Gary Gygax, Co-creator of D&D, Has Died
It’s a sad week for Dungeons & Dragons fans, players, and enthusiasts. Gary Gygax, its co-creator and lead cheerleader, has died at the age of 69.
Although it has been a few years since I’ve rolled twenty-sided dice, I’m still very much attached to D&D. We just moved to Belgium and while setting up my office, I set aside a shelf specifically for my more than 30 books, boxed sets, and notebooks. For the past 4 years, these things have been boxed up.
As one article puts it: “Dungeons & Dragons formed a bridge between the noninteractive world of books and films and the exploding interactive video game industry”. Created in 1974, the role-playing fantasy game was a huge success (mostly among geeky teenage and twenty-something boys).
D&D is a complex game. It takes months to learn (although new players can start playing with some experienced players almost immediately), and you need hours to play per sitting. But, the main rule is to have fun and enjoy its social and collaborative nature. D&D is also a game that stresses and embraces imagination.
I’ll always be thankful for Mr. Gygax and his partner Dave Arneson for their invention. It taught me how to be a team player, collaborate, and most of all, use my imagination. The complex rules also got me focused, and with the myriad tables and charts, I felt well prepared for my career as a software developer and business analyst. In fact, my very first FoxPro program was a D&D Character database, where I stored all of my player characters and produced a few interesting reports about them. It wasn’t perfect, but it gave me plenty of motivation to learn Fox2.6. I was also a “Dungeon Master” and created several hundred adventures across multiple campaigns. I wrote a lot and I studied history, mythology, and religion.
The game is still in production today (Hasbro, in my home State of Rhode Island is keeping it alive) even though online gaming has taken a large percentage of its audience.
I think I might just go order a pizza and roll some 20-sided dice for fun now…
I'm a Quant Technical Specialist (Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence), with expertise in business analysis, data modeling, and data integration. I have extensive experience developing vertical and integrated desktop, Internet, and BI applications spanning municipal, clinical, and financial industries.
March 22nd, 2008 at 9:25 am
[…] is by Sam Potts and was published by The New York Times Company on March 9th in response to the death of D&D creator Gary Gygax. I realize that exposing myself as a longtime D&D fanatic might get me the “did you play […]