Gary Gygax Interview at Kcgeek

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(Originally posted by Mollusken)

Kcgeek has posted a short summary of the life of Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons and Dragons and former of the TSR company, together with a few questions answered by the man himself.

You basically gambled everything to follow your dream of becoming a game designer and writer. What was your profession in the pre-Dungeons & Dragons days, and what factors contributed to your decision to follow your heart full time?

I was an insurance underwriter. I took the job rather than going on with schooling at the University of Chicago to become an anthropologist. I did fairly well in insurance, was a supervising underwriter for individual, group, and association group, health, life, long term disability, and unusual risk policies.

I was offered positions with several major agencies, and a junior partnership in one. I turned down all those offers because I was determined to get out of that field and become a writer and game designer. When the company was moving the office I worked for to San Francisco, that decided things.

You have said CRPGs aren't "real" roleplaying - as online multiplayer games become fuller featured, do you foresee this changing? What kinds of technological advances are necessary to make "real" roleplaying via machine possible?

First question is: To whom does one ROLEPLAY when gaming? Obviously, CRPGs are not really RPGs at all, are they? Unless there is direct communication between the Game Master and the players, that communication affecting the GM's decisions on the results of actions other than random number results, there is no roleplay of any meaningful sort involved, although some role assumption and playing within the bounds of the character set forth is possible.

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

When AI approximates Machine Intelligence, then many online and computer-run RPGs will move towards actual RPG activity. Nonetheless, that will not replace the experience of "being there," any more than seeing a theatrical motion picture can replace the stage play.

Read everything here.