Gary Gygax, Co-Creator of Dungeons and Dragons, Dies at Age 69

[FVZA_Colonel]

Source: Associated Press

MILWAUKEE (AP) - The man who co-created the game Dungeons & Dragons and helped start the role-playing phenomenon is dead.

Gary Gygax (GEYE'-gaks) died this morning at his home in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, about 55 miles southwest of Milwaukee.

His wife, Gail Gygax, says he had been suffering from health problems for several years, including an abdominal aneurysm.

Gygax and co-creator Dave Arneson developed the role-playing game in 1974 and it went on to become 1 of the best-selling games ever. Dungeons & Dragons is considered the grandfather of fantasy role-playing games and has influenced video games, books, movies and inspired legions of adoring fans.

Read more: http://wkbt.com/Global/story.asp?S=7963395

---

And thus did nerds everywhere take off their hats and bow their heads for 1d6 minutes of silence.

[bkcc]

1. sad news.

i used to play that game all the time as a child.
rest in peace, mr. gygax.

[jgraz]

2. Dude finally ran out of hit points.

[TechBear_Seattle]

37. And sadly, the cleric got stuck in traffic

And by way of non-sequitur, I'm reminded of a one-panel cartoon showing a group of adventurers standing around a grave and looking sad. The tombstone says, "Here lies Stoutbeard, Dwarf and Fighter. Died 520, 523, 524 (twice), 526 and (finally) 529."

Let us raise a mug to the memory of the man whose grand thought experiment was responsible for many a wasted hour of my youth.

:toast:

[knight_of_the_star]

51. and botched his soak roll

Along with rolling a 1 to convince Death not to take him

[Samurai_Writer]

3. He must have rolled a 1 on his saving throws.

Poor guy. My AD&D group will be playing an original D&D game in memory of him, during our next session. Rest in Peace, Mr. Gygax.

[Mabus]

4. Mr. Gygax, I salute you

Thank you for the D&D&D marathons.

You'll always be chaotic good to me.

[Sub Atomic]

5. This will be good news for the Ron Paul campaign.

Now his supporters will have on less distraction.

[Name removed]

16. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ArbustoBuster]

43. All D&D players should recognize dweeb's comment for what it is...

...a troll. :D

[Norrin Radd]

48. LOL

Get the burning oil!

[TK421]

59. Well...if memory serves, trolls can be killed by fire but not by tomb stoning

I thought there was another method, but since it's been so long since I last played I forget what that method is...

[Chovexani]

63. Acid!

And I didn't even have to look that up! God I'm a nerd! :rofl:

[Norrin Radd]

64. That's it!

[TK421]

65. Was it acid? Gosh...I really need to get back into the game

although I always played a Ranger, and never had any acid spells to use ( just two-weapon fighting or the occasional bow of force ).

[Chovexani]

66. My highest level PC ever was a ranger

I've been known to play mages a lot though. :)

Actually my favorite D&D character ever was a Drow wizard who fled to the surface and disguised himself as a circus freak after one too many indiscretions. :evilgrin:

[TK421]

67. Drow are cool characters to play, but I've had the misfortune of having

a DM who forces you to play just as a Drow would act ( and you can't even get creative with it, sometimes ) too many restrictions on their character...sort of like playing a Paladin

[YOY]

82. Hey! Not true!

Flesh-to-stone works on them just fine. It's just that fire and acid are more readily available to adventurers...

[Ian David]

24. Ron Paul supporters don't pay D&D. Paultards play Viva Pinata. n/t

[TheWatcher]

34. Look, my wife plays Viva Pinata, and she's an Obama Supporter.

What say we quit with the silly labels and generalizations on all fronts, and pay respect to a very decent man who has just passed away.

Shall we?

[Ian David]

36. Whether or not I listen to you depends on your charisma score. n/t

[TheWatcher]

46. Whether or not I really give a rat's ass what you think depends on the relevancy of your posts.

Looks like you failed your Saving Throw.

Why people need to engage in childish, nonsensical comments in a thread about someone passing, I will never understand.

Come on, you are better than this.

[Ian David]

53. You deal with your grief your way, I'll deal with it mine. n/t

[Ian David]

86. Is this better?

Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2008 1:05 am Post subject: Paying respects to Mr. Gygax

Thank you, Mr. Gygax for the hours I spent playing alone or with my friends in my basement.

For the hours spent debating whether you could de-fang a Succubus and make her your girlfriend (to put it politely).

And thanks to Mr. Gygax, I met my first real (non-Succubus!) girlfriend through my school Dungeons & Dragons club.

