General Discussion

On March 4th, we were saddened to learn of the passing of Gary Gygax, the co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons. After the outpouring of responses in our report, we present you with and ask you to aprticipate in this small tribute to a man who touched a number of our lives.

On March 4th, the world lost Gary Gygax. Considered by many to be the father of role playing games, Gygax is credited with the co-creation of Dungeons and Dragons and was co-founder of TSR, the brand that led the world of RPGs until it was purchased by Wizards of the Coast. Gygax was 69 at the time of his death and is survived by his wife and six children.

While inventing a game like Dungeons and Dragons won’t get you household name recognition, Gygax was a legend (and I don’t use that term freely) in the RPG industry and with role players worldwide. So much so that to this day one of my favorite episodes of Futurama features an animated version of Gygax. :“It’s a… *rolls dice, sees result*… pleasure to meet you.”

Read it all here.

I have been playing Dungeons and Dragons almost weekly for the last thirteen years. It has become a part of who I am, a release, an escape from the realities of my world. Honestly, I can’t imagine my life without it. I know it’s cliché, but Dungeons and Dragons has helped to make me a better rounded and happier human being.

I know the stereotype for Dungeons and Dragons players. We’re supposed to be pale and withdrawn, either way too skinny or way too fat and huddled in our parents‘ basement. We’re supposed to wear glasses held together with tape in the middle and pocket protectors. We’re supposed to fear the cool kids, hate sports and hope that one day we might even get to see a girl naked. That, my friends, is how many people think that we’re supposed to be. Problem is, that just isn’t the case. You can’t tell a D&D player by how they look or what their hobbies are outside of the game. Sure, my D&D game started in my parents’ basement, but I was also into sports growing up, and never in my life have I owned a pocket protector. I’ve played D&D with football players, entrepreneurs, artists, teachers, hippies, conservatives and even with a girl or two (turns out they do exist). The point I’m trying to make here is that the stereotype is meaningless and that Dungeons and Dragons appeals to a much larger group of people than some might imagine.

I think for me, that’s the appeal. It’s the freedom that the game gives to its players to leave the structure and expectations of the real world behind and focus on something completely apart. In the world of Dungeons and Dragons, I can be who and what ever I want to be. I can be a part of a story, created in partnership with some of my closest friends. I can take a few hours out of my week, put everything else aside and roll some dice.

Thank you Gary Gygax for creating Dungeons and Dragons. Thank you for giving us a universe full of adventure and excitement. Thank you for giving us the voice to create our stories.

Well said my friend.

I myself put up with a LOT of stigma in high school thanks to D&D - being called a "devil worshipper" because of the games I played and the music I listened to.  But looking back on that now, I wouldn't have traded it for the world.  I wouldn't exactly call myself well rounded :) but gaming definitely helped me expand my imagination.  Now I'm quite successful, running my own business and doing really well at it.  I've met lots of crazy, mixed up, curious, happy, delightful people, gone to a lot of conventions, and basically had a great time being a 30-something old "kid".

Not to mention the fact that without people like Gygax, most of the games that we know and love would have never came to pass.  Even the non-fantasy games owe their props to Gygax because they brought the people together who MADE those games.  I seem to remember reading a biography of iD software a few years ago and those guys basically got together and made games because they played RPGs in a house by a lake.  Games brought them together, and they, along with many, many, many other people revolutionized and created an industry.

I got to meet Gary last year, at GenCon 2007, when he was outside the convention center talking with a bunch of fans.  If you didn't know anything about the industry you would have never known him from any other gamer there that day.  He was a normal guy with extraordinary vision and imagination.  I only got to mutter a quick "hi" and listen to him for a few seconds, but I'll cherish that moment forever.

So, hats off to Gary Gygax.  Roll a die, lift a mug, and realize that the world is a little bit dimmer than it was on March 3rd, 2008, but that his light carries on within all of us and will carry on forever.

I have roleplayed since the early beginning, and even if I played a lot of different games, AD&D was the game that created Harafnir, the northern barbarian Chaotic Evil Cleric, that I activelly tried to kill from lvl 2 up to lvl 14 when the game master just gave up. I cant recall how many times I heard "Ok, you are dead... you know you are dead. Roll Initiative. Oh you won! Roll attack... critical hit! Not again.... ok damage... *sigh* Yup.. You killed him." My team hated Harafnir, but he solved most things. Entering dungeons with a loud "Mommy, I am hooomeee!!" he did learn a stealth approach to clearing a dungeon in the end. He walk into a room with enemies. Cast silence... then tell the Mage to cast a fireball into the room, right at himself. Silent... but deadly... His team never got a single heal from him, what I can remember, he used them himself.

The memories that Gygax has given people are endless. But I want to thank him especially for Harafnir. Many of my characters has appeared in games as NPCs, since I know a lot of PnP designers, and have played with them or their friends a lot. But Harafnir the insane cleric will always be my number one. And he could not have existed in any other game.

