Comments on: HP -1

HP -1

Cat Pie Hurts — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:14:24 -0800

Gary Gygax has failed his saving throw.

By: absalom

absalom — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:16:37 -0800

He must have read previews of 4.0e and his heart just gave out. Sad. .

By: lumensimus

lumensimus — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:17:00 -0800

Aw, man. .

By: Cat Pie Hurts

Cat Pie Hurts — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:17:18 -0800

More than any other, he helped developed the foundation of my my imagination. Rest well, sir.

By: chillmost

chillmost — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:17:19 -0800

By: starscream

starscream — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:19:04 -0800

I've never posted on a MeFi obit post before, but: RIP Gary, I'll be playing 1st edition till the day I die....

By: [expletive deleted]

[expletive deleted] — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:20:28 -0800

His name will always be heard in the clattering of dice, wherever nerds congregate.

By: kowalski

kowalski — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:20:38 -0800

By: WinnipegDragon

WinnipegDragon — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:21:43 -0800

The gazebo finally got him :(

By: Pastabagel

Pastabagel — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:21:55 -0800

By: Scoo

Scoo — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:22:06 -0800

. Thanks for the all the good times, old wizard. My majority female AD&D group in high school was what got me drawing every day, and provided the first girl I ever fell in love with.

By: eclectist

eclectist — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:23:27 -0800

By: MrVisible

MrVisible — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:23:47 -0800

By: cerebus19

cerebus19 — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:24:45 -0800

By: Dave Faris

Dave Faris — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:24:59 -0800

aw, frak.

By: DU

DU — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:25:02 -0800

/me dons the leather helm of mourning

By: Cat Pie Hurts

Cat Pie Hurts — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:25:20 -0800

FACT : Gary Gygax doesn't care if you don't think Gary Gygax Fact jokes are funny.

By: Anything

Anything — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:25:23 -0800

Are there any other sources?

By: munchingzombie

munchingzombie — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:25:59 -0800

I am a little surprised how upset I am over this. So long and thanks for all the troglodytes Gary.

By: robocop is bleeding

robocop is bleeding — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:27:09 -0800

. By strange laundry coincidence, I dressed in all black today. The last time I did that was when I played DnD and other RPGs pretty religiously. So when I looked in the mirror on the way out the door this morning, I thought to myself, "Man, I look like a DnD Nerd today." So I am surprised and saddened to learn that it was entirely appropriate for me to dress all in black today. Say what you will about RPGs, but I think they are a particularly American creation, one of the few up there with Jazz and Comic Books, that will be sticking around for some time to come. It's just a pity that Gary couldn't be around to see more of it.

By: Cassilda

Cassilda — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:27:16 -0800

By: booksherpa

booksherpa — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:27:49 -0800

. I met my husband online (back in the late 80's, before it was common) because we were both gamers, and some of my oldest and dearest friends are people I gamed with in college. I tried a few systems, but nothing ever had the same appeal as D&D did to me. Sad news.

By: JaredSeth

JaredSeth — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:29:39 -0800

Anyone have 5000 gold pieces worth of diamonds? Oh, and .

By: gaspode

gaspode — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:30:23 -0800

Aw, man. High school would have sucked so much harder without D&D. .

By: Bookhouse

Bookhouse — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:30:26 -0800

Somewhere in a box at my mother's house, on a faded sheet of notebook paper twenty years old, Smallheart the Gnome removes his helmet and falls to a knobby knee.

By: nicolin

nicolin — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:30:33 -0800

. too bad. btw : the text of your post is real nice.

By: arnicae

arnicae — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:30:54 -0800

Sad news indeed. Some of my fondest memories as a socially-challenged adolescent who had a propensity to wear inappropriate garb from lands far, far away in which I'd once lived (I wore my favorite sari in my 5th grade school photo) were of playing D&D with a kind Dungeonmaster who lived down the block and a bunch of other kids my who thought role-playing games were really fun. .

By: jtron

jtron — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:33:23 -0800

. I was introduced to D&D at the age of four. I could barely follow the rules, but was instantly fascinated. D&D and other RPGs gave me hours of fun, mystery, wonder, imagination, and friendship. I've heard that he was a class act in person, and his legacy will live on. Enjoy Valhalla (or the Happy Hunting Grounds, or Elysium, or whatever Good-aligned Outer Plane you end up in), Gary. Also he was quite funny in that one Futurama. An eternity spent playing D&D with Gygax, Al Gore, Stephen Hawking, and Nichelle Nichols doesn't sound so bad at all

By: maxwelton

maxwelton — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:33:32 -0800

I have never played any D&D or similar, but a lot of friends did and it provided them with a lifetime's entertainment (seeing as we're now all 40 and most of them still have some sort of tangential interest in the game, still). So good on Mr Gygax. My favorite description of D&D for outsiders was the one provided by Cecil Adams way back in 1980.

By: elendil71

elendil71 — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:33:56 -0800

For good or ill, that man defined about a quarter of my life. I would mourn him, but for someone who spurred the imaginations of untold millions and literally created RPG, I'd say a raucous wake is in order. Cheers to you old friend. Resquiescat in pace. You done well.

By: Artw

Artw — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:34:24 -0800

. I guess he finally found a way to get on that magic rollercoaster ride back to wherever he came from.

By: yerfatma

yerfatma — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:34:26 -0800

Aw, the post and title are cold, but awesome. Chaotic Good or Lawful Evil, not sure which. Thanks for making school a little easier, Gary. And for those damn Beholders that scared the crap out of 10 year-old me.

By: DU

DU — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:36:22 -0800

The Futurama with Gygax, Gore, Hawking and Nichols is one of the best, too.

By: Pollomacho

Pollomacho — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:36:44 -0800

By: Senator

Senator — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:38:05 -0800

Being a poor kid, this game gave me the chance to use my imagination for free, and it has made all the difference. I dedicate my first kill so long ago - a gelatinous cube - to your memory.

By: ChrisR

ChrisR — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:38:34 -0800

By: Pollomacho

Pollomacho — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:38:38 -0800

On one hand I thank Mr. Gygax for my social life between age 12 and 18. On the other hand I blame Mr. Gygax for my social life between age 12 and 18.

By: Parasite Unseen

Parasite Unseen — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:39:43 -0800

There's a seat waiting for him atop Mount Celestia. Gygax became sort of a cantankerous old coot, and there were a lot of statements that he made that I felt were better ignored by the roleplaying community at large, but he was always our old man telling the kids to get off his lawn. We'll be holding a wake in Castle Greyhawk this evening. Any of the surviving members of Al Gore's Vice Presidential Action Rangers are invited to attend. Also: Neeeeeerrrrrrddddddssss!

By: headspace

headspace — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:40:53 -0800

. Man, D&D gave me a place to be amazing when I was just a dun little kid from a crappy neighborhood. We had a lot of fun mocking ol' Gary, especially for 2nd Edition, but my imagination owes his imagination a huge debt. Roll the dice to see if I'm getting drunk!

By: Cat Pie Hurts

Cat Pie Hurts — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:41:11 -0800

yerfatma - I thought it sounded a little cold, too, but I like to think that's how Gary would have thought of it. Tonight, I may grab my old dice, go out to my local gaming store and roll a few throws for my dead homies.

