Letters to the Editor
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Alas
I met him at a D&D Con in Wisconsin almost 30 years ago. I admit he was kind of full of himself, and didn't make the best impression on this then teen. But he certainly inspired a lot of fun over the years, and at least a small part of my current career as a novelist can be attributed to the creative practice of dungeon-mastering lo these many years ago.
Good hunting wherever ye be, Master Gygax.
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Whoa...
Damn, dude blew his saving throw, eh? I knew he rolled poorly for his CON. Oh, wait... that's 'paid' for in online games now, I think.
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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.
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Kermit did not sing Mah Na Ma Nah
That is all.
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Save vs. Old Age, Poor Health ... -3
Let us all doff our Helms of Invisibility in a moment of silence.
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I was not allowed to play D&D
because my mom bought the idea on the nightly news that it was Satanic. I am sure there is an alternate universe in which I am a girl hacker, but it's not this one. I am catching up quickly on the fantasy games, though, thanks to my husband and my six-year-old son. Thanks for the tribute - and the silly video!
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Yes, I still play
Have done, off and on, since high school. Yes, I masquerade as a parent, a homeowner, a lawn-mowing, voting, grocery-shopping soccer mom. I play D&D with a group that includes my husband and several good friends. Our kids love D&D night--their chance to hang with their friends and watch movies until very late.
My son is learning to read the small print in Gygax's first edition Monster Manual, which appeared out of the bottom of a closet the other day. The line continues.
Gygax, you will be missed.
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Saved me from trouble (and sex)
At one point in my adult life my mom asked me flat out (in front of other people) how I managed to avoid drugs and police trouble when I was a kid. I shrugged my shoulders, never having thought about it before and said "D&D" Course didn't lose my cherry til I was 19, but thats a different story boys and girls.
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My Well Spent Youth
Ah the memories. I pulled many all-nighters in my early teen years playing AD&D with my friends. Good times. My parents always joked that if I spent as much time studying for school as I did studying AD&D rules that I'd be a straight-A student. They were absolutely right. I could quote the minimum strength and constitution scores needed to be a fighter, but I couldn't solve my way out of a quadratic equation. Gary Gygax, you will be sorely missed.
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Mah Na Mah Na
Not Kermit? All these years I've lived under such a misapprehension. A very quick web search offers no clarity, so I have changed the wording.
Thank you.
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End of an era
I'm sad to hear of Gary Gygax's death, too. I remember trying to explain the idea of D&D to my high school friends and talking them into playing it with me -- disastrously! I've spent many hours playing various types of role-playing games with my husband and friends. Our kids play computer RPGs with their friends. All of these games are descendants of D&D.
Gygax also wrote miniature wargaming rules (one of which, "Chainmail," he adapted to become D&D), board games, novels, stories, and several other RPGs besides D&D and Advanced D&D. But it's D&D (and its spawn) that he'll be remembered for. Gamers around the world owe Gygax a debt of gratitude for creating one of the foundations of their hobby.
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Ma na ma na
No H's.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lgcQUQZBtE
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Oh, and the original
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwYFFEf_ohc&feature=related
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I question Andrew Leonard's Google skills
Googling "The Muppet Show" or "Mah Na Mah Na" turns up a video of the muppets signing the song on the first page of results. The muppet singing is clearly not Kermit. The top result for "Mah Na Mah Na" is the wikipedia page on the song which explains that the muppet that often sang the song is called, surprisingly enough, Mahna Mahna.
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Paper or "Plastic"
The article notes that the modern adventure video game has its roots in D&D, which is certainly true. Having played modern video games based on D&D, I know I would have loved them when I was a teenager in the 70's, but that said, I'm really glad I played D&D back in the paper and dice days. The video games are really a lot of fun, but the paper game required a lot more imagination and work than the video game, since--at least the way my friends and I played it--you had to create not only your character, but if it was your turn to "host" the game, you had to create the setting, which meant at minimum creating maps and populating it with monsters and other dangers, but usually there was a backstory to your setting, as well as other heroes and villains your friends/adventurers would meet, and often they each had a story as well. Creating the "dungeon" was like a fun version of homework.
When playing, your real job as the host (or "Dungeonmaster") was not to set impossible tasks for the other players, or to get them "killed", but it was really to entertain your friends for a couple hours with a mix of clever puzzles, fun storylines, a dash of drama, and the judgement to know when to occasionally cheat the dice rolls in favor of the players, or to add a few more goblins, in order to tread that line between making the adventure too hard or too easy--you were in essence telling a story that evolved with chance and the choices your friends made. In this fashion, not only did the "adventurers" have to cooperate to overcome the obstacles set by the Dungeonmaster, in the end, even the "adversarial" role of the Dungeonmaster was a cooperative one.
Unfortunately, in the video games, the role of the Dungeonmaster is now filled by a computer or console, which is a shame. Playing the Dungeonmaster was in many ways the most rewarding part of the old paper D&D game, since keeping your fellow teenage friends entertained for a couple hours was a much bigger challenge, and triumph, than defeating any paper dragon.