A Brief Request.

[theweaselking]

Stop telling me Gary Gygax is dead.

First, I already heard it the first 50 times.
Second, there is no confirmation at this point. At least wait until somebody *reliable*, or at least *using their real name* reports it.
Third, Gygax's contributions haven't been new or relevant for nearly 30 years. This is like a massive public mourning of Ringo Starr's drum teacher, people.

Comments

[kadath.livejournal.com]

I just wanted to make a joke about the Planes.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

It doesn't really bother me, except for the "no confirmation yet" part. I know there are lots of people for whom this is significant.

I'm just really not one of them, and at this point it's an ANONYMOUS RUMOUR from an ANONYMOUS INTERNET BULLETING BOARD POSTER.

[kadath.livejournal.com]

"Anonymous" is a bit strong. "Pseudonomous" would be more accurate; "Troll Lord" is known to be Steve Chenault, who had a professional relationship with Gygax.

I agree with it being entirely irrelevant to my life, save for the chance to make really dorky jokes.

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

I don't have a raspberry icon, so I'll piggyback on kadath's comment.

Excuse some of us for growing up in the wrong continent, but said some of us started gaming with his contributions, or the direct descendants thereof. So it is not Traveller or GURPS or the One True System. You will get a "whatever" from me at this point to the relevance or importance or quality of D&D, because that is all I had.

I will grant you the "unconfirmed" point, although it is an Associated Press release. I do not know how accurate they try to be.

[kadath.livejournal.com]

Everyone knows the One True System is West End Games d6!

[publius1.livejournal.com]

And when *I* was a kid, all we had was D&D! And we LIKED it you hear me we LIKED IT!

My father gave me a D&D set when I was about 8. My mother immediately took it from my hands, said a prayer, and threw it in the trash. Because D&D was EVIL, since you could play an EVIL character and evil could WIN, and because it allowed you to use MAGIC and SUMMON DEMONS.

[speck.livejournal.com]

http://www.wbay.com/global/story.asp?s=7963395

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

That's a link! Thanks.

[skola.livejournal.com]

google news has a bunch of stories about it

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

It didn't 10 minutes ago.

[publius1.livejournal.com]

In other news, Gary Gygax is still dead.

[nomadmwe.livejournal.com]

Third, Gygax's contributions haven't been new or relevant for nearly 30 years. This is like a massive public mourning of Ringo Starr's drum teacher, people.

Well, sure - but isn't that kinda like saying that before we should note or mourn the passing of someone who did help create something that had a fairly large impact on some of our lives that we should ask, "But what have they done for me lately?" :)

That said, I can certainly agree with wanting to skip the quadrillions of nearly identical LJ posts that have sprung up all at once. Stupid internets!

(Plus, I just wanted to joke about pouring out a 40 of Mt. Dew for him.)

[jdarkwulf.livejournal.com]

I was actually mulling over a joke about pouring out my 2d20.

[publius1.livejournal.com]

It's more like a massive public mourning for Thomas Edison, for while he "invented" (read: bankrolled a lot of brilliant engineers) quite a few interesting things, they were much improved upon in later years. It doesn't make his initial contributions any less though, yes?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

"Teaching competent people who did competent things that inspired other people to do really cool stuff" isn't a great initial contribution, though.

There's a reason I specfically compared him to the guy who taught Ringo Starr how to play the drums.

[boixboi.livejournal.com]

It's more like a massive public mourning of Ringo Starr. He created something which invented what (for good or bad) has become a lifestyle for many. On top of which, he has worked in the background of the games industry and has been a public figure for geeks the world 'round. Ringo Starr hasn't created anything especially noteworthy since the Beatles split (IMHO), but he was still part of something that created a cultural movement and a sea change in the art he was involved with.

[drjon.livejournal.com]

How come you read so many people who cared enough to post about it? ;}P>

Me, I'm not looking forward to wading through the posts today. It's 5am here, I've got about 14 hours of it to come...

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Gamers! Gamers everywhere!

It's a side effect of being a geek and running a geeky internet blog - lots of gamers and furries.

[scixual.livejournal.com]

I don't know if anyone is telling YOU specifically about this -- it is multi-reported on my f'list, though. I don't mind, they're posting because it's something important to them. And since my friends are all geeks, I expect to hear about it a lot.

Shortly I will make a post myself, because it affects me.

And as for "...Gygax's contributions haven't been new or relevant for nearly 30 years. This is like a massive public mourning of Ringo Starr's drum teacher, people."

Yeah, I think I gotta disagree. His invention has had a major effect on thousands, if not millions of people. People who play WoW now may not know how the RPG was created, but I do. It's not so much mourning Ringo's drum teacher as mourning Little Richard, as one of the founders of Rock and roll itself.

Whether you like Rock or not, it has had an effect on modern society. The Geeks shall inherit the Earth.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I had more than a dozen people mail it, IM it, PM it, or otherwise send it directly to me, in addition to the livejournal posts.

It got a little excessive.

[fengi.livejournal.com]

With much respect for the quality of your journal, I think anyone who posts pictures of the cute polar bear may not be on the high ground when it comes to grumping about memage.

Ringo Starr did not create the Beatles - he was a replacement. Gygax played a key role in inventing and popularizing something significant, including proving one could make a business out of it, even if he ended up on the outside looking in.

Honestly, it's nice to mourn a guy who started something which became big, even if he ended up on the edges, which spread in a positive, or at least benign way. Better than endless comments n one who's significant mainly for being young and dead or eloquent about vile ideas (to name two recent examples).

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Steven Colbert did a segment on Knut, I think I'm safe.

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Hear hear. Actually, I wouldn't compare this to Ringo Starr's drum teacher: I'd compare it to George Lucas's film professor. (I lost any respect I had for the man when he blatantly ripped off the works of innumerable fantasy authors and then took credit for their creations, and then turned around and whined when other companies started putting out their own games to compete with D&D. If the man was such a damn genius, how do we explain his run as CEO for TSR, Inc. 25 years ago?)

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I like my analogy more. But yes.

Gygax's contributions were universally *bad*. Everything that makes an RPG worth playing - from "characters with personality" to "systems that are fast and consistent" to "things happening in a way that isn't arbitrary and totally random" and beyond - are things Gygax not only didn't come up with, they were things he HATED and did his best to stamp out. I mean, the man used CLASSES! And LEVELS! Those were a bad idea in the 1970s, they were completely obsolete by 1982, and yet there are still people around using them because of "Gary's Vision"

[andrewducker]

I'd compare him to Freud.

Everything he did is now acknowledge to be Wrong, but he still kickstarted something massive.