine Signal said, “Don’t think you can plug D&D into an AD&D format, because you can’t.” I agree. In fact, in one of the recent columns in your magazine, I pointed that out. They are different. You can’t do it. Basically, players and referees are going to say, “Thanks a lot,” when it’s all done, because all the work they put into setting up a game won’t go down the tubes in such a short time, as it would with D&D— not in all cases, but in most cases. D&D tends to allow too rapid growth of player-characters and the game gets beyond the control of the DM far too quickly. In AD&D, all of these problems have been taken care of. The character classes have more balance, and the growth rate of player-characters is kept in check far more closely. For the amount of work that a DM has to put in—probably two hours for every hour of play—you’re going to get some real returns, instead of a short-lived campaign.

Q. Back to your earlier comments, that inevitably players will find areas that don’t suit them, areas that may be “wrong”, areas that are treated in a way that the consensus feels to be wrong, whether or not it is, and if the game is expanded upon, or when it is expanded upon, it will be expanded upon in modules. Are the majority of D&D players going to have to pick up every one of these modules, like you used to have to do with all the supplements? You really had to keep up with the supplements to keep up with the ongoing, on growing D&D when it first came out. Is this going to happen again, or are you going to be able to take the DMG, lock yourself on a desert island, and have a good time with it?

A. This question will take about ten years to answer; it’s highly extensive. First of all, D&D came out in the form it did because it was still a baby when it was done. It was done in a hurry to answer the demands of many hard-core gamers, and it was written for a whole different audience. But even though the audience was different, their basic abilities were not all that different from the anticipated great minds and imaginations, and nearly everyone of them is going to be able to say, “Boy, that would be a perfect game if only this rule or those rules were changed, and I know how to make it a perfect game.” This is rather typical of gamers, and so they’re going to want to immediately change things and amend things to make it “the perfect game.”

To some extent, this can be done with AD&D, because there is still enough flexibility within the rules to allow it, without really changing the scope of the game. As the game matures, and we want to add on, without coming to what would be called perhaps “the third generation of fantasy role-playing,” we will add to it through modules, or perhaps through articles. These additions or clarifications or whatever won’t really be necessary to be obtained for any player, because, hopefully, they won’t be earthshaking revisions of the rules. If that comes up, what we’ll have to do, really, is publish an article saying, “this is a horrible revision, please take note, and free copies are available for all you good people who bought it.” But I really don’t envision that. Yet, the people who are active in this—perhaps not all the vocal ones or the ones you read about, but who generate the volume of mail—have enough questions or enough comments on certain areas, we might then look at a second edition, let’s say, of AD&D to cover these points. Again, if it becomes necessary, it will be well publicized prior to that. We don’t envision AD&D as being an ever-changing thing except as follows: Gods, Demi-Gods, and Heroes is really a necessary part of AD&D, because the deities are necessary to the game. So, eventually, those with viable campaigns move on to add deities to their games. And this will be possible within the next six-months, or a year, or whatever—whenever a much revised and expanded GDH is available. We also contemplate adding monsters to the game because monsters get burned up. It’s always nice to be able to throw a new monster at the players, so. . . . The people in the U.K. are going to have their chance to add some monsters to the game, and who knows? There might be two volumes to the Monster Manual, or three, over the years, but that’s about the size  of it: a slowly growing work, as the players want it, not as the players must buy it.

Q. One of the raps against D&D was that it was too flexible, and one of the great difficulties, particularly in going to conventions or tournaments and such, was: anyone could say, “I’m having a D&D game, and a person from one side of the country would go, he’d sit down at the table, and within ten minutes, he knew he was in trouble, because he didn’t recognize it as any kind of D&D he had ever played. How flexible, or how inflexible, is AD&D in this regard, compared to D&D? Can a player from California go and find a group in New York and at least have some reasonable assurance that he or she is at least going to understand the guidelines and the framework? Or are you going to encourage the massive variants and do-it-yourself additions that D&D was noted for?

A. D&D was noted for massive additions and variants that we encouraged, to some extent, without fully realizing the inventiveness of those people who were going to get it, and because it was done over a short period of time, and we didn’t realize how unfamiliar many of the players who would begin D&D were with miniatures and boardgames. And so . . . we encouraged a monster . . .and we are like Frankenstein and D&D is our monster. It’s grown and we want to throw it into the lime pit now and let it. . . . No, in reality, it’s a monster that brings so many people so much fun and enjoyment, even though, as you say, and is also true, that each group plays much differently than the other. We want to still keep D&D going as long as anybody is interested in it, because it is fun, and although you get wild variants, if you’re enjoying the game. . . .after all, that’s what it’s there for.

