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D&D Co-Creator Gary Gygax Has Passed Away
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Mar 04, 2008 01:22 PM
from the tip-of-the-hat-roll-of-the-dice dept.
from the tip-of-the-hat-roll-of-the-dice dept.
Mearlus writes "In the recent past co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons Gary Gygax has worked with Troll Lord Games, a small tabletop RPG publisher. Their forums have up a post noting that Mr. Gygax has apparently passed away. Gygax was known, along with Dave Arneson, as the Father of Roleplaying." Saddened reactions from well-known designers have already begun to appear online. Consider this is an in-memoriam Ask Slashdot question: How has D&D (and tabletop roleplaying) touched/improved your life? Update: 03/04 23:16 GMT by Z : With more time, official announcements have had time to appear. Many sites are featuring posts on Gygax's impact on gaming, including touching entries on Salon and CNet.
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[+]
Celebrity AD&D Character Sheets 194 comments
GnomeIllusionist writes "In their continuing tribute to Gary Gygax, Wired has created character sheets for nine celebrities. Apparently, Stephen Hawking can do 10D6 radiation damage to his enemies and Rick Astley is a 20th-Level bard. Steve Jobs' black turtleneck is actually magical armor with +6 against edged attacks." Most of them are kinda cheesy and obvious- I wonder if you can do better.
[+]
<em>D&D</em> Co-Creator Dave Arneson Dies of Cancer 71 comments
epee1221 was one of many readers to send word that Dave Arneson, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, has died of cancer at the age of 61.
"Arneson is often described as an 'unsung hero' in the history of gaming, having been largely eclipsed by his collaborator Gary Gygax. While Gygax was known for developing the rules for Dungeons & Dragons, Arneson's work focused more on the role-playing element. Although the two split up, Arneson continued developing fantasy role-playing content, and later taught game design at Full Sail University."
We discussed Gary Gygax's passing just over a year ago.
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D&D Co-Creator Gary Gygax Has Passed Away
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Re:This sucks. (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, once someone had created one RPG, it was fairly easy to come up with others and improve upon it. It seemed so obvious... once someone else had thought of it.
Oddly enough, during the 70's a lot of former flower children tried to come up with games where players actually played together rather than against each other. They abhorred D&D for its violent content--and yet, it fit exactly the dynamics they were looking for, and RPGs are the only kind of non-competitive game that survived the decade.
Parent
They go back to HG Wells... (Score:5, Interesting)
Little Wars was initially released in 1913. A 2004 printed edition of the work comes with a foreword...by Gary Gygax.
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Re:This sucks. (Score:5, Funny)
The early versions of D&D, perhaps through 2E but certainly the earlier stuff, had a distinct charm. The combat system was certainly crappy, but is was so simple and flexible that you could do what you wanted to with it easily. World War II squad vs company of orcs and trolls? Give me 20 minutes to throw it together and we'll start.
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You are out of your mind. (Score:4, Insightful)
I never particularly cared for D&D or WOW, but I would not try to conceal its enormous influence of Gary or TSR.
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Re:This sucks. (Score:5, Funny)
Mendel stopped doing genetics before epistasis and population genetics were even conceived of, much less understood.
Genetics succeeded after him not because of his influence in understanding heredity, but despite it. We all know that nonhomologous recombination plays an important role in the genotype of certain offspring and that random mutations can cause drastically new traits. (I'm ignoring the fact that such traits can result in selective advantage).
The reason genetics has succeeded as a field is because molecular geneticists have worked out a lot of the mechanisms of gene segregation on the molecular level. Mendelian inheritance has mostly played a peripheral role in this.
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-1 offtopic = you admit you don't understand the sarcasm = you wasted your mod point
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Re:This sucks. (Score:5, Funny)
Thank you Mr. Gygax, for your role in many enjoyable hours of leisure.
Parent
Re:This sucks. (Score:5, Insightful)
I played D&D as a child and am better for it. It fostered a love of storytelling and is solely responsible for my love of probability theory. If everyone wasn't so busy in their lives at the moment, I'd quite happily still run a game as an adult.
Mr. Gygax, thank you for creating something so great.
