Gimpy Geek 1.0

One of the fathers of fantasy roleplaying games, E. Gary Gygax, died today at the age of 69 after a long illness. Mr. Gygax, along with Dave Arneson and others, created what became the Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) roleplaying game and the TSR game company. D&D over the last 4 decades plus has entertained millions of gamers, spawned magazines, books, movies, and video/computer games, and basically created the paper-and-pencil roleplaying industry. Borrowing heavily from Tolkein’s Middle Earth, D&D expanded on miniature wargames to add the concept of roleplaying a single character working in a diverse group to crawl through dungeons, kill the dra

Mr. Gygax’s name is all over my beloved 1st Edition AD&D books and I wouldn’t sell them for anything, even though I haven’t played that edition in years. Those old boys up in Lake Geneva created something that gave me thousands of hours of fun and bunch of friends from 1981 onwards. I guess he dropped in at Gen Con Indy last year; I wish we’d have gone. Maybe, I could’ve thanked him.

Order of the Stick has a nice special tribute to Gary Gygax issue today. Check it out.

Keep rolling 20s, Gary.

photo credit: Alan De Smet