ICv2 hit the road and headed up to Gary Con, a games convention dedicated to the memory of Dungeons & Dragons co-creator E. Gary Gygax (see “Gary Gygax“), on March 21, 2025. While we were there, we sat down with Gary Con founder and RPG designer Luke Gygax and CEO of Troll Lord Games Stephen Chenault to discuss their Castle Zagyg BackerKit project.
We’re talking with Steven Chenault and Luke Gygax about Castle Zagyg today. This project is currently up on BackerKit. Let’s start off by having Luke tell us a little about this campaign, which was originally started as an in-house campaign of his father E. Gary Gygax, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons.
Luke Gygax: My father was working on this project in the last three years of his life; he wanted to bring his original homegrown dungeon and campaign setting to the gaming public. This campaign originally consisted of concepts brewing in his mind as well as in his notes, hand-drawn maps, and things like that.
He realized his time was short after he’d had a couple some serious health issues, and he wanted to get this project out there and get it done. He felt very passionately about this, so he started working with Troll Lord Games and Steve Chenault (see “D&D Creator To Pen d20 Sourcebooks“). My father communicated to Steve how important this project was to him. Together, they recruited a group of writers to help work on the several different products for the Town of Yggsburgh and Castle Zygag.
Interesting. What details can you tell us about this setting and its origin?
Gygax: It revolves around a castle built by the Mad Archmage Zagyg (a play on Gygax spelled backward). A host of so many original D&D designers and playtesters’ characters had ventured through this land: my character, my brother Ernie’s character Tenser, Jim Ward’s Drawmij, Robert Kuntz’s Robilar, and a host of others. Lots of old school D&D lore has its roots in that home campaign. My dad always wanted to update it, and I made him a promise to do so. He said to me, “Hey, I may not be here to see the this all the way through. I need you to support it and help any way you can to make sure that this gets published.” That’s why this project been important for me.
We had to take a little hiatus from developing this project. My dad passed away in 2008; the license was suspended or removed from Troll Lord Games at that time. After going through probate and taking some legal actions, the Gygax family came to an agreement where we’re going to work together to get this project done. We decided to go back to Troll Lord, who had the experience and massive amounts of information, yeah, information to bring it to life.
Right, I believe we just reported on that license returning to Troll Lord a little while ago (see “Troll Lord Games Expands Licensing Agreement“).
Gygax: That’s where we are today. In 2024, we started bringing back some of my father’s work as reprinted books. We got the gears turning to produce not only the previously published work prior to 2008, but Castle Zagyg, which was about 750 pages of material.
Stephen Chenault: Yeah, it’s roughly 750 pages. Each of the new Castle Zagyg books will be roughly 250 pages (three books). They’ll come with full size color maps: two in the first book, four in the second book, and I think there will be seven in the third one. And the books will come as boxed sets.
That’s a massive project. So, let’s go through what comes in a boxed set.
Chenault: The first box will contain the citadel. This contains lore and other information on the Free City of Yggsbrugh, which we previously published in 2004. It was entirely written by Gary Gygax, with some editing. The second volume we’re calling The Ruins. That’s the setting revolving around the castle in the Eastmark region, which will include one level of the dungeon. And then the third volume features the rest of the dungeons that has four levels. The first four levels also have three sub levels for a total of seven levels of dungeon crawl.
Are there plans for this to show up in retail one day or no?
Chenault: Absolutely. Troll Lord has a huge footprint in the distributor and retail market.
What distributors are you with in the U.S. and Canada?
Chenault: Our Canadian distributor is Universal. And here in the States, we’re working with ACD.
Is there anything else you guys want to tell us about this project?
Gygax: Just this: This is not just a dungeon crawl. This campaign is going to be exploring an entire city. The campaign hooks in the write-ups of each section of the city gives you a good overview of the Castle and its surrounding area. Then there’s awesome adventures in the environments and in the rooms of the castle itself. There’s several different locations in there: two towers, a royal quarters, and more.
Is there a retail tier on the BackerKit too?
Chenault: Yes.
Let’s switch gears for a second and talk a little about the current state of D&D. What do you think of the new 2024 books?
Gygax: I have them. I haven’t done a complete read through. However, I have made a character with the 2024 rules set, and played through it at least one game. It’s fine. I don’t want to criticize the new books. I think my problem with 5E, in general, is as you go up in level, it becomes harder to maintain the tension in a game.
That’s fair. In my opinion, I genuinely believe that different D&D systems appeal to different generations of fans. I feel like older generations of fans are picking and choosing what they like from the various editions of books. Newer fans seem to be constantly discovering some of the older content and embracing it in their own campaigns.
Gygax: 100%. We ran the Founders and Legends tournament this week, where we played across all the editions of D&D in one campaign. And people loved that so much. And surprisingly, a lot of people said, “I never played 4E. But boy, was that fun, right?” I think that once new players got a chance to dig into the rules, break them down, build characters, play a game, and they said, “That’s fun!” It’s kind of different, it’s like a tactical version of D&D that has more miniatures aspects to it, which is very important.
Is there anything new we should know about Gary Con itself — how’s attendance going?
Gygax: We had a fantastic Gary Con 17, it’s been amazing. We had over 3,500 people, and well over 2,700 events to play. It spans multiple different game systems. We’re celebrating our features. We’re celebrating 50 years of Chaosium, who is a big sponsor, along with Troll Lord Games. Also, we did our GM reports for the top 400 GMs who put in events and meet the criteria, and distributed over $120,000 worth of material to them. That’s due to thanks to all of our really generous sponsors.
Our convention charity is Children’s Wisconsin Foundation, which is part of the Miracle Network of Children’s Hospitals. We’ve raised over $110,000 in the last two years for this charity. I’m hoping we hit the mark from last year. I’m very proud of all those things, and it’s been running smooth, and we’ve had a fantastic time.
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