Why couldn't the Great Dungeon Master in The Sky have taken Rona Jaffe, Tom Lazarus, or Steven Hilliard Stern instead!

When I turned 13, the theme of my Bar Mitzvah was Dungeons and Dragons. Not expecting much, I invited Mr. E. Gary Gygax to my Bar Mitzvah.

To my great surprise and delight, not only did I receive a response, but Mr. Gygax personally wrote his regrets and sent me a check for $18.00 (in Jewish tradition, 18 is a lucky number).

I was always torn between bewildered gratitude and guilt. I have always wondered if maybe Mr. Gygax thought that I was some distant, forgotten relative he had some kind of obligation to send something to, or whether he sent me a gift knowing I was "just a fan."

After reading some of the press and comments after his passing, I'm now certain that Mr. Gygax delighted in the enthusiasm of his fans, and must have known that I was just one of his millions of his admirers.

Thank you, Mr. Gygax.

--Ian

PostPosted: Thu Mar 06, 2008 1:04 am Post subject:

[OnyxCollie]

69. Paultards play Magic: The Gathering. nt

[YOY]

73. Crack the Addiction

The only time I've ever seen grown men pay 50+ bucks for a new piece of cardboard without a baseball player's picture on it.

[Kelvin Mace]

32. As a long time player and DM

I can say I am offended.

[YOY]

81. You obviously have no idea who plays the D

And probably beleived the Pat Pulling.

Senor Gygax was one of Al Gore's homies...in animation...along with Michelle Nichols, Deep Blue, and Steven Hawking.

[RoyGBiv]

6. Salute ...

A 1d20 lightening bolt salute ...

[Centered]

7. RIP Sir

You were influential in my life and the lives of many others.

[SteppingRazor]

8. My 24th level paladin will come out of his years-long retirement long enough to weep.

:cry:

[4_Legs_Good]

9. Now that's sad!

Poor guy! We'll miss you. I was hoping for a reprise of his role as himself once Futurama is renewed!

David

[TlalocW]

10. I guess he'll be showing up as an evil spirit

In new Chick Tracts on the evils of gaming.

TlalocW

[berni_mccoy]

11. RIP Great Dungeon Master. You will be missed greatly.

[smb]

12. Memories

GM: Roll your final election night success rolls.
GWB: 11! Marginal success.
AG: 11! Also marginal success.
GM: Ok. Let's see how bad this is... (rolls) 18. Well. Isn't that special. Critical chaos table ... GWB, isn't your brother in charge of Florida?
GWB: Yeah... but he's a NPC...
GM: Too bad. AG, Florida was called for you on election night, but has shifted back to GWB by ... twelve hundred votes. Al has a (rolls) 0.2% lead in the popular vote but is losing the electoral college if Florida stays in GWB's column.
AG: Recount! Recount!
GWB: No fair, if I'm winning...
GM: Marginal success.
GWB: But that was a success!
GM: (rolls) 18 again! An excellent success. The election authorities in one of the Florida counties screwed up the ballot so all the voters with IQ under 100 or over 75 years old voted for the wrong person or twice.
GWB: Aaaaaaa
AG: I sue! No, wait, I don't sue, the *voters* sue...
GM: Roll to convince some voters to sue.
AG: ...(rolls) 14! I got 'em!
GWB: This is just terrible. We can't be doing this to the country. Concede already, Al.
GWB: (rolls) 8. Nope.
AG: Did the media see that? Did they?
GM: GWB, make a saving throw versus media.
GM: Make a saving throw versus public opinion.
GWB: (rolls) 12. Close enough?
GM: People are shaking their heads, but not trying to burn down your house.
GWB: Whew.
GM: (rolls) 17. Excellent. The first recount results show GWB's lead narrowing to... (rolls) 350 votes!
AG: I want a hand recount.
GWB: No, you don't.
AG: It says I can have a hand recount. It's on Page 41 of the Election Masters Guide, third paragraph, second sentence.
GWB: Don't be a Wussy Rules Lawyer.
GM: (flips pages) He's right.
GWB: Well Damnit. I'm suing to stop him anyways.
GM: You're suing to overturn the rules?
GWB: Damn straight.
GM: Oh-kay... roll for it.
GWB: (rolls) 15! Hey, look at that, I got a 15!
GM: Good, but not good enough to overturn a game rule...
AG: Haw Haw.
GWB: See if I share my pizza with you next time.
AG: Hey, don't get snippy.

[Norrin Radd]

13. Peace to Mr. Gygax, and condolences to his family and friends.

Thank you for all of the hours of fun because of your wonderfully rich and complex game.