By: DecemberBoy

DecemberBoy — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:41:13 -0800

The text and title of the post are just low-class and tacky. Sure, he created something widely enjoyed by people who are easy to look down on, but he was loved and respected by more people that most of us will be when we go. Plus, it's not even clear that "failed his saving throw" means that he died. Would "Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons and Dragons, has died" have been too mundane? Must people be fashionably sarcastic and dispassionate every goddamn second of every goddamn day?

By: Cat Pie Hurts

Cat Pie Hurts — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:43:34 -0800

DecemberBoy - are you kidding me? There's not an ounce of sarcasm in my post. That IS how I showed my respect for this man that had a hand in defining who I am.

By: boo_radley

boo_radley — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:43:58 -0800

I'm (rolls dice) ...sad... to hear this. RIP, Gary.

By: stbalbach

stbalbach — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:44:05 -0800

oh man.. he was born in 1938, the same age as my parents. I grew up buying everything he wrote as it came out new. I remember when the hardback Players Manual came out, the first of the large format hardbacks, that's when it went from a game to a lifestyle. I bought all his modules, all worth reading even if you never played them, in particular the D and G series. That was D&D for me, Gygax was it. He not only started D&D but arguably the whole RPG industry.

By: Ryvar

Ryvar — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:44:12 -0800

Here's hoping you don't wind up in the Blood War, berk.

By: ursus_comiter

ursus_comiter — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:44:21 -0800

By: podwarrior

podwarrior — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:44:31 -0800

. A notice on forbes.com

By: mkultra

mkultra — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:44:59 -0800

From the Wikipedia article: "As of March 13, 2003, Gygax is listed under the entry Dungeons and Dragons in the Oxford English Dictionary." Can anyone with a recent OED confirm this? 'Cause that's totally excellent.

By: kimota

kimota — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:45:14 -0800

It's my fault Black Leaf died. Oh, and .

By: sebastienbailard

sebastienbailard — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:45:52 -0800

By: Wolfdog

Wolfdog — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:46:14 -0800

Aw, gee. I remember sneaking the manuals and dice into my house (where opinions on the subject were formed on the basis of Readers Digest type articles).

By: Artw

Artw — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:46:54 -0800

Pen and paper RPGs outlive him, but lets face it, it's the same deal as comics - with a core customer base in it's late 30s and close to zero replacement they probably won't be around for much longer. Computer games are alright, I guess, but when it comes down to it don't have nearly the same creative elements to them and are all about locking you into some corporate vision. That and level grind. The computer mediated stiff seems like it's just about absorbing the pen and paper games into that. [/gloom]

By: Alvy Ampersand

Alvy Ampersand — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:47:13 -0800

Plus, it's not even clear that "failed his saving throw" means that he died. I never played D&D - my mom wouldn't let me because of that apocryphal kid who went crazy because of it in the early eighties, and plus I would have needed friends to play with - and even I got it. I see it as being less fashionably sarcastic than a warm tribute using the lingo that Gygax helped create.

By: anastasiav

anastasiav — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:47:27 -0800

In high school (this would have been in the early '80s - I believe the original D&D was published in 1974, so it had been around for nearly a decade by the time we found it during the Regan Era), a friend described his role-playing books and paraphernalia to his mother as follows: Its a shared set of rules for imagining. Now, some twenty-mumble years on, that same friend is teaching his four year old granddaughter the basics of the game. He plays with his friends, his wife, his children. In a very serious way, the work Gygax authored and inspired has influenced American culture in as profound a way as the work of Lucas, Roddenberry, and other "sci-fi/fantasy" pop-culture leaders whose names are much more of a household word. The seven-million plus World of Warcraft subscribers alone owe Gygax an enormous debt. .

By: adamdschneider

adamdschneider — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:47:59 -0800

. maxwelton, that 1980 date is suspicious. He talks about the CD-ROM edition coming out in 1996. A 16 year lead on a product release sounds excessive.

By: kaemaril

kaemaril — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:48:00 -0800

Damnit :(

By: Alvy Ampersand

Alvy Ampersand — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:48:09 -0800

On non-preview, nevermind. And, .

By: OmieWise

OmieWise — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:48:50 -0800

By: norm111

norm111 — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:49:20 -0800

By: Karmakaze

Karmakaze — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:50:00 -0800

Are there any other sources? posted by Anything at 1:25 PM on March 4

Yes, there are. .

By: Faint of Butt

Faint of Butt — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:50:33 -0800

Damn, damn, damn. Thank you for everything, Gary. Let me be the first to remind you all that driving to Wisconsin and rubbing your dice on his mortal remains will not imbue your dice with luck. Quite the opposite, in fact. Here's a cute interview with Gygax from 2001.

By: ciderwoman

ciderwoman — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:50:44 -0800

Thanks for ruining my teenage years, Gary. I loved every minute of it.

By: gurple

gurple — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:50:46 -0800

My parents really hated D&D and forbade me ever to play it. I think they thought I'd end up killing myself with a stone dagger in a sewer, or something. So, a la Pollomacho's comment above: On the one hand, I thank Gary Gygax for providing me with a way to rebel during my adolescence that probably kept me out of a great deal of trouble that I would have encountered by rebelling in other ways. On the other hand, I blame Gary Gygax for providing me with a way to rebel during my adolescence that probably kept me out of a great deal of fun that I would have encountered by rebelling in other ways. .

By: Ricky_gr10

Ricky_gr10 — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:51:11 -0800

By: never used baby shoes

never used baby shoes — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:51:15 -0800

I'll dig out my dice tonight. .

By: valis

valis — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:51:30 -0800

By: paddysat

paddysat — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:52:21 -0800

By: josher71

josher71 — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:53:13 -0800

Well, I know that Winston Churchill the Ranger is grieving.

By: cortex

cortex — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:53:55 -0800

Man. Gygax. Rest in peace.

By: Caduceus

Caduceus — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:54:01 -0800

Have fun behind that great DM screen in the sky, old man. I'm going to roll up a kobald bard for you this weekend.

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:54:14 -0800

From the OED: A proprietary name for: a fantasy role-playing game set in an imaginary world based loosely on medieval myth, in which players' characters undertake (individual) quests at the direction of a player in the role of the Dungeon Master, who dictates the nature of their environment, the obstacles they are to overcome, etc.; abbreviated D & D. Also allusively: a situation or undertaking likened to a game of Dungeons and Dragons, esp. in involving a complex and unpredictable sequence of events, out of the control of the protagonist. 1974 E. G. GYGAX & D. ARENESON (title) Dungeons & Dragons: rules for fantastic medieval wargames campaigns playable with paper and pencil and minature figures. 1979 N.Y. Times 8 Sept. 10/2 An elaborate version of a bizarre intellectual game called Dungeons and Dragons. 1982 London Rev. Bks. 30 Dec. 7/3 Dungeons and Dragons, with its whole spin-off family of Role-Playing Games, is much easier to categorise. 1987 New Yorker 20 Nov. 110/2 His Global Project reads like an elaborate boys' game{em}a revolutionaries' Dungeons and Dragons. 1991 Vanity Fair Dec. 90/1 He was slowly, then rapidly, sucked into a kind of covert-ops version of Dungeons & Dragons, with that memo as his guide and Michael Riconosciuto as his Dungeon Master. 1994 Etc. Montréal 15 Feb. 39/1 At the IFFM, beneath a long black leather coat.., Tarantino sports a goth-rock, dungeons-and-dragons type t-shirt, plus jeans and sneakers. 2001 Toronto Star (Electronic ed.) 9 Apr., Computer cousins to paper-and-pen games like Dungeons and Dragons, role-playing video games involve player-created characters moving through fantasy landscapes.

