Gary Gygax: When First we Met

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I reached out to Gary Gygax for the first time in the late summer or early fall of 2000 and we began talking about projects to do together. After a few months of wrapping up technical legal stuff we signed and began working on the Canting Crew and Gaxmoor for him and the World of Aihrde for TLG. In the meantime we converted to d20 and began releasing a few modules. I had never actually seen or met Gary. I had no image of him in my mind as I had no pictures of him that I knew of, internet searches were no where in my thought process.

The first time I met Gary Gygax in person was 2001 at Gencon. We were setting up the booth, a small 10 x 10 tucked away on some forgotten isle somewhere. It was our second time to exhibit and was all chaos with some cardboard POPs (I think that is the correct terms, point of purchase displays, but I've never been good at remembering all the terms marketing and business people give things, its all terribly exhausting), a big banner, tubes of the map for the world of Aihrde and books. I believe our new releases were The Malady of Kings and Dzeebagd. We hadn't yet released any material of Gary's. We had converted some of the books from the previous Gencon to d20 from our own, now defunct, game of Swords and Sorcery. 

The only real plan we had for Gary -- because we didn't have any books -- was for him to sit in the booth and and sign material people brought up.

It was Wednesday and we were very busy. Davis was out and about and Todd and I were throwing things around the booth trying to make it look professional. People we had met were stopping by to chat...and there was a lot of that. The d20 explosion was in full swing and people were jumping on with new companies popping up everywhere. There was an indescribable energy in the hall, as if some intellectual dam had burst and the corridors were rivers of gold for all our collective imaging. 

As I'm busy putting the table together this gentleman walks up and stands for a moment and asks if I wanted to get a smoke. He was smiling a bit. I had no idea who he was. I smoked in those days, marlboro reds, and looked up and thought, what in the name of hellfire is this about. He was a little taller them, with the weight of a comfortable man around his belt, a hairline that was lost in a pony tail and short, groomed beard. He was holding a pack of unfiltered camels.

My next thought was, yes I do want a smoke, but I have no time for this and I started to make small, polite chatter as one does. He listened and didn't say a word but watched me be uncomfortably polite when at last, after what in my memory seems to have been a great long while but was probably fairly fast, I saw his name tag. 

Gary Gygax.

He saw it immediately. My recognition and I'm sure laughed or smiled and I proceeded to exitadly come out from behind the ramshackle table and introduce myself with a firm handshake and eye contact as one does. He returned and said something about "the offer still stands" so I deserted Todd and wandered out the loading dock and sat down with Gary and we promptly began talking about history, a passion we both shared. I don't think we mentioned games or game design or publishing or our recent agreement once in that first sit down. It was really cool.

I later found out that he knew who I was, where we were and that I probably didn't know what he looked like, as he had run into Davis, my brother, on the same loading dock and they smoked together for awhile and Davis didn't know who he was either. Gary being a bit more astute had already figured this out.

I remember that smoke break. Him sitting in that chair, me sitting down a little from him just chatting like people do. It's a fond memory.

Next I'll talk about Gary's signing, at that table and the young lady he was so insanely gracious to.

This pic has nothing to do with Gary really, but it cracked me up as it is Davis and our first customer at that Gencon!