RIP: Gary Gygax
On March 4th a legend passed on to the Hall of Heroes, a man who redefined the swords and sorcery fantasy experience for us all. He is amongst the most influential of fantasy contributors of our time and he has unfortunately tapped his last land; I speak, of course, of Gary Gygax. If you don’t know who that is then I respectfully ask you to go commit ritual Seppuku rather than reading this blog, or at least go and look him up on Wikipedia before continuing. Gygax was the creator of Dungeons and Dragons, known affectionately as D&D, and one of the father’s of modern fantasy gaming. His influence on fantasy was about as subtle as a first turn Channel/ Fireball to the head; D&D opened up a whole new level of innovative gaming for those seeking refreshingly fun, fetishistic, fantastical, fantasy fanaticism… try saying that three times fast… ok, now you have some small idea of how difficult it was for Gygax to revolutionize the fantasy gaming genre.
D&D complemented the voracious imaginations of those adherents to gaming nerdom by supplementing their passions with oodles of dice, finely crafted miniatures, a gaming board, more books than the Bible, and the nefarious Dungeon Master, or affectionately known D.M. (curse him). But it wasn’t as simple as that; to fully appreciate Gygax’s gaming revolution one would need look no further than the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. D&D had pretty much the same kind of impact in toppling the fantasy gaming system as the Bolsheviks minus the animated movie and the piles of real corpses. With D&D at your disposal, no longer were heroic quests, terrifying monsters, and scantily clad elves the sole property of novelists and video game designers. Now you, yes YOU, could become Tagliff Wolfsucker, Human Warrior of Doom or Jasqueva the Fair, scantily clad Elvish wizard from the Harrow Woods. Hell, you could be Gary Coleman from the 711 down the street if you wanted to; this was the beauty of D&D as the game was only as limited by your imagination. Add some multicolored die to figure out your stats, grab a book, and then get ready to kick some fantasy monster butt.
People went crazy for D&D (hopefully, not as crazy as this guy) and rightly so. If all you know is World of Warcraft and other MMORPGs, then you truly have missed out on D&D. Imagine a game where you enter endless worlds, level up, work together in a team, fight monsters, and win powerful artifacts, all without having to devote 75.8% of your existence to it. That is D&D AND you interact with real, flesh and blood people!
Just how much did D&D rock? Well, I’ll tell you. My godfather introduced me to this wonderful game just months after M.T.G. had replaced crack as my drug of choice and I have so many great memories of my time spent frantically rolling dice and giving the D.M. the evil eye. The names and dates will go unsaid (lest she be reading this), but after concluding one intense gaming situation, I was able to slip away from the group with one of the female players to continue our roleplaying in another room. Suffice to say, our miniature characters had developed quite a contentious relationship during this impossible quest and we decided to sort things out between ourselves. I’d imagine that if you tried this with your World of Warcraft game you’d be labeled a pervert, deviant, and loser, something like this kid. This encounter cemented me as one of the top roleplayers in the group and earned my level 31 Elvish warrior, Nilrodell the nickname ‘King Dong’.
I’ve personally had so many great memories with D&D that I sincerely owe Gary Gygax a ‘thank you’ for the amazing game that he created. Incidentally, the in-game relationship between Nilrodell and Shiva van Staal, my female D&Der’s character, lasted far longer than the one we carried on. On a much cooler note, has there ever been a better last name in fantasy gaming than Gygax? You can pair this with any number of things to create super-cool fantasy items and names: the Gygaxian Death Sword, Gygax Lord of Shadows, Lost City of Gygax, Crystal Skull of Gygax the Maimer, etc. Perhaps even, dare I say, Benevolent Gygaxian Robot? Maybe not. Sigh. Rest in piece in nerd heaven, Gary Gygax, you are a true icon in the fantasy world. Time for World of Warcraft, I think Stella07a456 will be on tonight… maybe I’ll get lucky with Nilrodell II.
