across the sea, a pale moon rises.

I just found out that Gary Gygax died. He was only 69.

I failed my save vs. stunning blow, so forgive me if this isn't the most polished thing in the world.

For most geeks, RPGs are a huge part of who we are, and many of the games I've loved -- and continue to love -- probably wouldn't exist as they do without Gary Gygax. The news reports are calling him "the father of D&D," but he was really the father of all role playing games, whether they were played with dice and paper, a deck of cards, or on a computer. Yeah, wargames existed before D&D, and fantasy existed before D&D, but D&D is the game that introduced fantasy gaming to my generation.

I didn't know him, and never met him, but his impact upon my life can't be overstated.

To honor his passing, I'd like to share an excerpt from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Geek, from Happiest Days of Our Lives:

December, 1983

I sat on the floor in Aunt Val’s house and opened up her Christmas present to me. It was a red box with a really cool-looking dragon on the front of it. Inside, there were a few books, some dice, a map, and a crayon to color in the dice.

“That’s a game that I hear lots of kids like to play, Willow,” she said. “It’s dragons and wizards and those things you liked from The Hobbit. The back says you use your imagination, and I know what a great imagination you have.” My brother played with Legos and my cousins played with handheld electronic games. I felt a little gypped.

“Wow,” I said, masking my disappointment. “Thanks, Aunt Val!”

Later, while the other kids played with Simon and Mattel Electronic Football, I sat near the fireplace and examined my gift. It said that I could be a wizard or a fighter, but there weren’t any pieces that looked like that. There were a lot of weird dice, but I had to color in the numbers. That seemed silly, but at least it was something to do, so I grabbed the black crayon and rubbed it over the pale blue dice, just like the instructions said.

Aunt Val (who was my favorite relative in the world throughout my entire childhood and right up until she died a few years ago) walked into the living room. “What do you think, Willow?”

“I colored the dice,” I said, and showed her the result. “But I haven’t read the book yet.”

She patted my leg. “Well, I hope you like it.” She moved to the other side of the room, where my cousin Jack poked at a Nintendo Game and Watch.

I opened the Player’s Guide and began to read.

February, 1984

It was afternoon PE in fifth grade, and I was terrified. I ran and jumped and ducked, surrounded by a jeering crowd of my classmates. The PE teacher did nothing to stop the attack – and, in fact, encouraged it.

“Get him!” someone yelled as I fell to the asphalt, small rocks digging into my palms. I breathed hard. Through my adrenaline-fueled flight-or-fight response, the world slowed, the jeering faded, and I wondered to myself why our playground was just a parking lot and why we had to wear corduroy pants in the middle of a Southern California heat wave. Before I could offer any answers, a clear and loud voice spoke from within my head. “Hey,” it said. “You’d better get up and move, or you’re dead.”

I nodded my head and looked up in time to see the red playground ball, spinning in slow motion, as the word “Voit” rotated into view. Pain exploded across my face and a mighty cheer erupted from the crowd. The PE teacher blew her whistle.

I don’t know how I managed to be the last kid standing on our team. I usually ran right to the front of the court so I could get knocked out quickly and (hopefully) painlessly before the good players got worked up by the furor of battle and started taking head shots, but I’d been stricken by a bout of temporary insanity – possibly caused by the heat – on this February day, and I’d actually played to win the game, using a very simple strategy: run like hell and hope to get lucky.

I blinked back tears as I looked up at Jimmie Just, who had delivered the fatal blow. Jimmie was the playground bully. He spent as much time in the principal’s office as he did in our classroom, and he was the most feared dodgeball player at the Lutheran School of the Foothills.

He laughed at me, his long hair stuck to his face in sweaty mats, and sneered. “Nice try, Wil the Pill.”

I picked myself up off the ground, determined not to cry. I sucked in deep breaths of air through my nose.

Mrs. Cooper, the PE teacher, walked over to me. “Are you okay, Wil?” she asked.

“Uh-huh,” I lied. Anything more than that and I risked breaking down into humiliating sobs that would follow me around the rest of the school year, and probably on into sixth grade.

“Why don’t you go wash off your face,” she said, not unkindly, “and sit down for a minute.”

“Okay,” I said. I walked slowly across the blacktop to the drinking fountains. Maybe if I really took my time, I could run out the clock and I wouldn’t have to play another stupid dodgeball game.

January, 1984

Papers scattered across my bed appeared to be homework to the casual observer, but to me they were people. A thief, a couple of wizards, some fighters: a party of adventurers who desperately wanted to storm The Keep on the Borderlands. But without anyone to guide them, they sat alone, trapped in the purgatory of my bedroom, straining behind college-ruled blue lines to come to life.

I tried to recruit my younger brother to play with me, but he was 7, and more interested in Monchichi. The kids in my neighborhood were more interested in football and riding bikes, so I was left to read through module B2 by myself, wandering the Caves of Chaos and dodging Lizard Men alone.

February, 1984

I washed my face and drank deeply from the drinking fountain. By the time I made it back to the benches along the playground’s southern edge, I’d lost the urge to cry, but my face radiated enough heat to compete with the blistering La Crescenta sun.

