No more saving throws: Gary Gygax, RIP

Sad news: the creator of Dungeons and Dragons, Gary Gygax, died in his home at age 70. It can be argued that he fathered an entirely new hobby, the role playing game, whose influence over popular culture and pastimes has been pervasive for the last thirty years. Rules-moderated play acting, which is essentially what D&D is, allowed folks of different stripes to express themselves where they might not have felt comfortable doing so in public. D&D is nerdy improv theater in your living room without an audience. It is “let’s pretend” with a sense of consistency. And it’s no wonder I grew weary of it quickly, balking at the constraints necessary to make the story sharable. Still, it beats an evening watching TV.

Just to assure everyone of my D&D cred, I had blue cover book that came in a box set with chits. No dice, just chits. I spent months hunting down “hobby dice” in random toy stores. Mind you, this was 1981.

In a sense, Gygax was the executive producer of a million fantasy TV shows. Rest in peace, DM.