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.

[speck.livejournal.com]

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

[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.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

That's a link! Thanks.

[skola.livejournal.com]

google news has a bunch of stories about it

[publius1.livejournal.com]

In other news, Gary Gygax is still dead.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

It didn't 10 minutes ago.

[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.

I don't want to be Elfstar! I want to be Debbie!

[kadath.livejournal.com]

I've taken mages all the fucking way up to 20 and never gotten a spell out of the deal. My DMs have clearly been bogarting the True Power.

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

It's funny; the one all-out screaming match I ever had with my mother was on the subject of FRPs, and it's funny because she had had no exposure to the whole "D&D is witchcraft" or "D&D is evil" meme---those memes did not exist in Turkey. The entire FRP meme did not exist in Turkey outside a few clubs in universities.

(That has, since, changed. Ah, cultural osmosis.)

After I invited the party to hold a game at my place while my mother and aunt listened in from the kitchen, though, the... disagreement... ended.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

There's enough real news reporting it now that I believe it.

And I fully admit that Gygax inspired a whole lot of people, who did some pretty great things. I'm just not only not a fan of his work, but I think trying to stay "true to Gary's vision" has left a lot of people spending man-years trying to work around crippling design decisions that were bad in 1979 and obsolete in 1981, in pursuit of something that's supposed to be fun.

I suspect this is not going to be a popular view of Saint Gary for a few weeks, until he's back to being Gary Gygax again.

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

Cannot be a One True System without a d20, a d10, and a percentile table! Heretic!

Re: I don't want to be Elfstar! I want to be Debbie!

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Jack Chick Lied To Me.

[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.)

Re: I don't want to be Elfstar! I want to be Debbie!

[kadath.livejournal.com]

He lied about D&D, so why should I believe him about Jesus?!

[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?

No other choice, really.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I guess I'll just have to become a satanist and eat my neighbours.

[kadath.livejournal.com]

He did give us "Gygax dungeon" as a benchmark for arbitrarily lethal DM behavior.

"So...we're stuck in a 10x10 room with spikes coming out of the walls--which are closing in, incidentally--and a beholder?"

"Well, at least it's not a Gygax dungeon."

[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.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

It was all I had, too. Something about being introduced to gaming in Algeria.

And I'm glad for the work that he did, and I'm sorry that he died. I hope it was quick and painless and he had a good life. I wasn't a huge fan of the Gord the Rogue books, but I've read worse.

(But you'd still need to pay me to play a game of D&D, D&D 3, D&D or 3.5 because oh dear god the mechanics won't *lie down and shut up*. D&D 4, I hear all the developers are playing Savage Worlds games anyway and I'm really not expecting it to beat SW even if it matches it more closely.)

(AD&D2E was nice, though. Although discussing that with various people, it might have been due to house rules.)

"Salvation through faith alone" is such a crock.

[kadath.livejournal.com]

And as long as you accept Jesus on your deathbed, it's all good!

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Heh. I found The Tomb Of Horrors the other day - they've got a D&D3 conversion. It's just about as pointless as I remember, although they were much nicer about telegraphing things like the Sphere Of Annihilation in the new one.