Gary Gygax, the colorful creator of the original Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying game, has died at age 69. Gygax has been in poor health for several years, suffering from heart problems and an aneurysm. The exact cause of death has not been released. Gygax is survived by his wife, Gail.
Gygax spent many years as a game developer and entrepreneur, developing new roleplaying games and writing fantasy novels, among other projects. He was always best known for his role in creating Dungeons and Dragons, a tabletop pen-and-pencil roleplaying game that has attracted millions of players since its creation in 1974. Along with co-creator Dave Arneson and other figures from the early gaming years (many of whose characters have achieved immortality in the game universe through having spells or items named after them), Gygax made Dungeons and Dragons into the standard for fantasy roleplaying.
In my personal life, D&D was the springboard that led me into a life of enjoying gaming as a hobby. I cannot count the friends and associates who have enriched my life, people I would not have met were it not for the gaming hobby and most especially the roleplaying game at its center. Few men add as much to human happiness as Gary Gygax’ games and adventures did. RIP, Gary Gygax. Enjoy the Elysian Fields, and may your Handy Haversack never be too full for your mountain of gems.
Loading ...
22 users commented in " D&D Creator Gary Gygax Fails Final Saving Throw: Dead at 69 "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackIn an especially ironic twist of the knife, today is March 4th – “March Forth” – GameMaster’s Day.
Ah, Gary. Nice touch, that.
Gary, ye shall sorely be missed.
Thanks for helping create the game that my friends and I spend so many, many
moons playing.
man that’s a shock….rip Gary Gygax.
Did he drop any good loot?
Thank you Mr. Gygax.
The Party discovered treasure.
Thankyou, Mr. Gygax.
Everyone up there better get their dice ready… the Master of Masters is coming to DM.
usually raiding the body for Loot is in poor taste,
but the DM looks aside this time.
As an avid gamer well into my middle years (at 33) My birth is the same year as D&D. My first game system was in fact D&D, and it has led to many years of love since then. Now almost 18 years later, it saddens my heart to hear of this news. He was an inspiration to us all, and everyone in a way have been touched by his creative hands. You will be missed Gary, but we await your rebirth.
“Imagination is more important than Knowledge” – Albert Einstein
I got to meet Mr. Gygax when I was 9 years old, when AD&D frist come out. He showed me away to ues my imagination that I still ues to this day, for fun.
I will miss him with my Knight’s Heart.
Mr. Gygax is now the DM for the GODS make them play fair?
your friend,
Brian Williams
Off to the hinterlands, eh Gary? Well, all men have the same date with destiny, and I look forward to meeting you one day hence in the lands ahead. Treasure and glory, my un-met friend, treasure and glory. For the record, I discovered D&D at the venerable age of 10 back in 76, and led several unwilling cohorts into the lairs until I succumbed to women, alcohol, and the deadly effects of critical reasoning. From the fires of valhalla, skol to you for delivering that which freed an entire generation.
So it seems like a million years ago I was the dungeon master for the mishaps at my school…and when I look back on that time, it’s with the strangest stew of memories; hope, terror, regret, and the deep sweetness of victory only those who have literally spent their last gold piece can possibly know. I think this is how Adam and Eve must have felt, in some small way…Surely they looked back at Eden, don’t you think, as they started barefoot down the path to where we are now, in our glum political world of wars, terrorism, and blue-ray DVDs? Sure, I think they must have wanted one more look at the world they had lost, with its sweet-water and kind-hearted talking animals.
And it’s snake, of course.
Asta, my friend.
You twisted, corrupted and perverted my mind, I thank you for it!
You took a shy and desperately lonely young man, led him to a way that he could share the world of his imagination and changed his life. You let me met strange and interesting people and found they were to become great friends.
I still have the newspaper clipping where I started the first Role Playing Guild in my home town, I was more than surprised when 200 kids turned up.
I still remember the look on the faces of the local police when they found my lost D&D books and thought they had discovered the leader of a Satanic cult, it took an improv’d game with them before they were convinced I was innocent enough but some how I never managed to lived that rumour down with the churches in town…
Thanks for the memories and the life you allowed me to create.
