Letters to the Editor
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I Love D&D
Thank you very much for writing this. Ever since I heard that Gary Gygax passed I've been going around various sites on the net, nerd sites from Slashdot to Enworld, and am very glad to see that it's mentioned here on Salon. Gary Gygax as as influential of an artist and writer as any who've received and obit here, and he deserved attention even if us nerds and geeks may still be looked down upon.
I agree with what impact D&D has had on the net, computers and essentially everything high tech. Still I was saddened when at my work, in an IT development group, when someone mentioned Gygax's passing and I said how I still played D&D -- they laughed at me. I'm 37 years old, a well payed computer programmer, with a wife and two kids, but they still laughed at me like when I was in high school. For being a geek. It was frustrating at first but I calmly told them I still play, my wife plays, and my 4 year old son wants to. Then I told them what it was like, creating a character and a story and a whole nother world to live in. At then end they weren't laughing at me but, perhaps, appreciated the creative world that I and other gamers live in.