What is Gygaxian Gaming? A Compendium of Thoughts

The concept of Gygaxian is a relatively recent idea as far as I know. When I started gaming in the spring of 1981 the term was certainly not thrown around, much less a buzz word. When Second Edition came around, and most of the 1e diehards like myself rejected much of the style of the new edition not to mention its rules, we still didn't use the term Gygaxian in making comparisons. We simply knew something was different, and it wasn't just that there were no more demons, devils and risque line art. Something at the heart of the game's presentation changed. Even thought we might have embraced rather solid concepts like specialist wizards, or deity based clerics, or a d10 for initiative, this version wasn't "true" AD&D.

The idea of a distinctly Gygaxian style to differentiate gameplay evolved some time in the late 90's and early 2000's. Soon after it was introduced it became a serious topic of discussion with the rise of the OSR. Since at least that time, attempts to define what Gygaxian even means have been a common project, topic of forum discussions and subject of blog posts again and again. It was not long after the term Gygaxian arose and began to be a clarion call for all that was special about the original game, and especially 1e, that others began using the term in a disparaging way. As is the case with many new words, when trying to ascertain what a word really means can be elucidated as much by critics of the idea as proponents. Thus it is, without prejudice that I present a compendium of thoughts from across the Internet, good and bad, to begin to get an idea of the real core of what this new term Gygaxian might mean.

"Gygaxian: As pertaining to Gary Gygax, late co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons. Noted for extremely lethal traps and puzzles which rewarded the player for proceeding with paranoid caution. Frequently resulting in total party kills or instant death or dismemberment of a character.
Gygaxian dungeon design is credited with the boom in sale of 10-ft poles and halfling "trap springer" rogues ...

Gygaxian: Any extremely deadly trap, puzzle, or predicament in a Dungeons & Dragons adventure. Named for Gary Gygax, creator of D&D and known to create some exceedingly lethal adventure modules, especially the traps. That acid spray trap on that chest was quite Gygaxian." (Link)

"Gygaxian means, Killer Dungeons - after all, he wrote ‘Tomb Of Horrors’, right? Comedy Dungeons - after all, he wrote ‘Dungeonland’, right? Gaming focused on Dungeon Crawling in general - kill monsters, take their stuff. Adversarial gaming, where the referee is the enemy of the players, or at best indifferent to the suffering of their characters. Rules-light gaming - he wrote (or co-wrote, at least) OD&D, right? Rules-heavy gaming - look at all those tables in the AD&D DMG, right? Naturalism - adventures set in a realistic world where monsters behave realistically and have lives and motivations beyond that of merely being adversaries for the player characters. Surrealism - monsters, traps and other encounters appear in random locations with no logical explanation. Prosaic writing - frequent use of words such as ‘antithesis’ and ‘thereof’ and all manner of obscure pieces of vocabulary" (Link)

"Instant kill traps and illogical monster placements ...  intense sense of "GM vs PLAYER" ... Here are the tools you can use to kill the characters ... seem like they were designed to actively disincentivize gaming ... murderous. Insta-kills, bizzarre traps and screwed-up thinking ... arbitrary too... next room contains a chest, a pile of bones, and an orc ... Replace "Gygax" with "Jigsaw" and you are on the right path ... they didn't really have linear plots, so much as lack a defined plot ... If you're in to character continuance and story, Gygaxian dungeons aren't for you. If you're into solving puzzles, fighting monsters, surviving against all odds, and twisting your logic circuits into new configurations, they might be what you're looking for ... Gygaxian modules assume players won't cry when their character dies ... The other thing that made Gygax's dungeons stand out was the descriptions. Someone once referred to this as "the torchlight glints off the brass studs on the door" Gygaxian. You see, hear, feel and most certainly smell a Gygaxian dungeon. Here's a bout of "High Gygaxian" from Vault of the Drow: 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 lichens seems to glow in rose madder and pale damson, the fungi growths in golden and red ochres, vermilions, russets, citron, and aquamarine shades... The place is indeed a dark fairyland ...

