Bob Bledsaw Jr. on Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson and his Father: "These were good men."

Gary Gygax, 1969

Last month on Save for Half, "DM Jim" Wampler posted an audio recording of Bob Bledsaw Jr.'s recent North Texas RPG Con seminar on the history and future plans for Judges Guild - the groundbreaking game company originally co-founded and run by his father.

I highly recommend listening to it, and listening to the Save for Half podcast, in general.

For this Dungeons & Dragons history buff, it was an utterly fascinating hour-and-a-half, with many interesting and fun anecdotes about Judges Guild and the early years of the hobby. Bledsaw Jr. also spends a fair amount of time talking about the personalities, and personal relationships between his father, Gygax and Dave Arneson.

All three men passed away within the space of thirteen months in 2008 and 2009.

As Bledsaw Jr. narrates it, Gygax and his father had had an earlier falling out, but later reconciled, partly based on their shared understanding that they had both experienced similar emotional crises in their careers and family lives. And after Bledsaw Sr.'s death, Arneson would form a sort of protective friendship with Bledsaw Jr., initially not telling him that he, too, was ill.

According to Bledsaw Jr., the only time he ever heard Arneson use the F-word was when Arneson told him he should ignore then TSR's stricture that licensed products should only be compatible with its new 4th edition.

Dave said: "F__ em. Print what you want and tell them I gave you permission. I'm the one who created role-playing games, and I'm telling you, you can print what you want."

Dave Arneson

Bledsaw Jr. narrates an earlier phone call that Gygax made to his father. Gygax had lost his company, and Bledsaw's company had failed. It seems that Gygax called Bledsaw to buck him up, but also to repair their friendship.

These two men hadn't really spoken to each other in years ... From what I gathered, Gary oscillated between being hurt and angry, and then, kind of, he reached out to my dad because he knew that my Dad had been on the ropes. And he actually apologized to my Dad, saying, "there was no reason why we couldn't have been better partners to each other." And my Dad said to him, "the industry just outgrew us."

After the call, Bledsaw told his son, "I really feel sorry for that man."

Bledsaw was bed-ridden and dying when he learned of Gygax's passing. "Gary's upstaged me again," he said. "He's up to his old antics."

According to his son, the last time Bledsaw signed his name was on the card he sent to Gygax's family.

Bledsaw Jr. doesn't hold back on mentioning his father's personal weaknesses and failings, and at one remove, some of the imperfections of his father's partner, rival and friend, Gygax. There are elements of a soap opera. Or a tragedy.

But another thread also runs through the entire talk - that of the admiration and personal respect he came to have for all of them. Or as Bledsaw Jr. put it, midway through his presentation:

These were good men. These were moral men.

It's not all about paper, pencils and miniature figures.

Bob Bledsaw, Sr.

OSR Art Friday: Cover of City State of the Invincible Overlord

Yes, I think this is art.

The OSR and the Old School products that it draws from is as much about aesthetics as anything else. And in turn, aesthetics is as much about the overall presentation as it is about, say, any particular illustration. Finally, fun cover hype (when it is justified) is part of the overall presentation.

Here it is for $9.00 (or $22.20, adjusting for inflation). Why should you buy it? Here are a few reasons:

1. It's a fascinating Swords & Sorcery World!
2. There's a Huge 34" x 44" Judge's Map of the City State!
3. Also, there's a 17" x 22" Player's Map!
4. With a Forty Page Guide!
5. it's a Huge Referee's Guide for Fantasy Games!
6. And it also includes Thunderhold, a 11" x 17" Castle of the Dwarven King!
7. There are Two Booklets of Rules, Rumors and Renegades!
8. And Ten Dungeon Levels!
9. It's endorsed by Dave Arneson, Famous Fantasy Game Author!
10. And The Entire Playing Aid Includes Seven Mapsheets & Eighty Pages...

It's like an ad from your one of your childhood comic books: 500 plastic soldiers AND 15 pieces of artillery AND 500 enemy soldiers AND three individually molded, authentically designed jeeps, for only $2.99 plus shipping! (please allow 7-12 weeks for delivery, no C.O.D.s).

I also love those circles--each filled with such promise--that show you what's being so enthusiastically described.

The cover hype of City State was justified. This is not the first edition, but it's substantially similar. Apparently when it first came out it blew everyone away. It blew me away when I first saw it.

An entire city?!! And Ten Dungeon Levels?!! And Thunderhold (just in case)?!!

