Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

D&D Co-Creator Gary Gygax Has Passed Away

Posted by Zonk on from the tip-of-the-hat-roll-of-the-dice dept.

Mearlus writes "In the recent past co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons Gary Gygax has worked with Troll Lord Games, a small tabletop RPG publisher. Their forums have up a post noting that Mr. Gygax has apparently passed away. Gygax was known, along with Dave Arneson, as the Father of Roleplaying." Saddened reactions from well-known designers have already begun to appear online. Consider this is an in-memoriam Ask Slashdot question: How has D&D (and tabletop roleplaying) touched/improved your life? Update: 03/04 23:16 GMT by Z : With more time, official announcements have had time to appear. Many sites are featuring posts on Gygax's impact on gaming, including touching entries on Salon and CNet.

6 of 512 comments (clear)

  1. Friends by The+Aethereal · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How has D&D (and tabletop roleplaying) touched/improved your life? I made some great friends in college that I probably would not have met were it not for D&D (or role playing in general).
  2. Will be missed by wembley+fraggle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A better question would be what aspect of my life hasn't been influenced by Gygax. Safe travels, Gary.

  3. RIP Gary by Weaselmancer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You gave me a lot of my favorite childhood memories.

    Thanks Gary. We'll miss you.

    --
    Weaselmancer
    rediculous.
  4. Re:This sucks. by Thangodin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It wasn't the rule system itself that was important, but the very idea of a role playing game. D&D was the first attempt to come up with a war game system that could be applied to general storytelling with players each playing a single character. All the other RPG systems were derived from this core idea, and a lot of the fantasy and nearly all fantasy computer games can trace their influence, directly or indirectly, to this first RPG.

    Of course, once someone had created one RPG, it was fairly easy to come up with others and improve upon it. It seemed so obvious... once someone else had thought of it.

    Oddly enough, during the 70's a lot of former flower children tried to come up with games where players actually played together rather than against each other. They abhorred D&D for its violent content--and yet, it fit exactly the dynamics they were looking for, and RPGs are the only kind of non-competitive game that survived the decade.

  5. Re:This sucks. by h4rm0ny · · Score: 4, Insightful


    I played D&D as a child and am better for it. It fostered a love of storytelling and is solely responsible for my love of probability theory. If everyone wasn't so busy in their lives at the moment, I'd quite happily still run a game as an adult.

    Mr. Gygax, thank you for creating something so great.

    --

    Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
  6. You are out of your mind. by Molochi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I strongly doubt we would have World of Warcraft, or indeed most video games we enjoy today if there had never been a D&D. And I also strongly doubt the commercial success of TSR would have reached national (let alone world wide) recognition without Gary Gygax. The idea of a persistent character that gains experience and becomes more powerful the longer you play it was contrary to the wargames that evolved into D&D. D&D rules spawned ideas for hundreds of other table top RPGs, perhaps because its rules were "broken" but also because the concept was revolutionary and gave would be game designers an industry to design in.

    I never particularly cared for D&D or WOW, but I would not try to conceal its enormous influence of Gary or TSR.

    --
    "The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"