E. Gary Gygax Sleeps with the Fishes
Last week, E. Gary Gygax died. Together, he and Dave Arneson created Dungeons & Dragons, a game that was central to my youth and strangely enough my later life. His reputation over the years preceded him, both good and bad, but really that is neither here nor there. I never knew the man, I never met him in person even briefly, and I never even got a look at him from distance. I only knew him through his work, and in that regard he changed my life in more ways than one. For that I owe him my gratitude and respect.
I had a rough time in junior high school and it was D&D that pulled me back from the brink. The kid who introduced it to me was as worthless a human being who had ever lived and his first (and last) game mastering session with me pretty much ranked up there with the worst moment in roleplaying history. Yet despite such a rough introduction to the game, its creative potential immediately hooked my imagination. It was a living, breathing mythology that stimulated my mind in ways that stodgy old books on similar matters never really did. It was an interactive exercise in shared holistic storytelling years before the Internet, before MUDs, MUSHes, and MOOs, before X-Boxes and Playstations and Massively Multiplayer Online Games.
For many reasons I’d rather not go into, I was a piss poor student at the time just prior to my discovery of fantasy roleplaying. But as I delved deeper into D&D, I actually became much better. In preparing for gaming sessions, I learned the virtue of research. I appreciated history, mythology, and literature in ways I never before could have conceived because those subjects were intrinsic to creating a fun and, paradoxically, “believable” imaginary world. With my intellectual curiosity peaked, I began to look at high school through a whole new set of eyes and, if I don’t mind saying so myself, did pretty well over the next four years. Socially, I suffered, of course. After all, how many gamer dorks ever rise to the top of the cliche food chain in high school? But that didn’t really matter because I had other things to keep me distracted in addition to D&D: classes in history, science and languages, and books on religion, mythology, and philosophy. My interest in all that was fueled initially because of D&D, and by proxy, because of Gary Gygax. His simple little tactical and strategical simulation changed my world.
Much later in life, I also made money off his fantastic creation. I wrote and contributed to dozens of D&D books when the game underwent a brief renaissance a few years back. Some of my books did better than others, some paid more. Those books in turn have paved the way for other opportunities for me. My life hasn’t been easy at times, especially recently, and perhaps some of that can be attributed to the personality I formed as a result of having Dungeons and Dragons play such a prominent role in my life. On the other hand, a lot of the good things in my life have also come from it and I don’t have any regrets about that. In fact, I made most of my best friends through my gaming circles, and one in particular is my absolute best friend even to this day (he’s the irascible son of a bitch with whom I inhabit this server, if you couldn’t tell.)
So, foregoing all obvious D&D cliches and without further a-do…
Thank you for everything, Gary. May you find peace wherever you are.