And it's not just the PCs. NPCs were also submerged in sensory experience. There's an ogre with a toothache in Temple of Elemental Evil. The orcs don't like the kobolds who don't like the evil cult in Keep on the Borderlands. Perform the proper rituals, and you just might be able to get through parts of Shrine of the Kuo-toa without having to fight anyone. Most of the "modules" way back in the day included some or even most of these elements in them, because Gary's work was the model. But few went to quite the extremes that Mr. Gygax did. He also enjoyed a good excuse to go "infinite monkeys" wacko on you. Both Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth and Castle Greyhawk have a certain "Wonderland" zaniness about them, that random "game show" feel of having to chose between Door #1 (an angry troll), Door #2 (ten pounds of sugar guarded by six giant killer bees) or Door #3 (a might crown atop a pile of gleaming treasure). There was an excuse for this wackiness, but it was always a bit of a thin one, and these were never my favorite examples of his work ... Gygaxian dungeons are all about a GM's call ... Gygaxian Dungeons are incredibly dangerous and somewhat random and arbitrary in the implementation of this danger ... When my character survived an old school AD&D adventure, I felt like I earned something! ... another feature of Gygaxian works (modules or otherwise): if you want to read an entire book and understand everything without grabbing a dictionary, Gygax probably isn't for you. He loved himself some obscure words ... cruel, sadistic, bizarre, and byzantine. It seems like Gygax is going out of his way to grind his players. Especially given that he rolls dice behind a screen, out of their view. "Oh, I'm sorry, all your belongings have been stolen, and a creature (not the one that stole your stuff) comes thru the window and attacks you. I guess you feel pretty stupid for spending 5000gp this way, huh? Oh, well. Roll for initiative. ... No, GYGAX was LAWFUL evil. The very definition.

See, it says right here IN THE RULES that I get to grind you, so don't come crying to me. I rolled it fair and square, you knew the risks ... Mr. Gygax was never, that I could see, about brutalizing players. He was about challenging them, certainly, and giving them something fresh and different every time they played. That, I think, is still the point of his recent work. Yes, Tomb of Horrors is a horrendous meat-grinder of a dungeon, but everybody knew that before they played it. The dungeon was infamous for that, so it's not like anyone who jumped into it was surprised. (Ok, the folks who faced it at its convention debut might have been surprised, but convention play was also notorious for being brutal.) Likewise, it's not like the risks of Leomund's Secret Chest were hidden from the players. They could read the description and calculate the risks themselves ... "High Gygaxian" is purple, waaaay over the top, and full of $5 words with Latin pedigrees and far too many syllables. It's also specific about tiny details to an insane degree and can inspire a table-top version of "pixel bitching ... See - I don't see that as asshattery. I see it as "powerful spells are risky, you little twerp, so don't whine if your oh-so-cool disappearing chest that holds a ridiculous amount of stuff has a FIVE PERCENT chance of disappearing with your loot" and also, as GM, perhaps I need to get rid of some player loot so they have some damn incentive to get back to the dungeon where they belong! ... You call it "ass-hattery", I call it "making magic mysterious and capricious" I can understand YMMV, but insinuating that -- because Gygax liked his magic to be more than just cookie-cutter recipes that always work exactly as intended -- Gygax must have been a misanthrope is just totally out of line ... Here's my memory of a classic Gygaxian Dungeon Moment: A magic fountain, which has a different effect every time someone drank from it--results could range from sex change to gaining a stat point to swallowing acid, with it being totally up to the All-Powerful Dice. Why would anyone BUILD something like that, much less have it sitting in their living-room? Oh, yeah--awizarddidit. Because the wizard is a psychotic, evil fuck. Or a Demon having a good day. Or, because the god of strife hates everything about you, but knows the only way anyone will ever drink from that fountain is if there might be a benefit of some sort ... Why would any wizard burn all the XP to create the tons of magic items that are around in any D&D game? Anybody on Nehwon ... Read much mythology... ancient Sumerian, Babylonian, Celtic, Chinese, Norse, Greek? They're full of shit like that. Or for that matter, Dolorous Garde ... By the gods, there was a time when magic was MAGIC. When it took EFFORT and SKILL and finding octopus ink, the feather of a phoenix, powdered gems and WEEKS of work to make a magic item. That wizard who made the fountain that messes with you? HE DID IT BECAUSE HE WAS A FREAKIN' MASTER OF MAGIC, (or was batshit insane) - either way, you were in AWE of something like that. It was bizzare, dangerous and memorable." (Link)

""Gygaxian Naturalism." I realize that I've never actually explained what I mean by this phrase. As I use it, it refers to a tendency, present in the OD&D rules and reaching its fullest flower in AD&D, to go beyond describing monsters purely as opponents/obstacles for the player characters by giving game mechanics that serve little purpose other than to ground those monsters in the campaign world ... The intention behind Gygaxian Naturalism is to paint a picture of a "real" world, which is to say, a world that exists for reasons other than purely gaming ones ... A consequence of Gygaxian Naturalism is that it grounds D&D a bit more in a pseudo-reality. (Link)

