E. Gary Gygax, the founder of the once-legendary Tactical Studies Rules (TSR) company, fantasy author, and inventor of many fantasy based tabletop, board, and wargames in the 70s (most notably co-creating Dungeons & Dragons) passed away today at the age of 69 in his home of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. No official news sources are reporting on this yet (if they do), but his closest friends in the RPG world have been turning out the news on message boards he contributed too.
I've suffered and dealt my fair share of pain in his hand-written D&D modules, and I've never personally met the guy, but I've always heard he was an amazingly kind person who dedicated his entire life to making the world of fantasy gaming a better place. The influence of his work holds firm in virtually every fantasy game created in the 80s, 90s, and today, regardless of the format and medium.
He will be missed.
Just read this on Digg. Despite not being a D&D maniac, I have a lot of respect for what Gygax, Arneson, and the rest basically built up from nothing. Take or leave what his personal project has become after so many revisions, but the whole genre of recreational role-play owes everything to those guys.
R.I.P. Gary.
I never played D&D personally, but my dad played it a lot when he was younger.
R.I.P.
Sad to see him go, he will be remembered.
The D&D website put up a small tribute (And I'm sure they'll be dedicating 4th Edition to him now) here: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/welcome&dcmp=ILC-DND062006FP
But as I thought, no major news companies care.
But as I thought, no major news companies care.
When I read about the English earthquake, the major news companies showed the news a day later. Apparently, Obama vs Clinton is more important than a little shake on England).
A little late, but both Dueling Analogs and Order of the Stick have tributes up.
I've only ever actually played one campaign of D&D - and I didn't even finish it. But what he did for the tabletop RPG made a lot of geeks what they are today - he'll be missed.
I think I'm all out of various quirky jokes revolving around the death of Mr. Gygax and the d20 system, so you should be safe from those from my account, heh.
My only contact with D&D is really revolving around computerized takes on it in varous forms, many that arguably doesn't do the flexibility of a Dungeon Master any justice and makes the d20 system more a hinderance than anything. From the perspective of someone who's never seen the scene of Pen and Paper roleplaying without a choice of multiple systems and settings (and never actually played pen and paper RPGs, only played computer games, read sourcebooks and spoken to the initiated), I don't really hold the d20 system (and D&D by association) in the highest of positions as the system and I have some significant disagreements.
That said (or more like with that out of the way), I have to say that when put in context that as far as I know D&D was the start from where all those other options got started and that it still endures and still has plenty of legitimate and bastard children in various forms and shapes.. it's quite an impressive legacy. If nothing else, the work he created (or co-created, whichever is more true as I wouldn't know!) and all it's derivatives is going to outlive him by quite an ammount of time.
That's got to count for something, eh?
