Gary Gygax Interview

Kcgeek.com was able to track down the “father” of Dungeons & Dragons, Gary Gygax, for a very interesting Q&A session. Here’s a bit of what they talked about:

Q: About a dozen of us in the kcgeek community run a campaign using your first edition rules, mainly because we don’t want to purchase the new books and learn a new system. In retrospect, what problems do you see with first edition AD&D? Was Unearthed Arcana your attempt at an early form of a second edition?

A: Great to hear that the kcgeek campaign uses the original system. Are you all aware of the OAD&D website, www.dragonsfoot.org? Actually, I see very few problems with OAD&D. I ignore the weapon speed factor, the effects of weapons vs. armor, generally don’t pay attention to anything but gross violations of encumbrance, and NEVER use psionics.

Yes, Unearthed Arcana was an exploration of some of the ideas I had for a new edition of OAD&D. I wanted to have the HD ranges changes, the mechanics altered so as to allow the system to play in other genres, and to work in skills that matched classes in a complimentary way.