"Whatever other virtues later editions of Dungeons & Dragons may possess, none of them can compare to the baroque splendor of High Gygaxian speech. It is, hands down, the one thing I miss most about D&D. Reading Gygax at his florid best -- even when he's misusing words, which he sometimes did -- transports me in a way that no other gaming books ever have. Consider this classic description of the alignment restrictions on the assassin class: Assassins are evil in alignment (perforce, as the killing of humans and other intelligent life for the purpose of profit is basically held to be the antithesis of weal) ... High Gygaxian speech sounds to me like a local dialect of High Vancian. I once told Gary my opinion on this and he demurred. He didn't think his own peculiar voice was anywhere as erudite and witty as that of Jack Vance, saying that it was mostly the result of his having read a lot of rather "old fashioned" books when he was a kid, coupled with his lifelong love of dictionaries and thesauruses. Even so, there's something rapturous about the way Gary wrote and it's part of the lasting appeal 1e has for me. There are hints of it in OD&D, even in the three little brown books, but it's not until later that it reaches its fullest flower ... High Gygaxian was a major influence on me as a kid. I know that my vocabulary grew considerably as a result of reading my AD&D books. His writing was challenging and often difficult to decipher. (Link)

"Unusual dungeons with endless rooms and unusual traps and creatures in said rooms ... little concern seemed to be given to the ecology of the dungeon. For instance, there were lots of corridor traps and room traps but the wandering monsters that were roaming around never seemed to set them off. In addition, lots of nasty creatures would live in rooms next to each other but they never seemed to do anything other than wait for adventuring parties to enter their lair

 ... alignment languages, silly dungeons that would have cost my character several million gp to duplicate the stupid magical effects that were encountered which made me wonder why they existed in the first place ... the barbarian ...  polearms polearms polearms,

exceptional STR ... "humorous" methods of humiliating PCs ... To me, "Gygaxian" is a pejorative ... Fantasy is more based off the work of pulp stories than LotR. Archetype over superheroes. It's a game, not a virtual secondary life. It's about fantasy and the game, not about silly modern PC politics. Stupidity isn't rewarded ... Mindless dungeon crawls. Cheesy technology words based on the name Gygax....ie. Gygaxite. (Including the ever-popular "my or one of my friend's names, spelled backwards" (Xagyg, Drawmij, etc.)) Gleep Wurp "the Eyebiter" ... Horrible name conventions. A total disregard for story, plot, character development. Gold as prime motivator for "heroes" Alignment languages Planes centered primarily upon simplistic alignment concepts. DnD is supposed to be humanocentric thus level limits for nonhumans ... Filling out your character's last will and testament. Knowning what a bec de corbin is. Appreciating Lord of the Rings, but LOVING Ill Met in Lankhmar. Save or die ... Gygax is a sesquipadalian wordsmith. That's part of the reason Jack Vance's work appealed to him. The "...horrible naming conventions..." were Vancian also ... Gygaxian= Straight, fun, intense gaming without the attempt to try improv theater and deep psychological experiments at the gaming table. Encounters that ask for all the wits of the players, but they are still manageable. Things are not laid out in front of the players, they have to actually do some work to come up with conclusions. A certain style of writing that one does not see that much nowadays. you can actually die in the game. Etc, etc, etc.... I think the biggest mistake that a lot of people make is that they mistake Gygaxian playstyle with Deathtrap Dungeon gaming where the chance to die in is 99.9%. Perhaps it is due to the fact that everyone falls back to Tomb of Horrors when they try to come up with that kind of argument ... Gygaxian means the characters have no skills because the players are expected to ... "Gygaxian" killer-DM'ing ... No, and in fact Gary has an entire section of the old DMG devoted to that topic. Killer DMs are no fun to Gary just like DMs who give everything away disproportionate to challenge aren't fun. Gygaxian adventures often do however, involve a bit of critical thinking, even if the thinking is not open to all possible outcomes. Often, in Gary's adventures, there is a "right" answer and a "wrong" answer; however, what ISN'T said in the adventures, and left as an unspoken rule, is that the DM is open to interpret creative thinking, and I think often people miss this in looking at the adventures with hindsight ... Descriptions rather verbose with often obscure vocabulary. The adventure does not have any sort of innate plot. Actual dungeon area just a description of encounters, not much overview on how it fits together. Encounters often extremely challenging tactically. Monsters often guard treasure relating to their special abilities (e.g. basilisk guards protection from petrification scroll). Often a large foe at the end that may be extremely difficult to find and extremely difficult to defeat ... For me, "Gygaxian" means: 1) Mostly dungeon crawling. 2) Less roleplaying, more combat. 3) Lots of cool names. Sure, some of you may scoff at "a friend's name spelled backwards" but thinking of a character's name is one of the hardest things for me. Drawmij and Zagyg are perfect D&D names; perhaps Ekul the Gnome would work. And don't forget the best names ever in D&D: Fonkin Hoddypeak and Beek Gwenders of Croodle! 4) More situations resolved by DM arbitration rather than dice rolls (e.g. puzzles, traps, etc. that require player decisions as opposed to character skill checks). 5) Classic monsters. Even ones inspired by little plastic toys....bulette, rust monster, etc ... I don't see any overwhelming problem with a "Gygaxian" game or module; it seems that this style is better for non-campaign play, such as one-shot modules, or a series of adventures that are not interconnected ... 1. Stakes in Combat…such as Character Sheets 2. Player ingenuity versus Dungeon Master ingenuity, to the end of sport 3. Style: unabashed egotism and self-promotion, wit, flair, bluster 4. Unfettered curiosity 5. Game over campaign, campaign over players 6. Authoritarianism 7. Game mechanics to facilitate, not constitute, a tactical challenge 8. Aesthetic dogma: not pulp, but modernist: make it new. (Link)

