Gary Gygax was born in Chicago, within a few blocks of Wrigley Field on July 27, 1938, the son of Swiss immigrant and Chicago Symphony Orchestra violinist Ernst Gygax. Gygax spent his early childhood in Chicago, but in 1946 after he was involved in a brawl with a large group of boys, his father decided to move the family to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, where Gary's mother's family had settled in the early 19th century.

During his childhood and teen years, he developed a love of games and an appreciation for fantasy and science fiction literature. When he was five, he played card games such as pinochle, and then chess. At the age of ten, he and his friends played the sort of games that eventually came to be called "live action role-playing games", with one of them acting as a referee. His father introduced him to science fiction and fantasy through pulp novel. His interest in games, combined with an appreciation of history, eventually led Gygax to begin playing miniature war games in 1953, with his best friend Don Kaye. As teenagers, Gygax and Kaye designed their own miniatures rules for toy soldiers, with a large collection of and figures, and used "ladyfingers" (small firecrackers) to simulate explosions.

Gygax dropped out of high school in his junior year, and worked at odd jobs for a while, but moved back to Chicago at age 19 to attend night classes in junior college. He also took anthropology classes at University of Chicago. The following year, he married Mary Jo Powell. Their marriage would produce five children: Ernest ("Ernie"), Lucion ("Luke"), Heidi, Cindy and Elise. Gygax continued his night-school classes, and made the college Dean's List. At the urging of his professors, he applied to the University of Chicago and was admitted. However, now that he was married, he decided to take a full-time job in insurance instead.

By December 1958, the game Gettysburg from the Avalon Hill company had particularly captured Gygax's attention. It was also from Avalon Hill that he ordered the first blank hexagon mapping sheets that were available, which he then employed to design his own games. Gygax became active in fandom and became involved in play-by-mail Diplomacy games, for which he designed his own variants. Gygax learned about H. G. Wells' Little Wars book for play of military miniatures wargames, and Fletcher Pratt's Naval Wargame book; by 1965 he was active in the wargame hobby, and was writing many magazine articles on the subject. Then Gygax looked for innovative ways to generate random numbers, and used not only common, six-sided dice, but dice of all five platonic solid shapes, which he discovered in a school supply catalog.

In 1967, he and his family moved back to Lake Geneva. Except for a few months he would spend in Clinton, Illinois following his divorce, and his time in Hollywood while he was the head of TSR's entertainment division, Lake Geneva would be his home for the rest of his life.

During the 1960s, Gygax worked as an insurance underwriter for the Firemen's Fund in Lake Geneva. In 1966, Gygax co-founded the International Federation of Wargamers (IFW) with Bill Speer and Scott Duncan. The IFW, which was created by combining several preexisting wargaming clubs, aimed to promote interest in wargames, especially those set in the medieval period, and provided a forum for international wargamers. In 1967, Gygax organized a 20-person gaming meet in the basement of his home; this event would go on to be called "Gen Con 0." In 1968, Gygax rented Lake Geneva's vine-covered Horticultural Hall for $50 to hold the first Lake Geneva Convention, also known as the Gen Con gaming convention for short. Gen Con is now one of North America's largest annual hobby-game gatherings. Gygax met Dave Arneson, the future co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, at the second Gen Con, in August 1969.

I'm very fond of the Medieval period, the Dark Ages in particular. We started playing in the period because I had found appropriate miniatures. I started devising rules where what the plastic figure was wearing was what he had. If he had a shield and no armor, then he just has a shield. Shields and half-armor = half-armor rules; full-armor figure = full armor rules. I did rules for weapons as well.

Together with Don Kaye, Mike Reese, and Leon Tucker, Gygax created a military miniatures society, Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association (LGTSA) in 1965, with its first headquarters in Gygax's basement. In 1969, Gygax founded the Castle & Crusade Society chapter of the IFW. Gary left the insurance business and became a shoe repairman to make more time for pursuing his interest in game development. In 1970, he began working as editor-in-chief at Guidon Games, a publisher of wargames, for which he produced the board games Alexander the Great and Dunkirk in 1971. In 1968, Gygax and hobby-shop owner Jeff Perren wrote Chainmail, a miniatures wargame that simulated medieval-era tactical combat, and it was published in 1971. Gygax also collaborated with Dave Arneson on the naval wargame Don't Give Up the Ship!.

For the second edition of Chainmail, published in 1972, Gygax added a Fantasy Supplement to the rules. These included warriors who were monsters of non-human races, drawn from the works of Tolkien and other sources. He also included rules for individual heroic characters, including wizards. For the last he included ten spells that could be used to affect a battle, including lightning bolts, fireballs, and so forth. Dave Arneson adopted the modified rules for his fantasy Blackmoor campaign. While visiting Lake Geneva in 1972, Arneson ran his fantasy game using the new rules and Gygax immediately saw the potential of role-playing games.

Basing their work on Arneson's modified version of Chainmail for his Blackmoor campaign, Gygax and Arneson collaborated on "The Fantasy Game", the role-playing game that later became Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). The rules for simulating magic were inspired by the works of fantasy author Jack Vance, and the system as a whole drew upon the work of authors like Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp, and Fritz Leiber. In 1973, Gygax quit his day job and attempted to publish the game through Avalon Hill, who turned down his offer.

