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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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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.
Parent
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
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.
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Re:Funeral Details? (Score:5, Funny)
I find it ironic that the man credited for preventing so much sex had six kids himself.
Parent
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
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)
Helped me get through 13 years old (Score:4, Insightful)
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)
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)
Parent
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.
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]
Parent
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.
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.
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:5, Interesting)
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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)
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
Parent
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.
Parent
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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