By: Wolfdog

Wolfdog — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:54:24 -0800

I actually have my dice here, the same damn dice I had stashed in my locker back in the day. The d4 is incredibly worn and biased now, which is one reason I keep it around, to illustrate how you test for that. The d20 is a beautiful clear one with black numbers on it that doesn't always roll 20's - that would be silly - but when the chips are down? Yeah.

By: lord_wolf

lord_wolf — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:55:16 -0800

i can't even begin to describe how much his books and games -- and the books and games he inspired -- meant to the young lord wolf, one of the world's first blerds. as headspace wrote upthread, my imagination owes a huge debt to his imagination. .

By: webmutant

webmutant — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:56:03 -0800

By: Anything

Anything — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:56:45 -0800

(The AP story wasn't out yet when I checked.) Oddly, I never played D&D itself, but his influence on me through countless other games is immeasurable. Thanks for the good times. .

By: rabbitsnake

rabbitsnake — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:56:52 -0800

Here is a interesting article about Gygax from The Believer published September 2006

By: Deep Dish

Deep Dish — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:57:35 -0800

By: shmegegge

shmegegge — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:58:14 -0800

By: Stuart_R

Stuart_R — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:58:21 -0800

Really sad news. I'd always wanted to meet Gary in person and thank him for making the game that I had countless hours of fun with. At least I got the chance to chat with him online a bit. .

By: DecemberBoy

DecemberBoy — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:00:00 -0800

I see it as being less fashionably sarcastic than a warm tribute using the lingo that Gygax helped create. OK, I'm sorry, I misunderstood it. It struck me as a FARKish "LOL nerd icon died!", but I can see how it was meant to be a tribute. Sorry, Cat Pie Hurts.

By: Ironmouth

Ironmouth — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:00:12 -0800

By: moonbiter

moonbiter — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:02:55 -0800

I know this is going to sound like it's in bad taste, but ... I loot the body. .

By: batmonkey

batmonkey — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:02:58 -0800

On one hand, I know he lived a long-ish life for someone so dedicated to his vices. On the other, well, I wish there had been some kind of reward for supplying childhood's best game (Let's Pretend...) with a framework that made it easily translatable for anyone willing to bear the consequences of becoming an RPG nerd in order to have an amazing time with friends using only imagination, paper, pencil, and dice. And those books. Those crazy, illustration-rich books. Bless you, Mr. Gygax. Thank you for your efforts and your contribution. .

By: JohnYaYa

JohnYaYa — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:03:04 -0800

Sad indeed. A friend got me hooked with the Basic D&D rules in the early 80's, and I played all the way through college. Haven't really since then, but I'm hanging on to all the materials in the hope my kids will someday want to adventure. Of course, in reality, they'll probably just think "dad's a huge dork". .

By: Cat Pie Hurts

Cat Pie Hurts — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:03:31 -0800

No hard feelings, DecemberBoy.

By: Hugh2d2

Hugh2d2 — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:03:47 -0800

/me rolls 1d20 and misses his save vs. sadness

By: elfgirl

elfgirl — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:06:09 -0800

By: Artw

Artw — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:06:48 -0800

The seven-million plus World of Warcraft subscribers alone owe Gygax an enormous debt. They probably thing it's based on fucking Tolkien.

By: Pecinpah

Pecinpah — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:07:04 -0800

My life would be utterly different if this man had never exsisted. .

By: anansi

anansi — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:08:11 -0800

Damn. He was a huge influence on my childhood, I like to think that my early introduction to RPG's (D&D basic set 1984, I think) is at least in part responsible for my creativity now.

By: FatherDagon

FatherDagon — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:08:19 -0800

I shall mourn his death as we do any fallen comrade in our party of adventurers: "Brave Gygax, noble warrior, we shall avenge your fallen form! Say, what've you got on your inventory sheet? I've still got a ring slot free for your Ring of Evasion, and I could totally use your Hat of Disguise as well. Hey guys, party share of his cash - what's 1783 platinum pieces divided by four?"

By: pedmands

pedmands — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:08:31 -0800

By: BoringPostcards

BoringPostcards — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:08:31 -0800

By: danOstuporStar

danOstuporStar — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:08:48 -0800

By: solipsophistocracy

solipsophistocracy — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:08:54 -0800

By: gofargogo

gofargogo — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:09:35 -0800

. I'm gutted to hear it, D&D and then other RPGs provided me endless hours of entertainment during the mid-to-late 80s. But his legacy will continue long into the future. I've just started two new campaigns, one with my kids and one with several adults who have never played before. They all love it. RIP Gary.

By: jtron

jtron — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:09:48 -0800

also, wouldn't -1 HP just make him unconscious? haven't played in a while, but i seem to remember -10 HP being the threshold of death

By: COBRA!

COBRA! — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:12:18 -0800

Ahh, shit. One of my favorite argument escalations in junior high and high school was, "you're wrong, so completely wrong that we could mail a letter to Gary Gygax and ask him if you're wrong and he'd send back a postcard right away saying nothing but 'YES, YOU'RE WRONG.'" I don't play any more, but it still sucks knowing that that'll never be an option anymore.

By: papakwanz

papakwanz — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:13:12 -0800

*pours out a tankard of mead for his homey Gary Gygax*

By: COBRA!

COBRA! — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:15:09 -0800

also, wouldn't -1 HP just make him unconscious? haven't played in a while, but i seem to remember -10 HP being the threshold of death If you're a 2nd Edition heretic, sure. If you kick it old school with the stapled Basic/Expert/Companion/etc books, -1 was a bad place to be.

By: FatherDagon

FatherDagon — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:15:21 -0800

Actually, we wouldn't be THAT much like vultures. 1700 plat is most of the cost of a scroll of True Res, and then we'd spend the rest of the evening figuring out if he died of disease which is curable, or if the disease was just a symptom of Old Age death, which isn't. It all depends on if he was in the Venerable age category yet... either way, best of luck on your next character, Gary. May you drop 18s all the way down.

By: motty

motty — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:16:31 -0800

By: folgers crystals

folgers crystals — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:16:35 -0800

Thank you for everything, Mr. Gygax. Rest in Peace.

By: Joey Michaels

Joey Michaels — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:16:44 -0800

I never met Mr. Gygax, but I feel I owe him a ton. Not just for some excellent games, but for influencing the way I think about life. In his guides, he not only wrote about playing the game, but suggested how the game was at least somewhat based on reality. I remember his way of explaining the difference between wisdom and intelligence. He wrote something like "I may have the intelligence to know that smoking is bad for me, but lack the wisdom to quit." I mention this because he made some pretty complex concepts perfectly understandable to my 12 year old brain. Recently, I was invited to take part in writing a campaign for a non-D&D game system. I'll get paid for this. The only reason I'm remotely qualified for this opportunity was because Gygax's books and dungeon modules got me absolutely hooked on RPGs for the entirety of my teenage years. It cannot be said of many people that they pioneered something that thousands - maybe millions - of people enjoy and will continue to enjoy for years after their death. It can be said of Mr. Gygax. RIP, sir, and thank you for introducing me to your worlds.

