After TSR
Immediately after leaving TSR, Gygax helped form the company New Infinities Productions, Inc., and became the chair of its board and head of the company's creative committee in October 1986. Frank Mentzer and Kim Mohan were design executives and with Gygax formed the creative committee.
Gygax's first role-playing game work for New Infinities (with Mohan and Mentzer) was the science fiction-themed Cyborg Commando, which was published in 1987. Gygax's next project was a new fantasy role-playing game spanning multiple genres called Dangerous Journeys. (It was originally to have been called Dangerous Dimensions, but the name was changed to Dangerous Journeys in response to a threat of a lawsuit from TSR, that the "DD" abbreviation would be too similar to "D&D".) Gygax authored all of the products for Dangerous Journeys, including Mythus, Mythus Magick, and Mythus Bestiary. When the product was released by Game Designers' Workshop, TSR immediately sued for copyright infringement. The suit was eventually settled out of court, with TSR buying the complete rights to the Dangerous Journeys system from New Infinities and then permanently shelving the entire project.
In August 1986, Gygax's sixth child, Alexander, was born to Gail Carpenter. They were married a year later. From 1986 to 1988, Gygax continued to write a few more Gord the Rogue novels, which were published by New Infinities Productions: Sea of Death (1987), City of Hawks (1987), and Come Endless Darkness (1988). However, by 1988, Gygax was not happy with the new direction in which TSR was taking "his" world of Greyhawk. In a literary declaration that his old world was dead, and wanting to make a clean break with all things Greyhawk, Gygax destroyed his version of Oerth in the final Gord the Rogue novel, Dance of Demons. During this time, Gygax also worked with Flint Dille on the Sagard the Barbarian Books, as well as Role-Playing Mastery and its sequel, Master of the Game. Gygax also wrote a number of published short stories. In the 1990s, Gygax wrote three more novels, released under publisher Penguin/Roc and later reprinted by Paizo Publishing: The Anubis Murders, The Samarkand Solution, and Death in Delhi. Paizo Publishing also printed Infernal Sorceress, Gygax's "lost" novel. During 1994, he was the primary author for six issues of the entire 64-page Mythic Masters (Trigee) magazine. In 1995, he began work on a new computer game, but by 1999 it had morphed into book form and was published as a new role-playing system, Lejendary Adventure. He also contributed the preface to the 1998 adventure Return to the Tomb of Horrors. Gygax also worked on a number of releases with the d20 System under the Open Game License. These included the generic adventure module A Challenge of Arms; The Weyland Smith & Company Giant Fun Catalog, a book of "joke" magic items; and The Slayer's Guide to Dragons sourcebooks. From 2002 to 2006, Gygax worked on the Gygaxian Fantasy Worlds series from Troll Lord Games as the principal author of volumes I–III and as the editor of volumes IV–VII.
Gygax lent his voice to cartoons and video games in his later life, including providing the voice for his cartoon self in the episode "Anthology of Interest I" of the TV show Futurama which aired in 2000. Gygax also performed voiceover narration as a guest Dungeon Master in the Delera's Tomb quest series of the massively multiplayer online role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach.
In 2003, Gygax announced that he was working with Rob Kuntz to publish the original and previously unpublished details of Castle Greyhawk and the City of Greyhawk in 6 volumes, although the project would use the rules for Castles and Crusades rather than D&D. Since Wizards of the Coast, which had bought TSR in 1997, still owned the rights to the name "Greyhawk", Gygax changed the name of Castle Greyhawk to "Castle Zagyg", a reverse homophone of his own name. Gygax also changed the name of the nearby city to "Yggsburgh", a play on his initials "E.G.G."
This project proved to be much more work than Gygax and Kuntz had envisioned. By the time Gygax and Kuntz had stopped working on their original home campaign, the castle dungeons had encompassed 50 levels of cunningly complex passages and thousands of rooms and traps. This, plus plans for the city of Yggsburgh and encounter areas outside the castle and city, would clearly be too much to fit into the proposed 6 volumes. Gygax decided he would compress the castle dungeons into 13 levels, the size of his original Castle Greyhawk in 1973 by amalgamating the best of what could be gleaned from binders and boxes of old notes. However, neither Gygax nor Kuntz had kept careful or comprehensive plans. Because they had often made up details of play sessions on the spot, they usually just scribbled a quick map as they played, with cursory notes about monsters, treasures, and traps. These sketchy maps contained just enough detail that the two could ensure their independent work would dovetail. All of these old notes had to be deciphered, 25-year-old memories dredged up as to what had happened in each room, and a decision made whether to keep or discard each new piece. Recreating the city too would be a challenge. Although Gygax still had his old maps of the original city, all of his previously published work on the city was owned by WotC, so he would have to create most of the city from scratch while still maintaining the "look and feel" of his original.
Even this slow and laborious process came to a complete halt in April 2004 when Gygax suffered a serious stroke. Although he returned to his keyboard after a seven-month convalescence, his output was reduced from 14-hour work days to only one or two hours per day. Kuntz had to withdraw due to other projects, but he continued to work on an adventure module that would be published at the same time as the first book. Under these circumstances, work on the Castle Zagyg project continued even more slowly, even though Jeffrey Talanian stepped in to help Gygax. Finally in 2005, Troll Lord Games published Volume I, Castle Zagyg: Yggsburgh. This 256-page hardcover book contained details of Gygax's original city, its personalities and politics, and over 30 encounters outside the city. Later that year, Troll Lord Games also published Castle Zagyg: Dark Chateau, the adventure module written for the Yggsburgh setting by Rob Kuntz.
Book catalogs published in 2005 indicated several more volumes in the series would follow shortly, but it wasn't until 2008 that the second volume, Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works, appeared. The Upper Works described details of the castle above ground, acting as a teaser for the volumes concerning the actual dungeons that would follow. However, Gygax died in March 2008 before any further books were published. After his death, Gygax Games (under the control of Gary's widow Gail) took over the project, where it continues to be under further development.
Read more about this topic: Gary Gygax