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Thank you ...Gary Gygax
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Thank you ...Gary Gygax // Roundtable
Post by Humdinger // Mar 5, 2008, 3:09am
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Humdinger
Total Posts: 319
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Well,
Seeing as most of us hear share many likes and dislike I am sure I am not the only member that was saddened by the passing of Gary Gygax.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/05/arts/05gygax.html
Way back when...I was around 16 ...41 now ...I remember walking into Toys-R-us and seeing this 'thing'...
Dungeons and Dragons.
My friends and I were looking for a new board game to play and this box had a 'pretty cool cover'... lol ..back then this was what usually got my attention.
We had our share of Games from Avalon Hill..Like Panzer Blitz...Starship Troopers and King Maker (Percy of Alnwick anyone)....and needed a change.
I had no idea what I had bought but after reading the rules and then unleashing my first Carrion Crawler on my Player Characters...we were hooked.
I could go on and on but leave it at that...
Thank you Gary Gygax ..rest in peace |
Post by transient // Mar 5, 2008, 3:25am
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transient
Total Posts: 977
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He's not dead, he's just biding his time in his phylactery.;)
It's definitely a sad day. He's right up there in the geek pantheon, for sure. :(:(:( |
Post by Jack Edwards // Mar 5, 2008, 4:45am
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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He left a wonderful legacy of reviving the imagination of several generations and bringing about the explosion of creative storytelling that followed. His goals of encouraging creative collaboration are not unlike Roman's goals for shared spaces. Though it's hard to compare Roman and trueSpace to the movement that was Dungeons and Dragons.
I particularly liked the final two paragraphs in the article:
These days, pen-and-paper role-playing games have largely been supplanted by online computer games. Dungeons & Dragons itself has been translated into electronic games, including Dungeons & Dragons Online. Mr. Gygax recognized the shift, but he never fully approved. To him, all of the graphics of a computer dulled what he considered one of the major human faculties: the imagination.
“There is no intimacy; it’s not live,” he said of online games. “It’s being translated through a computer, and your imagination is not there the same way it is when you’re actually together with a group of people. It reminds me of one time where I saw some children talking about whether they liked radio or television, and I asked one little boy why he preferred radio, and he said, ‘Because the pictures are so much better.’ ” |
Post by TomG // Mar 5, 2008, 6:01am
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TomG
Total Posts: 3397
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Ah the times I spent playing D&D way back when! And lots of other tabletop RPGs, but D&D was my first, not surprisingly of course as it was the leader in the field, and still is so many decades later.
While I love computer RPGs, there is no denying that they do lose something, since the infinite possible actions in a tabletop RPG are boiled down to a set of finite, pre-predicted actions. Players in D&D can say "I'll do..." and then add anything their imaginations can think of, which was often something that the author of the dungeon had not thought of - but with another human being in charge, rules could be swiftly amended to come up with a way of deciding the outcome and the action was allowed.
With computer games, I am always reminded of the Discworld game in which Rincewind would spend most of his time saying "That doesn't work" (in Eric Idle's voice), such that I often say that to myself when I get a cool idea and try to do it in a computer RPG. "That doesn't work"
So I understand his point. I hear you can play D&D online now though with some special software, its not graphical etc, it just lets you get together and do old fashioned D&D across the net.
Anyway, a pioneer in many ways, a figure who changed the shape of gaming (both off computer, but also on computer as D&D definitely is the template from which computer RPGs are derived), so his passing is indeed an event of note.
Tom |
Post by brotherx // Mar 5, 2008, 10:12am
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brotherx
Total Posts: 538
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I saw something about him on Penny Arcade today. Didn't realise who he was at the time. I never did play the original D&D but did have the first edition AD&D...was fun for a while but couldn't handle the 14 hour sessions at college... |
Post by Garion // Mar 5, 2008, 11:21am
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Garion
Total Posts: 116
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He is probably just waiting on a Rez ;)
R.I.P
Gary
Cheers
Garion |
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