The Gygax ’75 Challenge: Conclusion & Links to Other Challengers!

One of the things that I’ve always enjoyed about Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) is the creative outlet it provides me. Unfortunately, for me at least, I’m often a bit scattered in how I build my campaigns. I tend to begin with something I find interesting and then I just build from there – but the…

The Gygax ’75 Challenge: The World Plan

As far as our immediate concerns go for the first few sessions of the game, we’ve accomplished all that is necessary for play; however, there’s some important planning that we should begin sketching out for the future. Our game world needs to have a general plan laid out that will answer a few major questions…

The Gygax ’75 Challenge: The Local Town and All the Trouble

For a Gygax ’75 campaign the world was anchored by two points: the Dungeon, and the Local Town. These two points of interest were to be the major focus of the campaign during the early stages of play, and for Gygax the represented an opportunity to let the game world stretch its legs. He wrote:…

The Gygax ’75 Challenge: Dungeon Level 3

For the Third Level of the Forgotten Temple I’ve decided to include a prison level. There’s a lot going on here that I don’t want to give away so that’s about as much a description as I’m going to have here. Suffice it to say that I'm really excited for when my players make it…

The Gygax ’75 Challenge: The Dungeon, Level 2

With the second level of the Gygax 75 Dungeon I’ve decided to continue with this theme of religious architecture in my dungeon design by emulating the geoglyphs of the Atacama Desert. The Forgotten Temple, Level 2 by Charles Akins This level of the dungeon is significantly larger than the previous one (you’ll need to click…

The Gygax ’75 Challenge: The Dungeon, Level 1

For the first level of my Gygax 75 Dungeon I’m going to be presenting the players with a relatively small level. This is because the dungeon’s first level is going to be the remnants of an ancient temple dedicated to a long-forgotten god which sits above a larger structure. To help create a structure that…

The Gygax ‘75 Challenge: How to Build the Gygax 75 Dungeon

How do you build a dungeon? For Gary Gygax this represented a fundamental question of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) in 1975. In the course of play the players might spend their time exploring the world map, or visiting the town where they’ve established a base, but it was in the dungeon where the real adventure…

The Gygax ’75 Challenge: The Map Around the Dungeon

The second part of the Gygax ’75 Challenge is to create a map of the world. Gary suggests in the article that we use a large piece of hex ruled paper and a scale of 1 hex = 1 mile (or 1.6 km) although he admits to using different scales as well. I don’t have…

The Gygax ’75 Challenge: The Setting of the Campaign

The first step in Gary Gygax’s plan for creating a campaign for Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) is to decide upon the overall setting of your campaign. For me this is typically the hardest part of the whole process because I tend to struggle with self-imposed limitations on what can, and cannot, go into a fantasy…

The Gygax ’75 Challenge: Introduction

Last night I was doing some research for a project I’m working on when I rediscovered an article Gary Gygax wrote for the fanzine EUROPA: 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 article illustrates a…