It's a bit of an understatement of the influence of his and Arneson's creation on entertainment in all of the forms of media. He will be missed.

[nxylas]

14. And a part of my adolescence dies with him

I was never a serious D&D player, me and my friends always played it strictly for laughs, but hey, there's nothing wrong with having fun, right? Sadly, I never did learn any of those real spells that Jack Chick was always warning us about.

[Deny and Shred]

15. I loved D&D in 5th, 6th grade. As a kid, learned more vocabulary,

mythology, history, particularly of various cultural pantheons through Deities and Demigods, than I did in school. The various dice and rolls necessary to avoid danger probably helped my understanding of probabilities as well. In the Atari age, he had kids using their imaginations. He should have been proud.
When I first played, my friend, the DM who introduced me, told me Mr. Gygax developed the game for his platoon while serving in Vietnam. If that's accurate, Role Playing Games are at least one creative thing, instead of destructive thing, that emerged from the conflict.

[Soodonim]

17. That game...

is so culturally insensitive.

[FVZA_Colonel]

19. Huh?

Seriously though, huh?

[RoseMead]

31. LOL I remember engaging in a philosophical discussion about orc babies

Went something like, all orcs are evil, and palladins are supposed to smite evil, so it's ok for palladins to kill orc babies.

But then we started to wonder, are orcs evil by nature, or is it a result of their environment, etc? If that were the case, it was argued, palladins shouldn't kill orc babies, because they're just babies and maybe haven't learned to be evil yet. And then there was the viewpoint that even if orcs are inherently evil, palladins still shouldn't kill orc babies because evil or not, they're still just babies...

lol We had way, way, waaaay too much time on our hands back then.

[Occulus]

39. Those sorts of conversations...

...are part of what that game is famous for.

[RoseMead]

41. Hey, at least we were thinking!

Thinking about orc babies, but thinking nonetheless.:)

[Ian David]

54. We had similar conversations.

"If you capture a Succubus and remove her fangs so she can't bite you, can you safely make her your girlfriend?"

[RoseMead]

74. That's another common aspect of the game:

Everything is always trying to get it on with everything else. At lease, that's how our games always seemed to go!

[smb]

79. Hmmm...

"If you capture a Succubus and remove her fangs so she can't bite you, can you safely make her your girlfriend?"

Use a ballgag for "safe sex".

[Ian David]

84. We weren't so sophisticated back then.

Back then, we imagined a woman's vagina must taste like orange juice.

Well, we were close. Neither of them are just for breakfast anymore.

I only mention this, because this revelation took place during the same conversation.

[Samurai_Writer]

25. Oh yes, the poor goblins are so misunderstood

:sarcasm:

Seriously... culturally insensitive? WTF?

[Ian David]

27. ...

[14thColony]

29. So true...

I was always offended by the game's portrayal of Goblin and Orc culture. They're really very nice once you get to know them. Assuming they don't eat you of course.

[smb]

30. Do You Read "Order Of The Stick"?

Part of the backstory is that the gods created goblins, etc, as walking XP for the "real" races -- and when one of them gets elevated to godhood and finds out, he's pissed...

[Posteritatis]

52. Everyone needs to read Order of the Stick, dammit (nt)

[4bh0r53n]

80. That is true. nt

[galledgoblin]

83. particularly today's strip

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0536.html
very nice tribute O8)

[Bassic]

89. Order of the Stick

fucking rocks.

[Occulus]

38. Considering your character can be from anywhere at all,

and also considering the dungeons can be in any setting,

it is clear you don't know WTF you're talking about.

[Book Lover]

56. Are you going to come back here and explain this post?

I for one want to know what you mean.

[Bassic]

88. Uh, what? nt

[onehandle]

18. Flashback to the late 70's. Player 1: "I won't attack the party again. I promise."

Party Leader: "Ok, Let's start down the road."

DM: "Two magic missles hit the party leader."

Party: "We kill the Magic-User."

DM: "The Magic-User is dead."

Magic-User's Player - "Hey, what can I say? I'm Chaotic."


And he went on to be Best Man at my wedding.

[Ian David]

26. I met my first real girlfriend through the school Dungeons & Dragons club.

Yes, there were actual girls there!

[onehandle]

33. We had girls in our group too.

Cute ones who wanted to date me.

I liked it.

[Chovexani]

62. I *was* the girl in my high school group

Sadly, the only one. And no one wanted to date me even though I was cute. :(

Maybe because I owned more sharp pointy sticks than everyone else combined and was known to exhibit Drowish tendencies. :evilgrin:

[lynnertic]

20. .

