So did they add material when putting articles online?
It would be nice to know what’s original and what’s added.
-FrL-
I said it on the Woot boards, and I’ll say it here: when it’s my time to go, make mine owlbear.
RIP, Mr. Gygax. Like others here have said, ADD gave my friends and me an outlet to gather and imagine and converse, a reason to read and study, a knowledge of history and mythos that many of my peers lack, and a pastime that let my parents know I wasn’t roaming the streets (although I knew the names of daemons). I haven’t played in years and years, but I’m still a D-and-D’er at heart.
Nonono, it’s completely correct. It requires great amounts of caffeine (or for those inclined/legal alchohol), a good group of friends (or nice open group of strangers) and a good imagination.
I never liked D&D - too much rolling for my taste, but without him there would be no RPG as we know it.
Tomorrow I’m DMing game for friends. Maybe I name some cool NPC Gary in memoriam.
This weekend is PlatteCon Phi. At noon on Saturday we will have a moment of scilence followed by a mass rolling of dice.
20 years ago Gary Gygax was the Guest of Honor for Plattecon Alpha. He did it for expenses + $100 (or something like that - of course it helps that Platteville isn’t all that far from Lake Geneva). He signed my Monster Manual and my Plattecon Alpha T-shirt.
I most remeber him explaining Shoji (Japanese chess)
He was also GOH for Plattecon Beta - just a t-shirt signing that year.
Brian
My current 1st edition campaign has Aligned Weapons (made by Loki) that need a certain number of hit point damage to destroy. 
I complained about this Cecil column when it was rereleased as a ‘Classic’, since it was full of inaccuracies and snide remarks.
Turned out that Cecil had never played the game, nor even watched it.
He wasn’t interested in learning anything about it, nor issuing any corrections . :smack:
I’ve been happily playing 1st edition since 1979.
Many many thanks to Gary Gygax (and Dave Arneson) for giving me such entertainment. 
He DM’d the finals of the UK Roleplaying Championships one year (and was guest of honour).
I was doing all right in the final (in front of a couple of hundred spectators), when I told him he’d made a mistake. :eek: :rolleyes:
I’m surprised that i’m just finding this out right now. I at least skim the news every day and i didn’t see anything on MSN, Yahoo! or CNN about it.
Rest in Peace, Gary.
He made lots of mistakes. The 1e Monk, the 1e Bard, the Barbarian, the Cavalier, Drow PCs, training costs, character expenses, the grappling system, thinking the Tomb of Horrors was anyone’s idea of a fun time, the…
Oh, you meant a mistake in DMing at the time. Sorry. He probably did, but I can’t imagine telling him did anyone within fifty yards an ounce of good.
Nevertheless I’d still lower 1 s.p.'s worth of ale to his memory, for I had some good times out of that game for all its faults.
RIP Gary.
I just told my old D&D buddies- It’s a good thing Gary had been around, or else we’d have spent our Friday nights chasing girls, attending parties, going to football games.
OK, seriously, maybe it’s a testament, that we would have done all these things… had he not created something so darn addictive we never really wanted to tear ourselves away.
If I’d been able to make it to GenCon last year, I would’ve been able to play in a game that Mr. Gygax ran. Honestly, I’m not sure that I would’ve had that much fun–his style of gaming seems very different from mine–but I sure would’ve liked the experience. When I talked with him on a messageboard, he came across as a cantankerous, slightly smug, highly opinionated, highly honorable, friendly old man, contradictions and all.
I’m sad to hear he’s gone.
Daniel
Daniel, I think it’s entirely permissible to introduce people to www.enworld.org in this, simply because of Mr. Gygax’s long history on it. You’ve got a paid account (I paid for one, but… well, the money went away, I think, but I never got the account upgraded. I shrugged, sucked it down.), and you can search. Could you collect some of his insights over the years?
We know he wasn’t perfect, but it’d be nice to let people see the man he was. Good and bad. This wouldn’t create a board war, I’m sure, so it’s legitimate.
I wish that I had the opportunity to tell the man how much fun his game brought me over the years. That will never happen now; and since I lack any bard skills, I can only honor his legacy in the most fitting way I know how…
I search the body.
Checking for traps! I am TOTALLY checking for traps… Oh man, what is the Treasure Type for a Gygax? That’s got to be, like, at least four rolls on Table IIIE…
This is a fair point. I recently resigned as a moderator from ENWorld (there’ll be an announcement there soon–short version is I haven’t had time to do my moderator duties for nigh-on a year, and the resignation was overdue), and it’s a wonderful site for gaming nerds, the largest unofficial D&D community online. Gary Gygax was an active member of the site and did a series of Q & A threads with his fans. He also ran a game for the site’s moderators at last year’s GenCon. One of the moderators did a jaw-droppingly awesome job of taking a brief sketch of a tile game from Gygax’s Gord the Rogue novels and turning it into a real, and beautiful, game, which was given to Mr. Gygax as a present.
Right now the search function is being very slow. I’m looking for those threads and will post them when I find them. His username there was Col_Pladoh.
Oh: here’s the latest thread in the series. As you can see, his most recent post was February 21.
(And e-sabbath, I got permission from the mods of this board a few years ago to crosslink to ENWorld; no worries on that account!)
Daniel
Somehow, it’s fitting that his final post addressed the question of whether female dwarves have beards…
Heh. I have no idea why it’s fitting, but both his post and yours make me snicker.
And I just realized that ALL his Q&A posts are in the archive there. Just go to the bottom and ask to show all threads from “the beginning,” and you’ll see the remainder of those threads.
Daniel
Daniel, female dwarves and beards has been one of the long-standing debates of D&D history. I jest thee not, I’m pretty sure if I cranked up the old Dragon Archive I could find references to it in the 70s.
I don’t think that’s a stretch at all. I’d also place Jack Vance in that list, the fantasy author who Gygax always spoke of as his inspiration. Many of the rules of magic in D&D are straight from Vance.
I played a 1st Edition AD&D game last night in his memory. It was awesome. First time I’d played 1st ed., and it’s simply a genius system. I like it way better than 3rd, and I hope to play a lot more of it.