Gary Gygax (apparently dead, supposedly)

[Nevermore]

I haven't seen it on any 'official' news sites yet, but news that Gary Gygax has passed away today is all over various forums.

[K9]

His wikipedia entry says that he's dead, so does that make it official?

[Lakov_Sanite]

Please check to see if he failed his saving throw.

[Mrbloodworth]

Was just about to post this.

[Moosehands]

Please check to see if he failed his saving throw.

--------------------------8<--------------------------------

[Bunk]

This is one of those ones that just makes me go huh. Not really sure how to react - hell the guy shaped my childhood.

[WayAbvPar]

Very sad. His later stuff wasn't as popular, but I really liked the way his mind worked. D&D was probably his magnum opus, but I also enjoyed Lejendary Adventures and some of his other gaming systems, at least reading the source books (never got to play them). I also really loved the Gord The Rogue series...not terribly deep, but basically a long D&D campaign come to life.

If anyone knows where I can get all the Gord books in a collection or omnibus at a reasonable price pls to be telling me kthx.

[Simond]

Anybody got a diamond worth 5,000gp? 

[Grand Design]

Doesn't this rumor appear about once a year?

Apparently this time its true - a quick search shows quotes from his widow, someone who would probably know.

So I guess D&D wasn't a dark pact with Satan and it does not make one immortal.  Damn 1980's propaganda.

What the hell am I going to do with my Rules Cyclopedia now?

[Mrbloodworth]

Doesn't this rumor appear about once a year?

Apparently this time its true - a quick search shows quotes from his widow, someone who would probably know.

So I guess D&D wasn't a dark pact with Satan and it does not make one immortal.  Damn 1980's propaganda.

What the hell am I going to do with my Rules Cyclopedia now?

Waite a year, and ebay it.

[Slyfeind]

Urgh, 69 is too young these days. Grandfather indeed, every fantasy game we play has its roots back to the day Gary and Dave put monsters in their medieval wargames.

[Righ]

Shame - he struck me as being one of the good guys. I presume he's being buried up on Boot Hill.

[Chenghiz]

RIP Gary Gygax "A cool dude."

[Jain Zar]

We just lost our Elvis today.

I think my gamegroup is gonna put Heroquest on pause and go play some Basic D&D and delve into the Keep on the Borderlands tonight.  With some hard liquor to salute a legend.

[Daeven]

Time for a chainmail reunion. It'll last about two sessions, and then everyone will remember why the Blue Box was such an improvement.

[Comstar]

Dosn't he provide for the DM for some of the quests in D&D Online? Makes me want to play it now. Or find my red book basic D&D book and re-read it.

[sidereal]

Wrong forum!

Oh, and look.  Someone made the unfunny 'he failed his saving throw' joke.  Damn you!

[Nevermore]

Gygax is bigger than just pen and paper games.  D&D, for better or worse, is the soil from which nearly all computer RPGs and MMOs have grown.  Rest in peace, Dungeon Master.

[Tale]

In 1982 when my parents had one of those parties where the kids run around while the grown-ups drink, I sat on the floor with some friends while one of them made us play something called Dungeons & Dragons. My imagination soared - it was the most amazing thing ever. We soon bought AD&D and played it most weekends. My school friends got into it too. And the name Gary Gygax was on the front of everything.

We didn't know anything about him, except that the stuff he invented was amazing. But I was at a conservative Christian school and went to a conservative Christian church, and both started saying my hobby was evil. Rumours reached me that Gygax wasn't a real name, it was a satanic word Gary had changed his name to. The D&D scene in E.T. was evil. Stuff like that. I was taught to be wary. I kept buying AD&D books and modules, but my weekends with AD&D buddies somehow stopped.

I began feeding my imagination with computer games instead. It took a while before they became evil, too. I've still got a box of AD&D stuff - heaps of the early modules and books with the legit Swiss name Gary Gygax on the front, and they still fill me with wonder.

[Hutch]

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0536.html

[Falwell]

My jaunt through RPGs began back in 5th grade when a buddy of mine (the preacher's kid of all things) kicked open his desk and I saw a red cardboard box with a big gold dragon on the front.

That day started and shaped my gaming life more than any other.

Rest well ole boy. Any guy who's ever pined over his character's stat sheet, thought that damn unicorn should have been shot on the cartoon, or ran to the post office foyer to make copies at 3 a.m. owes you a good deal of thanks.

[Roac]

Fuck.   

[Broughden]

Wasnt sure if you guys had heard yet or not.

I still remember my first game. It was at a gamer's day/get together at Florida State University. We were still using the original paperback books at the time although Im pretty sure the basic red box set was out by then, because I bought it shortly after that first day. I was the only kid there not in college, in fact Im pretty sure I was like 8 or 9. But I was hooked from that first day forward.

Over the intervening years I bought a multitude of books (who doesnt remember the Fiend Folio?), modules, dice, minatures, and traveled to cities far and wide (and even to that forsaken plane called Wisconsin) to attend gaming conventions.

Im now 36 and although a number of things over the years have changed, one has remained constant, my love for D&D. It, perhaps more than anything else in my life, gave me a means of escape, entertainment, and taught me what the imagination is really capable of.

I will always feel indebted to Gary Gygax.

RIP and thank you Gary.

[Llava]

I am <rolls dice> sad to hear this.

[Sir Fodder]

Like so much he wrote and did, this part of the afterword from the Dungeon Masters guide has always stuck with me:

"IT IS THE SPIRIT OF THE GAME, NOT THE LETTER OF THE RULES, WHICH IS IMPORTANT... YOU ARE CREATOR AND FINAL ARBITER".

