But in memory of you my next character i play will b a cleric till i hit lvl 17 and can cast true resurection on you…i have only been playing for 3 years now and only have played 3.5.

P.S. i hope god doesnt get angry when you DM for him and jesus, rest in peace garey.you will be missed

kids don’t know what that is today.

*pushes up glasses*

And? Can I? don’t leave me hanging like that. Not after yesterday.

Still, I’ll give a nerd salute to Gary.

Go ahead and play on the lawn all you want, kids. Oh, and Mikey? You are a fine man. Annie Laurie? Where does such eloquence come from?

Mr. Gygax, may you out-roll the Cacodemons and Demogorgons, at least when it comes to deciding who has to get up and make the beer run. Or fix the iced tea, if they’re djinns and efreets.

As for Gary and D&D, yep I played, and honestly I wish more kids today would pick it up. Besides all of the game, and fun, and hanging out busting on friends, old school D&D forced you to use math skills (“hit points”, “roll for success”), to learn how to chart things (“where the hell are we”, “how do we get back to that room”), to learn how to cooperate (“look we need to figure out what we’re going to do”), and most importantly it taught us to use our imagination. In the age of Xbox (and yes, I have one) and DVDs I’m not sure kids are getting that anymore and I don’t think that’s a good thing.

That’s true. It could be argued that none of us would be here (on the Intert00bs) without them. Hotshot programmers and D&D d00ds, I mean.

“I am the Gygax! I speak for the dweebs!”

Just kidding. Never played it myself, but I could see I would have enjoyed it.

Also, mikey continues to be my hero.

I gleaned the the idea that all people have the same value, just with the points spread around differently, from D&D. I was taught compassion and tolerance from a game.

RIP, Gary.

The games we play today, like those addicted to World of WarCraft, owe their invention to GG and TSR. The guys who invented WoWC were no doubt young nerds playing D&D in their parent’s garage before they became hotshot programmers.

RIP Gary. May the next world be as exciting as the one you invented for all of us.

BTW – Draken is the name of an elf character I’ve been playing for over 25 years now, and my best friends are the guys I’ve been playing the game with for all that time.

I think I’ll have to dig out my original set of dice for gaming next week…

Gygax and Arneson took inspiration for desktop roleplaying from Barker’s tabletop wargames, based on the creatures and nations of his world of Tekumel (http://tekumel.com ). Their tabletop army battles started to get down to the individual personalities of the soldiers and generals involved, and so roleplaying games were born. Gygax and Arneson placed their game within the much more culturally accessible environment of Tolkein’s European mythology, and D&D was born.

I understand — and agree with — the larger point you’re trying to make (Shrub can’t make nice and therefore could not possibly have ever played this particular game), but I cringe at your wording here.

I, too, started playing RPGs in the late 70s, and my group was a pretty normal looking and behaving group. None of us wore pocket protectors or eyeglasses held together with scotch tape and paperclips. None of us snorted when we laughed. None of us bore even passing resemblance to Prof Frink or Robert Carradine. (I myself bore a striking resemblance to a young Robert Redford… Two eyes, male, bipedal…. It was uncanny.)

Like 99.999% of role playing gamers, we were just folks who liked to get together and play a game. We didn’t need to learn socialization skills–the fact that we already had those skills drew us to the game and made it playable and enjoyable.

In fact, it sounds to me like the person with the below average EQ would be the one calling others bad names and “storming off in a huff” just because a character got killed…..

Just sayin.