[namsdubmo]

21. old D & Ders never die, they

just get caught up in an endless maze of never ending complexity

[Occulus]

40. I've often wondered what D&D would be like if it incorporated the fractal maze.

[Nevernose]

55. That's the Temple of Elemental Evil, not a fractal maze.

Or maybe the revamped Castle Greyhawk.

[semillama]

22. The Empty Chair

The Empty Chair
Eulogy for a Gamer

There is an empty chair,
at the table this day.
A hallowed place where,
a friend once played.
The roll of his dice,
my ears long to hear.
Or perhaps it would suffice,
if he should suddenly appear.
With character sheet in hand,
and a bag of Cheeze-doodles to share.
All his friends would stand,
as he sat in the empty chair.
I hear his voice a-callin’,
and it ties my heart in a knot.
For he cries, “Though a comrade has fallen,
You must play for those who cannot.”
We conquered worlds on the run,
he and I in the name of fun.
And as others may come and go,
I make both both friend and foe.
But what I long for most,
is our past now long a ghost.

http://www.kenzerco.com/Operiodicals/kodt/nemptychair.php

[Ian David]

23. Oh, no! I invited E. Gary Gygax to my Bar Mitzvah, and he sent me a check for $18.00

The theme for my Bar Mitzvah was (of course) Dungeons & Dragons.

[intaglio]

28. May a druid rebirth him as a Half-Elven Warrior mage

My experience

Party Member 1 - This dungeon is too damn quiet! there's nothing to fight,

Party Member 2 - Yeah, boring. Haven't even rolled any wandering Monsters,

Party member 3 - Uh-huh, we've gotta do something though, spice it up a little,

PM.s 1, 2 and 3 - yeah!

PM4 My character, Genisius Joculator CG Cleric -

HERE, MONSTER, MONSTER, MONSTER!!

[Chovexani]

60. As long as he doesn't come back as a puppy

Like my 16th level Elven ranger when I was in the 8th grade. Our DM for that campaign (we took turns in my nerd herd) was a sadistic bastard with a wicked sense of humor. She still had all her ranger skills though. Nipping a balor in the ankles to death in the Nine Hells...ah man those were good times. :D

I may not have always agreed with Gary but thank the gods for him every day. He was a national treasure as far as I'm concerned--through D&D he touched so many lives and will continue to long after he's gone. The cultural and social impact of the game can't be denied.

[Zhade]

35. sadness.

:cry:

Never played DnD (I was a Palladium kid - Rifts ftw), but he was so influential and creative.

Gary, it was very <rolls 2xD20> awesome to have you on this planet.

[Norrin Radd]

49. Erick Wukcik is also not well.

http://www.erickwujcik.com/

http://www.47rpg.com/

[Ian David]

90. That's very sad. I hope Andrew C. Greenberg and Robert Woodhead are okay. n/t

[eShirl]

42. here's to the Great Gax

:toast:
we'll have to pencil him in to the Deities & Demigods somewhere...

yep, I was one of 2 girls in our high school D&D club

[htuttle]

57. I think he's already in there

or was, as Zagyg.


on edit:

Man...I really let my Nerd Flag fly there, didn't I? :eyes:

[FVZA_Colonel]

70. The question is: which plane of alignment will he be going to?

I'm hoping Arboria, or maybe Bytopia.

[KingOfLostSouls]

44. that sucks

he's gone to the big tv lounge in the sky.


may his afterlife be full of plenty of mt dew, chips, take out pizza, and conan the barbarian playing in the background.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsyT4uYZj0E

[Shadowsmith]

45. A moment of silence and a roll of the dice.

I have two reactions to this:

1. Gary you will be missed by many. You brought joy to my friends and I for many years.
2. March 4th is DM's Day, so it is fitting that the grandfather of all DMs should pass away on this day.

[ikojo]

47. Sadness

I am a female who LOVED playing D&D!!!

RIP Gary Gygax

[Norrin Radd]

50. Here is a thread at the message board Gary used to frequent

if you'd like to pay your respects:

http://www.freeyabb.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?mforum=trolllordgames&t=4373&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15&sid=0faee73dbbbc950ae519ecbfb131e7a4&mforum=trolllordgames

I think also he had his hand in

http://www.lejendary.com

[Ian David]

85. THANK YOU! I just posted there

Thank you, Mr. Gygax for the hours I spent playing alone or with my friends in my basement.

For the hours spent debating whether you could de-fang a Succubus and make her your girlfriend (to put it politely).

And thanks to Mr. Gygax, I met my first real (non-Succubus!) girlfriend through my school Dungeons & Dragons club.