Parent
Re:This sucks. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:This sucks. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:This sucks. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:This sucks. (Score:4, Interesting)
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FIST SPORT! (Score:3, Funny)
Casting (Score:5, Funny)
RIP, Gary.
Re:Casting (Score:4, Funny)
Well, I guess we all have to go meet the 'Dungeon Master' in the sky at some point....
Parent
How has it improved my life? (Score:5, Funny)
Me too, if it wasn't for AD&D (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Me too, if it wasn't for AD&D (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:How has it improved my life? (Score:5, Funny)
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Quick. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Quick. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Quick. (Score:5, Funny)
Which plane?
Parent
Re:Quick. (Score:5, Funny)
That would permanently lower his constitution by one. I don't think Gary would want to live that way.
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Re:Quick. (Score:4, Funny)
Unfortunately, I think his death qualifies as Death From Old Age and Raise Dead, Resurrection, and True Resurrection specifically exclude that.
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Re:Quick. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Quick. (Score:5, Funny)
Never fear, he was an American!
Since he died after 1952 and was American, he died of some cause other than old age. Hence, Raise Dead, Resurrection, and True Resurrection all work.
Good thing I've been maxing out Rules Lawyering since I was a level 1 rollplayer.
Parent
Re:Not willing to play along (Score:4, Funny)
Except when he play a module himself and casts Resurrection...
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Funeral Details? (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously, does anyone have funeral details yet? I somewhat envision the geek version of Mother Theresa, when she died, only with about a third as many people attending...
However, I expect twice as many people demanding that the Pope canonizes "Saint Gary", the Patron Saint of Natural Twenties, Preserver of Virginities; may your troubled heart find shelter in His mother's basement.
S.
Parent
Re:Funeral Details? (Score:5, Funny)
I find it ironic that the man credited for preventing so much sex had six kids himself.
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Thank you Gary (Score:5, Interesting)
It's almost cliched now but as a Dungeon Master in my early teen years, Gary Gygax's work helped to refine creativity, learning, communication, strategy and logic in a way that few other tools or experiences (including school) were able to accomplish. The rule sets were were a revolution to me at the time that helped inspire an understanding of how to engineer environments, social interactions and most of all communicate in conventional and unconventional fashions. All of these tools have certainly helped in my personal and academic lives.
I will forever be grateful to Gary Gygax and the team at TSR.
It was... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Best game ever (Score:4, Insightful)
As a side note, my sister-in-law that's currently in college was struggling with depression and a lack of friends until she started doing RPGs. Now she's got as many friends as she could wish for
Re:Best game ever (Score:4, Insightful)
Count yourself fortunate then. You wouldn't have liked those people anyway. Too worried about their status to have fun.
In any case you are right about the importance of the D&D system. Everybody changes rules they don't like, there are so many that are awkward or illogical or just plain inadequate. But the problem with improving rules it that it's hard to stop. In some ways, D&D's technical faults were an advantage. Making better and better systems eventually leads down a path away from role playing and back to its direct ancestor: war gaming.
It's not that war gaming isn't fun, it's just something different. It's not that you can't make a better role playing system than D&D, but you can't make it too much better without moving falling victim to the siren call of simulation.
Ever see a toddler running around the house pretending he can fly? In his mind he can fly. It's as close to really flying like a bird that a human being will come, even if jet powered bat suits go on the market. Adults, even young adults, are locked out of that experience. It is beneath their dignity to play.
D&D, with it s dice and tables, its miniatures and reference books, with all its war gaming inherited paraphernalia, is just a fig leaf, and not a very large one, over childhood games like Cops and Robbers, Cowboys and Indians. People who are particularly insecure about maintaining adult gravitas immediately recognize the risk it poses to their facade of maturity or coolness.
Well, too bad for them. You can have fun and be cool, you can be cool and have fun, but only one of those things can paramount. It's like choosing a major in college; some people can double major, but most will have to choose to major in one and minor in another. Which one would you rather miss the advanced courses in?
Everybody feels like a geek inside; so many people live in dread that they will be found out. The great thing about being a grown up geek is that once you get over everybody saying it's uncool, you realize how much more simple, comfortable and fun to let those things that most people are apparently ashamed of show for all the world to see; things like playfulness, imagination and fantasy.
