E. Gary Gygax, 1938 – 2008
No lame jokes about failed saving throws, final quests, or undead please.
It’s for real: E. Gary Gygax passed away today.
I got the D&D Basic Rules Set for Christmas when I was about eleven years old, and I spent most of the following snowy weekend exploring the kobold-infested caves just outside the Keep on the Borderlands.
In terms of actual time spent playing the game, I probably peaked a couple of years later. That didn’t stop me from picking up volume after hard-bound volume of AD&D 2 rule books from the bottom shelf of the Hyannis Woolworth’s well into High School. (And I read those suckers cover-to-cover, believe me.)
So many cool ideas, so many possibilities… most of them sound like stereotypes now because they’ve been constantly tread & retread in every medium from paperback to WoW, but then they were exciting and fresh. And it was fascinating to see how those dramatic fantasies were reduced down to — and then reconstituted from — a balance of maps, tables, and statistics. My first insight into game design principles.
Every geek’s got to have a D&D story or two, and that’s mine. I could go on, but I think Rich Burlew pretty well sums it up. RIP, EGG.
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