I was going through some of my old Judges Guild stuff and came across this addition to the City-State of the Invincible Overlord, located in an empty building on the Street of Crafts. This writeup dates from around 1979-1980 as I recall.

GAME LIZARDS

WARY EYEJAX      C:MU AL:LN LVL:3 HTK: 14 AC: 4 SL: 5 S:8 I:17 W:8 CON: 12 DEX: 12 CHA: 16 WPN: Staff+2

Sign: A Lizardman rolling dice

This small shop is stocked with all manner of exotic games. There are strange, extremely complex games of elven design (25 to 500gp — need an INT of 14+1d4 and many hours of careful study to understand a game’s rules) and finely crafted dwarven games (20-120gp), but the main feature of the shop are roleplaying games created by Wary himself. Wary claims to have created the very idea of roleplaying games, and no matter how many generations of children have played “bandits and caravans” or “knights and knaves” it is best to just agree with his claims as his pleasant manner turns somewhat testy if you don’t. Wary’s new-fangled roleplaying games are extremely popular with the young and well-off. Game Lizard’s sells Papers & Paychecks (40gp), Alpha Plane (15gp), Empire of the Stars (35gp), Guildlords (15gp), and Realms of the Future (65gp), all designed by Wary. Hand-carved and painted miniatures are sold at 2-20gp a figure. Wary loves to talk about his latest, soon to be published, roleplaying game: Payoffs and Kickbacks, set in a improbable world where people elect their own leaders and even kick them out of office if they get too powerful or annoying. Most of the actual work (but not the game design) is done by 20 slaves (3 HTK). Rumors: The Overlord is going to ban Realms of the Future as it implies the corruption of his decendents lead to the conquest of the City-State by the World Emperor. (F) Wary hates Ben vonAndrew of Running Turtle Games as he thinks his games are just ripoffs of his designs. An irate traveller has taken over the Royal Falcon Inn.

Gary lives on in my version of the City-State, still turning out games and occasionally saying something that causes some controversy. If only that were true in our universe.