Commemoration

Gary Gygax has recently died. He has failed his final save against death. He fought the Tarasque and lost. Many other epitaphs might be appropriate.

It is a sad day when you consider all that he did with his life and how all of us have been affected in some way by what he did.

I along side many people played Dungeons and Dragons and various other roleplaying games. I wasn’t around and playing for Basic Dungeons and Dragons, First and Second edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons are just recounts of stories from gamers who have been playing longer than me. I enjoyed it all anyway.

If you aren’t sure what Gary Gygax has done or how he might have affected your life, have a gander over at websnark, Eric Burns said it better than I can, or check order of the stick by Rich Burlew .

It is amazing how widespread role-playing is today. When I was a wee little thing role playing games were something I had heard of, they were strange, played by strange people in strange places, and quite possibly caused people to do strange things, often with implications that these things were done in gloom and darkness possibly with occult implications.

As i grew and found role-playing games late in my adolescent years, I found the truth of this (except for the occult implications). The people that played these games were delightfully strange, as were the games themselves. Now days when I play these games there is less darkness and gloom, my tired old eyes cant see the numbers on the dice anymore and as for gloom, I prefer to game in open well ventilated rooms.

In honor of Gary, I will now commute to an open, bright and well ventilated room and roll lots of different kinds of dice and imagine that a hero walks the land and that chance is in his favor.