AD&D is designed specifically to answer this lack in D&D in that the players will not be so able to bend the rules nor will the DM be able to bend the rules. There are strong admonitions against tinkering with the integral systems, and what we are trying to do is establish a game that will be recognized from coast to coast, from the Arctic Circle to the Mexican border, or beyond if they read English and play AD&D. This will give fellowship to all the AD&D players, and also enable us to do something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time, that it to establish an international tournament for AD&D, which will allow players from all over the country and maybe even the U.K. and Australia and everyplace else it’s played to get together and compete in a recognizable game where they’re on relatively equal footing for—someday—substantial prizes, perhaps.

Q. On to the DMG specifically; the much-awaited, long-hoped-for, etc., etc., hoopla-build-up, trumpets, fanfare, DMG, The piece-de-resistance in AD&D. Regarding the book itself: what did you find was the biggest problem, the most detailed revision, the hardest obstacle to overcome, the easiest part of it, the most difficult? What were the highlights, and lowlights, in the writing of it that you remember and look back upon?

A. The hardest part of the whole thing was sitting down to write it. I had already been working on the Monster Manual and the Players Handbook for about two years, and I was getting a little big “frayed around the edges,” let’s say. Yet the need was there. When the fans are crying out and saying, “Help us! Help us! Things aren’t going well!”, it did give me considerable motivation. The easy parts were writing up character classes, the spells, etc. All of the tables and so forth went very easily, except the things I really put off to the very last; the details of massive combat, in the air, on land, or in the sea, and encounters, and so on, because many of these things don’t lend themselves to chance. In other words, much like monster or treasure placement, they just really shouldn’t be rolled up on a chart. I was loathe to prepare the charts to do all these things, but finally I did, and so, OK, if you don’t take the time or the care, or don’t have concern for your campaign to sit down and really look at your map, whether it’s a dungeon map or an outdoor map, and place these monsters for yourself, in some sort of a sensible order, and just want some sort of an off thing . . . OK “Disneyland” campaigns can be fun — you never know what spook is going to pop out from around a comer — here are the tables to do it. It’s kind of like Disneyland, you know, and the old fun houses. I can relate to Riverview because that’s what was in Chicago when I was a kid, and you stepped on a little board and something went “bleeh” and would pop up and you never knew what it was going to be. And it was fun. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. It’s difficult for me to get too up-tight about making a lot of sense, because I don’t really see much sense in firebreathing dragons and giants 20 feet tall, and things like that, but the game sense within the whole thing: we can talk about that. And we want to look at some sort of a reasonable ecology and a reason for something being there. So I approached that all with great trepidation, and after much work, I hope I got something that would fit within the confines of the book with respect to its size and its page content, that would answer the need. One of the things that I was continually aware of was the limitation. I just couldn’t write everything I wanted. I couldn’t go on for more than 200 or so pages. Perhaps, given another year and no limits, we could have had a monster of a book; a DMG 400 pages long, instead of 224 or 232 or whatever it’s going to be. Perhaps given five years or ten years, we could have had something that would rival Shakespeare’s works or Tolkien or the like, because if you work at something long enough, you can do that. But the demand is immediate, and the limits were there, and so we had to work within that. I did have very able assistance from all numbers of people who were kind enough to pass along ideas and comments on what I’d written. Len Lakofka was outstanding, we got much work from Tom Holsinger — I just think of those two immediately, but there are so many who did crate continual inspiration within me, and contributed materially to what the form of the thing was going to be.

Q. One last question. This may be a political hot potato. And judging from the rest of our article, you certainly seem to have aroused some strong feelings. The issue I allude to is bearded female dwarves. Would you care to elucidate on that?

A. It’s fairly common knowledge. I don’t believe I know anyone who ever met a female dwarf who didn’t have a beard, so I don’t know what more there is to be said about the matter. I’m not quite sure what the hoopla is — perhaps somebody who is uninformed or who has never dealt with dwarves en masse would assume that because homo sapiens females generally don’t tend to have beards, dwarven females are likewise. But they all, of course, have beards. They’re not so bald as the males, though . . . .

Q. They do go bald and have beards?

A. Well, usually when they go bald, it’s only in a small spot on the crown of the head, unlike the males, who’s entire upper cranium is going to be smooth and egg-like.

Q. I guess, then, that we should all be glad that we weren’t born dwarves.

A. I believe I must have a small dwarvish strain, because I’m slowly getting a shining chromedome.

Q. Perhaps that would explain mine, also. Thank you very much.