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:17:00 -0800

They probably thing it's based on fucking Tolkien. posted by Artw at 11:06 AM on March 4 Well, but D&D was based on Tolkien (which preceded it) so thats not totally off: "A careful examination of the games will quickly reveal that the major influences are Robert E. Howard, J.R.R. Tolkien, L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt, Fritz Leiber, Poul Anderson, A. Merritt, and H. P. Lovecraft." - Gary Gygax, 1985

By: octothorpe

octothorpe — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:17:30 -0800

Jarlsburg Cheshire, my half-elf ranger (who hates elves), says a few prayers to whatever god/goddess it was that he worshiped.

By: washburn

washburn — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:17:56 -0800

By: cortex

cortex — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:18:05 -0800

I shall mourn his death as we do any fallen comrade in our party of adventurers: By pouring out a healthy aportionment of a mug of yon house ale 'pon the doorstop of an Inn whose name will (barring a save against cliche with a -3 penalty) involve ponies or horses or something akin to prancing? And I feel very strongly about what anastasiav said upthread. It's going to get harder and harder as time goes by to suss out the line between the old-school RPG nerdery that had gotten and still gets HURF DURF DRAGON-READER mockery, and the this-is-what-people-do-for-fun newer state of story-driven videogames and interactive online content and even just mainstream movie/film treatments of fantasy stuff. Gygax didn't invent collaborative story-telling, but he did manage to lay a tremendously influential framework that has shaped the lives of folks now increasingly responsible for the direction that entertainment and storytelling is taking. A cultural giant that no one has heard of; a great hidden pivot in game playing and everything it touches.

By: CrunchyFrog

CrunchyFrog — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:18:43 -0800

By: Dave Faris

Dave Faris — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:20:46 -0800

Just want to point out that Gygax had a partner when he created D&D... A guy named Dave Arneson.

By: Maastrictian

Maastrictian — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:21:12 -0800

. Thanks to Gary for creating not just a simple game but an entirely new way of telling stories that has changed my life for the better.

By: Shepherd

Shepherd — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:21:49 -0800

By: deadcowdan

deadcowdan — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:22:34 -0800

I met Gary once a few years ago at a gaming con. He was there as a celebrity guest, and to run a benefit game (you paid a large fee to play a scenario he ran personally, with the fee going to charity). I of course knew the name, but I had never seen him. So during a lull in the con, I sat down at an empty table to wait for my next session, and this bearded, grizzled-looking guy sat down at the same table. We chatted for a while, and not surprisingly we talked about D&D. I told him about a home campaign I was playing in that was totally non-standard (took place in 17th century Europe, had an unholy mixture of 1st and 2nd ed and homebrew rules, had an unusual number of hellbeasts and an elven pope), but a complete blast. He said something like, "Man, that sounds like a whole lotta fun." We shot the shit for awhile longer, until people started drifting over to the table and sitting down, all of them acting quite deferential to this man. My brain then kicked itself out of neutral and I realized who I had been talking to. I've heard some less-than-complimentary things said about him in the years I've been gaming, but my brief encounter with him was very enjoyable - he seemed to be happy to be part of something that had created as much pleasure and fun as RPG gaming had. Of course, he smoked like a chimney the entire time he was there, despite the con's no-smoking policy.

By: clockworkjoe

clockworkjoe — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:23:00 -0800

By: schwa

schwa — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:23:48 -0800

Yeah I wouldn't normally post in an obit. thread, but… .

By: DecemberBoy

DecemberBoy — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:23:58 -0800

His influence beyond pen and paper RPGs shouldn't be discounted either. Every video game you've ever played that has points to measure vitality, numbers to represent attributes like strength and dexterity, lists of magic spells you can cast, etc. etc. from Rogue to Nethack to Final Fantasy to Dragon Quest/Warrior to Diablo to KOTOR to WoW to Mass Effect and on and on (it would be literally impossible to create a list)? All based on his ideas, although some of it was Dave Arneson's. As an aside, when I was very young, I thought the term was "roll playing game", as in you "roll" dice. Anyone else make that mistake?

By: ignignokt

ignignokt — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:24:06 -0800

. It was one of the few things I looked forward to in high school. What a brilliant man.

By: khaibit

khaibit — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:24:57 -0800

Like many others here I owe a large part of who I am to this man. My love of history, language, and myth were encouraged in ways that I can't begin to describe. I still remember reading through one of the appendicies of the 1st edition DMG and learning new Greek and Latin words. I'm still stunned.

By: mwhybark

mwhybark — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:25:16 -0800

. Thanks for all the good times. Great story, deadcowdan. I bet it took him back to when they were just figuring out how to put the game together.

By: Artw

Artw — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:25:48 -0800

vacapinta - Those other guys are kind of important too. And Jack Vance, who is shockingly not mentioned there. I'd argue that the D&D world is far more like that of Vance (or Clark Ashton Smith) than Tolkiens world, which was rather stuffy and preachy.

By: ktrey

ktrey — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:25:57 -0800

By: Malor

Malor — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:26:29 -0800

No other popular figure has even come close to Gygax for sheer impact on my life. D&D was sort of the center of gravity for my entire social life for just about a decade. I have no doubt that my later ability to handle emergencies well stems in large part from those early 'practice' sessions. Being swarmed by trolls doesn't sound much like watching an automobile accident, but practicing in slow motion for unexpected things sure seems to have helped. I've always been the first person moving after something bad has happened. In the earliest cases, I believed strongly that it was because I was used to thinking about weird and startling things. So, thank you, Mr. Gygax: as odd as it may sound, I think your game had some actual life lessons to impart, above and beyond the simple entertainment of whacking pretend bad guys and stealing their stuff. And it was a neat introduction to the major world mythologies and all the wonderful stories of the Greek and Roman gods. It's interesting that someone above thought Gygax was headed toward Celestia, the plane of Lawful Good... I always figured him for a Chaotic Good type, myself.

By: not_on_display

not_on_display — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:26:34 -0800

No entry found in the online OED for "gygax". Still, though... A kid at camp introduced me to D&D around age 11. He had (among others) the Monster Manual, which I couldn't stop poring through. I couldn't understand a lot of the technical stuff at first, but the pictures, the exotic names of the monsters, their histories and connections to one another kept me leafing through until a short time later, wouldn't you know it, I could understand what was going on as he rolled all those cool-ass dice. I spill some of my 2-liter of Mountain Dew and my bag of Cheetos on the ground for him. .

By: batmonkey

batmonkey — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:26:43 -0800

Dave Faris pointed out: "Just want to point out that Gygax had a partner when he created D&D... A guy named Dave Arneson." True. I doubt anyone here is forgetting that. Or, at least, I assumed so. And, when Mr. Arneson passes on (may it be a long time from now), he'll get his own special treatment.

