Gary Gigax, creator of Dungeons & Dragons (which was the font from which all other role-playing games flowed), has died at age 69.
Believe it or not, back in the early 80s I was a huge geek, and Dungeons & Dragons was one of my main vices. Since I was also painfully shy, I spent a lot more time reading the sourcebooks and Dragon magazine than I did actually getting together and playing. In many ways, being brave and powerful in a game made up for some of the deficiencies in my real life, although I never went overboard like some of my friends, whose characters tended to be omnipotent and indestructable.
With the arrival of advanced computer games in the 90s, and massively multiplayer online games in the last ten years, I would guess that good old-fashioned role-playing is dying out. Much like Saturday morning cartoons, it turned out to be only a brief moment, never forgotten by those who were there, but difficult to understand for those who weren’t. Kind of like a Rick Springfield concert.
We still gather in the night. Some old ones like me remembering the old ways when AC -10 was best and skill points were but a dream for the future. The younger ones know only the new ways, but they still follow the one true rule of Xagyg passed to me so long ago. In a collage snack bar at GenCon East II he said to me (and about fifty other people hanging on his every word) “As long as you and your players are having fun, you are doing it right.”
Last Saturday I ran Tomb of Horrors for the new ones. And we left a seat opened for him, in case he might happen through. I killed each and every one of them, some more than once. Because that was how the man wrote it, so that is how we played it. And everyone had fun. Next week we’ll go back to our normal game (which isn’t a deathtrap), but Gary will still have a chair at our table. That’s just how we roll.
Somebody toss the DM a ‘Dew…