[Endie]

We just lost our Elvis today.

I think my gamegroup is gonna put Heroquest on pause and go play some Basic D&D and delve into the Keep on the Borderlands tonight.  With some hard liquor to salute a legend.

Amen to that: I've told my players that Delta Green is on the back burner, and to bring plenty of dice.  The Keep On The Borderlands will be getting a lot of playtime this month, around the world.  It's 25 years since I started playing: the big guy deserves some thanks.

And even in Scotland we had the loony US conservative Christian backlash affect us: at about 13 or 14 my dad took me aside, showed me a pamphlet from them saying that the picture of Elric in the 1st Edition Deities and Demigods I owned was a surefire sign that D&D was Satan's work.  He asked what I thought: I told him it was nonsense.  He said he thought that would be the case, and that was that.  Turns out that as local headmaster and preacher he'd been getting some requests to ban the hobby from using the school library, where we had about four big tables running various games every week (belying the cliches, about half of us in the school rugby First XV played at one point).

[Merusk]

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0536.html

I was just going to link that.  Best tribute I've seen so far.

I never played D&D much, as I've never had a huge cadre of friends who were as geeky as me.  I still loved the few times I played, and the rules in general.  So what if they were "too hard" or "too obscure" or "contradicted themselves every other sentence."   That's where your imagination and creativity comes in, you sanitized, mass-produced, insipid fuckwits!  To steal a quote from Pirates, "They're not really rules they're more like... guidelines. "

gg, GG.

[Wasted]

I was 7 and reading Fighting Fantasy books when a friend of mine showed me his brothers D&D set and spoke in awe of all the rules you had to learn and how you could do whatever you wanted.  I  had to wait many years to actually play a game but through my childhood that red box indicated a realm beyond books where it was your imagination that mattered.  D&D was more than just a set of rules to play a game by, it was a license for creativity.

[Riggswolfe]

I was 7 and reading Fighting Fantasy books when a friend of mine showed me his brothers D&D set and spoke in awe of all the rules you had to learn and how you could do whatever you wanted.  I  had to wait many years to actually play a game but through my childhood that red box indicated a realm beyond books where it was your imagination that mattered.  D&D was more than just a set of rules to play a game by, it was a license for creativity.

QFT and I think I'm gonna sig that last line. I thought GG was a bit of an egomaniac but there's no denying what he did. My life would have had much less adventure in it if not for him.

[Nevermore]

I thought GG was a bit of an egomaniac but there's no denying what he did.

I'd heard that before in the past, but then on NPR yesterday they were talking about how when people would visit him out of the blue, GG was known to invite them into his home for impromptu gaming sessions.  How cool is that?

[Endie]

I thought GG was a bit of an egomaniac but there's no denying what he did.

I'd heard that before in the past, but then on NPR yesterday they were talking about how when people would visit him out of the blue, GG was known to invite them into his home for impromptu gaming sessions.  How cool is that?

I'd be all "sure, let's go through the 17-level Dungeon of Gthnar that I'm playtesting: you get to ascend to Godhood at one point and... Oh you chose the left corridor?  Sorry son, that's the one with the collapsing roof, you take 80D10 of damage... save to half"

[Xilren's Twin]

That's sad.  Regardless of your opinion of the D&D ruleset compared to other systems, Gygax played a direct role in not only shaping my childhood and love of things fantasy and gaming, but continues to shape the social lives of peoples today and will for years to come.  Do you have any idea just how many p&p games, board games, books, AND computer games owe their lineage pretty much directly to the influence of D&D?  Probably about half of the games my kids like today fall in that category.  The mind boggles on the wide touch he had.

Man, i just found some old modules in the basement like 2 weeks ago too.

As someone else said, "the Dungeon Master is dead, long live the Dungeon Master!"

[Slyfeind]

I'd be all "sure, let's go through the 17-level Dungeon of Gthnar that I'm playtesting: you get to ascend to Godhood at one point and... Oh you chose the left corridor?  Sorry son, that's the one with the collapsing roof, you take 80D10 of damage... save to half"

From what I hear, that's a lot like the games he ran. :)

Ah damn, I miss those days so much. I was like 11 or 12 years old when I started playing, and didn't stop until a couple years ago. For all that time, every second of leisure time among my group was spent role playing, somehow. Even if we didn't have the books handy, we'd talk about it, pass notes in class, draw pictures of our characters, plan our next sessions....

I grew up in a small town, so naturally all the gamers congregated around each other and there were about twenty of us, though not all of us at the same time. We seemed to break off into cells almost, yet with constant interaction among us, and once in a great while we'd find ourselves all in the same place at the same time and chaos would ensue. And we never really got anywhere. There were a couple campaigns that stuck for a month or two, but for the most part we'd make our characters, play an adventure or two, then get bored and do something else. And that's how we did it. We're all still in touch to this day.

I miss it, but for some reason I can't go back to it. The memories make me misty-eyed.

[Sky]

I started playing in the late 70s. Chainmail/Spells and Swords through the D&D boxes to AD&D. Still love the writing in the original books, the later editions seemed dumbed down. Still have and cherish all the original AD&D 1st ed stuff. RIP, DM.

[Bunk]

Well, as I knew would happen, I've been invited to play a weekly game in memorium. 1st edition, 3 core books only, no fudging, 3d6 in order, live and die by the charts.

I'm actualy really looking forward to it. I may have to dig out the old light blue d20 that can only be read from 3 inches away.