By: Fuzzy Monster

Fuzzy Monster — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:27:31 -0800

By: Malor

Malor — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:28:15 -0800

Gygax didn't invent collaborative story-telling, but he did manage to lay a tremendously influential framework that has shaped the lives of folks now increasingly responsible for the direction that entertainment and storytelling is taking. A cultural giant that no one has heard of; a great hidden pivot in game playing and everything it touches. Goddamn, that was well-said, cortex.

By: oddman

oddman — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:28:31 -0800

By: thinman

thinman — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:29:03 -0800

Get his stuff. .

By: DecemberBoy

DecemberBoy — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:32:22 -0800

OK, we're all nerds here to one degree or another. Confession time. I know at least one of you will answer in the affirmative: Ever beat off to Blibdoolpoolp?

By: GuyZero

GuyZero — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:35:14 -0800

I was just going to make this post and I already made the same saving throw joke... ah well. Rest well Mr. Gygax. Also, you had the awesomest name ever. There may be other Gygaxes, but there will never be another Gary Gygax.

By: Dave Faris

Dave Faris — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:35:17 -0800

Stay classy, DecemberBoy.

By: XMLicious

XMLicious — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:40:39 -0800

By: Hactar

Hactar — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:41:33 -0800

If he'd only been evil, we'd have his lich to contend with for eternity. I would have supported that. .

By: graymouser

graymouser — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:41:46 -0800

. I met Gary briefly at Gen Con in 99, back when they were in Milwaukee, and he was a truly decent guy to his fans. I'm glad I got to shake his hand and tell him (as an under-washed kid just out of high school) how much I had enjoyed the thing he created. I couldn't imagine high school without flipping through the original Dungeon Masters Guide for nuggets of hidden wisdom. I regret that I never got to play at his table. RIP, Gary.

By: kaseijin

kaseijin — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:44:35 -0800

Oh man. This one's depressing. :( Rest well, Gary.

By: blendor

blendor — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:47:20 -0800

Thanks, Gary, for countless hours of fun and friends and the development of a young imagination. .

By: COBRA!

COBRA! — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:47:35 -0800

Y'know, I just thought of something. Like everybody, I default to thinking of Gygax as an enormously influential guy who most people haven't heard of. but, on the other hand, living in a remote-ass town in rural Nebraska in the 80s, I knew who Gary Gygax was before I'd heard of Lou Reed or Hunter Thompson or Alan Moore or Iggy Pop. I don't know if that really means anything, but it struck me kind of hard.

By: twins named Lugubrious and Salubrious

twins named Lugubrious and Salubrious — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:47:56 -0800

Man, D&D got me (gets me) through a lot of tough times. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say Gary Gygax saved my life. RPGs are still my metaphor for life today. I always thought of D&D as some sort of inherited oral tradition, with Gary being the link to that living past. Like Stuart_R, I honestly wanted to meet the man. For me, Gary Gygax existed in some eternal Dreamtime, a shamanic imagination-saving culture hero that managed to tap into our collective unconscious, forever rattling his dice to show us the way through the dungeon. Godspeed, Gary Gygax. Much love and thanks for everything.

By: robocop is bleeding

robocop is bleeding — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:48:22 -0800

There may be other Gygaxes, but there will never be another Gary Gygax. Reading some of the more "official" obits that are starting to show up AP and Reuters, I was surprised to learn that he had six kids. So let there be hope for you, young awkward gamer, for yes, you can dedicate your life to something you enjoy, roleplaying games, and still get laid. And in yet another thing, Gygax shows us the way.

By: zengargoyle

zengargoyle — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:48:26 -0800

. At summer camp one year, some hippy chick *gave* me the original box set while packing up to leave. And in Junior High, some bastard stole all of my hard earned AD&D books from my locker (*bastard*).

By: tittergrrl

tittergrrl — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:48:49 -0800

. (shaped as a small dodecahedron, 'natch) He's rollin' twenties in Heaven.

By: dragstroke

dragstroke — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:54:20 -0800

Same here, COBRA! Those other guys didn't penetrate and shake the small-town Midwest the way G.G. did. Seriously - punk rock or whatever your favorite form of rebellion was didn't hit home nearly as much as lurid local-newscast tales of children seduced by the 'demonic' influence of D&D, at least where & when I grew up. Gary was a nerd rockstar. If it weren't for D&D this nerd probably wouldn't have had a social life at all at that age.... .

By: item

item — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:57:57 -0800

I had a DnD dream last night, something I haven't had since I was 14. This is terribly sad news - like everyone else above, he helped shape my imagination and provided me with a portal to new friends, ideas, and hours and hours of entertainment. Thank you Gary. Thank you thank you thank you. Fuck.

By: Janta

Janta — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:59:06 -0800

By: Lord Widebottom

Lord Widebottom — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:00:41 -0800

By: VicNebulous

VicNebulous — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:02:36 -0800

Smedrick the Half-Elf Palladin, now in retirement for 28 years, doffs his cap and takes a knee.

By: rusty

rusty — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:04:56 -0800

. And while we're at it: Dumb D&D Monsters.

By: absalom

absalom — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:07:45 -0800

I think the funny thing is that a lot of the way I played, and I assume many of you played, was a method of play GG found detestable. Role playing, character development, etc. had no place in one of Gygax's worlds. Go back and read some descriptions of his campaigns from Dragon magazine, or online. They were always about the loot and, to a lesser degree, fucking over your companions to get a greater share of that loot. He wanted us off his lawn because he thought we were playing his game "wrong." My understanding is that his idea was that the game was a very traditional sort of game, one with competition and points (err, gold). The idea that it'd be some open ended storytelling system rankled the old man quite a bit. Though, at the core, he was right: "A DM only rolls the dice because of the noise they make." Maybe I'll break out that copy of Master of the Game I have on my shelf and try to read it again. (Emphasis on "try." Ye gods.)

By: ten pounds of inedita

ten pounds of inedita — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:08:29 -0800

I haven't played in more than ten years (and I'm more than a little embarrassed that I did keep playing well into my 20s) but I've still got a Crown Royal bag full of assorted dice sitting in a box somewhere. .

By: schwa

schwa — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:09:00 -0800

"Collaborative Storytelling". I hate that term. People who used that term to describe D&D do not understand D&D.

By: TochterAusElysium

TochterAusElysium — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:11:07 -0800

Just logged in at lunch to say Bookhouse: your comment made me cry. At work. Thanks. .

By: ao4047

ao4047 — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:11:10 -0800

By: BitterOldPunk

BitterOldPunk — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:12:37 -0800

I really don't have anything to add to this thread that someone hasn't already said more eloquently. I sometimes visit the obit threads with a sense of obligation to note someone's passing, spend a moment, and leave. But Gygax's death truly saddens me, though I never met the man and haven't played in decades the wonderful game he created. Playing D&D was one of the first real aesthetic and intellectual choices I made as a kid -- one of those choices that define you within your peer group. When I sat down at the table with those kids in fourth grade and picked up a d20 for the first time it was as if I'd made a life-changing choice without even realizing it: I may never be POPULAR, but I'll damn sure be INTERESTING. Gygax's game enriched my imagination, brightenend my Saturday afternoons, and made me a better creative collaborator. If the Many Worlds theory holds true, then somewhere in the City-State of the Invincible Overlord a half-elven rogue named Fithian just felt a cold shiver. .