In that way many people's lives have been made immeasurably richer by Gary Gygax's work.
Parent
Friends (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Friends (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember playing a round of D&D once in the cargo bay of a C-141, on the way to a TDY exercise... beat the hell out of playing the same card games over and over again, and you're right - it led to meeting a lot of great people overall.
Parent
Re:Friends (Score:4, Interesting)
There were alot of us D&D geeks in the Navy too, used to play on the aircraft carrier while out on a cruise. Everyday after that 12 hr shift you head down to the forward galley and there were at least 2 games going on, sometimes more. You didn't even have to really be a part of the campaign you could just sit down, roll up a char and play for a couple hours. Played with alot of great people, we even had some officers who played.
Gary will be missed, he gave us geeks hidden down in the basement hours and hours of enjoyment.
Parent
Same, plus: (Score:4, Interesting)
Other friends of mine have changed careers and gotten much better jobs through friends they met gaming.
Clearly D&D is a gift to the world that's touched a lot of lives, and not just those of parents'-basement-dwelling pasty teenagers.
Parent
Will be missed (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't Forget His Writing (Score:3, Informative)
Helped me get through 13 years old (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
* puzzle solving
* ensemble acting
* lots of calculating
* making moral choices that give you practice for real life
* or just reveling in being bad since it doesn't really count
* painting
* collecting
* drawing
* writing stories
* telling jokes
* a lot of laughter-- sometimes so hard you can't breath.
Even a bad game has most of these-- but often drops the acting part. The worst are where the referee seems themselves competing with the players instead of entertaining them since they can always win by adding more foes or an unsolvable puzzle.
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Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Take your CRPG, but replace the computer's role as a mediator of what you can do and what the results are and replace it with an actual, living, breathing human who is able to assess any action you can imagine and (with the aid of the game's rules) determine what results. At the broad physical level, there's no asinine "there's a completely immovable knee-high table here that you must walk around" simply because the game engine doesn't have support for it - if you can't jump over, stand on, flip over, carry away, take a bite out of, etc. the table, there's a specific reason for it and you have a decent chance of determining that reason.
Much more importantly, though, it means that you can take on the persona of your character and interact with the other characters in the world - both PCs and NPCs - through that persona. You can set your own goals instead of or in addition to those presented to you. You can even negotiate the terms of the goals presented to you or their rewards instead of just walking up to the guy with punctuation floating above his head, click to talk, click a few canned responses, click "accept quest", kill 20 monsters, collect gold, repeat. (Admittedly, that's WoW. I haven't played D2, so I don't know whether it uses the floating punctuation or not.)
You can also change the (game) world in tabletop RPGs. Things don't respawn as soon as you turn your back (unless, as in the table example, there's an actual in-game reason). If there's a dragon threatening the city and you slay it, it stays dead instead of just waiting for the next person to accept that quest so you can go farm it. If you ignore it, then that city is going to be toast and your characters will be held at least partially accountable for their decision not to even try to save it unless they make sure that nobody knows it was their fault.
These last two combine to open up possibilities for actual stories to develop in the course of the game rather than just a series of "deliver item", "kill X monsters", and "clean out dungeon" contracts. With a good gaming group, you can get stories comparable to, and even more intricate than, the plot of a good novel or movie.
It's a whole different world.
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Rest in Peace (Score:5, Funny)
* rolls dice *
"very sad to hear that!"
(With apologies to the writers of Futurama).
Re:Rest in Peace (Score:4, Funny)
* rolls dice *
"very sad to hear that!"
(With apologies to the writers of Futurama).
From the episode:
Gary Gygax: Here, take my +1 mace.
Parent
Sad day... (Score:4, Funny)
yes. bad taste. (Score:3, Funny)
RIP
Since I believe premarital sex is wrong (Score:4, Funny)
RIP Gary (Score:5, Insightful)
You gave me a lot of my favorite childhood memories.
Thanks Gary. We'll miss you.
