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Fun Stuff => CLIKC => Topic started by: Alex C on 04 Mar 2008, 11:13

Title: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: Alex C on 04 Mar 2008, 11:13
Just thought I'd throw this in here since it's become the general repository for all things nerdy, although technically D&D is communicated through books. Gary Gygax finally failed his Saving Throw vs. Death at the ripe age of 69. He had a good run and without him I wouldn't have spent so much time pondering THAC0, tossing d20s and thinking up new ways of killing my players for next week. Thanks Gary.
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: CardinalFang on 04 Mar 2008, 11:27
RIP Gary.

So should his tombstone be shaped like a 20 sided die?


Edit: You know this is more of an affect on me than I would've thought. Damn. I started playing back in the old days. Like '79-80.
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: Surgoshan on 04 Mar 2008, 11:29
Nope.  The original player's handbook, bordered with the platonic solids.
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: CardinalFang on 04 Mar 2008, 11:40
Better! But maybe it should be from the original small box set. Maybe showing the covers of the first three books.

This is the box set I'm referring to. I bought it back in 1979 I think.
(http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/5/5a/175px-D%26d_Box1st.jpg)
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: supersheep on 04 Mar 2008, 11:51
I remember when I was about seven or eight, finding a book on Dungeons and Dragons at my grandparents' house, spending an entire weekend reading it, and then being given the old Basic set (http://paizo.com/store/downloads/wizardsOfTheCoast/classicDAndD/rulebooks/v5748btpy7mvl). I'd been interested in wargames for a while, but this was my first introduction to RPGs. THe perfect thing for a kid who had probably read Lord of the Rings about five times by then, maybe started reading the Silmarillon. Gary Gygax is one of the reasons I love being a nerd, and he's a name I will always remember.
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: KvP on 04 Mar 2008, 12:04
Let's have 1d6 minutes of silence for our old pal Gary. Finally hit -10 hit points.
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: Teh Geek Lord on 04 Mar 2008, 12:57
Who was this guy and what did he create? 
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: jeph on 04 Mar 2008, 13:10
Okay it is official, Teh Geek Lord is a troll
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: thegreatbuddha on 04 Mar 2008, 13:19
I don't play anymore, but I followed the hobby for years. Mr. Gygax's work was for me, like many others, a gateway to new worlds and fantastical places. He will be missed.
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: Teh Geek Lord on 04 Mar 2008, 13:52
Okay it is official, Teh Geek Lord is a troll

What did I do?  I'm really not trying to be offensive, I really don't know who this guy was.
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: est on 04 Mar 2008, 14:14
Maybe you should read the thread?  I know basically nothing about D&D but a quick wiki search confirms my suspicion that he co-created it.
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: Teh Geek Lord on 04 Mar 2008, 14:32
oh, sorry D&D wasn't mentioned until the edit.  I didn't re-read the first post when I asked the question, either way I feel like a dumbass now.
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: 0bsessions on 04 Mar 2008, 14:41
The edit that was a good hour and forty five minutes before you asked. Nice try, though.
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: supersheep on 04 Mar 2008, 15:36
five times at age 7-8? Man, I was still reading The Hard(l)y Boys at that point.
Maybe not five times, but I know I had read it a couple of times by the time I was in second class (so before I was eight).
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: LordNagash on 04 Mar 2008, 15:40
It is always a shame to lose such creative individuals.
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: bryanthelion on 04 Mar 2008, 16:29
I played DnD today, I was sitting with Kelsey (Nezumi Shaman who also went down -10 hitpoints today) at the library. Sara's mother, who works at the library (I play with Sara), comes up to us with a CNN article printed out.

It was about Gary Gygax
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: ackblom12 on 04 Mar 2008, 17:01
I disagreed with the man on so many things over the last 19 years I've played D&D, but it's still a great loss to the tabletop world and I'm greatly saddened by it.

...

