I've been reading and listening to a lot of material about Gygax and the origins of D&D lately: Playing at the World, The Game Wizards, When We Were Wizards... It's been interesting to learn so much about him, and his creative process (in collaboration with many others, of course, Dave Arneson chief among them) and it's crystalised some thoughts I've had about the man's genius and the nature of it.
I have a tendency to throw words out there pretty lightly, and to make overblown statements without thinking them through (usually for attempted comedy). But I actually do think Gygax is a genius. When I think about how far-reaching and influential his work has been, in pop culture in general and video games in particular, it's hard not to come to that conclusion. Perhaps this is just me in my particular pop-culture bubble, but I feel like I see his fingerprints everywhere I look.
I wouldn't say he's a creative genius. Certainly he was no slouch in that area, but I think his true genius lay in synthesis, in blending the ideas of others into a workable whole. When most people think of "fantasy" these days, it's a fair bet they are picturing something akin to a D&D world. And yes, most of them will look more than a little like Tolkien... But then most of them will also have monsters from various real world mythologies and folklore, a patchwork historical setting similar to Howard's Hyboria, elements from old pulp novels, from Lovecraft, from Lieber, from Vance... That was the base, anyway, with more elements being added to the generic fantasy stew as time went on. But that initial "kitchen sink" fantasy setting, as far as I can tell, was brought into to the world and popularised by D&D and its earliest creators. I might be overlooking something here, but I don't think so.
I don't think the above is a big secret, or something that wasn't readily understood by most fantasy gamers. But what's become more apparent of late is how much of a synthesis the original rules of D&D were also. The discovery of Len Patt's "Rules for Middle Earth", with their obvious influence on Gygax's CHAINMAIL Fantasy Supplement, has thrown this into sharp relief. The OD&D rules draw on many sources: CHAINMAIL, Len Patt's rules, the wilderness exploration from Avalon Hill's boardgame Outdoor Survival, Dave Arneson's Blackmoor notes, the aerial rules from Mike Carr's Fight in the Skies, the naval rules from Gygax and Arneson's Don't Give Up the Ship... There are no doubt other things I'm overlooking, or sources that have yet to be discovered.
The takeaway is that, although a genius by my own definition, Gygax's greatest gift wasn't in creating things from whole cloth. His real skill was in combining his own creativity with that of others, taking bits and pieces from every place and combining them into a compelling whole. By some it could be called influence, and by others theft - I think it possibly skirts over that line in some cases, although I can't really speak as to the attitude of wargamers of the day when it came to sharing ideas. Maybe this sort of thing was done by everyone, I have no idea. Regardless, the results spawned an entire industry, and had far-reaching influences on all kinds of media up to the present day (for good or ill). Before D&D blew up, Gygax was supporting his family as a shoe cobbler. You could say that's what he was still doing as an RPG designer: cobbling rules systems and cobbling a whole genre of fantasy. It turned out that cobbling was what he did best.