By: deadcowdan

deadcowdan — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:12:40 -0800

You may hate it, schwa, but at least in my estimation it's about as good a two-word summation of the phenomenon as any other. What exactly is your issue with it?

By: Artw

Artw — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:13:00 -0800

absalom - yikes! really? I'd always thought an overemphasis on that kind of thing was universally considered bad in RPGs. Was he really some kind of min-maxing rules lawyer?

By: bra1n

bra1n — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:13:07 -0800

By: Artw

Artw — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:13:39 -0800

(Plus it means he'd be no fun to play something like CoC with)

By: The Light Fantastic

The Light Fantastic — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:15:07 -0800

Seriously - punk rock or whatever your favorite form of rebellion was didn't hit home nearly as much as lurid local-newscast tales of children seduced by the 'demonic' influence of D&D, at least where & when I grew up. Gary was a nerd rockstar. That is so true. In the 80's in small-town Michigan, D&D made me the geek equivalent to Keith Richards - especially to the Assembly of God kids. .

By: COBRA!

COBRA! — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:16:01 -0800

One last thing that popped into my head: if you ever get the chance to watch the entire run of Freaks and Geeks (and I recommend you make sure you get that chance), the final episode does a perfect job of showing how awesome D&D could be for a certain class of kids. And check the deleted scenes for that episode-- there's some in-game action that just fucking rules.

By: jscott

jscott — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:18:13 -0800

I went ahead and took out a piece of the excellent documentary Uber Goober: A Film About Gamers that has a nice weigh-in from Gary Gygax. I think this clip shows the warm, intelligent, great guy he was. http://www.welcometointernet.org/mefi Same footage, just 320x240 vs. 640x480. See ya, Gary.

By: dwivian

dwivian — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:20:06 -0800

. oddly, I'm in all black today, too. Not my normal mode of dress.... I must have hit something on the psionic table....

By: qldaddy

qldaddy — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:22:45 -0800

D&D let me keep in contact with my smarter, more responsible friends during middle school. In retrospect, it probably kept me out of jail. So, cheers, Gary and thanks from Ranger Cameron.

By: Kattullus

Kattullus — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:22:53 -0800

Artw: Pen and paper RPGs outlive him, but lets face it, it's the same deal as comics - with a core customer base in it's late 30s and close to zero replacement they probably won't be around for much longer. Perhaps... but I'd argue that roleplaying games are the purest form of art there is. Marcel Duchamp thought of chess as art, and each chess game as a single work of art. Roleplaying is unique among artforms in that every participant is both creator and audience (though this would also go for improv theater without an audience, of course). Gygax and Arneson are on my list of people whose wikipedia pages I check regularly to see what they're up to. Fascinating people whose influence on my life and the modern world is hard to quantify. Fittingly I have a roleplaying session tonight. In Nomine, not D&D though. I sometimes wonder if roleplaying games would have come into existance without Arneson and Gygax or whether they were sui generis. Either way, I'm thankful for their creation. I'm glad Gygax lived.

By: illiad

illiad — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:23:45 -0800

The one time I met EGG he was brusque and kind of a dick to me. But hell, given how much his work inspired me, I don't hold that against him. Thanks for all the great times, Mr. Gygax.

By: never used baby shoes

never used baby shoes — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:24:27 -0800

absalom - yikes! really? I'd always thought an overemphasis on that kind of thing was universally considered bad in RPGs. Was he really some kind of min-maxing rules lawyer? I recall reading an article from Gygax in Dragon some many years ago, when I was truly discovering the joys of role-playing characters with flaws and odd stats, entitled "In Defense of Roll-Playing" in which he laid out the case for min-maxing, and that it wasn't a bad thing to be only interested in creating a powerful character, rather than an interesting one. It was tough for me to read, and provoked a realization in my then teen-aged self, that just because someone had a great idea, and created something wonderful around it, it didn't mean that they always had an understanding of, or authority over, how that idea would come to be used and enjoyed. And that sometimes the people who play with that idea further and in different ways than the creator would've on their own. And that, many times, that is a good thing. It made me understand that I could honour someone for what they had done, and still disagree with them and do things differently - and that it was ok. It seems like a trite insight now, but as a 13 or 14 year old, it was pretty profound. my next insight needs to apparently be around the over-use of commas.

By: kuujjuarapik

kuujjuarapik — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:25:26 -0800

. sad

By: Paragon

Paragon — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:25:49 -0800

I can't think of anyone else who had such an influence on the idea of a game as a narrative experience - something that had affected, and will continue to affect, games far beyond mere pen-and-paper RPGs. Everything I know about university lecturing I credit to my early DMing experiences. Gygax and Arneson gave all of us nerds an opportunity to socialise, make friends, and find common ground throughout the world. So sorry to see you go, Gary, and I'll charge a glass in your memory.

By: LobsterMitten

LobsterMitten — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:27:11 -0800

By: Cyrano

Cyrano — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:27:23 -0800

By: about_time

about_time — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:27:36 -0800

. I first played D&D when I was 8 at summer camp. It was so much fun, it really blew my mind when I discovered it. I played it for years afterwards. The game was a fundamental part of helping me grow my imagination and creativity as a kid. Thanks, Gary!

By: quin

quin — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:35:33 -0800

I'll add mine to the voices here who know that, for better or worse, my imagination was directly formed by he and his ilk. The mere idea that my friends and I could do these things; create people, monsters, and worlds, and then interact with them was a powerful concept. One that we indulged in, on and off, for the better part of my youth (and then some). Some of my favorite memories are of storming castles, looting dungeons, and drinking way too much soda in my friend's basement.

By: absalom

absalom — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:36:14 -0800

Artw: No, I wouldn't say that he was a rules lawyer. As a total outsider, I would take it that he viewed it as a game - that is, progression and accumulation were goals, not byproducts.

By: papercake

papercake — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:36:20 -0800

Horrible news. D&D and Hitchhiker's Guide and Monty Python were the basic buildingblocks of my teenage personality. Another personal giant passes. God, when John Cleese and Michael Palin go... I'll be completely lost. Sorry we had to postpone our monthly game this past weekend. Next time we'll roll some d20's for Gary. .

By: Smedleyman

Smedleyman — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:36:31 -0800

I was on leave with some friends of mine and we were at this vacation type beach. We swam out to this bar/raft sort of deal that I think was only for boaters (bit of a way out). Bunch of cigarette boats, etc. We got a little boozy, not drunk, you know how it is, summer in the sun, and we drifted in and out of lazy conversation with people and amongst ourselves. A few of us had miliary tats and we chatted about those and boasted about places we’d been and how hard we were (easy to do when you’re in the best shape of your life, and look it on the beach). And some of us got to talking about an old dungeon crawl (good way to pass time in the military while hurrying up and waiting) and this couple seemed really hooked into the conversation. So we told them about the group of slavers we fought (and sold off their slaves), how we destabilized this unholy regime, killed all these bastards and plundered all this gold and platinum and hid it, etc. etc. We played up all the really interesting elements and the thousand to one shot situations that came off and the hilarious screw ups on easy situations (Dave completely screwed up trying to assassinate the king, accidentally stabbed the queen, then poisoned the whole dinner party - except the king, etc. etc.) and so forth and ha ha ha wasn’t that funny. All the neat and sometimes bloody and amazingly callous sounding “kill them and loot the bodies” type stuff you remember happening from fun gaming sessions. Suddenly they didn’t want to talk to us anymore and politely excused themselves, looked a little shakey. We figured it was because we had geeked out a bit. But they kept looking at us and talking to other people who looked at us. And slowly, furtively, more and more people kept getting farther and farther away from us. After a minute we all kind of realized, and one of us said the obvious - “Hey, you think they knew we were talking about gaming?” That moment alone - worth so much man. We still tell that story and laugh ourselves to tears. In lieu of cutting lyre strings, I’ll smash my dice.

