gygax r.i.p. ;_;

Wow, RIP

i heard about this on wikipedia of all places :|

this calls for 1d6 minutes of silence.

:( RIP lovable weirdo

A great Futurama cameo as well!

RIP, dungeon master.

heart disease saving throw = 1 ;_;

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51HoHib8IcL._AA240_.jpg

RIP :(

his constitution had been permanently decreased due to a cursed medic alert bracelet.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51P2VANGBPL._BO2%2C204%2C203%2C200_PIlitb-dp-500-arrow%2CTopRight%2C45%2C-64_OU01_AA240_SH20_.jpg

^^i remember checking this out of the library when i was a pretty young kid. at the time it seemed like this crazy, obtuse philosophical text that was sorta about D&D (probably still would).

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c4/B2ModuleCover.jpg/250px-B2ModuleCover.jpg

Keep On The Borderlands was THEE CLASSIC starter module, right? Am I confused?

http://rdushay.home.mindspring.com/Museum/Images/MMcover.gif

AERIAL SERVANT TO ZOMBIE

RIP dude. (My blog burblings.)

Oh man!! MONSTER MANUAL!!

http://analogmedium.com/blog/2007/07/mazes-and-monsters-1.jpg

;_;

I think this has been linked to before, but great article nonetheless:

http://www.believermag.com/issues/200609/?read=article_lafarge

Supposedly Mary Kate Olson was seen leaving his West Village flat around 9:45am the day of his passing...

i heard his heart exploded from a potent dose of sparks and riding his bike too fast

ugh, i feel like someone punched me in the gut

never met gygax but i always imagined him looking and acting like the bearded, overweight, shorts + black socks not matching, aviator glasses wearing, mildly downs syndrome looking clerks at GAME TOWNE. i miss those dudes, they were our heroes when we were 7th and 8th graders. we'd go hang out at the store for 3-4 hours at a time, listening to these 40 year old dudes tell us stories about the golden age of roleplaying in the early 80s.

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_309b.html

From that Paul LaFarge article:

Gygax does not look un-wizardly: he has a long white ponytail, a white beard and fierce black eyebrows, like Gandalf. He is shorter than Gandalf, however, and stouter, and more cheerful: picture him as a cross between Gandalf and Bilbo Baggins. A lifelong smoker, Gygax sounds a bit like Tom Waits, especially when he laughs, and he laughs often. He had a mild stroke in 2004, and his doctor ordered him to quit cigarettes; now he smokes Monterrey Black and Mild cigarillos, one after the other.

A friend got to be DMed by him once. Gygax spend the game trying it on with the lady gamers and having extended conversations between the NPCs.

RIP!

he was a figure of some scorn in the rpg community in recent years (so i gathered, maybe i was reading around the wrong places). but the world owes him a lot!

for what?

i mean, the scorn part

this is shorthanding a lot of comment-box attitudinizing, etc, but i think it was rooted in a lot of backlash against D&D itself: too rules-y, too arbritrary, too complicated, not enough character or atmosphere. being nerdy in a bad way, i guess.

i never played it (maybe moonship can help me out), but the second big fantasy game he made, mythus, came in for some crazy harsh reviews.

that believer article is great.

THE HARLOT ENCOUNTER TABLE
01-10
11-25
26-35
36-50
51-65
66-75
76-85
86-90
91-92
93-94
95-98
99-00
slovenly trull
brazen strumpet
cheap trollop
typical streetwalker
saucy tart
wanton wench
expensive doxy
haughty courtesan
aged madam
wealthy procuress
sly pimp
rich panderer

mythus / dangerous journeys

gff basically has it right. gygax was a really "crunchy" game designer (as in number-crunching, lots of rules and stats), especially compared to the late 90s vogue for rules-light "storytelling-heavy" RPG

i think this criticism has toned down a bit because people realized that just being rules-light doesn't in and of itself ensure a roleplaying-heavy behavior on the part of players. and that a lot of what they were paying for in "rules-light" game systems was basically fluff and padding.

also it's too easy to forget that early roleplayers managed to transition from tabletop miniatures wargaming to pencil & paper RPG - they invented a whole new form of entertainment. dudes were as bold as the guys who made PONG. too easy to criticize their attachment to some of the trappings of wargaming, in hindsight.

