Gone to the great DM in the sky

[undyingking]

Goodbye Gary Gygax, it seems.

Like most people of my sort of age, he provided my introduction to role-playing. We may have moved onwards and outwards, but we can still thank him for our beginnings.

I met him a couple of times at Gamesfairs, when he was still with TSR. Being young and cocky, I did not pay him as much respect as I later thought I probably should have. But he seemed like a pleasant chap, and took the teasing in very good part.

I don't really know what he'd been up to in recent years, but I hope he was able to put the various disputes etc behind him and look happily over what he achieved.

Comments

[secondhand-rick.livejournal.com]

Gygax-bashing was pretty fashionable for a while.

I never met the chap myself, but I once read his book on role-playing which provided some interesting insight into the chap. As far as I can see his only real 'sin' was that he thought of role-playing as something you could win. You know, like, a game?

[theo]

Like you, I first met him at Gamesfair and subsequently at various TSR things. As Rick says, there was a lot of hostility towards him in the eighties especially after the corporate turmoil in TSR. By and large, however, gamers lost sight of him as an active figure in the 1990s. Whatever the merits of his business dealings and whatever the scale of his participation with his partners, he undoubtedly transformed hobby gaming and, arguably, laid the groundwork for much of today's fantasy industry.

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

Oh, no no no. Was he young, or am I old?

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

He was 69, so too young to die really. He had an inoperable aortic aneurysm.