Gygax left Guidon Games in 1973 and, with Don Kaye as a partner, founded the publishing company Tactical Studies Rules (later known as TSR, Inc.) in October. The two men each invested $1000 in the venture...Kaye had borrowed $1000 on a life insurance policy...in order to finance the start-up of TSR. However, this did not give them enough capital to publish the rules for
Dungeons & Dragons and, worried that other companies would be able to publish similar projects first, the two convinced acquaintance Brian Blume to join TSR in 1974 as an equal one-third partner; this brought the financing that enabled them to publish
Dungeons & Dragons. Gygax worked on rules for more miniatures and tabletop battle games, including
Cavaliers and Roundheads (English Civil War, with Jeff Perren),
Classic Warfare (Ancient Period: 1500 BC to 500 AD),
Tractics (WWII to c. 1965, with Mike Reese & Leon Tucker), and
Warriors of Mars.
Dungeons & Dragons was first released by TSR in January 1974 as a boxed set; a hand-assembled print run of 1,000 copies, put together by hand in Gygax's home, sold out in less than a year. In the same year, Gygax created the magazine
The Strategic Review with himself as editor, and then hired Tim Kask to assist in the transition of this magazine into the fantasy periodical
The Dragon, with Gygax as writer, columnist, and publisher (from 1978 to 1981).
The Dragon debuted in June 1976, and Gygax commented on its success years later: "When I decided that
The Strategic Review was not the right vehicle, hired Tim Kask as a magazine editor for Tactical Studies Rules, and named the new publication he was to produce
The Dragon, I thought we would eventually have a great periodical to serve gaming enthusiasts worldwide... At no time did I ever contemplate so great a success or so long a lifespan." Gygax wrote the supplements
Greyhawk,
Eldritch Wizardry, and
Swords & Spells for the original
D&D game. With Brian Blume he also designed the wild west-oriented role-playing game
Boot Hill in 1975. The
Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set, a variation of the original
D&D geared towards younger players and edited by J. Eric Holmes, was released in 1977.
In 1975, Gygax and Kaye were only 36 years old, and Kaye had not made any specific provision in his will regarding his one-third share of the company. When he unexpectedly died of a heart attack in January 1975, his share of TSR passed to his wife, a woman whom Gygax characterized as "less than personable... After Don died she dumped all the Tactical Studies Rules materials off on my front porch. It would have been impossible to manage a business with her involved as a partner." Neither Gygax nor Blume had the money to buy the shares owned by Kaye's wife, and Blume persuaded Gygax to allow his father, Melvin Blume, to buy the shares and take Kaye's place as an equal partner. Later, Brian Blume persuaded Gygax to allow his brother, Kevin Blume, to purchase the shares from Melvin; this gave the Blume brothers a controlling interest at TSR, Inc.
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons
In 1977, a new version of
D&D,
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (
AD&D), was first published. The
Monster Manual, released later that year, became the first supplemental rule book of the new system, and many more followed. The
AD&D rules were not compatible with those of
D&D, and as a result,
D&D and
AD&D became distinct product lines.
Gygax wrote the
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons hardcovers
Players Handbook,
Dungeon Masters Guide,
Monster Manual, Monster Manual II,
Unearthed Arcana, and
Oriental Adventures. Gygax also wrote or co-wrote numerous
AD&D and basic
D&D adventure modules, including
The Keep on the Borderlands,
Tomb of Horrors,
Expedition to the Barrier Peaks,
The Temple of Elemental Evil,
Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun,
Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure,
Isle of the Ape, and all seven of the modules later combined into
Queen of the Spiders. In 1980, Gygax's long-time campaign setting of Greyhawk was published in the form of the
World of Greyhawk Fantasy World Setting folio, which was expanded in 1983 into the
World of Greyhawk Fantasy Game Setting boxed set. Sales of the
Dungeons & Dragons game reached $8.5 million in 1980. Gygax also provided assistance on the
Gamma World science fantasy role-playing game in 1981, and co-authored the
Gamma World adventure
Legion of Gold.
