Let’s set the wayback machine to the ’70s, at the dawn of Dungeons & Dragons. For you kids out there, this entirely predates the Internet as we know it; there were no blogs or forums on which to share ideas. Gamers who wanted to broadly disseminate gaming material would submit their work to fanzines, which were compiled on a typewriter, printed via photocopier or mimeograph, and sent out via snail mail.
One such fanzine was “Liaisons Dangereuses,” a Diplomacy ‘zine run by Len Lakofka. As an early D&D player, Len used his ‘zine to print up some D&D material that he and Gary Gygax had written. There are a few gems to be found here, such as the Pyrologist, a new character class appearing in LD #74 (September 1976). The class is a gonzo mess, allowing for Pyrologist/Cleric dual classing, psionic abilities, spells and bonus powers, weapon choices varying by level, and other oddball rules. Well worth looking at for a peek into how idiosyncratic things could get in old-school play!
You can read the original ‘zine here. More recently, an old-school fan transcribed the whole thing up on the forums at The Delver’s Dungeon, a 1e AD&D fan site. The transcription can be found here.
Charlatan
Eric Minton
maldoor
Greengoat
David Wellington
James Nostack
tavisallison
The Mule Abides 
I also remember reading that the author of Liasons Dangereuses had made the whole thing up. It wasn’t actually Gary Gygax’ article: “I wrote the articles and added E. Gary Gygax’s name to preserve his copyright to D&D. He was in control of D&D and any material I published was not “official” unless Gary blessed it. He did not see the text prior to me publishing it in LD. Some of what I did to in LD ended in up The Dragon — issue #1 actually. […] Gary did not author anything in LD.” http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2009/11/interview-len-lakofka-part-i.html
I remember because at the time these were rediscovered by Randall I had submitted some elementalist pictures to Fight On! — I was surprised at how loosely people treated copyright back then. I guess those days are over… :(
http://blog.retroroleplaying.com/2009/09/1976-od-articles-by-gary-gygax-and-len.html
Click to access ld74.pdf
Very interesting! Grognardia is, as always, the place to go for the straight dope. Thanks for the update!
In any event, Len Lakofka is an important fixture in early D&D; witness his everpresent “Leomund’s Tiny Hut” column in The Dragon. Even if this isn’t Gygax’s work, it’s noteworthy as a window into some of the earliest OD&D kitbashing.
Hmm. Steven Brust based his Jhereg series off a D&D campaign of some sort that he was in; one of his prequel books has a character explicitly termed a pyrologist, whose job consisted of (among other things) setting fire to the bodies of plague victims. Doesn’t bear too much relation to the class presented here in terms of abilities, but I can’t help but wonder if this is where Brust nicked the name.
It’s possible, but the word does have a long lineage. Here’s a newspaper reference from 1909, and it seems to have appeared in the 1828 Webster’s Dictionary.
(Also, it’s good to see you, Allandaros!)
Here’s a thread discussing an OSRIC conversion of the pyrologist.
Thanks for the link-back. I know Rusty put a lot of work into the transcription and appreciates the nod.