RIP : Gary Gygax
I received this link this morning from a co-worker who doesn’t play D&D, but knows that I do. I spent some time searching, and came across here and here as well. Wikipedia also confirms it, but we know how trustworthy that is.
I never did meet Gary in person, but I’ve touched his spirit countless times through my adventures in his many games. I feel a sense of loss for losing the patriarch of my main hobby, but not a personal loss. It’s an odd dichotomy of feelings. I think I should be impacted more, but I’m not. Maybe it’s just sinking in.
As I did when Bobby Fischer died, I’ll tell you a little bit about why I care about Gygax’s passing.
When I was 10 years old and in the Cub Scouts, I got the Boy’s Life magazine. On the back of every magazine was an advertisement for selling Captain O greeting cards. The deal was this: For every item you sold, you could either get a point or a dollar. If you chose to collect points, you could “spend” them on various items from the catalog. This didn’t interest me too much since some of the points were outrageous (over 300 points for a $120 bicycle) and such. Well, one of the items was a red box with a dragon on the cover, and it looked so very cool that I had to have it! I think the point cost was about 10 points. I figured I could easily sell 10 items. In the end, I sold over 100 items, and collected various trinkets from Captain O, but I don’t remember what any of them were, except for that really cool red box.
At the time, I didn’t have a group to play with. I didn’t care. I fell into the game with a fervor that was only equaled by my passion for computers. I would create characters, roles, adventures, evil lords, evil minions, damsels in distress, monsters, maps, worlds, countries, and so much more. I did this on my own until I hit junior high at age 12. That’s when I found a handful of other people that played the games, and things went from there.
We’d game before school (yeah, we got to school early to do this), at lunch, after school, and on the bus home. It was a great time. I still remember J.P., Marc, Van, Roger, and Stephen quite fondly… well… except for Roger because he thought fantasy names like Frodo, Bilbo, Dwalin, etc. were stupid, so he would name his characters Bob, George, Joe, Steve, etc. We all agreed that Roger was the stupid one.
I continued picking up the various box sets as they came out. I went through the Expert, Companion, Master, and Immortals rules. Out of all of them, I really loved the Companion rules the best. It added so much more to the game like having followers, controlling your own nations, tournament fighting rules, and quite a bit more. The Immortals rules were the worst because they took the power level of the game to a quite insane level. It was fun for a while, but after the 5th round in a row of dealing out over 200 points of damage with a single strike you become numb to the numbers.
Then my sophomore year in high school rolled around, and 2nd Edition AD&D was released. I somehow managed to totally miss the 1st Edition rules, but I joined in with a gaming group that lasted from 1989 until about 1993. Not a bad run in those days. Every since then, I’ve tracked D&D through its incarnations, and bought every core book and damn near every supplement that has been released since then. Years ago, I even went back and tracked down all of the 1st edition hard covers, and quite a few of the adventures from that era. They’re all on my shelves next to the other role playing books.
I just wonder what it would take to track down and get my hands on the original three D&D pamphlets that were called Chainmail back in the day. Maybe I’ll do some snooping on them. I had a chance to buy them in their original box back in the early ’90s, but I didn’t have the cash for it back then. I still kick myself from time-to-time for not selling a kidney to raise the requisite money to purchase those. Now that Gygax is gone, I’m sure the price is going to go up a few pennies.
Of course, Gary didn’t have much to do with 2nd Edition back then, and didn’t have anything to do with the 3rd Edition that was released a while back. Now 4th Edition D&D is coming out in March. I’ve seen and heard quite a bit about the changes, and I’m very happy that Gary didn’t live to see his wonderful creation utterly destroyed to ruination…. but that’s a rant for another day.
I still have a book that he published many moons ago titled “Role-Playing Mastery” that’s quite a good read. Maybe I’ll pull it from its shelf, dust it off, and check it out.
Even though Gary is gone his legacy will continue to live on through the millions of role-players out there. I have no doubt that role-playing would have evolved into existence without Gygax, but it would not be the quality experience that it is today without his early foundations and influence.
I’ve seen word that Gygax converted to Christianity at some point in his life. I’m glad for that. It’s one more person at the Heavenly Gaming Table that I’ll be able to take a turn with when my time comes.
Update: Story picked up by CNN.
Update 2: Something I had wanted to mention in my original post, but forgot about until just now… It’s very ironic that the original Dungeon Master died on DM’s Day.
Update 3: Great single-panel comic tribute from Penny Arcade.
Update 4: Some more tribute pages that I’ve come across today:
Dork Tower
Steve Jackson Games
Full Frontal Nerdity
Order of the Stick
I’m sure there are probably others out there, but I’m not actually looking for them. These are just ones that I’ve stumbled on.
If anyone finds decent ones that I don’t have listed here, drop it in the comments, please.
PS: Somehow this morning it all seemed real that Gary is gone. While doing my daily thing, I came across those above sites, and it hit me that a man that drastically changed my life is now gone. While reading the comics and posts, a few tears were shed. Steve Jackson’s words, “And now it’s the day when the best-known GM of all time put down his dice.” really hit me hard. So final. So true. Gary may not be rolling any more, but we can keep his spirit around by picking up the dice, throwing them around the table, lamenting or cheering or laughing over the results, and being with each other. Gaming isn’t about winning. It’s about companionship. I’ve tried to explain this to “outsiders” in the past, but it’s never really become more clear to me in the past than it is right now.
Update 5: Another mention of Gygax. Very subtle. Check out the specials board in the background of the Questionable Content web comic for 2008-03-06.
Update 6: Another one. This time from xkcd.
Update 7: Two more
- User Friendly
- NY Times Article Check out the “flowchart” along the left side and enlarge it. Except for the Harry Potter section, it pretty much sums up my life
Update 8: An article on Wired about the history, innovations, movement, changes, inspirations, and personalities that went into the creation and evolution of D&D. Great article, and I highly suggest reading all seven pages of it.