Why couldn't the Great Dungeon Master in The Sky have taken Rona Jaffe, Tom Lazarus, or Steven Hilliard Stern instead!

When I turned 13, the theme of my Bar Mitzvah was Dungeons and Dragons. Not expecting much, I invited Mr. E. Gary Gygax to my Bar Mitzvah.

To my great surprise and delight, not only did I receive a response, but Mr. Gygax personally wrote his regrets and sent me a check for $18.00 (in Jewish tradition, 18 is a lucky number).

I was always torn between bewildered gratitude and guilt. I have always wondered if maybe Mr. Gygax thought that I was some distant, forgotten relative he had some kind of obligation to send something to, or whether he sent me a gift knowing I was "just a fan."

After reading some of the press and comments after his passing, I'm now certain that Mr. Gygax delighted in the enthusiasm of his fans, and must have known that I was just one of his millions of his admirers.

Thank you, Mr. Gygax.

--Ian


http://www.freeyabb.com/phpbb/posting.php?mforum=trolllordgames

[Norrin Radd]

87. Great post!

At the Kenzer & Co. boards there are post-ers with photos they took at one of Gary's porch parties:

http://www.kenzerco.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=14

He seemed like a super-sweet guy that always had time for his friends. Lots of lovely tributes on their boards, as well.

[Chovexani]

58. Death rolled a perfect 20

Godspeed, you wonderfully pompous bastard. You will be missed. Nerds everywhere raise their dragon goblets filled with Mountain Dew in salute. :toast:

[TK421]

61. He leaves behind quite a legacy, this guy does....

And for all of the bad jokes people make about the hobby ( not talking about anything anyone has posted here, mind you ) it certainly kept me out of trouble and held my interest for many years. I think an appropriate label for a guy like this ( in the gaming sense ) would be "icon", since he is, indeed the creator of fantasy role-playing games.

RIP Gary...and thank you for your contribution to nerds everywhere ( although I never considered myself one of those, I still found it to be a great excuse for friends to get together and just have a great time ).

[FVZA_Colonel]

71. He kept millions of people entertained with just a few books and some oddly shaped dice.

There really are worse legacies to have.

[The Straight Story]

68. can we cast a resurrect spell?

:)

[sofa king]

92. Yes, but he'll lose a level.

And someone needs to cough up 10000gp worth of diamonds.

[NuttyFluffers]

72. aw, critical botch with no rerolls...

i'm sad now. but his legacy will live on. he gave an outlet for creativity and a shelter for the socially awkward. we'll be feeling his effects in the social stories of our times for generations. the creation of personal mythologies and epics has been a boon to the metaphysics and meta-narrative of our modern world.

[myrna minx]

75. RIP. :-(

[Orsino]

76. It's a milestone...

...but not the end of an era, thank goodness. Gygax and Arneson created the fantasy game by adding magic rules to existing rules for medieval warfare. They've inspired gamers to play in all genres and sub-genres such that if there's a kind of game that you want to play, you can probably find others who play it.

They made something bigger than themselves, something that continued to grow when they no longer were in charge.

[LanternWaste]

77. Gary's Legacy to me is personal

In 1983 I began playing a campaign with some high school classmates I didn't know very well; the only thing we had in common was D&D-- between the five of us, we covered every high school social base available: jock, cheerleader, marching band weenie, drama nerd, and the perpetually-wounded intellectual.

In 2008-- twenty-five years later(!), you couldn't find a group of five closer friends than we are. Marriages, kids, divorces, mortgages, t-ball, and careers have prevented us from playing D&D in a long, long time, but we're still friends.

Gary's Legacy to me is personal-- he introduced me to the four best friends a guy could have.

[YOY]

78. Had the same happen to me

The "geek" steriotype did not fit.

[Frank Cannon]

91. That was my exact same experience

I was pretty shy in high school, until I heard about a D&D game that a kid in a local rural community was running. Everything changed from that day on. I got into just about every "clique" there was, because there were so many people connected to that game.

Some of the best friends I still have today were rolling dice with me in those marathon sessions more than 25 years ago.

We still laugh about our "war stories", like the time at the end of a campaign when most of our party had been killed or mortally wounded by a giant six-armed statue, and we were completely out of spells and ammunition except for a single dart. Our half-dead halfling threw the dart and rolled a 20, which meant he got to roll percentile dice for additional damage. He then rolled "00": "instant kill" by our DM's own rules. The party lived on, in more ways then one.

Mr. Gygax had no real idea of just how much happiness and thrills he was responsible for, for so many people. The gods speed you, Gary.