The Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association (LGTSA) was a prominent wargaming club active in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin during the early 1970s.
Lake Geneva is a city in Walworth County, Wisconsin, USA. The population was 7,651 at the 2010 census. A resort city located on Geneva Lake, it is popular with vacationers from the Chicago and Milwaukee areas.
At its inception around February and March 1970, it was originally known as the Lake Geneva Tactical Games Association, though this name gave way to 'LGTSA' within weeks. [1] Its early membership included Gary Gygax, Terry and Rob Kuntz, Ernie Gygax, Jeff Perren, Mike Reese, Leon Tucker, and Don Kaye. [2] The group usually met weekly in Gygax's basement. [3] [4] Brian Blume joined the LGTSA in the summer of 1973. [5] When Gygax and Kaye founded Tactical Studies Rules (later TSR, Inc.) in 1973 to publish Dungeons & Dragons, they echoed part of the name of the LGTSA in the name of their new company; Blume later soon joined the partnership. The LGTSA continued to exist as a wargaming group well after the publication of Dungeons & Dragons.
Ernest Gary Gygax was an American game designer and author best known for co-creating the pioneering role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) with Dave Arneson.
Terry Kuntz, born December 25, 1953, in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, is a game designer who was an early associate of Gary Gygax and employee of TSR.
Robert J. Kuntz is a game designer and author of role-playing game publications. He is best known for his contributions to various Dungeons & Dragons-related materials.
Greyhawk, also known as the World of Greyhawk, is a fictional world designed as a campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy roleplaying game. Although not the first campaign world developed for Dungeons & Dragons—Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign predated it by over a year — the world of Greyhawk closely identified with the development of the game from 1972 until 2008. The world itself started as a simple dungeon under a castle designed by Gary Gygax for the amusement of his children and friends, but it rapidly expanded to include not only a complex multi-layered dungeon environment, but also the nearby city of Greyhawk, and eventually an entire world. In addition to the campaign world, which was published in several editions over twenty years, Greyhawk was also used as the setting for many adventures published in support of the game, as well as for RPGA's massively shared Living Greyhawk campaign from 2000–2008.
TSR, Inc. was an American game publishing company and the publisher of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D).
Blackmoor is a fantasy role-playing game campaign setting generally associated with the game Dungeons & Dragons. It originated in the early 1970s as the personal setting of Dave Arneson, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, first as a setting for Arneson's miniature wargames, then as an early testing ground for what would become D&D.
Gen Con is the largest tabletop-game convention in North America by both attendance and number of events. It features traditional pen-and-paper, board, and card games, including role-playing games, miniatures wargames, live action role-playing games, collectible card games, and strategy games. Gen Con also features computer games. Attendees engage in a variety of tournament and interactive game sessions. In 2015, Gen Con had 61,423 unique attendees, making it one of the largest conventions in North America.
Chainmail is a medieval miniature wargame created by Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren. Gygax developed the core medieval system of the game by expanding on rules authored by his fellow Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association (LGTSA) member Perren, a hobby-shop owner with whom he had become friendly. Guidon Games released the first edition of Chainmail in 1971 as its first miniature wargame and one of its three debut products. Chainmail was the first game designed by Gygax that was available for sale as a professional product. It included a heavily Tolkien-influenced "Fantasy Supplement", which made Chainmail the first commercially available set of rules for fantasy wargaming, though it follows many hobbyist efforts from the previous decade. Dungeons & Dragons began as a Chainmail variant, and Chainmail pioneered many concepts later used in Dungeons & Dragons, including armor class and levels, as well as various spells, monsters and magical powers.
Guidon Games produced board games and rulebooks for wargaming with miniatures, and in doing so influenced Tactical Studies Rules, the publisher of Dungeons & Dragons. The Guidon Games publishing imprint was the property of Lowrys Hobbies, a mail-order business owned by Don and Julie Lowry. About a dozen titles were released under the imprint from 1971 to 1973.
Don't Give Up the Ship is a set of rules for conducting Napoleonic era naval wargames. The game was published by Guidon Games in 1972 and republished by TSR, Inc. in 1975. It was the first collaboration between Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax, the co-creators of Dungeons & Dragons. D&D fans may also recognize the name of contributor Mike Carr, who edited the rules and researched the historical single ship actions that are included as game scenarios.
The International Federation of Wargaming (IFW) was a wargaming club operated from 1967 to early 1970s.
The Castle & Crusade Society was a chapter of the International Federation of Wargaming dedicated to medieval miniature wargaming.
Cavaliers and Roundheads is a set of rules for English Civil War miniature wargaming. It was written by Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren and published by Tactical Studies Rules in 1973. The unassuming booklet was the first product released by the company better known for Dungeons and Dragons.
Lenard "Len" Lakofka is an American writer of material for the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. Although never a formal TSR staff member, the company that published the game of Dungeons & Dragons, he was an influential voice in the development of the game. He was one of the playtesters of the game as it was being developed, an editor of early manuscripts, wrote a widely-read monthly D&D magazine column and two official D&D adventures, and had his home campaign setting of the Lendore Isles incorporated into Gary Gygax's World of Greyhawk Fantasy Game Setting.
Donald R. Kaye was the co-founder of Tactical Studies Rules (TSR), the game publishing company most famous for their Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) role-playing game. He and TSR co-founder Gary Gygax had been friends since childhood, sharing an interest in miniature war games. In 1972, Kaye created Murlynd, one of the first D&D characters, and play-tested him in Gygax's Castle Greyhawk campaign. Kaye and Gygax were convinced that D&D and similar games were an excellent business opportunity, and together they founded Tactical Studies Rules in 1973. However, only two years later, just as sales of D&D started to rise, Kaye unexpectedly died of a heart attack at age 36.
Timothy James Kask is an American editor and writer in the role-playing game industry. Kask became interested in board games in his childhood, and later turned to miniatures wargames. While attending university after a stint in the US Navy, he was part of a group that playtested an early version of the new role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) for game co-designer Gary Gygax. Gygax hired him as the first employee of TSR, Inc. in 1975. After editing some of TSR's early D&D publications, Kask became editor of The Strategic Review, which later became The Dragon, and then Dragon Magazine.
Brian J. Blume is a game designer and writer, principally known as a former business partner of Gary Gygax in TSR, Inc., producers of the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons.
Jon Pickens is an American game designer and editor who has worked on numerous products for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game from TSR and later Wizards of the Coast.
This is the Index of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition monsters, an important element of that role-playing game. This list only includes monsters from official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition supplements published by TSR, Inc. or Wizards of the Coast, not licensed or unlicensed third party products such as video games or unlicensed Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition manuals.
Jeff Perren is a game designer, a hobby shop owner, and an early associate of Gary Gygax.
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