Thread "The death of a Legend." in forum "Comic Talk and General Discussion *"

Posted at 10:03AM, Mar. 10, 2008

I posted this to my blog on March 5:

For those of you who didn't know, possibly the greatest creative mind of our time passed away yesterday, March 4. This is a man responsible for an entire generation of nerds spending time in their parents basement instead of going out to meet girls. People who consumed mass quanitities of pizza and Mountain Dew and stayed up until 5am or later throwing dice and arguing about character actions based on allignment (myself proudly included among them). Imagine a time pre-internet where the only thing to do was table-top gaming.

This man inspired an entire genre of gaming, and set the standard for countless spin-offs and entire series of multi-media (we're talking billions and billions of dollars in industry) that all spawned from a franchise that he no doubt came up with while, well…sitting in his parents basement. His passing marks a sad day indeed, especially for those among us who consider themselves a member of the table-top gaming community (and fans of RPG games in general). Without the ideas that spewed forth from this mans mind, our world would be a very different place today.

Posted at 1:03PM, Mar. 10, 2008

Matt Forbeck has a nice write up of the memorial service.

Seems many people there started referring to it as Gary Con 1… which I think is very cool.

Posted at 4:03AM, Mar. 14, 2008

Steve Colbert and his tribute to Gygax

Posted at 8:03AM, Mar. 14, 2008

No… :( (And I've never even played D&D; talk about influential!)

Posted at 10:03PM, Mar. 16, 2008

How come I haven't seen anyone mention this elsewhere?
Uhh… and just who is he?

Posted at 4:03AM, Mar. 17, 2008

How come I haven't seen anyone mention this elsewhere?

I've seen it mentioned plenty of places.

Uhh… and just who is he?

Aw, come on man.

Gary Gygax (July 27, 1938 - March 4, 2008} was an American writer and game designer, best known for co-creating the pioneering role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D;) with Dave Arneson, and co-founding the company Tactical Studies Rules (TSR, Inc.) with Don Kaye in 1973. Gygax is generally acknowledged as one of the fathers of the tabletop role-playing game.

Ithink it'd be safe to say that if it wasn't for people like Gygax and Arneson, we wouldn't have MMORPGs like WoW and CoH. I'm sure people would disagree with me on that fact, but dammit I'm sticking to that one. :)

Posted at 4:03AM, Mar. 17, 2008

Ithink it'd be safe to say that if it wasn't for people like Gygax and Arneson, we wouldn't have MMORPGs like WoW and CoH. I'm sure people would disagree with me on that fact, but dammit I'm sticking to that one. :)

Wouldn't have all those fantasy genre animes/games coming from Japan either. And no Final Fantasy.
(Not in the cheesy form we know it as.)

Posted at 6:03AM, Mar. 17, 2008

Ithink it'd be safe to say that if it wasn't for people like Gygax and Arneson, we wouldn't have MMORPGs like WoW and CoH. I'm sure people would disagree with me on that fact, but dammit I'm sticking to that one. :)
Wouldn't have all those fantasy genre animes/games coming from Japan either. And no Final Fantasy.
(Not in the cheesy form we know it as.)

I guess he created the interest for that group of people. But I'm not really sure he directly influenced it.

In fact you could say if it wasn't for Tolkien & LoTR, Gygax wouldn't have created D&D. ;)

Posted at 9:03AM, Mar. 17, 2008

In fact you could say if it wasn't for Tolkien & LoTR, Gygax wouldn't have created D&D. ;)

In fact, ozoneocean already said that. Heh. :D

Posted at 12:03PM, Mar. 17, 2008

In fact you could say if it wasn't for Tolkien & LoTR, Gygax wouldn't have created D&D. ;)
In fact, ozoneocean already said that. Heh. :D

Did he? Whoops, sorry. My bad!

Some funny stuff:

-A strain of bacteria was named in honor of Gary Gygax, namely "Arthronema gygaxiana sp nov UTCC393".

-Sync Magazine named Gary Gygax #1 on the list of "The 50 Biggest Nerds of All Time".

-Following the announcement of his death and as a tribute to him, several Dungeons and Dragons players proposed to call a natural 20 dice roll (on the Dungeons and Dragons emblematic 20 sided die) a "Gygax".