Wednesday, March 05, 2008
The Dungeon Master Has Departed, But The Game Goes On
Gary Gygax did not eradicate cancer. He did not bring peace to the Middle East nor did he stop global warming, but neither has anyone else last time I checked and there are legions of people around the globe whose lives would have been emptier without him. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson created Dungeons and Dragons the role-playing game that began it all, a legacy that now encompasses any number of tabletop gaming systems, video/computer games, films, television shows and conventions spawned, inspired or influenced by the characters, rules and even players of that original game.
It may seem trivial to those who are not gamers to see this as a historic contribution, but for some of us life without Gary, D&D and its progeny would have been unimaginably different. Dungeons and Dragons was my second game. I cut my teeth on Traveller, part of the RPG diaspora and like its fellows owing an ancestral nod to Gygax and Arneson. Role-playing gave me back as an adult what had helped me survive my childhood; not only a needed escape but a socially interactive outlet for my fertile imagination. As I matured and my playing style evolved I discovered more facets to my favorite hobby. Gaming has allowed me to become a writer of sorts and an actor for very small audiences. It has taught me improvisation. It has helped me through inhabiting and interacting with characters possessing motivations and facing dilemmas vastly different from my own to have deeper empathy and better see things from someone else’s perspective. For the benefit of those of you who have played with me or simply know me I admit empathy does not always equal sympathy. Sometimes despite my lofty aspirations to deep method acting it was just good to blow off steam from a hateful day at work by gleefully slaughtering monsters in lieu of my coworkers. Thanks to Gary and many others in the gaming industry I have been lucky enough to imagine what it might be like to be a starfaring assassin, a duplicitous wizard, a wealthy dabbler in crime fighting, a single mother, a psychic shopkeeper from Salem, a psychiatrist, a Toltec god, a depressive horror illustrator enlisted by the FBI, an Irish super hero and a thirteen year-old mutant foster child. I have enjoyed the company of fantastical creatures and people both brilliant and bizarre, from opera divas, Estonian truck drivers, vampire diplomats, space traveling gold-diggers and greebly-poking clerics to a sheep loving Elf prince and the freak prince of folk. Yes, at 41 years of age I am still playing and hope to as long as I can gather a few of my fellow geeks around me for a night of beer, dice, melodrama and mayhem. These are my friends; this is what we do, and we found each other in whole or in part due to the legacy of a man named Gary Gygax.
It may seem trivial to those who are not gamers to see this as a historic contribution, but for some of us life without Gary, D&D and its progeny would have been unimaginably different. Dungeons and Dragons was my second game. I cut my teeth on Traveller, part of the RPG diaspora and like its fellows owing an ancestral nod to Gygax and Arneson. Role-playing gave me back as an adult what had helped me survive my childhood; not only a needed escape but a socially interactive outlet for my fertile imagination. As I matured and my playing style evolved I discovered more facets to my favorite hobby. Gaming has allowed me to become a writer of sorts and an actor for very small audiences. It has taught me improvisation. It has helped me through inhabiting and interacting with characters possessing motivations and facing dilemmas vastly different from my own to have deeper empathy and better see things from someone else’s perspective. For the benefit of those of you who have played with me or simply know me I admit empathy does not always equal sympathy. Sometimes despite my lofty aspirations to deep method acting it was just good to blow off steam from a hateful day at work by gleefully slaughtering monsters in lieu of my coworkers. Thanks to Gary and many others in the gaming industry I have been lucky enough to imagine what it might be like to be a starfaring assassin, a duplicitous wizard, a wealthy dabbler in crime fighting, a single mother, a psychic shopkeeper from Salem, a psychiatrist, a Toltec god, a depressive horror illustrator enlisted by the FBI, an Irish super hero and a thirteen year-old mutant foster child. I have enjoyed the company of fantastical creatures and people both brilliant and bizarre, from opera divas, Estonian truck drivers, vampire diplomats, space traveling gold-diggers and greebly-poking clerics to a sheep loving Elf prince and the freak prince of folk. Yes, at 41 years of age I am still playing and hope to as long as I can gather a few of my fellow geeks around me for a night of beer, dice, melodrama and mayhem. These are my friends; this is what we do, and we found each other in whole or in part due to the legacy of a man named Gary Gygax.
E. Gary Gygax
July 27, 1938 – March 4, 2008
Thank you, sir, for everything.
