Gary Gygax rolls a 1 on his saving throw
Gary Gygax, the man who invented Dungeons & Dragons and roleplaying games, accidentally revitalized the fantasy fiction genre (which remade itself in his image) and inspired a whole genre of computer games (including World of Warcraft) has died.
Gary Gygax, who co-created the fantasy game Dungeons & Dragons and helped start the role-playing phenomenon, died Tuesday morning at his home in Lake Geneva. He was 69.
He had been suffering from health problems for several years, including an abdominal aneurysm, said his wife, Gail Gygax.
Gygax and Dave Arneson developed Dungeons & Dragons in 1974 using medieval characters and mythical creatures. The game known for its oddly shaped dice became a hit, particularly among teenage boys, and eventually was turned into video games, books and movies.
Gygax always enjoyed hearing from the game’s legion of devoted fans, many of whom would stop by the family’s home in Lake Geneva, about 55 miles southwest of Milwaukee, his wife said. Despite his declining health, he hosted weekly games of Dungeons & Dragons as recently as January, she said.
“It really meant a lot to him to hear from people from over the years about how he helped them become a doctor, a lawyer, a policeman, what he gave them,” Gygax said. “He really enjoyed that.”
Dungeons & Dragons players create fictional characters and carry out their adventures with the help of complicated rules. The quintessential geek pastime, it spawned a wealth of copycat games and later inspired a whole genre of computer games that’s still growing in popularity.
Funeral arrangements are pending. Besides his wife, Gygax is survived by six children.
Appropriately, he died on GM Day and National Grammar Day. (The effect the original Advanced Dungeons & Dragons books had on my elementary and middle school vocabularies cannot be understated. How many 11 year olds know what a carbuncle is? Or hematite?)
EDIT: A tribute strip from Order of the Stick. A more serious one from Penny Arcade. Given that EGG shoved a ton of cartoons into the original Dungeon Masters Guide, I suspect he would be pleased. The man who showed all the Bond villains what a real death trap looked like in Tomb of Horrors had a good sense of humor.
