10 Gygaxian Things I Love
1. The Gygaxian Naming Convention
Just take your name and mix up the letters a bit. Instant archmage name! See Zagyg the mad, the Ring of Gax, Gygar of Castle Mistamere, etc.etc. (Even, if rumours can be believed, Arneson’s EGG of Coot.)


2. Treasure hoard descriptions
No-one described treasure with the fetishistic inventiveness of Gygax.
All furnishings are of ebony or black stone. Silver inlay is usual. The wardrobe holds various garments and the priestess’ vestments of mauve, black, and plum, stitched with gold. This garment is set with 10 violet garnets (500gp each), 10 topazes (500gp each), 10 black opals (1,000gp each), and 10 oriental amethysts (1,000gp each). Note that it is covered with a plain black wrapper to protect it. On the dressing table are 2 combs, a brush, 4 pins, and 10 unguent and cosmetic jars. These items are of onyx and silver, set with tiny gems. Each is worth 200 to 800 gp...


3. The Vault of the Drow
The Vault is a strange anomaly, a hemispherical cyst in the crust of the earth, an incredibly huge domed fault over 6 miles long and nearly as broad. The dome overhead is a hundred feet high at the walls, arching to several thousand feet of height in the center. When properly viewed, the radiation from certain unique minterals give the visual effect of a starry heaven, while near the zenith of this black stone bowl is a huge mass of tumkeoite - which in its slow decay and transformation to lacofcite sheds a lurid gleam, a ghostly plum-colored light to human eyes, but with ultravision a wholly different sight.
The small ‘star’ nodes glow in radiant hues of mauve, lake, violet, puce, lilac and deep blue. The large “moon” of tumkeoite casts beams of shimmering amethyst which touch the crystalline formations with colors unknown to any other visual experience. The luchens seem toglow in rose madder and pale damson, the fungi growths in golden and red ochres, vermillions, russets, citron, and aquamarine shades... The rock wall softhe Vault appear hazy and insubstantial in the wine-colored light, more like mist than solid wallls. The place is indeed a dark fairyland...


4. Character Names
Check out the cast of characters used in the original Against the Giants tournament at Gen Con ‘78: Gleep Wurp the Eyebiter (human MU), Cloyer Bulse the Magsman (human thief), Roakey Swerked (human cleric), Frush O’Suggill (human fighter), Flerd Trantle (human cleric), Redmod Dumple (dwarf fighter), Faffle Dwe’omercraeft (human MU - love the apostrophe), Beek Gwenders of Croodle (half-elf ranger), and everyone’s favourite, Fonkin Hoddyspeak (high elf fighter/MU). You know you’re in Gygaxian hands when the sheet you get handed bears a name like that.


5. The Alignment System
Yeah, I kinda hate it too. But I’m glad it exists. Gygax stamped a strong vision on D&D with this system, and the two-dimensional frame, Law-Chaos and Good-Evil, allowed for a surprising amount of complexity. Take Gary’s World of Greyhawk, which was full of neutral nations squabbling against each other, as an example of application and you’re left with a game that actively evades simple morality. It would not be stretching too far from the truth to interpret all of the early Greyhawk games as an interrogation of the very idea of “neutrality”.


6. The DMG Appendices
So much mad genius in those DMG appendices. Like Appendix J: Herbs, Spices and Medicinal Vegetables. ( burdock - laxative, tuberculosis, more ) and Appendix K: Describing Magical Substances ( Some Dungeon Masters have difficulty describing the contents of potion bottles, magical elixirs, and like liquid substances. The lists below give the appearance of liquids, colors, tastes, and smells. These various descriptive ords will serve the DM in good stead when preparing level keys or when ‘winging it’. ) and the delightful Appendix N: Inspirational and Educational Reading.

But in particular, the oddities of the encounter tables. How there’s a table for “Sub-Arctic Conditions”, “Temperate Conditions”, and “Pleistocene Conditions”. How wonderful is the mindset revealed by treating “pleistocene” as a condition? And the fact that you can roll up a large walled castle with keep as a random encounter? And let’s not forget the Harlot type subtable for city encounters: 0-10 Slovenly trull, 11-25 Brazen strumpet, 26-35 Cheap trollop...


7: The Mighty Servant of Leuk-O
In the Artifacts in the DMG, this device is as core-D&D as it comes, and yet it is mostly forgotten except by the Greyhawk grognards.
The Mighty Servant of the famous General Leuk-O is a towering automaton of crystal, unnown metals, and strange fibrous material. It is over 9’tall, 6’ deep and some 4 1/2’ wide. Inside is a compartment suitable for holding 2 man-sized creatures, and there is space for 4-5 others to sit outside.
I love the idea of roaming around the countryside on your crystal mech with four of your mates perched on its oversize shoulders, looking for random castles to fight. Awesome.


8: RPG Mashup Culture
Gygax set the tone of D&D: unlike the anachronism-wary military wargames that spawned it, everything was fair game. Monsters and treasures and weapons from every culture on earth, and every neat fantasy novel, all mashed together into a gloriously messy chaos. Anything goes.


9: Lareth the Beautiful
Lareth the Beautiful is the dark hope if chaotic evil - young, handsome, well-endowed in abilities and aptitudes, thoroughly wicked, depraved and capricious. Whomever harms Lareth had best not brag of it in the presence of one who will inform the Demoness Lolth!


10: The Face of the Great Green Devil
The ultimate “heh heh heh” encounter for DMs everywhere. If you know it, you know it. If you don’t... be thankful.