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Peace The Spork Out Dungeon Master : Gary Gygax : 1938-2008
Orcs, goblins, paladins, clerics and dwarves everywhere shed a tear yesterday. Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, died on Tuesday at the age of 69.
My parents divorced when I was in 5th grade. My mother moved my brother and I out to the East End of Louisville, and I spent much of the next two years - total puberty, glasses, braces, awkward, fat, thin, fat, thin - trying to make all new friends and adjust to my new life. We lived in an apartment complex for a while. Below our apartment, an 8th grader going through a similar situatation, invited me over to hang out. We became friends, and he introduced me to the Dragonlance book series. I briefly became engrossed in this fantasy world and we eventually found our way into Dungeons & Dragons, devil worship, puppy sacrifice and all things related. We dabbled in this means of escape for about a year. Soon my parents worked things out, reunited, and I eventually discovered baseball, new friends, girls and all things deemed healthy for boys of my age. Really though, I never felt too much shame for my role-playing days. I held it near and dear. I know millions secretly, or you brave few who have come out publically, feel the same.
Gary G., I roll my 20-sided die one last time in your honor brotha.
Little Dragon - Twice
Dragons of Zynth - Get Off
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posted by Dodge @ 8:10 AM
4 Talk back to yo' mama!
4 Talk back to yo' mama!:
since we're sharing...
When I was 13, my old man got some half-baked idea that what my family really needed was to get back to good, wholesome Midwestern living. To this end, he plucked us out of Trenton, NJ and dropped us in Brookings, SD (population 16K with SDSU in session and the rodeo in town). Within six months, we suffered the first recorded family-wide nervous breakdown, but that's a story for another time.
Not unlike Dodge, I was a bit of a mess at puberty. Fat, nonathletic and loud, with teeth so bucked that I could have found side-work as a professional bottle opener. Luckily, I was quickly befriended by two other outcasts: Dean, who lived with his mother and older brother in a trailer, and John, a kid who might as well have had KICK ME tattooed on his back.
Dean, not only lived in a trailer, which seemed pretty sweet back then, but he also had a penchant for getting his mitts on random cans of beer as well as access to his brother's very impressive collection of porn. Yes, to me, Dean was part Huck Finn/part Dean Moriarity, but more importantly, Dean seemed to find his entire sense of self-worth through his role as dungeon master for our marathon Dungeons and Dragons sessions. He was a true artist, not only because he could do things with dice that would get him banned in any Vegas casino, but more importantly because he was able to make me forget, if only temporarily, that I was a fat, ugly city kid stuck in Brookings.
I think about Dean and John sometimes, and wonder what became of them. I thought about them yesterday when I heard about the death of Gary Gygax, and I wondered if he ever thought about how many kids he helped, by allowing them to slay an orc or ogre, rather than classmates.
I spent so much time playing D&D in the 80's. It was an obsession for me and a couple of equally compulsive friends. So much so that my parents staged interventions complete with a preacher. Madness.
In one article I read about Gygax it says he lived in Lake Geneva, WI and used to host games for people that would turn up at his house. I used to go to professional conferences at Lake Geneva - probably best that I didn't know this, or I may have had to relive my youth.
i KNEW you were a closet nerd! i knew it.
;)
mwah.
who said anything about the closet! I can't hide it.
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