Building a Gary Gygax Memorial

An anonymous reader writes "It looks like approval to build a memorial to E. Gary Gygax has been granted in Lake Geneva City, Wisconsin. The Gygax Memorial Fund is still taking donations for the memorial that may begin construction as early as later this year. I (like many on Slashdot) spent many years of my youth using Gygax inspired creations as an excuse to socialize, roll dice, and eat chips at impromptu gatherings before computers intruded on the RPG realms."

It's been done before

[Anonymous Coward]

http://laughingsquid.com/mit-hackers-pay-tribute-to-gary-gygax-with-giant-20-sided-die/ [laughingsquid.com]

A more profound effect than one might recall

[Krishnoid]

Reminds me of this old post [slashdot.org] and my small contribution [slashdot.org] to it. I had to rewind quite a bit to recognize how fundamentally D&D shaped my model of reality. It allowed kids to test the waters of having an adult level of power, responsibility, and open-ended freedom of action in what was effectively a hostile wilderness; a world with rules but where the rule of laws of nature, God, magic, and morality were called out explicitly and which overrode the rule of the law of man, in contrast to how those laws subtly-to-overtly shape the law of man in the modern world. And all in the days before computer simulations of the same.

Incidentally, it's a 503(c) organization [gygaxmemorialfund.com] -- tax-deductible in the US.

Hall of Fame

[Phoenix666]

When I was in junior high I went to a gaming convention where I played D&D with Gary Gygax, Tracy Hickman (author of the Dragonlance series), and Larry Niven. It was the Ravenloft module that Tracy had written, so naturally he was the DM. Watching those guys spin the fable was an amazing experience I've never forgotten, and it set a bar for fantasy gaming that no computer game has ever come close to surpassing. Maybe it's because in a computer game no one ever gets into character and brings pathos to the role. Sure, the mechanics and special effects of computers are great, but nobody really gets emotionally attached to their character (beyond how much time they spend levelling up) and...the storytelling just isn't there.

All these years later I realize that that evening with Gary, Larry, and Tracy and the other players was like our generation's equivalent of hanging out with Jack Kerouac and Allan Ginsberg at the height of the Beat era.

I hope they build Gary a monument that pays proper homage all the young imaginations he fired and lives he influenced. RIP, Gary.