WORLDS OF GARY GYGAX

We are beyond pleased and honored to announce that the powers that be have released multiple works of the late Gary Gygax to Troll Lord Games for mass-market publication. These include the complete Gygaxian Fantasy World series, Castle Zagyg: Yggsburg, Castle Zagyg: East Mark, Castle Zagyg: The Manse, Castle Zagyg: Mouths of Madness, Castle Zagyg: The Dungeons (including all 17 handcrafted levels and any sublevels), and all related Castle Zagyg adventures such as the Teeth of Barkash Nour, The Halls of Many Panes, The Hermit, and the Kings of England Kings of France boardgame. See below for details.

Our last Kickstarter, Gary Gygax's World Builders Archive is now complete. Thank you all for a wonderful Kickstarter campaign! This finished with the release of the amazing Castle Zagyg Preludes, an introduction to what is coming in the future and all 10 volumes in the series! Thank you all! Our work begins now....

The Kickstarter campaign for Gary Gygax’s The Hermit ended in December of 2023, support for which broke six digits! Fear not if you missed the Kickstarter, for you can pre-order The Hermit on our website and receive yours when it becomes available this spring.

Furthermore, we still have copies of the classic printing of Gary Gygax’s Castle Zagyg: Yggsburgh. This classic reprint relaunched the Gygax Estates properties, and a host of folks came out to order it, support TLG and the Estate, and help launch this whole endeavor. A hearty thanks to all those people, but if you missed it, you can buy yours now on our store. It ships immediately!

The Gygaxian Fantasy Worlds, renamed the World Builders Archive (Check it out here), this collection is an Encyclopedic series envisioned by the co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons, Gary Gygax. He conceived the series as an open-ended collection of role-playing gaming aids for the Game Master and the Player, the specific focus of which was World Building. Written, co-written, or edited by Gygax himself, its intent was to cover all the bases of our gaming world.

The first of these books, The Canting Crew, was published in 2001. Six more volumes followed, and more were planned prior to his passing in 2008.

Now, for the first time since they were pulled from the market in 2008, this collection of Gygaxian knowledge returns to the gaming world. Through this Kickstarter we hope to bring back all seven volumes and possibly more. Join us in recreating part of our gaming heritage and flood your own table with mountains of gaming content.

For a complete list of the Castle Zagyg material see below.

WHY CASTLES & CRUSADES

In 2003 Gary opened a discussion with Steve Chenault about Castle Zagyg. He did not want it to appear under the Dungeons & Dragons name or game system. When the Troll Lords proposed that we make Castles & Crusades compatible with his vision for a game for Castle Zagyg he heartly agreed. Both he and Steve wanted C&C to be near to AD&D, so it worked well. Gary was given the right of approval of the rules, and did so with few corrections, so that when Castle Zagyg: Yggsburgh and Upper were finally published, they launched with the Castles & Crusades SIEGE Engine system. We will pick up with his wishes where we left off in 2008.

We are going to revisit Gary Gygax’s Castle Zagyg like never before, but much like we intended in years past. This project is massive!

Mike Stewart, known for his Victorious RPG and many adventures like Shadows of the Halfling Hall, has come on board as the head writer. But he won’t be alone, Luke Gygax joins him as does James M. Ward, Jason Vey, Jeremy Farkas and Davis Chenault. Peter Bradley and Bill Edmunds on cartography.

This project will include several major areas:
Castle Zagyg The City of Yggsburg
Castle Zagyg Yggsburg Environs (24 neighborhoods of the city)
The East Mark Setting
Castle Zagyg: The Manse & Mouths of Madness
Castle Zagyg: The Dungeons, 17 levels

We’ve not yet settled on an organizational format but have settled on hardcover books with pockets in the back to hold the many maps that will come with this set.

MISSION STATEMENT

We are going to try to stay as true to Gary Gygax’s vision of his work as we possibly can. Steve and Davis Chenault and Peter Bradley all worked closely with Gary for almost 8 years and have a pretty good handle on what he wanted. On top of this, we will be consulting with family members such as Ernie and Luke Gygax, and long time friends like James M. Ward and Jeffrery Talanian to make these works as close to Gary’s vision as we can. New art! New maps! Layout and all, but Gary through and through.

There is so much more to work on. Gary’s creative output was unmatched and even in the wanning years it continued to grow.

Now that the extremely successful Kickstarter for The Hermit has moved to preorders (preorder here), we move toward bringing that fabled adventure to your table.

But there is more. The Hall of Many Panes is on the deck. This massive planar adventure, written by Gary and originally published in 2005, is a monument to the bizarre and genius that was Gary’s gift to us all. We’ll bring this on up to date and republish in full color!

One of the projects near and dear to his heart was the Kings of England, Kings of France board game. We are going to dust off the old maps and playing pieces and bring this one back to the fold.

Castle Zagyg Environs

The City Neighborhoods 19 Areas:
Citadel End, Grand Temple & College District, Bhurghers’ Quarter, Gray Friars, Bridgegate Markets, High Gardens, Jewel District, Rivergate Quarter, East Corner, The Dargs, Storehouse District, Moatgate District, Town Halls District, West Market Sector, The Rakes, The Manors, Gaming District, Mixed Company District

The Outs 5 Areas: 20 Riverman’s Town, East Road & the Insiders, The Mills and Scalesbank, Hookton, The Five Farms, & Y’s Cemetary, Watergate Bridge & Newtown
Teeth of Braknous Nour

In the 1960s, Gygax created an organization of wargaming clubs and founded the Gen Con gaming convention. In 1971, he helped develop Chainmail, a miniatures wargame based on medieval warfare. He co-founded the company Tactical Studies Rules (TSR, Inc.) with childhood friend Don Kaye in 1973. The next year, he and Arneson created D&D, which expanded on Gygax's Chainmail and included elements of the fantasy stories he loved as a child. The same year, he founded The Dragon, a magazine based around the new game. In 1977, Gygax began work on a more comprehensive version of the game, called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. He designed numerous manuals for the game system, as well as several pre-packaged adventures called "modules" that gave a person running a D&D game (the "Dungeon Master") a rough script and ideas for how to run a game scenario. In 1983, he worked to license the D&D product line into the successful D&D cartoon series.

After leaving TSR in 1986 over conflicts with its new majority owner, Gygax continued to create role-playing game titles independently, beginning with the multi-genre Dangerous Journeys in 1992. He designed another gaming system, Lejendary Adventure, released in 1999. In 2005, Gygax was involved in the Castles & Crusades role-playing game, which was conceived as a hybrid between the third edition of D&D and the original version of the game conceived by Gygax.