Gary Gygax Interview at GameBanshee
Posted Thursday, July 22, 2004 - 19:47 CET by chevalier

GameBanshee have interviewed Gary Gygax, the father of Dungeons and Dragons and the founder of TSR. Despite being very busy with his current work, he took time to answer a set of questions on the phone for GameBanshee. Here's a clip:

GB: Tell me a bit about your history and how you originally came up with the concept of the miniature ruleset called Chainmail, and, later, Dungeons & Dragons. Were these games originally just a hobby of your own, or did you intend to make it into a commercial game from the beginning?

Gary: This goes all the way back to Gen Con 1 with a fellow by the name of Jerry White from Portland, Oregon, as I recall. He brought a bunch of 40 millimeter Elastolin figurines done by Hauser. I started playing and got hooked. Jeff Perren happened to collect quite a few of those same scale miniatures and he had gone and set up rules for them. Henry Bodenstadt ran a gaming shop business out in New York, he had got his Siege of Bodenstadt game into Strategy & Tactics magazine at that time published by Chris Wagner. This was what really hyped the 40 mm figurines.

Read the whole thing at GameBanshee.