Gary Gygax dead at age 69
- Thread starter John Reynolds
- Start date
/me rolls 1 
Sad news for gamers in general imo.
He was one of the most influential people in gaming.
Sad day indeed.
Heh, I was going to write that he failed his save vs. death and must've been using 1st ed. rules, which included a table for reducing stats like strength and constitution for aged characters.
You are a goddamned geek.
One of the bright memories was playing AD&D while growing up. He will be missed.
I still regularly play D&D with a group of close friends and I'm about to start DMing a new campaign next month. Gary's work changed my youth and continues to influence my daily life today.
Gary, may you find new adventures in the heavens and may you roll many 20s.
Gary, may you find new adventures in the heavens and may you roll many 20s.
Order of the Stick's tribute (and a fantastic comic series D&D themed for those who don't know about it)
God DAMMIT! You beat me to the punch! Anyway I never played D&D, but that doesn't mean I'm unaware of its intimidating fan following.
Rest in peace, Gary.
I mentioned Gygax's death in guild chat while playing LOTRO the other night and only one person even knew who he was. Of course this is the same guild that actually included my suggestion for guild name change--Caught From Behind--in the forum poll without realizing it was a joke.
Jerry Holkins had a nice piece on him today:
"Gygax always struck me as a tremendously sinister name: no mortal name, this. This was the sort of name one earned in the service of horned devils and more primordial shapes of evil, a boon for the loyal servant, placed like a black crown on the bowed head.
The first time I ever played Dungeons & Dragons, I was six years old - books with great red demons on the cover that dared us to claim their riches, subtitled by this alien name Gygax. My mother was furious when she found my uncles had exposed me to those subterranean burrows, spilling over with rubies, and tourmalines, and the wealth of old kings even songs no longer remember. As a young man, I began hiding the books I bought inside my bed, which had a vast hollow space I had hidden in as a child. These books were soon discovered, and blamed for everything from recent colds to the dissolution of my parents' marriage. I took the wrong lesson, I'm afraid: I didn't learn to fear them. What I learned was that books, some books, were swollen with power - and this power projected into the physical realm. Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes.
I owe a tremendous debt to his legacy. I couldn't even calculate how deep."
And Malo, is that actually an excerpt from one of his books, in that first cartoon?
"Gygax always struck me as a tremendously sinister name: no mortal name, this. This was the sort of name one earned in the service of horned devils and more primordial shapes of evil, a boon for the loyal servant, placed like a black crown on the bowed head.
The first time I ever played Dungeons & Dragons, I was six years old - books with great red demons on the cover that dared us to claim their riches, subtitled by this alien name Gygax. My mother was furious when she found my uncles had exposed me to those subterranean burrows, spilling over with rubies, and tourmalines, and the wealth of old kings even songs no longer remember. As a young man, I began hiding the books I bought inside my bed, which had a vast hollow space I had hidden in as a child. These books were soon discovered, and blamed for everything from recent colds to the dissolution of my parents' marriage. I took the wrong lesson, I'm afraid: I didn't learn to fear them. What I learned was that books, some books, were swollen with power - and this power projected into the physical realm. Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes.
I owe a tremendous debt to his legacy. I couldn't even calculate how deep."
And Malo, is that actually an excerpt from one of his books, in that first cartoon?
IGN has a retrospective of old D&D / AD&D computer games :
http://uk.retro.ign.com/articles/857/857143p1.html
http://uk.retro.ign.com/articles/857/857143p1.html
