I add my thoughts to this discussion: Gygax is, in my very personal opinion, very overrated. He has been very good at appropriating the work of others and ‘selling’ it as his own work. His writing style is mediocre, and the proof are the Gord series, novels for teenagers that add nothing new, special or innovative to the fantasy genre. On the contrary, they are rather banal stories in which the reader already knows exactly how the plot develops.
On the level of manual writing, perhaps it is even worse: AD&D 1ed is a chaotic and confusing mass of information, often scattered here and there in the text in an absolutely incomprehensible way, with passages that are often cryptic or contradictory. Still on a personal level (I reiterate that this is my view), the only aspect to be saved from the AD&D 1ed manuals are the tables in the DM Manual. Zeb Cook and Steve Winter have made the rules much, much more comprehensible, harmonious and sorted with AD&D 2ed, publishing manuals that are easy to consult and where you can find what you are looking for without having to scroll through all the pages hoping to locate what you want.
Finally, as far as the writing of the adventure modules is concerned, here too one finds excellent ideas implemented in a way that is questionable to say the least. The adventures written by Gygax are never ready to use, but require a considerable amount of work on the part of the DMs to make them usable and fun for the players to play. Again, I think there have been (and are) much better designers than Gygax.
Having said that, Gygax played a huge role in the development of this hobby, but on the same level as others starting with Arneson, of whom we often forget all about, not to mention those who came before the two of them and had already laid the foundations that Gygax later took up and expanded (but not alone!!). Gygax was a bad designer, while he had the inventiveness and imagination to create settings and stories, and above all he had the vision for a project that was embryonic at the time. This is precisely why he was able to ‘take’ credit beyond what actually happened and create his own myth.
On the level of manual writing, perhaps it is even worse: AD&D 1ed is a chaotic and confusing mass of information, often scattered here and there in the text in an absolutely incomprehensible way, with passages that are often cryptic or contradictory. Still on a personal level (I reiterate that this is my view), the only aspect to be saved from the AD&D 1ed manuals are the tables in the DM Manual. Zeb Cook and Steve Winter have made the rules much, much more comprehensible, harmonious and sorted with AD&D 2ed, publishing manuals that are easy to consult and where you can find what you are looking for without having to scroll through all the pages hoping to locate what you want.
Finally, as far as the writing of the adventure modules is concerned, here too one finds excellent ideas implemented in a way that is questionable to say the least. The adventures written by Gygax are never ready to use, but require a considerable amount of work on the part of the DMs to make them usable and fun for the players to play. Again, I think there have been (and are) much better designers than Gygax.
Having said that, Gygax played a huge role in the development of this hobby, but on the same level as others starting with Arneson, of whom we often forget all about, not to mention those who came before the two of them and had already laid the foundations that Gygax later took up and expanded (but not alone!!). Gygax was a bad designer, while he had the inventiveness and imagination to create settings and stories, and above all he had the vision for a project that was embryonic at the time. This is precisely why he was able to ‘take’ credit beyond what actually happened and create his own myth.
