Maximum Gygaxian Campaign Design

Grendelwulf of the very excellent Axe & Hammer blog has reprinted an old article by Gary Gygax that was originally run in the newsletter/fanzine Europa circa 1975.  He has also gone on to mine this article for all it is worth in terms of setting up and developing a truly Gygaxian Greyhawk Campaign, a process that can be viewed as it progresses at the Axe & Hammer blog.  Part One is here, Part Two is here, and Part Three is here.  Grendelwulf's post reprinting the Europa article that started all this is here, the scan of the original (for completeness sake) is here.  For what it's worth, the article is called: How To Set Up Your Dungeons & Dragons Campaign--And Be Stuck Refereeing It Seven Days Per Week Until The Wee Hours Of The Morning!  The reprinted Europa article, as is Grendelwulf's insightful analysis and personal application of it to his own campaign development process, are both highly recommended.  Even if you dislike Greyhawk or are working in a totally different genre from Sword & Sorcery/High Fantasy--there's a lot of good stuff in this article, and in Grendelwulf's subsequent follow-up posts. This is some of Gygax at his best, and it could easily have been extracted and slipped into a revised/expanded OD&D Book Three: The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures to good effect, back in the day. 

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Paying Respects to Three Grognard Elders: Gygax, Arneson, Barker

There is a Gary Gygax Fund Testimonial page over at the Gygax Memorial Fund site.  If you've played D&D in any edition for any length of time, or otherwise been affected by they guy's work, then maybe you'd like to drop by and say something for posterity's sake.

There is also a nice post over at Harvard's Blackmoor blog regarding the idea of producing a memorial miniature for Dave Arneson, co-author of the world's oldest Fantasy RPG.  I think this is a great idea, and it reminds me of the cover to the old Painting Miniatures for Tekumel booklet that Tekumel Games put out in the old days that showed a wonderful Ken Fletcher illustration of a Pe Choi painting-up a Professor Barker miniature on the cover.  I know that several others names have been bandied about as also deserving a commemorative miniature, and they are all deserving indeed, but let's not forget the good Professor.  He produced the first RPG setting back before anyone else and the deep and often overlooked influence of Empire of the Petal Throne cannot and should not be denied.  He hasn't left us yet, so it might be fun for him to see this happen before it became a posthumous sort of honor.