I began playing D&D over 30 years ago.  At that time I had already developed a very active imagination.  D&D was the perfect outlet for my newly discovered personality trait.  My friends and I would play for hours on end and we soon realized that a particular residue effect was resulting from our hobby; WE WERE NOT GETTING INTO ADOLESCENT TROUBLE.  I also realized that my grades in school were improving; imagine that.  Perhaps this was the effect of my endless hours of reading “The Players Handbook”, “Dungeon Masters Guide”, Etc. These books required that I actually look up words like “initiative” and “alignment” I the dictionary and even use the family encyclopedias to research exactly who Zeus and Odin were.

This trend of discovering practical applications for skills the game of D&D helped me tap into continued with my Military career and still today.  Do you remember the first time that you actually used deductive reasoning to successfully bypass a particularly nasty section of a dungeon? (Tomb Of Horrors just kind of jumps to mind.)  Do you remember that saying to yourself, “ I came up with the solution to get by that trap, not my character”?  I know that for me this was a great feeling, knowing that I was actually developing problem solving and team building skills by playing a game that I loved. 

Thank you Mr. Gygax

Here is a story of how i learned of D&D

I happened to be born in a communist country. Needles to say , any communication with the west was discouraged. This goes especially for any capitalist trend like "roleplaying games". There was no notion of
D&D in my world. But I loved Tolkien , especially "Hobbit". Crafted wooden swords and bows , and always wanted to play knights and monsters with other kids...

One day i went to cinema to see "E.T."
In one of the opening scenes kids are gathered around kitchen table playing some kind of fantasy game.

What is that !!! I asked myself ?

I got so intrigued with it , that i started reconstructing and reverse engeenering the scene , together with another friend...

We worked over a month on our version of the "mystery game" and came up with a game played with set  of hand drawn fantasy cards, 2 six sided dice and board map... We made it ! We reconstructed D&D rules from a 2 minutes movie scene

Well, not really. The game was utterly unplayable , but +5 for effort on our part.

Years passed...

And than one day i stumbled into a back room of some forgotten book store.

There on a dusty shelf - stood a book : D&D Rules Cyclopedia by Gary Gygax

I gave my self a massive smack on the head and yelled out loud:
" SO THIS IS WHAT THEY HAVE BEEN PLAYING !!!! "

And this is how i became D&D geek.

Thank you Sir Gary , you will always be my hero !

Does it make me the queen of nerds that I actually cried when I learn he had died? (rhyming unintentional). And Im crying again... silly I know... but for some reason his death just made me really sad. Maybe its the fact that he was like an "uncle in art" to me... were both artists of a sort.

His death affected me more than anyone elses death thats happened recently.. so I guess that just makes me strange.
 >.>

I wonder if nerds are going to go on pilgrimages to his grave now. Hehe... I know I would.

I have been playing on and off since 1988 started with the “red books”.  My friend Rudy introduced me to the game before I left El Paso to go 3000 miles across country.  I cherished my first character.  A Cleric named Oda Lee Rilk (if you are a Mexican and can catch the reference, you will see the funny in it; note, I am Hispanic and the name is NOT an insult to Hispanics).  I own two chests FULL of Dungeons and Dragons material (with overflow boxes!) and am currently taking my sons and his friends through the ruins of Myth Drannor.  They are realizing that being specific in the use of Wishes is a good idea, and loopholes are a beast…literally.

The most memorable moment of DMing had to do with a far reaching campaign spanning the Forgotten Realms from the wastes of the Far East to the City of Waterdeep.  The group I was running were camping one evening when they heard loud footsteps coming their way and trees being trampled.  After waking each other up and preparing for battle, a large two headed Ettin burst through the clearing.  Before the lightning bolts could start flying and the barbarians could begin their rage, the Ettin lets out with a large voice, “HI GUYS!  WOULD YOU LIKE TO PLAY WITH ME?”  (with a “Which way did he go George?” voice).  The group stopped and gave me an odd look.  The leader immediately said: “yeah!  Let’s play hide and seek!  You count, and we will go hide, ok!?”.  The Ettin jumped up and down, clapped and said “OK!”   The leader says, now go stand by the tree, turn around, and count.”  “OK!”  *whispers*guys, pack, NOW*  *Ettin turns around*  “1, 2, 3…um guys, what’s after 3?”  They all stop in midstream and the leader then says: “HEY!  NO peeking!”  “Oh, SORRY!  “ “ no problem, it’s 4.  Now you have to start over!”  “Oh darn!  1, 2, 3”  After a few moments, the group hears, after they are far off: “HEY!  WHERE DID YOU GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO????”  What made the group burst out in hideous laughter was the fact that I, as the DM, got up and acted out it all out.  The look on their face when they heard “HEY GUYS!  I caught up to you!” several times in the campaign was CLASSIC.  Good times.

Most insane moment has to do with the Drow Necromancer that followed a merchant into an alley, cast hold person, silence around him, and proceeded to sacrifice him right there.

Scariest moment for me as a player:  Given an assignment to help a village who have had numerous killings and people disappear.  Went north where it all started, found some ovular looking things in the middle of a clearing.  I camped Anastasia, my Elven Archer, in a tree and waited until nightfall.  The dwarf barbarian, mage and cleric were camped on the ground.  After some time, the DM asks me to do a listen check, passed.  “you hear movement coming from the branches next to you, as you look over, you see a large, black, smooth head come into view, saliva oozing from his open maw, it reveals an inner mouth that snaps at you, INITIATIVE”.