Tom Van Winkle's Return to Gaming

In some recent entries ( here and here ) I have lingered on what E. Gary Gygax said about D&D and how it should be played. In 1976, Gygax called D&D a “free form” game open to modifications in the rules. By 1977, his attitude had changed. He had come to hate house rules that modified the game he claimed as his personal property. We know he took legal action against any company that came too close to D&D. In 1982, Gygax stated officially (in Dragon ) that if you modify his game, you are no longer playing D&D and you can’t even say you are a D&D player, but you are rather playing something inferior. Some players got in line and accepted that they had to memorize the AD&D books to play by the “official” rules. Others, who were playing their own way and had used house rules for years, became indignant at being told by the man credited with creating the game that their game was not “serious,” that it was at a “lower level,” even “perverted.” The development of G