Gary Gygax passes away

[eugimon]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/03/04/obit.gygax.ap/index.html

While I don't play any longer... many a lunch breaks during elementary and middle school were passed throwing dice and picking on our favorite kender.

[Ghadrack]

I'm a big geek, I still play every week with all my buddies from High School and college. I'll have to stop on the way home from work tonight and pick up a Grape Soda and a little bag of Funyuns to commemorate his passing.

[Mr March]

I gamed in my younger years and fondly remember plenty of hours spent on his RPGs. It's like an old magician has passed, leaving only those with happy childhood memories of the show he played. RIP Gary.

[F-ZeroOne]

Its amazing to think how many modern - and very big - video game franchises use similar principles to those in Dungeons and Dragons; although that itself grew out of tabletop war games its quite possible Gary Gygaxs contribution to modern popular culture has always been somewhat underestimated...

[mikeszekely]

Its amazing to think how many modern - and very big - video game franchises use similar principles to those in Dungeons and Dragons; although that itself grew out of tabletop war games its quite possible Gary Gygaxs contribution to modern popular culture has always been somewhat underestimated...

Agreed. Even big JRPGs like Final Fantasy began as little more than videogame versions of D&D. And even though it's been a long time since he's worked on it, he's still more or less the father of D&D. Considering that I play D&D, I've been playing videogames influenced by D&D, and hell I even watched the D&D cartoon as a kid, Gygax's passing is about as sad as when I found out there's no Santa.

[David Hingtgen]

While I've never played a "real" RPG or anything, a good chunk of the video games I own owe something(or a lot) to D&D.

[Tober]

He was brilliant.

RIP Gary - I still have many fond childhood memories of your products.

[1st Border Red Devil]

Godspeed, Col_Pladoh.

[F-ZeroOne]

Agreed. Even big JRPGs like Final Fantasy began as little more than videogame versions of D&D. And even though it's been a long time since he's worked on it, he's still more or less the father of D&D. Considering that I play D&D, I've been playing videogames influenced by D&D, and hell I even watched the D&D cartoon as a kid, Gygax's passing is about as sad as when I found out there's no Santa.

Having had a little more time to think, more so than even that, what Gary Gygax gave us was perhaps the greatest gift of all - imagination.

Edited March 4, 2008 by F-ZeroOne

[EXO]

It's as if millions of basements suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

[mikeszekely]

Having had a little more time to think, more so than even that, what Gary Gygax gave us was perhaps the greatest gift of all - imagination.

Absolutely. Oh, absolutely. (Which is why, to David, I say you don't know what you're missing.) I mean, even in a game like Neverwinter Nights that's got the D&D label on the box, there's only so much you can do. Trolls, for example. In D&D, Trolls regenerate unless they're hit with they're weakness. For 25 years, players have been burning run of the mill trolls with fire. In a videogame, either you kill it with fire or it kills you, or maybe they ignore that whole bit about having to use fire as long as you can bring its hit points to zero.

Our DM thought he'd throw us a curve, and pulled some kind of crystalline trolls from outside the standard Monster Manual. We took them down, but we didn't know how to kill them, and we'd only have a round or two before they started regenerating. Our solution? We had our rogue poke at them to keep their HP down, while the rest of us dug holes, then we buried the trolls. DM allowed it, rationalizing that yeah, the trolls would regenerate, but by the time they regenerated enough and dug themselves out, we'd be long gone.

Oh, and it was sonic, by the way. Sonic energy breaks crystalline trolls.

[eugimon]

penny arcade has a nice send off: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic

It's the most recent comic at the time of this post.

[F-ZeroOne]

Order of the Stick:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/images/rZ5a...KCDAwzZyA2l.gif

[Roy Focker]

The man contributed a lot to the abstinence movement.

[mikeszekely]

Dueling Analogs.

[chrono]

GG only put century old RPG's games on to paper in the form of a dice mechanic (which is something every current RPG is running away from). Healthily stealing left and right from dozens of sources along the way doing so. Also it's quite the reverse because RPG's own a huge amount of their popularity to the broad audience that VG's and computer games brought them.

Sure he opened the door by putting gambling and childs games together, but hundreds of others did the job of making RPG's what they are today. He's equal to Supermans creator or Bill Gates founding partner at MS.

Besides the guy invented trolling with his BS at CON's.

[Graham]

Big roleplayer in my teens back in the 80s'.

Always more into Runequest, Traveller and Call of Cthulu than D&D though. Always found D&D rules too unrealistic.

Still Gary Gygax made a huge contribution to the industry, even if I don't personally like his system.

Graham

[mikeszekely]

Also it's quite the reverse because RPG's own a huge amount of their popularity to the broad audience that VG's and computer games brought them.

But those videogames and computer games are directly descended from geek programmers trying to emulate D&D on the computer. I mean, World of Warcraft wouldn't be what it was today had Ultima Online not come before it. And Ultima creator Richard Garriot was a D&D player. The original Final Fantasy had a class system, extra attacks, an 8 level spell system, and spell slots, all ripped from D&D. There's nothing "quite the reverse" here; without D&D modern RPGs, be they computer or console, western or JPRGs, wouldn't exist.

You might not like him, and you can marginalize his creation of D&D or the actual game of D&D itself, but you're really kidding yourself if you think you can marginalize D&D's impact. That's like saying, "Henry Ford wasn't so great, all he did was rip off the carriage, which had been around for a long time before, and combined it with a combustion engine that the automotive industry is moving away from."

(Yeah, I know that despite research into alternative fuels, no one's really moving away from combustion engine. But I figure the analogy is apt, because no one's really moving away from dice... D&D is still king, and 4th edition is still d20. Even storytelling games like World of Darkness use d6's to resolve actions.)

[Retracting Head Ter Ter]

Goodbye Gary! Sad that you missed your last saving throw.

Edited March 8, 2008 by Retracting Head Ter Ter

[yellowlightman]

Dueling Analogs.

I laughed at that for completely different reasons than the other had intended. I'd forgotten about the removal of demons and such from 2nd edition, but the 2nd edition rules were certainly hellish.

[Alpha OTS]

http://xkcd.com/393/

[lord_breetai]

too say everyone is moving away from dice is out and out wrong, there are new paper RPGs being released all the time based on TV shows and even video games, so no it's not going away, and there's obviously something there.