Q&A with Jeff Berry

[chirine ba kal]

Yes, it is, and it does. Phil had had a lot of exposure to Dave and the Blackmoor players, and he'd also had exposure to the 'Gygaxian style' of playing D&D; one of the people at the club was an immigrant from Lake Geneva, and was very much a player and GM in Gary's more formalistic / rules-oriented approach to RPGs. It was after observing one of the D&D sessions run in this style that EPT was written; Phil had raised an objection to something he observed in the game, and was told that if he didn't like it he should go write his own rules. So, he did...

yours, Chirine

And that must be Mike Mornard. I had read his version of the story of how he influenced M.A.R Barker to create EPT but he never mentioned anything about whether Barker knew anyone else who played D&D at the time. Thanks again Jeff.

Yep, that was him; Michael was running a D&D session, and Phil objected to the players being able to squash the Archangel Gabriel like a bug; pointing out that said Archangel was a semidivine being. Michael, who had moved up here to the Twin Cities from Lake Geneva, informed Phil with a degree of lofty superiority that a) Michael had gamed with Gary Gygax, and knew more about D&D then Phil did, and b) it was in The Rules, "Gods, Demi-gods, and Typos" having just come out. Phil pointedly asked "Then how many hit points does Jesus Christ have?" and Michael (an undergraduate student at that time) got all bent out of shape and heatedly told Phil (a full professor with tenure and the Department Head of the South Asian Studies Department at that time, as well as the Faculty Advisor of the club and thus holding the powers of life and death over the club and everyone in it) that "If he didn't like the rules, then he should go and write his own rules!"

(There was, shall we say, a certain amount of pandemonium that erupted, as the other club members figured they were all dead. Phil was not noted for being nice to rude people.)

Phil vanished for six weeks, and came back with the complete EPT, the maps of Jakalla and the continent, the Jakalla underworld, and 1,000 NPCs on cards. Dave Arneson took one look, called Gary Gygax, and the rest (as they say) is RPG history.

And, yes, Phil did get even with Michael several times over the years. My personal favorite was when Michael came up with the name Hck'ptoo for his EPT character, and then nearly got impaled for 'spitting' before the Petal Throne in Avanthar when asked to give his name for presentation to the Seal Imperium. There was a very, and I do mean ***very*** fast change of name...

yours, Chirine