By: aftermarketradio

aftermarketradio — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:37:05 -0800

:::

By: Senator

Senator — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:37:28 -0800

7th level clerics are pretty easy to find so I would assume a Raise Dead is eminent.

By: forforf

forforf — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:39:36 -0800

From one of the links upthread .... kp: Tell us a story about a great fan-encounter you had. gg: Well, some few years back, a Deadhead girl mistook me for Gerry Garcia, as a few folks have done, and so after we talked a bit... Oh, sorry! Wrong story. Back in the early 1980s a young guy came drifting in from Oklahoma. He was broke, needed a job, and TSR had nothing to offer. Seeing as how he seemed a good fellow, I took him in, and as at that time we had a large place, I hired him to assist in maintaining it. He was a great D&D player, so he was included in my semi-weekly campaign. After six months or so time he had enough cash to head back home, and we were sorry to see him leave. About two years ago he emailed me. He's an M.D. now.

By: tehloki

tehloki — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:41:41 -0800

*Stands at top of mountain, slings a bloody claw at the sky* CURSE YOU, OLD AGE! *Lightning strikes, background*

By: triggerfinger

triggerfinger — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:44:44 -0800

rusty, that is just the funniest link ever. Oh how I loved D & D in my teenage years. I thnk I was the only girl in my school who played and I'd still be playing it now if I could find a campaign in my city. .

By: cortex

cortex — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:44:53 -0800

If I ever went back to my elementary school, I could take you to the exact flight of stairs where one day I walked up to a group of my friends fiddling with dice and some books with dragons on the covers and asked, "What are you guys playing?" The memory is that vivid and formative. I still have my first character sheet. I have a similarly powerful, burned-into-my-brain memory of my first exposure at age fifteen to Magic: The Gathering—a game that itself is helplessly indebted to what Gygax accomplished. There's something powerful about discovering a new kind of game; here's a system of thought, a way of approaching problems and of applying reasoning to the world, but instead of being presented as an abstract problem of philosophy or logic, it is wrapped up to a lesser or greater degree in alluring trappings. A game is a way of fooling you into growing, a clever trap that, if you're lucky, opens beneath you and deposits you ass-first in an unexpected, educational place. It's an amazing thing, what a good game can do for a person, and there's a twisted, awful irony to the general notion that (with certain exceptions—chess, go, poker) games are still so widely considered things for children, things to be set aside by adults.

By: Aversion Therapy

Aversion Therapy — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:46:55 -0800

. Just found out about this. I am making all of my players this weekend come in with black dice.

By: juiceCake

juiceCake — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:47:45 -0800

This will Colbert.

By: cavalier

cavalier — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:49:00 -0800

Oh, wow. This made me exclaim in an otherwise mundane and usually quiet office. . And now the office will suffer the roll of my dice! Yes, for on my mantle of awesomeness, I still carry a tube of dice -- d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20. We're uh, just going to ignore the d100 for this tribute.... d4 - 3, d6 - 5, d8 -1, d10 - 4, d12 - 12, d20 - 13. Ooooh, unlucky 13! . ! Gary. While there certainly were other fine folks involved in the creation of D&D, your name certainly stood out in this whee teen's mind as he pored over those books for quite a long time. What good stuff! Go ahead, make a saving throw off using eponysterical against my comment - I've got the dice here to back it up!

By: Pollomacho

Pollomacho — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:50:01 -0800

Personally, I think it's all a hoax. I think he just put on his aetherial mail and slipped into another plane.

By: willmize

willmize — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:52:35 -0800

This makes my poor little nerd heart sad. I don't think I've been this sad since Sinatra died.

By: mumkin

mumkin — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:53:25 -0800

By: loquacious

loquacious — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:55:32 -0800

Has anyone looted his corpse yet? I betcha he has all kinds of awesome stuff. Also, what the hell? Wasn't there supposed to be someone protecting him and healing him on this raid? *glares at priest and mage* Yeah, you guys. Put away the Nintendo DS and pay attention, we just lost our NPC guide. Dumbasses.

By: TedW

TedW — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:58:18 -0800

Wow, I haven't played D&D since early college days, but this really bums me out. .

By: 445supermag

445supermag — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:01:12 -0800

Wait, wait, can I try a role for divine intervention?

By: graventy

graventy — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:03:23 -0800

also, wouldn't -1 HP just make him unconscious? haven't played in a while, but i seem to remember -10 HP being the threshold of death If you're a 2nd Edition heretic, sure. If you kick it old school with the stapled Basic/Expert/Companion/etc books, -1 was a bad place to be. Ah, wouldn't be proper without some sort of rules argument. .

By: prentiz

prentiz — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:05:36 -0800

I hope some helpful mefite will print off this thread and post it to his family. For a man who wasn't a great scientist or inventor, to have had such a profound effect on so many lives is one hell of a testament. May he rest in peace.

By: zekinskia

zekinskia — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:07:01 -0800

I was certainly an addict of the lowest form to a few MUDDs in my day, and addictions are never healthy. But, interacting with a world where the rules are clearly defined by computer code opened up my intellect in a way that I am not sure is possible otherwise. Thank you, Sir.

By: doctor_negative

doctor_negative — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:08:00 -0800

Haven't played since the 70's but this still makes me sad. .

By: Duncan

Duncan — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:12:42 -0800

By: Ragma

Ragma — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:15:02 -0800

As I sit here worrying over the administration of my 130+ member MMORPG guild I think back to those pen and paper days of 3d6, double aughts, and arguments about flaming oil. Gary Gygax fucked us up for life. Thank you Mr Gygax, and rest in peace.

By: Cat Pie Hurts

Cat Pie Hurts — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:17:08 -0800

This is hitting me so much harder than I expected. There's this enormous flood of memories washing through me: Seeing Gygax's name for the first time when I was 9 in 1982 and spending the next few years engaging in viscous arguments on the correct pronunciation. Coming home after spending hour upon hour with my friends in the local forest beating the everliving crap out of each other with sticks, acting out our tabletop experiences (none of us had heard of LARPing). My Mom telling me I had to stay home and clean my room and me whining, "but Moooom! I need to go to Tony's house cuz we're adventuring and my magic-user is going to get to level 8 and I get new spells and it's gonna be so COOL, but it won't be if I have to clean my room". (She let me go just to shut me up). The moment I realized that I didn't NEED modules anymore and started designing my own campaigns. Meeting the first gamergirl (tabletop, not these newfangled electro-computer thingamabobs)I had ever met and being utterly confused and smitten. I'm getting teary, so I'll shut up now.