Missed by all his friends and admiers (Score:4, Informative)
Farewell Gary, glad I met you. (Score:5, Interesting)
He was friendly, and a fun guy to talk to. I was actually quite amazed at how interested he was at talking to my friends and I about the game and actually was very interested in what we thought of the 2nd Generation of D&D.
I only had the chance to meet him once, but I was glad I had the opportunity.
Farewell, Gary. Thanks for the great games and entertainment.
Re:Farewell Gary, glad I met you. (Score:4, Informative)
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Neverwinter Nights (Score:5, Interesting)
At one level, it's simply a hobby that combines a lot of skills I enjoy practicing. The scripting language is C-like, which probably helped me get over a long habit of programming in Basic-like languages. Modding is also something I can share with my kids, as my son enjoys tinkering around with the toolset and putting together simple modules.
On another level, I'm in awe of the people who have played my modules and how I've touched their lives. I remember getting an e-mail from a woman who was dying of cancer and how a particular moment in my game made her husband laugh for the first time in a long while. I got another letter from a young man in the Israeli army, talking about how my games were a bright moment in an otherwise terrifying life.
I think Dungeons and Dragons has ended up being something larger than it was originally envisioned. My kids make up these elaborate "playing pretend" stories. D&D has turned this instinct for adventure into something adults can do without too many funny looks. We all need to play the hero and live a life bigger than ourselves. Gary helped give that to us, and for that I am most grateful.
Pouring... (Score:5, Funny)
As silly as it might seem (Score:4, Interesting)
Beyond that, I can't begin to count the number of hours I spend enjoying first D&D in 1975 and then all the other RPGs that followed it.
Good-bye Gary.
Steven
D&D is IRL software (Score:5, Interesting)
D&D was my entire reason for becoming interested in programming computers. In the early 80's what I realized is that D&D is the "software" of games. Modules expand the original game in new ways that nobody thought of before. They expand the core system in new and interesting ways.
Sure, software was already doing this on computers at the time, but it really helped my brain make that leap at a young age - software is extraordinarily powerful.
It also seemed to foster a healthy (or unhealthy of you believe Jack Thompson
Thank you Mr. Gygax. You will be missed.
Not just YASD (Score:3, Funny)
First chat with the Almighty (Score:5, Funny)
Appareantly he got a glimps (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Appareantly he got a glimps (Score:5, Informative)
Nah, he just wanted to go out on His Day. Today is DM's Day! [sjgames.com]
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Gary Gygax was a god. (Score:5, Interesting)
Really: Ernest Gary Gygax was a god. He turned the wargaming world on its head when he created a fantasy-based game, and did it again with the little supplement in the back that dealt with more individual encounters. His legacy was this new attention to detail, a whole genre, richly inspired by Tolkien's similar work, and spawning universes of imagination to touch generations. ... for this reason, I'd say he was a creation god [wikipedia.org], having created the world of role-playing games, significantly influencing the Fantasy genre itself, and even brining polyhedral dice to a more mainstream world. Gods don't die; Gygax will live on as only the most significant fathers of ideas do.
D&D has been a part of me since 1986 or so. I've been actively playing and even designing rules for most of that time, even if I had no idea of what I was doing. How did D&D improve my life? It gave me a gateway to my imagination, allowing me to express myself in creative ways that would otherwise have been developed far less aptly. It increased my vocabulary ("what does 'proficiency' mean?), and in triggering my interest in Tolkien, it caused me to learn much of linguistics, etymology, and language, not to mention the reading of fantasy novels including RA Salvatore's Drizzt books. Its limitless possibilities make me laugh at MUDs and MMORPGs for their simplicity ... I can't play CRPGs or the like thanks to having discovered the real thing.
Thanks, Gary. From your days guiding the RPG movement, to your voice-overs on the D&D television show, to your return to the core team with WotC, you had a great run. We always wanted more, but that's only because you always provided so much. You will be missed, and never forgotten. So long and thanks for all the books.
PS: Anybody thinking of DMing or writing about a game or fantasy world (even outside the context of D&D) should take a look at his book Master of the Game [google.com], which is sadly out of print.
I feel sorry for the cemetary... (Score:3, Funny)
And then they'll realize they have to have someone go out and clear up the piles before they can mow. A lawnmower hitting Gygax's grave will cause a 30' radius spray of polyhedrons, doing from 1d6 to 3d6 damage depending on the horsepower of the mower.
