Friday, August 7, 2020

The New Arrival: CHEERS, GARY

So, a few posts ago I mentioned how I'd love to get ahold of a copy of the book CHEERS GARY, a collection of posts from an ENWORLD forum in which a number of fans asked Gary Gygax, the co-creator of roleplaying games and cofounder of TSR, all kinds of questions, mostly about the early days of the game.

Thanks to the generosity of someone who was lucky enough to pick up a copy at GenCon 2011 and was now willing to pass it along (thanks H).

It's a dip-able book rather than a concentrated read-through, and I've been enjoying reading it a few pages a day. Much of its appeal comes from Gygax's relaxed tone. Unlike some of his infamous editorials in DRAGON years before, these are low-key and approachable: more a sharing of what he remembers off the cuff.

Plus there's some TSR/Tolkien material in here worthy of its own post, which I'll see about pulling together and posting tonight.

--John R.

--current reading: CHEERS GARY (2011), THE WORLD OF TOLKIEN (2020), A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS (1920)
--current music: 'Chicago' by Graham Nash (circa 1971)
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1 comment:

  1. Zenopus ArchivesAugust 8, 2020 at 10:36 AM

    As long as that book is, it is only a fraction of the online Q&A threads that Gygax participated in during his last decade. At Dragonsfoot alone he made over 3,500 posts, including a series of twelve Q&A threads, now archived as Zagyg's Wisdom. He also participated in Q&A at the Troll Lord and Pied Piper Publishing (Rob Kuntz) forums. And he had his own long running gygax-games mailing list where, in addition to answering questions, he would post summaries of his game sessions. I made a list of these various Q&A threads along with links in a stickied thread at the Knights & Knaves Alehouse forum, here.

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