Topical Tens: 27th July: Gary Gygax (Dungeons and Dragons)

Gary Gygax, US writer and game designer, best known for co-creating the pioneering role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons, was born on this date in 1938. Gygax has been described as the father of D&D.

The game of Dungeons and Dragons was first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. (TSR). Despite having an amateurish production and assuming players were already familiar with wargaming, it took off rapidly and soon spread from the wargaming community to college and high school students. The game had more than three million players around the world by 1981. 750,000 copies of the rules were selling every year by 1984.
Deriving from an earlier wargame called Chainmail, Dungeons and Dragons owes its existence to a number of influences. The most obvious is JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, so obvious that Tolkien Enterprises threatened to sue and that's why Hobbit-like characters in the game have to be referred to as "halflings" instead. The Dying Earth stories and novels of Jack Vance influenced the magic system. From the novel Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson, came the idea of character alignments (lawful, chaotic, neutral). Gary Gygax was a great fan of pulp science fiction and drew ideas from many of the books he read, including the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. P. Lovecraft, Roger Zelazny, Michael Moorcock and Lewis Carroll. What may seem surprising is that there are even elements inspired by the Bible. The "flaming sword which turned every way" at the gates of Eden inspired a clerical spell in the game called 'Blade Barrier'.
As a kid, Gary Gygax and his friends Don Kaye (later his business partner) and Mary Jo Powell (later his wife) used to sneak into an abandoned psychiatric hospital, and has said that these adventures gave him the sense of what a dungeon should be like. (Both Gary and Don had a thing for Mary Jo and fell out when she married Gary. Don refused to attend the wedding, but they later reconciled.) He also lived in a haunted house, in which ghostly footsteps were heard in the attic and doors opened on their own. These happenings freaked out the family cat, which seemed to see things Gary and his family could not. These events instilled in him a belief that the supernatural was not only real, but not to be messed with.
The game was widely accused of being a bad influence - it was denounced by many churches as promoting the occult, witchcraft, devil worship and murder. You may be surprised to learn in light of this that the father of D&D was an active Jehovah's Witness. However, his church were somewhat concerned about him already because he used to smoke weed and drink. His connection with this satanic game was the last straw, and he and his wife eventually left the church - but Gygax didn't give up his Christian faith - remaining a Christian until the day he died.
Another criticism levelled at the game was that it could lead to players having difficulty separating fantasy from reality, possibly leading to psychotic episodes. Chris Pritchard, who was convicted in 1990 of murdering his stepfather, and his participation in D&D was blamed for his crimes. A novel, Mazes and Monsters, based on the story of James Dallas Egbert III, explored this theme, and was made into a film. However, recent psychological research has concluded that playing D&D is not harmful to your mental health. In fact, it could even be beneficial, as playing involves using social skills, cognitive skills, logic, mathematics and imagination.
The game has, however, become associated with geekiness and in popular culture, TV and films, a character being shown playing D&D is almost shorthand for "this person is a total geek". Characters in The Big Bang Theory, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Stranger Things and The IT Crowd play it. In The Simpsons, Homer relates that he bonded with some geeks by playing Dungeons & Dragons "for three hours... then I was slain by an elf."
A number of celebrities have confessed to having played the game. It probably comes as no surprise to learn that among them are Game of Thrones novelist George R. R. Martin, Star Trek actor Wil Wheaton, directors Steven Spielberg and Joss Whedon, Stephen King, Marilyn Manson, novelist China Miéville and entrepreneur Elon Musk. Add to that Simpsons creator Matt Groening, actors Vin Diesel, Robin Williams and Mike Myers. The two that might be a little more surprising are Michael Gove and Judi Dench.
All that is required to play is three rule books (The Player's Handbook, the Dungeon Master's Guide and the Monster Manual), character sheets for each player, something to write with, usually a pencil, and Dice with various numbers of sides. Maps and figures as a visual aid are optional. Each player generally has one character which makes up part of a party with the characters of the other players. Ideally the characters should all have skills which complement each other. One player acts as the "Dungeon Master", ie the storyteller and referee, who will have done some preparation in advance. The first step is to determine (usually by rolling dice) a characters attributes - Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. These scores influence what race that character may belong to (eg a character which is strong but thick might be an orc) and what their occupation is (fighters need to be strong, wizards need to be intelligent, thieves need to be dexterous). Whether a character is evil or good, lawful or chaotic and any backstory is up to the player. Hit points are a measure of a character's vitality and health and are determined by the class, level and constitution of each character. These can be lost in battle or accidents and when they're all used up the character is dead. They can however be healed or even resurrected by other characters with the right skills. The success or failure of any action is determined by rolling dice, taking into account the level of skill the character has. The longer a character lasts, the better they get as they earn experience.
Dungeons & Dragons is the best-known and best-selling role-playing game, with an estimated 20 million people having played it. It has generated more than US$1 billion in book and equipment sales. It has also gone through numerous owners (TSR, TSR Hobbies, Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro) and editions (A 5th edition was released in 2014).
Wargaming may have made Gygax a fortune but not without some cost. He lost his job as an insurance underwriter in 1970 - while new management and restructuring of the company was the official reason, the fact that he worked on wargaming material during working hours probably put him at the top of the redundancy list. His marriage suffered, too. He spent so much time playing games that his wife, Mary Jo, was certain he must be having an affair. One day she followed him, intending to confront him and his mistress but discovered him in a friend's basement sitting around a table playing a game. Not that it helped - Mary Jo resented the amount of time her husband spent playing games when he had a job and a family to support. They argued a lot; Mary Jo drank; which led to him having affairs for real. The couple divorced in 1983.