You will be sadly missed…
I start playing D&D in 1975 when I was a freshman in high school and a few of us decided to take the plunge into role playing from board war games. It was a revelation. The game at the time was unplayable if you were the sort who could only literally follow the rules. To make it playable you had to change the rules or make up new rules to fill in the gaps. We learned to design game systems and content on the fly as a result, and within a few weeks everyone of our group was designing their own role playing games.
We were not alone in this, numerous pen and paper games were published within a year or two, many if not most actually better than D&D. Fantasy games, Western games, Science Fiction games all poured on to the shelves of our local hobby store, and we bought them, modified them and played them. Over the years the genre changed, first with pre-built “modules” that took a lot of the creative element out of the games, and later with the migration to the computer that took most of the rest of the player generated content and modifications out.
We found the changes vaguely troubling, though that hasn’t kept us from playing many of these wonderful new games. But the experience has morphed from a more active one to a more passive one, like the difference between reading a book and watching television, or in the case of former game designers / game masters like myself the difference between writing a book and watching television. So I’d like to thank Gary Gygax for not only spawning a movement which is still growing and changing, but also for being there at the right time so that I was able to taste the fruits of being not only a consumer, but a creator.
Sorry to see u fail ur saving throw so early in the game Gary..
Rerolling??
RIP
Thank you Gary, when someone handed me (a pre-teenage girl in the early ’80′s) a copy of D&D, I was hooked, and now in my 40′s I’m still playing and now teaching my children.
But being the only girl in the gaming section has been a little weird at times!!
Thank goodness there are other girls gaming now.
You opened my mind, saved my sanity as a teenage, without D&D I would never have found the si-fi fantisy section in the book store, found the SCA, or found my first husband, our 3 children, learned to argue the rules! or found the best set of friends in college – d&d for 10+ hours a night in the lafollette commons.
RPG may not be the end-all-be-all in life, but it has sure made life interesting.
I put most of my high school funds into books and dice. My friends and I poured over mythology and combat history in the library for ideas for story lines. I played because my friends played, we never thought about what we learned just to play.
My senior year of high school we had to write a poem, and I hated the thought of having to do it. I was angry and decided I would write something about one of my characters. Our teacher read a few of them back to us while we closed our eyes and let the word ‘draw a picture’ for us. Mine was the last read and by the end every eye in the class was open, probably trying to ‘erase’ the imagery of the dark, rainy medieval night I created. My friend (and regular DM) and I could barely keep from laughing at the class reaction to something from ‘that silly game’ as they called it. It was the easiest and most memorable “A” I ever earned.
Had I met Gary in person I could never have thanked him enough for the imagination exercises, the history lessons, fun and all that they have lead to. Hopefully when I get to the gates, I’ll make my save and there will be room at his table for me to play.
Dragons, wizards and fairies do exist, but only inside our heads. You just have to find them, and through D&D, Gygax helped me out a whole damn lot with it at a time (teenage) when everything was rather dark in my life.
For that priceless gift, Gary, I have to thank you with all my heart. May you be in peace forever.
JFC
Quebec City
Perhaps there is a resurrection scroll hidden somewhere in his basement …
In any case, thanks for everything, D&D truly enriched my life.
Godspeed
See ya later Gary.
The fullness with which I immersed myself in Dungeons and Dragons from around 12-19 years old is beyond description and measurement.
Gaming psychology: quantifying ability, thought, and deed into a coherent system. Gary Gygax did this and thus shaped computer gaming engines more than any formula or complex equation. His was a mechanism that could be cast in paper, pencil and dice, or cast in digitized form.
His influence was immense and extreme, and he was charming and charismatic, dextrous and wise.
We will miss you, Gary.
Paul
antiaging4geeks.com (a site in no small part influenced by the great Dungeon Master himself!)
Quick! Who can cast Resurrection?
Wow…
You helped many kids through the high school years, as did the books and games that were invented and will be invented because of your influence on our world. You are the perfect example of the change that one person can bring about in the world. When i make the journey you have made i hope to meet and game with you.
On behalf of those that love you and your games
Thank you, and you will be missed.
God speed
line spela poker…
indirection gymnasium!Estonia,pillared …
Leave A Reply