"It means different things to different people, but to me a "Gygaxian Dungeon" is one where things are just slapped about randomly, such as large monsters stuck in a room they couldn't actually get into or out of, but somehow live long enough to be killed by players. Or by having an orc nest with "drinking water" and "deadly acid" sitting side by side in barrels. Or a pack of wolves who have a suit of magic plate armor in their den for no real reason. If it's silly and absurd, it fills the criteria ... Gygaxian, for me, means quirky, detailed, rich, sometimes intricate, and sometimes arbitrary fun. For an adventure, I'd expect it to be about people banding together to solve a problem, usually the problem caused by evil in our world; combat might be a part of that but it wasn't always the focus. It was about low power, low angst, high heroism, high detail, often improvisational gaming, where the world is magical, steeped in mythical themes, deadly, fascinating. Failure=death;

"there was no guarantee of glory and success, only the hope of it. It means the DM runs the game, not the books, and the players are expected to immerse themselves and contribute personality, excitement, ideas and color ... The DM was expected to know the rules, and the DM's word was final, even over the rulebook. The game centered on the adventure, most typically the dungeon, which was expected to be overcome by the cleverness of the players and not their stats or rules in the books. Death, especially at low levels, was a given. Games were humanocentric and generally draw their tone and elements (although not usually the plot) from (mostly American) fantasy fiction written before the 1970s -- the real "sword & sorcery" genre. Demihumans were in the game, as a sop to major fans of Tolkien, but not expected to take the big prize. Demihumans were frequently limited in both class and level ... I don't think "Gygaxian" is random so much as very eclectic, highly improvised stuff, in an anything-goes sort of atmosphere. The subject matter is based off of Jack Vance, Clark Ashton Smith, and R. E. Howard - but neck-deep in purple prose and contorted syntax ... more room for maneuver on the part of the DM. One of the things that made modules of that time great was that no 2 DMs ran them the same. Adventures published after EGGs time at TSR seemed to add more detail than was necessary...IMO this makes adventures more difficult to modify for an individuals campaign. Rules can be thought of in the same way, the more detailed they are, the more constrained game play becomes. Fewer rules, lighter on the descriptions, more work from a prep perspective but all these things make campaigns unique ... Principally characterized by an inordinate fondness for pole-arms ... High adventure, heroism, devious puzzles and deadly traps, great riches that can only be earned by taking a correspondingly great risk, iron-thewed warriors holding off hordes of screaming monsters, black-hearted wizards spreading their evil over the land ... challenge the players, not the character stats" -- emphasis on player skill and DMs adjudicating actions on the fly. Once the skills, feats, etc. were rigorously defined in the 3e PHB, the game had pretty well moved away from being playable in the Gygax style, as the rule book -- not the DM -- was the primary engine for in-world causality. (My own theory is that 90% of game design over the last 30 years or so has been oriented toward minimizing the impact of a bad GM. This makes it antithetical to Gygax's philosophy, which was that you should play with a good GM.) As for the "ridiculous/hard module" definition of Gygaxian, I think that's due to the various tournament modules, especially Tomb of Horrors, that were meant to be ludicrously hard. From what I've read, they weren't exactly exemplary of what Gygax ran in his own games ... Gygaxian to me usually means a combination of illogical randomness, an obsessive level of meaningless detail, and pointless overcomplication. Dragons stuck in rooms they couldn't have gotten inside. Goblins living sandwiched between trapped rooms. Orcs guarding chests for no discernible reason. Dungeons that don't really have a purpose. Dungeons that couldn't be used for their stated purpose. 