B: …which I personally think that, if you’re doing any kind of serious Fantasy gaming under whatever system, a person should go out and grab a copy, whether it’s the PDF available online or a used copy from a second-hand bookstore. It’s an amazing work.
G: <chuckles> I still have people e-mailing me saying “Y’know, I reread that book very often!” and I have to confess it’s been a long time since I’ve cracked it to more than reference a chart or two. Y’know, your own writing is sort of like your own cooking.
B: Oh yeah, I do a lot of the cooking around here so I know where you’re coming from.
G: It isn’t that much fun to eat what you’ve cooked!
B: As Dungeons and Dragons, or AD&D, D&D as a whole, matured and you looked down the road and said “Well, we’ve got AD&D. We’ve got rules spread across Dragon Magazine, Unearthed Arcana, Wilderness Survival Guide, Dungeoneer’s Survival Guide…”
G: Well, those two were really Second Edition products…
B: That’s a good lead in to my next question then – of your own work, how much made it in to what became Second Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons? It came out towards the end of your formal association with TSR…
G: Well, other than the fact that everything they used was basically based off of my original design, zip. I’d left the company.
B: Looking at the FAQ on your own website, I realize that must have been a difficult time for you, seeing what was your “baby” being taken away from you – not, of course, to detract from 1st Edition’s other contributors.
G: Yes, the main thing was…well, there were a couple of things. Number one, the direction of the company was going off in a way that I was very opposed to, with the cheapening of product quality even before 2nd Edition. The original AD&D books were double-stitched school-textbook quality; virtually indestructible. To save a nickel…I said, “Guys, we’re not selling widgets. We don’t want to make the most profit, we want to build long-term customer relationships with high quality products. We always do our best,” and that didn’t fly. It was much the same with the corporate organization. I wanted a more employee-ownership and the people who had controlling shares did not want that.
B: Towards the end there, when you were doing the Dungeons and Dragons Entertainment, Inc., I guess that was out in California, in Dragon Magazine you did mention a few times that there was a Dungeons and Dragons movie in the works. Now as we know back in 2000, a Dungeons and Dragons movie was released…