Gary Gygax
Well, as an avid gamer as myself, I’ve been playing all sorts of games since the tender age of whenever I first started games. If we aren’t going to count things like Hi Ho Cheerio and Hungry Hungry Hippos. I’d say I started gaming at 4, when my father taught me how to play chess. It’s definitely the game I’ve been playing the longest, even having gone to chess school for a handful of years during that time. Games unlocked a lot of things for me. I’d probably consider the big three game influences to be Chess, Magic (yes that Magic), and D&D. And got me to explore my creativity on “okay” grounds, start reaing heavily, and solve puzzles.
While I don’t pen and paper roleplay as much as I used to, I started probably about the same time I started burning my life savings into collecting Magic cards. Ahhh the addiction levels. Anyways, I’ve been roleplaying since about 7th grade (about 12 or 13) which would be considered half my lifetime. So Gary Gygax’s death got an “oh shit” out of me when I read it at work yesterday, and I wanted to post yesterday but wasn’t sure what exactly to say. Gary and Dave got the whole ball rolling some 10 years before I was even born, and still managed to have a major influence on me. I still play in an online 1st edition campaign that I’ve been playing for what feels like forever. Even people who don’t roleplay they’ve seemed to have a major influence in. How many hours does the average person play WoW? It looks like just a fancy UI and a larger world than a single DM could handle. Even back in the day of dial-up modems, and America Online I was mudding.
So yesterday was a said day. I know Gary was semi-retired and did manage to do a lot. I just hope he didn’t have something up his sleeve that never got to see the light of day.
Oh and you can enter the obligatory failed his saving throw joke here.
Posted on March 5th, 2008 by tehdiplomat
Filed under: fantasy, games, life
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