On the other hand I can't help but think he failing his Fortitude vs. Heart Failure save. I may be a bad person.
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: thepugs on 04 Mar 2008, 17:14
He will be missed.  He's left behind quite a legacy.
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: Narr on 04 Mar 2008, 17:50
http://wkbt.com/Global/story.asp?S=7963395

Short news article confirming it.

I am saddened.  Old-school D&D will always live with me.  RIP Mr. Gygax.
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: Nodaisho on 04 Mar 2008, 18:07
He is gaming with the saints now. On the bright side, plenty of people willing to be clerics up there.
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: JJXB on 05 Mar 2008, 05:18
not a fan of d&d but without it, some of the best pc rpg's wouldn't exist so RIP gary.
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: doombilly on 05 Mar 2008, 07:49
RIP Gary.

So should his tombstone be shaped like a 20 sided die?


Edit: You know this is more of an affect on me than I would've thought. Damn. I started playing back in the old days. Like '79-80.

me too. Like '78 I think for me.
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: pilsner on 05 Mar 2008, 13:12
I somehow can't comprehend that GG has departed for the outer planes.  Someone get me  13th level cleric, please.
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: dalconnsuch on 05 Mar 2008, 17:05
yesterday my band played a show and i did a tribute for gary gygax by throwing 20 d20's into the audience of like (ironically) 20 people

we'll miss you gygax, father of the modern nerd, me especially
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: Surgoshan on 05 Mar 2008, 20:23
Eric Burns of Websnark (http://websnark.com/) posted a tribute.  What speaks most to Burns' depth of feeling is that, in a normally immaculate blog, he posted a multitude of grammatical and spelling mistakes.
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: Martok on 05 Mar 2008, 21:56
Thanks for the memories, Gary.  Partially because of you, I've spent many happy hours with my friends playing D&D, and I'm grateful for that. 

May you roll all 20's in the afterlife.   :-(
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: Catfish_Man on 05 Mar 2008, 22:55
:(
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: Surgoshan on 05 Mar 2008, 23:15
EGG's in a newly created 8th heaven.  For Lawful Awesome characters.

Lawful because you *know* he loved rules.
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: Narr on 05 Mar 2008, 23:31
Order of the Stick tribute to Gygax. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0536.html)
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: Surgoshan on 06 Mar 2008, 00:05
Who was this guy and what did he create? 

Okay, let's assume you're not a troll, but instead a dumbass.

In the future, when people start mourning a death, try googling it.  If you don't come up with the name, assume it's the death of a local member and therefore incredibly personal to the community.

If you do come up with the name, it's obviously someone public enough that a large portion of the community will feel a sense of loss.

In either case, shut the fuck up.  Either say nothing or just mouth platitudes.

Sheesh.  My father's sister told him that was someone like you at my mother's funeral.
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: Spluff on 06 Mar 2008, 02:12
Damn, RIP. He left a huge legacy in the world.
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: CardinalFang on 06 Mar 2008, 04:53
Eric Burns of Websnark (http://websnark.com/) posted a tribute.  What speaks most to Burns' depth of feeling is that, in a normally immaculate blog, he posted a multitude of grammatical and spelling mistakes.

Thanks for linking that. I hadn't checked out Websnark in a while. That was an excellent read.
I had no idea that a) There was a Gamemaster's Day and b) It's March 4th the day EGG died.
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: dalconnsuch on 06 Mar 2008, 06:26
the geek lord is a haXX0R


you a geek? I'M NOT A GEEK and i know who gary gygax is

you should be shamed

SHAMED

*pee noises*
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: doombilly on 06 Mar 2008, 07:10
saving throw, missed.
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: DonInKansas on 06 Mar 2008, 07:54
I have the urge to start up a collection to buy 5,000 gp of diamond dust. 