Okay, so in small print we read: "Fantasy Game System Not Included". Presumably you have one of those if you've managed to get this far. Also, the "Recommended Age" is "15 and up". That just makes it all the richer if you're younger.

Speaking of fifteen-year olds, that warrior on the flying horse was drawn by someone who was still two years away from that. I'm going to quote a full passage on this from Fight On! #3:

The Origin of the "Flying Turkey" by Bob Bledsaw II: I was a lad of thirteen when the first boxes of printed Judges Guild product got stacked in my bedroom. I had aspirations of being an artist, with some talent in cartoon-ing. My father came to me and said that he needed a logo for the company, perhaps a man riding a dragon instead of a horse, “waving a cutlass like one of Teddy Roosevelt’s Roughriders.” A dragon felt a bit too TSR-ish, so I offered a Pegasus, as it was horse-like enough, and he agreed. I drew the “flying turkey” in 30 minutes, and off he went to have it printed. It was in pencil with intricate shading and detail, but the printer informed him that it would work better in multipurpose application if it was inked. Dad took out an engineering .00 pen from his pocket (a leftover from his work at General Electric) and inked it quickly on the counter while the printer looked on. Because of his rush, he failed to ink the fingers of the raised right hand and accidentally faced it back. That is why the ‘flying turkey’, as he called it, has, if you look closely, a left hand on his right arm.

Well, those days are gone, obviously, with all of their associated stories. And I can only feel a bit melancholy when I read about them.

First RPG Gamemastered: Dungeons & Dragons

Note: I edited the last post to add a year to the dates. I played Melee, Wizard and Death Test in the fall of 1978, and first encountered Dungeons & Dragons in the winter of 1978-79. I was in 10th grade.

At the start of 1979 the final book of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons trilogy, The Dungeon Masters Guide, was nine months away from being published. I believe that the three little brown books and the supplements were still technically in print, but I don't remember them being easily obtainable or something that new players sought out. The Holmes Basic Set was on sale, but I think my view of it and the view of other high schoolers in my circle was that it was the "baby" edition, only suitable for one's kid brother, or whatever.

So I used the Judges Guild Ready Ref Sheets for combat tables. Dragon Magazine also had a "preview" of the Dungeon Masters Guide featuring attack and saving throw tables that we circulated Xeroxed copies of.

The only TSR AD&D modules available were high level adventures such as Against the Giants or the Drow series. (The low level modules were for "Basic D&D". Again, kids stuff.) Therefore, I didn't draw from any published examples. 

I don't know where I obtained a list of magic items, but I must have gotten them somewhere, as my dungeon was full of them.

So the point is that during (what I now know) what was an explosive period in the game, the rules were in flux and incomplete. Kids were patching them together from all sorts of sources, "official" and not.

But it didn't matter. The game was glorious.

My "megadungeon" had five levels, drawn out on 8 1/2 x 11 inch graph paper. I think it was an abandoned Dwarven (or perhaps Gnomish) mine. You had to travel for weeks through a secret Gnome tunnel under the mountains to get to the underground entrance.

And after passing through the great double door, you encountered The Stirge Room.

I didn't design it to be deadly. But it turned out to be. I think three parties TPK'd before one of them defeated the resilient critters and was thus able to move on.

I suppose looking back there were a number of "lessons":

1. Characters died quickly and often (at least at first) but that was fun. It became a challenge: "This time we're going to kill those blood-sucking bastards."

2. Alignments were silly (or at least they were the way we played them). My characters were usually Chaotic Evil (I think my players thought that gave them more freedom) but when it came to their relationship with other party members they were practically holy. I remember, during the final TPK, the Chaotic Evil Fighter shouting (as he was being pecked to death by Stirges), “Fly, friends! Go through the north door. Don’t worry about me! I’ll hold them off!” I haven’t talked to him in a while but I think he’s now the chairman of a Philosophy Department.

3. The concept of a dungeon was fun and interesting: “Let’s go down to second level!" “No, we’re not ready!" “I don’t care. I don’t want to go back and forth through that bloody underground tunnel again. What if they rebuild things before we return?” “Okay, we’re powerful enough now. Let’s just clean out those Goblins (whatever level they live on) once and for all. We owe them that!” And so on.

This wasn't based on anything, let alone, reading old school blogs (obviously) or whatever. It just happened.

Here's to you, Soma, Bromarle the Green Wizard, Khumzaal, Peras, Corwin and all the rest of the crew. You killed the Goblin King (on the fifth level) and moved on to defeat the Slavers and the minions of the Temple of Elemental Evil.

I remember.

May God grant you peace, wherever you are.