15 or so different stat blocks for "pointy thing on a stick". Prostitute chart. THAC0. Abilities rated 3-18 ... I would define the term Gygaxian as a pastiche of elements drawn from disparate works of genre fiction and real-world mythology, juxtaposed for the purpose of creating a milieu characterized by action, adventure, and danger, where there is no expectation of protagonist survival, characters are broadly drawn and generally free of angst or ambivalence, and the whole is characterized by underlying dry humor and sense of whimsy. Player: "Will this campaign be swashbuckling adventure, grimy sword & sorcery, cosmic horror, western, planetary romance, Tolkienesque high fantasy, or urban intrigue? Gygaxian DM: "Yes."" ... Magic cloaks that are indistinguishable from every other magic cloak in the game, but which kill you with no saving throw if you use them. Also necklaces, goggles, rugs, scarabs, tridents, etc. (I guess that's what hirelings are for.) Puzzles that are solved like Infocom text adventures. Do something random in a random place and see if anything happens. "You cannot have a meaningful campaign if strict time records are not kept." This was all in caps in the 1st Edition DMG, but I'll spare you. "Other Non-Player Characters: The host of merchants, shopkeepers, guardsmen, soldiers, clerics, magic-users, fighters, thieves, assassins, etc. are likewise yours to play...Dealing with all such NPCs should be expensive and irritating." ... Gygaxian dungeon: Bizarre hole in the ground, mapped out on graph paper, populated by a bizarre menagerie of creatures who exist to be killed by the player character. Gygaxian prose/rules: Stream of consciousness writing, dozens of tables for strange miscellanea.  Gygaxian monster: A monster with strange physiology uniquely suited to the conceit of the Gygaxian dungeon, often with a "gimmick" to kill or impede players. Rust monster, gelatinous cube any monster designed to look like furniture or clothing, et cetera. (Link)

"the concept is integral to D&D.  Broadly speaking, Gygaxian naturalism is the mechanical expression of world simulationism.  Outside the sphere of D&D, I would describe it as “immersive mechanics,” or “rules expressing game reality through mechanical function.”  It’s the marriage of fluff and crunch, usually accompanied by lots of random tables..  By fleshing out the fantasy world through Gygaxian naturalism, D&D creates the illusion of a fantasy world–a world that might exist, at least within the imagination ... Here, the character are explorers, moving through uncharted wildernesses and strange locales.  Gygaxian naturalism provides an environment in which this style of game flourishes, reinforcing the idea of being an adventurer in an unfamiliar world ... Although old-school gaming is characterized by a “GM as god” mentality, Gygaxian naturalism reduces GM agency.  Although the GM acts the rules arbiter, it is implied that monsters behave in a specific way without the GM’s input.  This is the heart of Gygaxian naturalism.  It attempts to simulate a cohesive fantasy world that operates separately from the whims of the players.  The world exists, and they experience it ... The developers (of 3.5/4e) understood that Gygaxian naturalism cannot coexist with mechanical balance.  Gygaxian naturalism exists to portray a fantastical world, not create a finely-tuned system of balanced encounters.  Consider the demilich.  There’s a chance that the demilich will be a creature of dust that will dissipate without attacking, and there’s a chance that some fool of a Took will touch the skull and instantly kill everyone in the party.  An encounter with a demilich can vary from a (relatively) peaceful to sudden death, dependent on chance and the actions of the players.  Such is impossible to balance–again, by design.  One can create better balance in such a game, but it will never be as simple or easy or balanced as a game that eschews Gygaxian naturalism.  Naturally, with the problems of 3e demanding solutions, the D&D 4e developers removed Gygaxian naturalism in favor of balance.  Unfortunately, they threw out 3e’s baby with the bathwater. (Link)