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.

Immediately after leaving TSR, Gygax helped form the company New Infinities Productions, Inc., and became the Chair of its Board and head of the company's Creative Committee in October 1986; Frank Mentzer and Kim Mohan were Design Executives and with Gygax, formed the Creative Committee.

Gygax's first role-playing game work for New Infinities, with Mohan and Mentzer, was the science fiction-themed Cyborg Commando, published in 1987. Gygax's next project a was a new fantasy role-playing game spanning multiple genres called Dangerous Journeys. (It was originally to have been called Dangerous Dimensions, but the name was changed to Dangerous Journeys in response to a threat of a lawsuit from TSR, Inc. that the DD abbreviation would be too similar to "D&D.") Gygax authored all of the products for Dangerous Journeys, including Mythus, Mythus Magick, and Mythus Bestiary. When the product was released by Game Designers' Workshop, TSR immediately sued for copyright infringement. The suit was eventually settled out of court, with TSR buying the complete rights to the Dangerous Journeys system from New Infinities and then permanently shelving the entire project.

In August 1986, Gygax's sixth child, Alexander, was born to Gail Carpenter. They were married a year later. From 1986—1988, Gygax continued to write a few more Gord the Rogue novels, which were published by New Infinities Productions: Sea of Death (1987), City of Hawks (1987), and Come Endless Darkness (1988). However, by 1988, Gygax was not happy with the new direction in which TSR was taking "his" world of Greyhawk. In a literary declaration that his old world was dead, and wanting to make a clean break with all things Greyhawk, Gygax destroyed his version of Oerth in the final Gord the Rogue novel, Dance of Demons. During this time, Gygax also worked with Flint Dille on the Sagard the Barbarian Books, as well as Role-Playing Mastery and its sequel, Master of the Game. Gygax also wrote a number of published short stories. In the 1990s, Gygax wrote three more novels, released under publisher Penguin/Roc, and later reprinted by Paizo Publishing: The Anubis Murders, The Samarkand Solution, and Death in Delhi. Paizo Publishing also printed Infernal Sorceress, Gygax's "lost" novel. During 1994, he was the primary author for six issues of the entire 64-page Mythic Masters (Trigee) magazine. In 1995, he began work on a new computer game, but by 1999 it had morphed into book form, and was published as a new role-playing system, Lejendary Adventure. He also contributed the preface to the 1998 adventure Return to the Tomb of Horrors. Gygax also worked on a number of releases with the d20 System under the Open Game License. These included the generic adventure module A Challenge of Arms; The Weyland Smith & Company Giant Fun Catalog, a book of "joke" magic items; and The Slayer's Guide to Dragons sourcebooks. From 2002 to 2006, Gygax worked on the Gygaxian Fantasy Worlds series from Troll Lord Games as the principle author of volumes I-III and as the editor of volumes IV-VII.

Gygax lent his voice to cartoons and video games in his later life, including providing the voice for his cartoon self in the episode "Anthology of Interest I" of the TV show Futurama which aired in 2000. Gygax also performed voiceover narration as a guest Dungeon Master, in the Delera's Tomb quest series, in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game Stormreach.

In 2003, Gygax announced that he was working with Rob Kuntz to publish the original and previously unpublished details of Castle Greyhawk and the city of Greyhawk in 6 volumes, although the project would use the rules for Castles and Crusades rather than D&D. Since Wizards of the Coast, which had bought TSR in 1997, still owned the rights to the name "Greyhawk", Gygax changed the name of Castle Greyhawk to "Castle Zagyg"...a reverse homophone of his own name. Gygax also changed the name of the nearby city to "Yggsburgh", a play on his initials E.G.G.

This project proved to be much more work than Gygax and Kuntz had envisioned. By the time Gygax and Kuntz had stopped working on their original home campaign, the castle dungeons had encompassed 50 levels of cunningly complex passages and thousands of rooms and traps. This, plus plans for the city of Yggsburgh and encounter areas outside the castle and city, would clearly be too much to fit into the proposed 6 volumes. Gygax decided he would compress the castle dungeons into 13 levels, the size of his original Castle Greyhawk in 1973, by amalgamating the best of what could be gleaned from binders and boxes of old notes. However, neither Gygax nor Kuntz had kept careful or comprehensive plans. Because they had often made up details of play sessions on the spot, they usually just scribbled a quick map as they played, with cursory notes about monsters, treasures and traps. These sketchy maps contained just enough detail so that the two could ensure their independent work would dovetail. All of these old notes had to be deciphered, 25-year-old memories dredged up as to what had happened in each room, and a decision made whether to keep or discard each new piece. Recreating the city too, would be a challenge; although Gygax still had his old maps of the original city, all of his previously published work on the city was owned by WotC, so he would have to create most of the city from scratch while still maintaining the "look and feel" of his original.

