Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons & Dragons

by Michael Witwer

And while tonight’s adventure had been purely an exercise in imagination, and a humorous one at that, Gary was convinced that not all such occurrences were of his own making.

His father’s age and illness distressed him—a cause, no doubt, of Gary seeking more and more escapes, whether they be physical adventures or in the form of an immersive game or fantasy novel.

Later, when Gary stumbled on a school supply catalog put out by California-based Creative Publications that featured various polyhedral dice, including the iconic twenty-sided die, he found a simpler, more efficient, and readily available solution to generate these twenty outcomes.

“I write mainly because I have so much information inside I just have to … The main ‘no-no’ I have is not to ignore an urge to write. Ideas are ephemeral, slip away too quickly, so when the muse is there go like hell,”

Though too young to be involved in the testing, it was Gary’s youngest daughter Cindy, who when hearing all of the prototype names for the then unnamed Fantasy Game, famously said “Oh, Daddy, I like Dungeons and Dragons best!”6

“It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.”