RIP Mr Gygax.
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: Fletch on 06 Mar 2008, 08:46
Rolling in his grave. (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic)
R.I.P.
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: vegeto18 on 06 Mar 2008, 11:49
the man be rolling die in the heaven planes now.
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: Surgoshan on 06 Mar 2008, 23:31
xkcd for the win.
(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/ultimate_game.png)
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: cwoolard on 07 Mar 2008, 00:41

Seconded. Best tribute comic so far.

Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: Switchblade on 07 Mar 2008, 02:17
He's roleing in his grave as we speak.

I play DnD to this day. We had a moment of silence at the last game.

Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: doombilly on 07 Mar 2008, 04:39
xkcd for the win.
(http://snips)
you beat me to it!
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: linkstarwind1 on 07 Mar 2008, 11:18
Despite being an avid RPG fan for years, I can't say I was ever into the tabletop DnD that much. However I do know how much Gary influenced a culture I've been proud to be a part of, so to see him pass is really a horrible thing. My boyfriend (far more of a tabletop geek) was distraught though, understandably.

RIP, Gary, and thanks for being so damn brilliant.

Note- xkcd and Order of the Stick both have great tributes =)
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: Homma_Caboola on 08 Mar 2008, 19:44
Gary Gygax is more then just the co-author of the original D&D before TSR shanked him.

IE : Gary was voted out of his own company but the F*wits at TSR, and then recognised by Wizards.

Gary Gygax is the founder of the entire RPG Genre, without which our Gaming experience would be considerably poorer.

Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: Surgoshan on 08 Mar 2008, 20:10
Actually, what he did was transform a previously existing game style into something far more immersive and, IMO, better.  There was tabletop wargaming prior to D&D, but it was pushing around soldiers, rolling dice and, in essence, pretending to be General Patton, or Grant, or the Duke of Wellington.  Basically, it was Warhammer 40k without the scifi.

Gygax's genius was to reduce the scale, making it more or less one on one, and set it in a sword & sorcery universe.  He then had to work really hard to develop rules to balance it. 
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: Homma_Caboola on 08 Mar 2008, 21:41
Ohh I know he turned war gaming into a RPG. But all the rpg's out there are based on or inspired by d&d, without gygax there would not have been any Shadowrun, GRPS, Call of Cthulu, Magic the Gathering. The modern RPG era would either not have kicked off, or taken a considerably longer time of it, and most likely poorer then what it has been. Fantasy books would not have been as richly detailed, I know Raymond E. Feist's entire book franchise came out of d&d. (it's on the dedication of the first 3 books and the rest make mention of his friday night d&d crew.)
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: cwoolard on 09 Mar 2008, 11:01

Maybe Steve Jackson, or the GDW crew would have come up with something RPG-like out of their various wargaming projects, but it would have happened later, and the hobby would have originally leaned more towards SF than heroic fantasy.

We owe Gary a great deal.
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: doombilly on 09 Mar 2008, 11:07
Actually, what he did was transform a previously existing game style into something far more immersive and, IMO, better.  There was tabletop wargaming prior to D&D, but it was pushing around soldiers, rolling dice and, in essence, pretending to be General Patton, or Grant, or the Duke of Wellington.  Basically, it was Warhammer 40k without the scifi.

Gygax's genius was to reduce the scale, making it more or less one on one, and set it in a sword & sorcery universe.  He then had to work really hard to develop rules to balance it. 
Ima hella geek because I had Tractics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractics) as well as D&D.
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: CardinalFang on 09 Mar 2008, 14:53
I wish I knew what happened to my Tractics rules.
Probably lost in the great Storage Flood of '94.
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: doombilly on 10 Mar 2008, 07:38
I wish I knew what happened to my Tractics rules.
Probably lost in the great Storage Flood of '94.
heh, I think I dumpstered all my miniatures while in college.