In 1979, a Michigan State University student, James Dallas Egbert III, disappeared into the school's steam tunnels, allegedly while playing a live-action version of
D&D. Negative mainstream media attention focused on
Dungeons & Dragons as a result. In 1982, Patricia Pulling's son killed himself; blaming
Dungeons & Dragons for his suicide, Pulling formed an organization named B.A.D.D. (Bothered About
Dungeons & Dragons) to attack the game and the company that produced it. Gygax defended the game on a segment of
60 Minutes, which aired in 1985. When death threats started arriving at the TSR office, Gygax hired a bodyguard. In 1982, however, TSR's annual
D&D sales increased to $16 million, and in January 1983,
The New York Times speculated that
Dungeons & Dragons might become "the great game of the 1980s" in the same manner that Monopoly was emblematic of the Great Depression.
In the early 1980s, Gygax and Mary Jo divorced, and he moved to Clinton, Illinois for a short time. Since he didn't have a driver's license, he commuted to TSR with another employee, Don Snow.
After TSR was split into TSR, Inc. and TSR Entertainment, Inc. in 1983, Gygax became the President and the Chairman of the Board of Directors of TSR, Inc., and the President of TSR Entertainment, Inc. As part of TSR Entertainment, Inc. (later
Dungeons & Dragons Entertainment Corp.), Gygax went to Hollywood, where he became co-producer of the licensed
Dungeons & Dragons animated television show for CBS. The series led its time slot for two years.
One of Gygax's creations during this time was Dragonchess, a three-dimensional fantasy chess variant, published in
Dragon #100 (August 1985). It is played on three 8x12 boards stacked on top of each other - the top board represents the sky, the middle is the ground, and the bottom is the underworld. The pieces are characters and monsters inspired by the
Dungeons & Dragons setting: King, Mage, Paladin, Cleric, Dragon, Griffin, Oliphant, Hero, Thief, Elemental, Basilisk, Unicorn, Dwarf, Sylph and Warrior.
Leaving TSR
During his time in Hollywood, Gygax left the day-to-day operations of TSR to his fellow board members, Kevin and Brian Blume. In 1984, he discovered that TSR had run into serious financial difficulties. By the time he came back to Wisconsin in 1984, the company was $1.5 million in debt. At this point, he hired Lorraine Williams to manage the company. He engineered the removal of Kevin Blume as CEO in 1984, but the Blume brothers subsequently sold their majority shares in the company to Lorraine Williams. By this time, it was evident that Gygax and Williams had differing visions of the future of TSR, and Gygax took TSR to court in a bid to block the Blumes' sale of their shares to Williams, but lost. In October 1985, TSR's Board of Directors removed Gygax as the company's President and Chairman of the Board. He remained on the board as a Director and made no further contributions to the company's creative efforts. Sales of
Dungeons & Dragons reached $29 million by 1985, but Gygax, seeing his future at TSR as untenable, left the company on December 31, 1985.
I was pretty much boxed out of the running of the company because the two guys, who between them had a controlling interest, thought they could run the company better than I could. I was set up because I could manage. In 1982 nobody on the West Coast would deal with TSR, but they had me start a new corporation called "Dungeons and Dragons Entertainment." It took a long time and a lot of hard work to get to be recognized as someone who was for real and not just a civilian, shall we say, in entertainment. Eventually, though, we got the cartoon show going (on CBS) and I had a number of other projects in the works. While I was out there, though, I heard that the company was in severe financial difficulties and one of the guys, the one I was partnered with, was shopping it on the street in New York. I came back and discovered a number of gross mismanagements in all areas of the company. The bank was foreclosing and we were a million and a half in debt. We eventually got that straightened out, but I kind of got one of my partners kicked out of office. [Kevin Blume, who was removed as TSR CEO in 1984]. Then my partners, in retribution for that, sold his shares to someone else [Lorraine Williams]. I tried to block it in court, but in the ensuing legal struggle the judge ruled against me. I lost control of the company, and it was then at that point I just decided to sell out.
Before leaving TSR, Gygax had authored two novels for TSR's Greyhawk Adventures series featuring Gord the Rogue,
Saga of Old City (the first Greyhawk novel) and
Artifact of Evil. By the terms of his settlement with TSR, Gygax kept the rights to Gord the Rogue as well as all D&D characters whose names were anagrams or plays on his own name (for example, Yrag and Zagyg). However, he lost the rights to all his other work, including the World of Greyhawk and the names of all the characters he had ever used in TSR material, such as Mordenkainen, Robilar, and Tenser. In October 1986, Gygax resigned all positions with TSR, Inc., and settled his disputes with TSR in December 1986.