Gary Gygax, 1938-2008

This is an odd article to write and I've been trying to write it since I found out on Tuesday with little success.

So, here's the simpler version and maybe I'll come back and expand it later once I have a better idea of how I want to put all the things down.

E. Gary Gygax didn't deserve a nobel prize. He wasn't a great scientist or politician. He (certainly in later life) wasn't a great athlete or a media personality. He did appear in the D&D movie though, and lets not forget Futurama either...

He was a great man though and I can't quite find the way to put HOW great a man he was. He wrote the game that launched the entire hobby and regardless of how people feel about D&D, without it in its many and varied forms we wouldn't be here today.

Yes, someone else might have written something. Greg Stafford maybe or even Dave Arneson on his own would have come up with D&D, but without that fateful meeting between Gygax and Arneson we wouldn't have seen D&D in the form we did when we did and the whole face of gaming would be different. VERY different.

But its not just that. It's so much bigger than that. (Or at least thats how I feel). Without encountering D&D in the holidays aged 7 I wouldn't have started gaming. No gaming no shop. Thats how big it is for me. I would never have met all the people I know now. I would never had told the first two parts of my WFRP campaign. I wouldn't be writing this now and you wouldn't be reading it.

There are so many things that would never have happened without Gygax and I wish I could thank him. So, if you're reading this and are thinking "Who cares about that Gygax bloke, he wasn't that important..." then have a think about all the gamers you'd have never met, all the poeple you wouldn't know and all the memories of games you have and then tell me he wasn't that important.

Gary Gygax has affected both directly and indirectly the course of literally millions and millions of people's lives, including yours.

So if you're old enough or lucky enough to still have them kicking around, dig out your old copies of D&D Basic set, or AD&D, get some friends together and play Keep on the Borderlands or Against the Giants, chuck some dice and dedicate a crit ot two to the man who changed your life.

E. Gary Gygax. Thank you for so much of the happiness you brought to my and other people's lives, you will be missed by many who you never knew.

LiAm