My remembrance (Score:4, Interesting)
Now he has passed from the game we call life. I don't think Mr. Gygax failed his last saving throw, but rather that the Great DM determined that it was time for his character to be retired. He will be missed.
A old friend to be sorely missed (Score:3, Interesting)
restrospective of a person like Gary Gygax this takes a bit of time
to think about. Mea culpa. ]
To the rest of the world world, Gary Gygax was the guy who created D&D
(Dungeons and Dragons) back in Lake Geneva, WI, and who started the company
there called TSR Hobbies, which produced it.
To me, though, Gary was just my neighbor down the ways a bit along Center
Street. I lived down the street and around the corner from from him,
*worked* for him at TSR for about 4 years, played games with him, on and
off the job. Hung out with his son Ernie and pal Skip (Ralph) Williams a
good bit in high school, since the other kids of my own age I found--um,
boring and slow. I'd sub for Skip on his paper route at times, and once
Ernie dragged Skip into D&D, I wasn't far behind, even thought I was like
five years younger than they were.
Gary was from my folks' generation--actually a little older even. Gary was
smoething of a nobody for the longest time, our semi-employed town cobbler,
whose flame-haired wife, Mary, a fervent Jehovah's Witness, was the mother
of their 6 children (2m+4f) who lived in the only sesquistoried house I'd
ever been in. His dad was a violinist down in the Chicago Symphony, but
Gary never got the hang of the instrument.
I also seem to recall Gary may only gotten a college degree later in life,
if then, but even so, it was something like a BA-English and may have been
of the honorary or over-the-net or mail-in variety, Gary initially being
one of those bored-with-school drop-out sorts. People around town really
didn't think much of him--*UNTIL* he became rich.
But before then, the talk of the town wasn't very good about him. "All
those kids, and all you did was shoe repair with maybe a little insurance
on the side? And your wife has nothing better to do than to be knocking on
our doors passing out Watchtower pamphlets? What kind of a way to raise a
family is that?" You know how critical some small-town people can be of
others, especially when they just don't know the people their bad-mouthing.
But I did, and I never thought that. It was especially fun to go over to
Gary's house, not just because of his jokes and stories, not to mention the
virtual library books and comics he had littered about everywhere, but also
because that extra half-story was kidsville, since only we kids could get
around standing up straight in it and the adults were crippled. I always
enjoyed Gary's first wife, Mary, even if she did have funny pamphlets.
I got into D&D just after Don Kaye died, which would be in 1975. I
remember stopping off at 542 Sage Street with Skip (Ralph) Williams to get
some D&D books or supplements from Don's widow. This was just across from
the street from Eastview, the grade school I'd only just then completed the
6th grade at, and barely half a block from my home.
Later when Gary and Brian Blume moved the business to the corner house a
couple blocks to the north, called the "Dungeon Hobby Shop" then. The
downstairs was retail, the upstairs games-design. I helped out in the
store and in shipping and mailing. By the time I was old enough to be
hirable, TSR had moved down to the choicest of spots in town: the old
hotel property at corner of Broad and Main, which at that time was Lake
Geneva's only stop-light. We didn't even have 5k inhabitants at the
time. There were well under 2 dozen employees when I first went on the
payroll; I think my employee number, if you counted extant employees was
13, or 19 if you didn't.
I'd work in the retail hobby shop under Ernie, or upstairs in mailing, or
eventually in the GenCon (Geneva Convention) department itself under Joe
Orlowski (R.I.P.) and Skip Williams. GenCon started out in Lake Geneva
Re:DnD has not improved the life of anyone I know. (Score:3, Insightful)
Parent
Re:DnD has not improved the life of anyone I know. (Score:4, Insightful)
I know dozens upon dozens of healthy, well-adjusted adults who, shockingly, have good jobs, function normally in society, have regular consentual sex with other people, and game.
People who "piss away" their future playing D&D aren't doing it because D&D is just that addictive or compelling. They're doing it because they're so unhappy with the real life they're avoiding. What you're seeing is the symptom, not the problem.
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