Even this slow and laborious process came to a complete halt in April 2004 when Gygax suffered a serious stroke. Although he returned to his keyboard after a seven-month convalescence, his output was reduced from 14-hour work days to only one or two hours per day. Kuntz had to withdraw due to other projects, although he continued to work on an adventure module that would be published at the same time as the first book. Under these circumstances, work on the Castle Zagyg project continued even more slowly, although Jeffrey Talanian stepped in to help Gygax. Finally in 2005, Troll Lord Games published Volume I, Castle Zagyg: Yggsburgh. This 256-page hardcover book contained details of Gygax's original city, its personalities and politics, as well as over 30 encounters outside the city. Later that year, Troll Lord Games also published Castle Zagyg: Dark Chateau, the adventure module written for the Yggsburgh setting by Rob Kuntz.

Book catalogs published in 2005 indicated several more volumes in the series would follow shortly, but it wasn't until 2008 that the second volume, Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works, appeared. The Upper Works described details of the castle above ground, acting as a teaser for the volumes concerning the actual dungeons that would follow. However, Gygax died in March 2008 before any further books were published. After his death, Gygax Games, under the control of Gary's widow Gail, took over the project, but to date no more volumes of the Castle Zagyg project have been published.

From an early age, Gygax hunted and was a target-shooter with both bow and gun. He was also an avid gun collector, and at various times owned a variety of rifles, shotguns and handguns.

Gygax married his first wife, Mary Jo Gygax, in 1958. By 1961 they had two children who would later assist with play-testing Dungeons & Dragons. Three more children were to follow before the marriage ended in divorce in the early 1980s. On August 15, 1987, the same day as his parents' 50th wedding anniversary, he married his second wife, Gail Carpenter, and together they had his sixth and last child. By 2005, Gygax had seven grandchildren.

Gygax went into semi-retirement after suffering strokes on April 1 and May 4, 2004, and almost suffered a heart attack after receiving incorrect medication to prevent further strokes. He had been a lifelong cigarette smoker, but switched to cigars after his strokes. In late 2005, he was diagnosed with an inoperable abdominal aortic aneurysm. Despite his reduced workload, Gygax continued to be active in the gaming community and regularly contributed to discussion forums on gaming websites such as Dragonsfoot and EN World.

Gygax died the morning of March 4, 2008, at his home in Lake Geneva at age 69.

2008 reading:

The first DM,He taught us to roll the dice.He opened the door to new worlds.His work shaped our industry.He brought us Gen Con,For this we thank him.

In fond memory of Gary Gygaxand in celebration of his spirit and accomplishments.]]

As the "father of role-playing games", Gygax received several awards and honors related to gaming

• He was inducted into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design Origins Award Hall of Fame 1980.
• Sync Magazine named Gygax #1 on the list of "The 50 Biggest Nerds of All Time".
• SFX Magazine listed him as #37 on the list of the "50 Greatest SF Pioneers".
• In 1999 Pyramid magazine named Gygax as one of The Millennium's Most Influential Persons "in the realm of adventure gaming."
• Gygax was tied with J. R. R. Tolkien for #18 on GameSpy's 30 Most Influential People in Gaming.
• Numerous names in Dungeons & Dragons, such as Zagyg, Ring of Gaxx, and Gryrax, are anagrams or alterations of Gygax's name.
• A strain of bacteria was named in honor of Gygax, "Arthronema gygaxiana sp nov UTCC393".
• Blizzard Entertainment dedicated the 2.4.0 patch of World of Warcraft, "Fury of the Sunwell", to Gygax.
• Electronic Arts dedicated Publish 51 in Ultima Online to Gygax. This included a new room in the dungeon Doom containing a special encounter and unique decorations.
• Turbine, Inc. included two tributes in the Stormreach Module 7, released June 3, 2008:
• A new area in Delera's Graveyard containing a memorial marker and text, and a new unique item, Voice of the Master, that improves the wearer's experience awards.
• Stephen Colbert, an avid D&D gamer in his youth, dedicated the last part of the March 5, 2008 episode of The Colbert Report to Gygax.
• Gygax was commemorated in a number of webcomics, including xkcd's comic #393 "Ultimate Game," Penny Arcade's "Bordering On The Semi-Tasteful," Dork Tower's "Thanks for the Worldbuilding Rules," Order of the Stick #536, "A Brief Tribute" , UserFriendly's cartoon for March 9, 2008 GU Comics' "The Journey's End", and the Unspeakable Vault .
• The 2008 film Bender's Game, contained a post-closing credits title card paying tribute to Gygax, and a clip of him from the episode "Anthology of Interest" saying, "Anyone want to play Dungeons and Dragons for the next quadrillion years?" Many people involved in the show, including David X. Cohen, were D&D fans and played the game during production of the show. Gary Gygax also lent his voice to his 8-bit self on Code Monkeys.
• All three Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition core rulebooks are also "dedicated to the memory of E. Gary Gygax."
• Gygax and his love of gaming are celebrated at GaryCon, a Lake Geneva, Wisconsin gaming convention hosted annually by family members and fans, as a tribute.

Members of Gygax's family have been raising funds to construct a memorial in his honor. As of January 2010, plans are to secure a location in Library Park on the lakefront in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.