By: jtron

jtron — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:18:02 -0800

from a history of D&D:

Dave Arneson was a very enthusiastic gamer. He was already tweaking and changing things. Many of the rules in D&D came from rules he had created years before. However, it was Gary Gygax who put those ideas in writing, adding some of his own along the way. Gygax became the face of the game, and Arneson wanted more credit. Gygax was not about to give Arneson that wish. Don Kaye died of a stroke in 1975, spelling the end of Tactical Studies Rules. Gygax and Brian Blume dissolved the company and formed a new one, TSR, Inc. The notable person missing from this new company was Arneson, whose disagreement with Gygax had become a full-blown feud. In 1977, the D&D game underwent a revision. In an effort to cut Arneson out of the royalties he was owed as a co-creator of the game, Gygax produced the new edition under the name of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. A series of lawsuits from Arneson followed, and another, more basic and less supported line was formed to appease him. This secondary line was known simply as Dungeons & Dragons, and featured a much simplified version of the game. Basic D&D, as it became known, was supposed to be an introductory platform from which new gamers would jump to the AD&D game. But the two systems were not compatible, and the product lines eventually developed separately, effectively splitting the market. Arneson faded into obscurity in the industry, while Gygax continued producing massive amounts of material for AD&D while delegating D&D to other authors.

I would love to read a well-produced oral history of this era in gaming.

By: thanotopsis

thanotopsis — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:26:35 -0800

After my parents were divorced in 1978, they set up a visitation schedule, as they lived in 2 different states. I was to spend 6 weeks every summer with my dad until age 18. That first summer, I felt awful. There was seemingly nothing to do, and my little brother was too young to be a companion that could help me through it. Then, one day, my dad takes me around to the place of this new woman he's seeing. On her table is the blue box. While they're in the kitchen, I'm checking out the contents: Dice, rulebook, crayon -- everything you need. It was amazing to me. When my dad came out of the kitchen, he got angry with me because I was going through her stuff, but she said it was just a silly game that she bought for parties, but it hadn't worked out. She let me keep it. Cut to years later, and I'm at Gen Con in 1983, standing in line to see Gary. When it comes around to my turn to have him sign my DM's guide, I fumble through some words about inspiration and how gaming is "the best thing", and I figure he won't really hear me, sign his name, and move on to the next guy. Something twinkles in his eye at this moment, and he stops writing and says to me: "Oh, really? What do you find the most inspiring?" He was basically calling me out (not that I realized this at the time). Once again, I tried to push out some words, but my mind was a jumble of half-formed thoughts, not the least of which was that I was the center of attention for everyone behind the table as well as the 10 or so people behind me. Mustering up all the wisdom that 14 years of age benefited me, I worked out: "D&D lets me be in charge. I can make my own rules, and it still works. When I'm playing it, nobody makes fun of me..." and, in the middle of the greatest convention in the world, in front of possibly the only man I could honestly call my hero, I started to cry. He stopped writing entirely, got me to come around the desk and sit down next to him. He started taking the book for the next guy and signing his name, not looking up at him at all. I calmed down, and he started just talking with me. For the next 30 minutes, I sat with him and he was calmly supportive and just generally a great guy. He wrote down my name and my address on the back of a business card. About 2 months later, I got some cool collector's items in the mail, return address was E.G.G. I wrote him a letter to thank him, and saw him again years later. He remembered our conversation, and we started talking again. By this time, he was divorced from TSR, so our conversation was all about where he saw the industry going. Much later, as a young adult, I met him when he had just started selling LJ. Once again, he still remembered who I was, and what had happened to me when I first met him. So, today, I'd like to thank the memory of EGG for creating me as the person I am today. I douse the torch and throw away the 10 foot pole in your honor, sir.

By: melissa may

melissa may — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:26:47 -0800

I love you guys so much right now. .

By: crunch buttsteak

crunch buttsteak — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:30:57 -0800

By: mr_book

mr_book — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:34:42 -0800

I sincerely hope that WotC doesn't dedicate their new, shitty 4th edition to him. But they will.

By: Pollomacho

Pollomacho — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:37:49 -0800

When gangsters die their friends pour out some beer from a forty for their "homie". I'm guessing the nerd equivalent in this case would be to pour out some kool-ade from a bedazzled plastic goblet?

By: panamax

panamax — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:42:39 -0800

I've only spent a dozen or three hours in the AD&D environment, but the time there was cetainly some of the highest entertainment and camaraderie that I've experienced.

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:43:03 -0800

Alvy, here is an excellent post on that apocryphal kid who went crazy because of it in the early eighties. I think my old D&D books are still in my parents' basement; I am going to go dig them up just cuz. I really enjoyed that stupid "game", because it was always more about the imagination than about the dice. I confess that, as DM, I cheated and let people live just so they could get killed by some epic horror or hilarious booby trap I'd created in my sick little 13-year-old mind. Anyway, old wizard, here's hoping you don't become a lich as I will have to smite your ass in that case.

By: Parasite Unseen

Parasite Unseen — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:43:26 -0800

mathowie: You enter a large, blue room. There is a door to the left leading to a green room and a door to the right leading to a gray room. The room is full of trolls. jessmyn: Again with the fucking trolls! I whip out my +1 Banhammer. cortex: Good thinking. Trolls take double damage from banhammers. mathowie: The trolls flee into the gray room, as is their trollish custom. cortex: I search for treasure! mathowie: It appears that the trolls were guarding a bucket of some sort. jessmyn: :: Sigh! :: All right, what's in the bucket. mathowie: :: Rolls on the treasure table. :: It appears to be a bucket of cocks. jessmyn: That is IT! I've had enough of this! Next week, I get to be Dungeon Moderator!

By: herichon

herichon — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:44:59 -0800

By: papercake

papercake — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:45:02 -0800

I don't know about the games you played in, Pollomacho, but I think we'll pour out a shot of Jack, those who smoke will take a hit for Gary, and we'll all devour bags of chips and an entire store-bought chocolate cake in his honor. (Well, that's how we used to eat when we played. Now that we're all in our 30's and are watching our cholesterol and fat intake not to mention avoiding hangovers because they're deadly with a nine month-old banging around the house, we'll probably raise a frosty beer.)

By: sleep_walker

sleep_walker — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:53:01 -0800

By: middleclasstool

middleclasstool — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:55:36 -0800

thanotopsis, awesome comment. That's one hell of a good memory.

By: Pollomacho

Pollomacho — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:57:13 -0800

I don't know about the games you played in, Pollomacho... I played, as stated above, religiously between age 12 and 18. At 12 there was little of the gaming you describe in your post. At 18 the D&D gaming generally peetered off for some reason.

By: cgc373

cgc373 — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:58:53 -0800

Pollomacho, an appropriate beverage for such a libation would be a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew. Man, this is making me sad today.

By: robocop is bleeding

robocop is bleeding — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:59:32 -0800

So is a Mefi Birthday Bash happening again in July? Cuz we should get our dice on.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:59:47 -0800

MetaFilter: don't become a lich as I will have to smite your ass.