Gary Gygax and my youth

From the beginning my friends and I have complained about the stupid tables and charts Gary Gygax put in his first edition rule book. He was the scapegoat of whatever we found wrong with the current system we were playing in. It was easy to complain about him from afar. But one thing holds true about all those statements, he was ALWAYS mentioned when it came to D&D and in some small way we all loved him.

A huge part of my life is role playing. Without D&D I would have never considered role playing. I wouldn't have hung out and met a lot of the people that now fill my life without that simple game which you play in your head with dice and a piece of paper. It's truly a sad day for my friends and I.

I speak for a lot of people in my corner of the world and say that without Gary and his insane tables and charts we would have never had anything to complain about. He was a genius in that he created something totally new and it brought out the geek in a lot of us through our young lives and into our adult ones as well.

Not many people can say this about their life, but this man, Gary Gygax will live forever in a game we will continue to play for years and years to come. What a legacy he has created with one simple book of rules in 1974.

You will be missed. You are now off the complaint list and your name will only be mentioned in good light from this moment on. From now on I will only complaint about Wizards of the Coast. They deserve it anyways.

We love you Gary, rest in peace.

Michael

On a related note to my last blog entry about 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons. I think Gary says it best in this interview from 2005 about the new editions of Dungeons and Dragons. If anyone has a right to comment on what is wrong with the new editions, it's the man that created the genre and the game itself.

Have you had a chance to play or even look at some of the current Dungeons & Dragons games?

Gygax: I've looked at them, yes, but I'm not really a fan. The new D&D is too rule intensive. It's relegated the Dungeon Master to being an entertainer rather than master of the game. It's done away with the archetypes, focused on nothing but combat and character power, lost the group cooperative aspect, bastardized the class-based system, and resembles a comic-book super heroes game more than a fantasy RPG where a player can play any alignment desired, not just lawful good.

Amen Brother, Amen

Michael