Gary Gygax Games Quotations

Send anyone claiming that their RPG activity is an art form my way, and I'll gladly stick a pin in their head and deflate it just to have the satisfaction of the popping sound that makes. One might play a game artfully, but that makes neither the game nor its play art.

Pen-and-paper role-playing is live theater and computer games are television. People want the convenience and instant gratification of turning on the TV rather than getting dressed up and going out to see a live play. In the same way, the computer is a more immediately accessible way to play games.

The idea that a game is anything more than a game... You know, there are people who are basically unbalanced who are going to misuse a game and have bad results. If a golfer who insists on playing during a lightning storm gets hit by a stroke of lightning and is killed nobody says, 'There's golfers dying by the droves being hit by lightning!' You can overdo what you really like, and if you're unbalanced you go overboard.

Gaming in general is a male thing. It isn't that gaming is designed to exclude women. Everybody who's tried to design a game to interest a large female audience has failed. And I think that has to do with the different thinking processes of men and women.

Somebody said they threw their copy of Dungeons and Dragons into the fire, and it screamed. It's a game! The magic spells in it are as real as the gold. Try retiring on that stuff.

I would like the world to remember me as the guy who really enjoyed playing games and sharing his knowledge and his fun pastimes with everybody else.

Some of the roots of role-playing games (RPGs) are grounded in clinical and academic role assumption and role-playing exercises.

Games give you a chance to excel...

The books I write because I want to read them, the games because I want to play them, and stories I tell because I find them exciting personally.

Role-playing isn't storytelling. If the dungeon master is directing it, it's not a game.

The essence of a role-playing game is that it is a group, cooperative experience.

There is no winning or losing, but rather the value is in the experience of imagining yourself as a character in whatever genre you're involved in, whether it's a fantasy game, the Wild West, secret agenst or whatever else. You get to sort of vicariously experience those things.

Role-playing games are contests in which the players usually cooperate as a group to achieve a common goal rather than compete to eliminate one another from play.... Role games ... bring players together in a mutual effort...

Games give you a chance to excel, and if you're playing in good company you don't even mind if you lose because you had the enjoyment of the company during the course of the game.