http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9885383-7.html
― bell_labs, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 18:40 (seventeen years ago)
Wow, RIP
― Joe, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 18:43 (seventeen years ago)
i heard about this on wikipedia of all places :|
this calls for 1d6 minutes of silence.
― Will M., Tuesday, 4 March 2008 18:45 (seventeen years ago)
:( RIP lovable weirdo
― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 18:47 (seventeen years ago)
A great Futurama cameo as well!
― Alex in SF, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 18:52 (seventeen years ago)
RIP, dungeon master.
― ian, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 18:53 (seventeen years ago)
heart disease saving throw = 1 ;_;
― mookieproof, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 18:56 (seventeen years ago)
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51HoHib8IcL._AA240_.jpg
RIP :(
― Jordan, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 18:57 (seventeen years ago)
his constitution had been permanently decreased due to a cursed medic alert bracelet.
― ian, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 18:59 (seventeen years ago)
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).
― Jordan, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 19:02 (seventeen years ago)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c4/B2ModuleCover.jpg/250px-B2ModuleCover.jpg
― mookieproof, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 19:09 (seventeen years ago)
Keep On The Borderlands was THEE CLASSIC starter module, right? Am I confused?
http://rdushay.home.mindspring.com/Museum/Images/MMcover.gif
― ian, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 19:12 (seventeen years ago)
AERIAL SERVANT TO ZOMBIE
― Jordan, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 19:15 (seventeen years ago)
RIP dude. (My blog burblings.)
― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 19:20 (seventeen years ago)
Oh man!! MONSTER MANUAL!!
― Joe, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 19:32 (seventeen years ago)
http://analogmedium.com/blog/2007/07/mazes-and-monsters-1.jpg
― Joe, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 19:33 (seventeen years ago)
;_;
― moonship journey to baja, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 20:00 (seventeen years ago)
I think this has been linked to before, but great article nonetheless:
http://www.believermag.com/issues/200609/?read=article_lafarge
― o. nate, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 20:03 (seventeen years ago)
Supposedly Mary Kate Olson was seen leaving his West Village flat around 9:45am the day of his passing...
― Steve Shasta, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 20:05 (seventeen years ago)
i heard his heart exploded from a potent dose of sparks and riding his bike too fast
― jaxon, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 20:07 (seventeen years ago)
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.
― moonship journey to baja, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 20:08 (seventeen years ago)
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_309b.html
― Joe, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 20:08 (seventeen years ago)
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.
― o. nate, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 20:09 (seventeen years ago)
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.
― The Real Dirty Vicar, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 20:43 (seventeen years ago)
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!
― gff, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 20:59 (seventeen years ago)
for what?
― s1ocki, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 21:10 (seventeen years ago)
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.
― gff, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 21:19 (seventeen years ago)
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
― Jordan, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 21:32 (seventeen years ago)
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.
― moonship journey to baja, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 21:37 (seventeen years ago)
RIP and thanks for lots of fun times
― Noodle Vague, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 21:39 (seventeen years ago)
Do you want your possesions identified? (y n)
― felicity, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 21:42 (seventeen years ago)
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)
― sexyDancer, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 21:52 (seventeen years ago)
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.
― gff, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 21:56 (seventeen years ago)
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!
― Alex in NYC, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 21:58 (seventeen years ago)
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.
― The Real Dirty Vicar, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 22:22 (seventeen years ago)
Folks, if you haven't read Alex's blog post just now, you *really* need to. I'm very envious!
― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 22:23 (seventeen years ago)
WEEP NERDS
― akm, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 22:25 (seventeen years ago)
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.
― Nate Carson, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 22:34 (seventeen years ago)
Alex, that was a great tribute
― Joe, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 23:49 (seventeen years ago)
― Raw Patrick, Wednesday, 5 March 2008 00:24 (seventeen years ago)
Thanks, Joe. Our local NPR affiliate here in NYC, WNYC, just did a nice piece on him. Read and hear it by clickin' here.
― Alex in NYC, Wednesday, 5 March 2008 00:34 (seventeen years ago)
http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2008/20080304.jpg
― Curt1s Stephens, Wednesday, 5 March 2008 02:44 (seventeen years ago)
RIP Zagyg.
― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Wednesday, 5 March 2008 03:05 (seventeen years ago)
Awwww. This is so funny but also touching.
RIP big guy!
― nickalicious, Wednesday, 5 March 2008 03:17 (seventeen years ago)
Jack Chick triumphant
― milo z, Wednesday, 5 March 2008 03:28 (seventeen years ago)
Will be eternally remembered fo making swaths of americans know what "isocahedrons" and "dodecahedrons" are
― kingfish, Wednesday, 5 March 2008 03:41 (seventeen years ago)
Did Colbert mark his passing tonight?
― kingfish, Wednesday, 5 March 2008 03:44 (seventeen years ago)
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.
― sleeve, Wednesday, 5 March 2008 03:55 (seventeen years ago)
nope. maybe tomorrow.
― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Wednesday, 5 March 2008 05:07 (seventeen years ago)
hueg bummer. sadface.
― g-kit, Wednesday, 5 March 2008 08:57 (seventeen years ago)
"Rolling In His Grave"
I don't know whether to laugh at that or cringe.
― Alex in NYC, Wednesday, 5 March 2008 12:02 (seventeen years ago)
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.
― gff, Tuesday, 11 March 2008 17:17 (seventeen years ago)
what a nerdlinger.
― s1ocki, Tuesday, 11 March 2008 17:19 (seventeen years ago)
comicstoreguy.jpg
― s1ocki, Tuesday, 11 March 2008 17:20 (seventeen years ago)
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.
― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 11 March 2008 17:21 (seventeen years ago)
I am grateful that he created a class of high schoolers that even I could feel superior to.
― Dr Morbius, Tuesday, 11 March 2008 17:25 (seventeen years ago)
Haha.
― jaymc, Tuesday, 11 March 2008 17:27 (seventeen years ago)
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.
― Edward III, Tuesday, 11 March 2008 17:27 (seventeen years ago)
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
― gff, Tuesday, 11 March 2008 17:36 (seventeen years ago)
Tabletop RPGing is not supposed to be innovative or sophisticated! It is maybe supposed to help you eventually become friends with Daniel Desario.
― nickalicious, Tuesday, 11 March 2008 23:20 (seventeen years ago)
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
― muntjac wagner (Neanderthal), Thursday, 27 August 2020 02:57 (four years ago)
Oh man, so he was in hell this whole time
― Dadjokke (Sgt. Biscuits), Thursday, 27 August 2020 11:27 (four years ago)