RIP and thanks for lots of fun times

Do you want your possesions identified? (y n)

you could toss out those rules if you needed to. D&D is all about the collecive imagination of the DM and Players.
Gygax, you provided a real bond for me and my brother for years.
R.I.P. (hopefully on the Plane with all the creatures shaped like polyhedrons)

i think D&D is largely responsible for the survival of nerd-dom's medievalist strain, much more than the surviving cults of tolkein or howard or moorcock alone (if you can even differentiate them any more) so yeah peter jackson and blizzard software are in his shadow.

and the idea of a participant in a game being a "character" is a big big conceptual breakthrough; even something like grand theft auto is descended from D&D, in a way.

I'm wearing a black armband for the rest of the day, as I said on my stupid weblog, pour thyself a dragon-festooned hogshead of mead and pour one out for the Dungeon Master!

I officially love the moves away from complex polyhedrons and loads of tables that the rules-light games like Over The Edge or even Star Wars brought in, but we must salute Gygax for creating the hobby.

Folks, if you haven't read Alex's blog post just now, you *really* need to. I'm very envious!

WEEP NERDS

I met Gygax at Gen Con/Origins '88. I think that meeting and his disillusion with the industry at that time is a big reason why I quit gaming.

Regardless, the six years of my life that I dedicated to D&D profoundly shaped who I am today.

My mother always tells her friends that her kids turned out well because of video games and Dungeons & Dragons.

I hope Gary is riding Demogorgon to the 666th layer of the Abyss right now. Total respect. RIP.

Alex, that was a great tribute

;_;

Thanks, Joe. Our local NPR affiliate here in NYC, WNYC, just did a nice piece on him. Read and hear it by clickin' here.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2008/20080304.jpg

RIP Zagyg.

this calls for 1d6 minutes of silence.

Awwww. This is so funny but also touching.

RIP big guy!

Jack Chick triumphant

Will be eternally remembered fo making swaths of americans know what "isocahedrons" and "dodecahedrons" are

Did Colbert mark his passing tonight?

aw, RIP. MY friend Tony taught me how to play Tunnels & Trolls when I was like ten years old (in 1976). I soon moved on to the 3-book D&D set in the box, and it totally consumed my life until around age 16. Even after that, until I was like 23-24, I occasionally worked for an RPG company and went to conventions like Origins and Gencon.

To my old D&D high school buddies, thanks for all the good times. And thanks to GG for helping to create them.

Did Colbert mark his passing tonight?

nope. maybe tomorrow.

hueg bummer. sadface.

"Rolling In His Grave"

I don't know whether to laugh at that or cringe.

heh, someone comes to bury:

http://www.slate.com/id/2186203/

But it has to be said: Gary Gygax wasn't a visionary to all of us. The real geeks out there—my homies—know the awkward truth: When you cut through the nostalgia, Dungeons & Dragons isn't a good role-playing game; in fact, it's one of the worst on the market. Sadly, Gygax's creation defines our strange corner of the entertainment world and drowns out all the more innovative and sophisticated games that have made D&D obsolete for decades. (As a game designer, Gygax is far outclassed by contemporaries such as Steve Jackson and Greg Stafford.) It's the reason that tabletop gaming is not only stuck in the pop culture gutter but considered pathetic even by the standards of mouth-breathing Star Trek conventioneers. And with the entire industry continuing to collapse in the face of online gaming, this might be the last chance to see Gygax for what he was—an unrepentant hack, more Michael Bay than Ingmar Bergman.

what a nerdlinger.

comicstoreguy.jpg

As a game designer, Gygax is far outclassed by contemporaries such as Steve Jackson and Greg Stafford.

I'm not a Jackson cultist but I did like the look of Munchkin, as a friend's kid was showing me the other day. Anyway, coexistence is possible rather than one-or-the-other choices, so fuck a Slate.

I am grateful that he created a class of high schoolers that even I could feel superior to.

Haha.

Sadly, Gygax's creation defines our strange corner of the entertainment world and drowns out all the more innovative and sophisticated games that have made D&D obsolete for decades. (As a game designer, Gygax is far outclassed by contemporaries such as Steve Jackson and Greg Stafford.) It's the reason that tabletop gaming is not only stuck in the pop culture gutter but considered pathetic even by the standards of mouth-breathing Star Trek conventioneers.

yeah, that's the reason.

yeah, otm. i think he's right (or at least i agree with him) that the moral universe of d&d is pretty creepy, he's way way off to think that 'more innovative and sophisticated' games should or could have a bigger market share than they do

Tabletop RPGing is not supposed to be innovative or sophisticated! It is maybe supposed to help you eventually become friends with Daniel Desario.

So this old chestnut was dredged up by a D&D playing friend of mine, from 2005.

https://i.ibb.co/KhwRjw4/FB-IMG-1598496599463.jpg

Oh man, so he was in hell this whole time