Obituary: Pete Gaylord, a force behind fantasy games

For the better part of 30 years, Pete Gaylord made his living sorting mail and answering phones at the downtown St. Paul post office. But by nights and weekends he ruled over a mystical world of elves, orcs, knights and wizards.

Gaylord's attempts at writing role-playing games helped inspire the venerable fantasy game Dungeons & Dragons — which later gave birth to a billion-dollar fantasy game industry. He died earlier this month of complications from heart ailments, friend David Wesely said. He was 73.

What began in 1965 as weekly gatherings of a group of local gaming enthusiasts — including Gaylord and D&D co-creator, the late David Arneson — grew into the worldwide phenomenon that invaded thousands of living rooms and basements in the 1970s and 80s, inspiring generations of gamers.

The contributions of local gamers like Gaylord in crafting the game is one of those industry secrets missed by textbooks and endlessly debated by fans in chat rooms and online forums, friends say.

Jeff Berry, a fellow war-gaming aficionado, said that his longtime friend had a major hand in helping Arneson write the rules on "how do wizards work" in the game.

He had a certain fame among several generations of devotees of the game, said Berry.

"The postal official turns into the 'Wizard of the Wood,' Saturdays at 1 p.m.," said Berry, referring to the nickname bestowed on Pete by other gamers. Gaylord is credited with originating the iconic character — arguably the first wizard in the role-playing world — who was known to befriend dragons and raised an army of Pixies, Treants and other mythical creatures with which players would embark on imaginary adventures that involved solving puzzles, waging battles against the forces of evil and gathering treasure and knowledge.

"It is clear to me that Pete Gaylord, like many of Dave Arneson's players, made important contributions to what would one day become D&D," Berry posted on an online forum shortly after his friend's death.

After graduating from high school, Gaylord briefly attended the University of Minnesota before joining the Marines as a radio operator, friends say.

At the height of the Cuban missile crisis, Gaylord and his battalion were stationed aboard an amphibious assault ship bobbing off in Cuba, Wesely said, waiting on orders to invade the island nation that never came.

"He had a quite aggressive style of battle that he probably got from the Marines," Wesely said. "He was a very hard-charging kind of guy."

After he left the service, Gaylord returned to the Twin Cities and fell into the burgeoning gaming scene.

The gamers would assemble in someone's house a few nights a week and on the weekends. They played for hours on end using hand-drawn maps and dozens of miniature figures scavenged from other games and model-sets. They would sometimes make up the rules as they went along, and keep playing even as players moved away, corresponding almost daily with letters.

The games were usually competitive. Some seasoned gamers, said Berry, "were there to rip your heart out and feed it to you with Tabasco sauce."

But Gaylord, a patient pioneer, stopped the action regularly to give pointers to inexperienced players, friends say.

From those sessions emerged the framework of games like Blackmoor and, later, D&D, Wesely said. Since the game's birth, an estimated 20 million people have played it and spent $1 billion on rule books and equipment. It has since spawned an animated TV series, movies, computer games, while inspiring a generation of video game developers.

"All of these gaming companies in California should at least send flowers," Berry said.

Gaylord is survived by his wife, Gail, two daughters and a son, and a grandson. Services have been held.

Libor Jany • 612-673-4064