Also:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/opinion/09rogers.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: KvP on 11 Mar 2008, 23:11
Slate pulls a late hatchet job. (http://www.slate.com/id/2186203/nav/tap3/)

Gist: If you like D&D, you are a morally base person!
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: Alex C on 12 Mar 2008, 00:24
I like the part where he completely glosses over the fact that D&D is a violent game because it grew directly from wargames. I mean, honestly, the way D&D developed makes so much sense when you realize that the game is a result of a fairly natural progression. Player builds a li'l army. Player develops favorite li'l battalions in his li'l army. Player has one li'l "block" of troops that never lets him down. Player decides he needs some way to indicate that these guys should be veterans by now. Player decides a particular figurine should be a veteran named Bob, who, by the way, has to be kind of tired of infiltrating Castle Blackmoor by now, because he's done it like a million times and has to be like, level 12 by now. Seriously, from the perspective of raw game mechanics, the big difference between proto-D&D and earlier games was the inexorable move from large scale to small scale, which then led to a deeper 1-to-1 Player-Character relationship. The real contribution Gygax made to gaming history was simply accelerating the process and embracing fantasy elements. Acting like it was Gygax himself who invented the world of table top violence is kinda missing the forest for the trees.
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: doombilly on 12 Mar 2008, 06:03
That slate author has a rep-sort of...
http://gotzune.com/2007/12/idiot-of-the-day-erik-sofge-of-popular-mechanics
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: pilsner on 12 Mar 2008, 08:59
I could be better better situated to respond to the Erik Sofge article given that I've played neither GURPS nor pre-D&D table-top RPGs.  Nevertheless, the man is full of shit -- for a variety of reasons.  The alignment systems primary purpose was to guide role-playing -- it is rarely a combat mechanic (in that it rarely gives you pluses to attack etc.).  The source books focus on combat was premised less on Gygax's obsession with combat and more on the fact that for a DM, combat mechanics would be the hardest and most tedious bit to make up and explain.  Furthermore, story XP almost always played a more significant role than combat XP in terms of bringing your character forward in levels.  At the higher levels, story XP was almost the only thing bringing your forward -- unless you were spending every second day in the outer planes taking on demons and devils single handedly.

Of course, the significance of combat in a given campaign is up to the DM.  Plenty of DMs could provide hours of gameplay with nary a combat in sight.  I didn't play a lot of Gygax authored campaigns, but I'm given to understand that they were as much about puzzle solving as they were about combat.  The most obvious thing a DM could do is make you regret the merciless killing of humanoids and offer you alternatives to avoid it.  And then reward you for roleplaying a character who wasn't into wanton destruction (if that was consistent with the character you set out to play . . . .)

In any event, we know well that the fastest way for a marginal internet scribe to generate notoriety is to smear an icon.  Sofge's article is infantile in the "Look at me!  Look at me!" sort of way.
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: doombilly on 12 Mar 2008, 12:45
I could be better better situated to respond to the Erik Sofge article...
Also he's a -2 Charisma Half-Orc
:wink:
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: Narr on 12 Mar 2008, 23:41
Erik Sofge in a nutshell:

I AM GOING TO TRY AND MAKE A NAME FOR MYSELF BY BASHING A GAMING ICON AFTER HIS DEATH
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: Uber Ritter on 13 Mar 2008, 22:06
While I am sympathetic to some of the points made in the article about DnD, frankly it's like writing a president's day piece on why Washington was a worthless sexist because he didn't make the constitutional convention give Mary the vote.  Judging the past by the standards of the present is bad form, particularly when you're looking at the import of a figure's past contributions.  As has been said before, keeping in mind that Gygax was coming straight from wargaming really is the only way to understand DnD at all.  If it weren't for those first dungeon crawls all the games I love (Fading Suns, WFRP, etc) probably wouldn't exist.

Also, Gygax is this week's Economist obituary.  It's a decent article, though definitely written for the uninitiated.
Title: Re: R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Post by: pilsner on 14 Mar 2008, 07:27
Great obit (http://www.economist.com/obituary/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10838120).  Was it Fark that had the fortitude save headline or Something Awful?  Anyhow, I didn't know Gygax worked in insurance.  That makes so much sense.