Art by Jason Sholtis, published in his book, Operation Unfathomable

"Once upon a time Gygaxian Unnaturalism was the default assumption for DnD. In it, the world essentially plays favorites between PCs and monsters (unfortunately, the favorites are not you) and logic is more or less thrown out the window as far as stocking dungeons. Monsters rarely fight among themselves and will instead team up in odd combinations to fight you, doors refuse to open for you but swing easily for them, rooms are randomly arranged and dressed. In short, the dungeon is a bizarre place more the testing ground of a mad wizard than a realistic ecology simulator ... After all, there probably are some mad wizards out there crafting strange dungeons with little rhyme or reason. But for an entire campaign to operate this way chafes the sensibilities of those who expect their game world to make a little more sense. Here are three explanations why an entire campaign world might operate under a state of Gygaxian Unnaturalism. Players and characters may not be aware of these reasons but discovering them can be a fun campaign arc ... The Live Earth ... Lovecraftian Unnaturalism ... Divine Judgment. (Link)

"There are guidelines here, but the DM is going to create this world and then the other people who are players are going to contribute to it and this becomes the world that you play in and that you share. There are no boundaries, no board. Earlier Gygax was let's get down to the dungeon, you're there at the beginning of the dungeon. I'm gonna describe things to you. I remember reading through B2 recently when I wrote the forewords for Goodman Games. I read the instructions on how to run the dungeon, was like listening to my dad talk. Cause I was like, wait, this is exactly like he did things. He gave advice like, don't let them see the map, be somewhat vague if they don't know the exact measurements. Part of the game was exploration portion of it. So you had to figure out this dungeon, the design of it, find any areas that looked suspicious, like maybe why does the 60 by 60 area there are no apparent entrances to, but there's a whole bunch of passages everywhere else. This kind of stands out. You'd have to figure that out, like maybe there's a secret door there, or you know you'd have to do a little bit of the exploration of the unknown,. kind of figure out the puzzle, or rhyme or reason to it. What's hidden down here, because there are gonna be things hidden. That was part of the game. Not just throwing the dice, but talking about what you are going to do and describing a tech unique or a tactic. Because there wasn't skills that you could fall back on. So if you wanted to do something you kind had to say well this is what we're gonna do. Or, you don't really have a skills in this area, but if you can tell me what you're gonna do maybe I'll give you a little bit of a bonus to figure it out. So I think those were some of the parameters that were the expectations that he would have when you were playing. You had to be thinking, you had to be on your toes. You had to be aware of your surroundings and everything that was going on when you were there. So, typically if you're in a dungeon adventure, you'd be like okay you descend down the stairs and you force open the door , cause you had to roll to open the doors because they are all swollen dungeons doors. You step into a ten foot wide corridor to the east and west. Your torchlight sheds twenty feet down the passageway each direction and you could look round and describe it, but it would be ten feet, twenty or thirty feet to the sought the passage continues west or whatever the case may be. And you're mapping and figuring it out.  When you defeated the creature you had to look for the treasure. It wasn't always just laying there. You had to be investigative, it was pat of the puzzle, it's solving a puzzle, so there wasn't a lot of freebies. Gygax was a parsimonious dungeon master. So you when you got something when you were playing with my dad you know you earned it. It felt good, and lose those items or use them frivolously cause you weren't sure if you were gonna get just any more potions of extra healing or flying, or whatever. Yo couldn't go buy that stuff. There was no buying magic items. If you wanted to sell magic items, people would buy them from you, and then they'd go disappear and you'd never see them again. There was no magic store or stuff like that. I guess there's old school in that sense a lot of times. Later on when he was writing for other things other than D&D and people, the expectations had changed. Folks wanted more a setting, and descriptions and things like that, well sure he did that and he would. Wasn't always my most fun playtest when we're playtesting all the various shops in the bazaar. We were like can we go to the dungeon? No, no you gotta go check out this pat of the merchants' section. But it added that more layers and a little bit more of the interactions and shopping and the roleplay and talking with and between the DM and discovering things that way. It evolved over time. But the early days going through Greyhawk it was more puzzles, puzzle solving, problem solving, strategy, figuring it out." (Link)

Luke Gygax, 2nd Son of Gary Gygax

The fact is there is some degree of truth in most of these statements, even the apparently contradictory ones. As with many things it is all a matter of perspective. Next time we might collate some of these ideas and see what we can come up with as a common denominator of what Gygaxian means. And more than that determine if such a definition is in itself too limiting to encompass what Gargy Gygax established at the dawn of a new age.