I sat down near Simon Teele, who, thanks to the wonders of alphabetization, ended up with me and Harry Yan (the school’s lone Asian kid) on field trips, on fire drills, and in chapel. Simon was taller than all of us, wore his hair down into his face, and really kept to himself. He was reading an oversized book that sort of looked like a textbook, filled with charts and tables.

We weren’t officially friends, but I knew him well enough to make polite conversation.

“Hey,” I said. “Why don’t you have to play dodgeball?”

“Asthma,” he said.

“Lucky,” I said. “I hate dodgeball.”

“Everyone hates dodgeball,” he said, “except Jimmie Just.”

“Yeah,” I said, relieved to hear someone else say out loud what I’d been thinking since fourth grade.

“Hey,” I said. “What are you reading?”

He held up the book and I saw its cover: a giant statue, illuminated by torches, sat behind an archway. Two guys were on its head, prying loose one of its jeweled eyes, as a group of people stood at the base. One was clearly a wizard; another was obviously a knight.

“Player’s Handbook,” he said. “Do you play D&D?”

I gasped. According to our ultra-religious school, D&D was Satanic. I looked up for teachers, but none were nearby. A hundred feet away on the playground, another game of dodgeball was underway. I involuntarily flinched when I heard the hollow pang! of the ball as it skipped off the ground.

“You’re going to get in trouble if you get caught with that,” I said.

“No, I won’t,” he said. “If I just keep it turned upside down, they’ll never see it. So do you play or not?”

“I have the red box set,” I said, “and a bunch of characters, but I don’t have anyone to play with.”

“That’s Basic,” he said. “This is Advanced.”

“Oh.”

“But if you want, you could come over to my house this weekend and we could play.”

I couldn’t believe my good luck. With a dodgeball to the face, Fate put me on the bench next to the kid who, over the next few months, helped me take my first tentative steps down the path to geekdom. He had a ton of AD&D books: the Dungeon Master’s Guide, which had a truly terrifying demon on the cover, and would result in certain expulsion if seen at school; the Monster Manual, which was filled with dragons; and the Fiend Folio, which not only had demons and devils, but a harpy and a nymph, accompanied by a drawing of a naked woman! with boobs!!

Simon’s parents were divorced, and he lived with his mom in a huge house in La Canada. His room was filled with evidence of a custody Cold War. Too many toys to count littered the floor and spilled out of the closet, but even though we were surrounded by Atari and Intellivision, GI Joe and Transformers, we had D&D fever, and the only prescription was more polyhedral dice.

Of all the things I do that make me a geek, nothing brings me as much joy as gaming. It all started with the D&D Basic Set, and today it takes an entire room in my house to contain all of my books, boxes, and dice.

Thank you for giving us endless worlds to explore, Gary Gygax. Rest in peace.

Comments

[Jason Azze]

I did get to meet Gary once, at GenCon 2001. He was really kind to me, and chatted with me while he signed my 1st ed. AD&D DMG. It's because of him that I know what a brazier is.

[TheDoctor]

Noooooo....it's not true...I'll never join you.

Raises arms to heavens..."Khhhhaaaaaannnn!"

Ironically, one of the guys my older brother played with was named Kaan. And it was watching my brother from the doorway that left the impression on me that D&D was cool (little did I suspect how misguided I was...)

It's remarkable to see how similar our initiations were (although I went out and bought my own red boxed set with my paper route money) and the fascination with the clearly verboten Advanced books...

RIP, Gygax. I hope he had a chance to see the 4th edition before he left the material plane (man, am I nerding out in this comment, and it feels so good...just wait till your book arrives and I'll be in the Nostalgia Dreaming!)

[jdifran]

Alas, if only this world were like the ones he created, if the laws of this universe were as he imagined, we could find a cleric to cast Resurrection. A thousand times a thousand geeks would line up outside the Temple of Boccob in Lake Geneva and offer to undertake any quest, no matter how perilous, in compensation.

May his spirit rest in peace.

[taruntius]

Wow.

It is indirectly because of Gary Gygax that I now have the career I have.

I just left a 13 year career in the software industry to pursue life as a novelist. This wouldn't have happened, except that I discovered that I really enjoy writing and am actually capable of writing novel-length fiction that people don't hate.

That, in turn, would never have happened except for D&D.

I came late to D&D. It hit the sleepy town of Flagstaff, AZ in 1981 when I was in the 6th grade. Even at that tender age, I was already pigeonholed in to the social outcast bucket-o-lepers category. Yet, being the ironic way my life tends to go, at my school D&D was the purvue of the in crowd and I was definitely not cool enough to play D&D with them. I begged my mom to buy me the game, which she did (I know exactly the basic set boxed edition Wil's talking about), and didn't have anyone to play it with. So I let it go.

Fast forward to college. Dorm life. A chance, socially speaking, to roll up a new character, a new me, and start over. One of the guys on my floor was a total D&D junkie, and he was itching to get up a game. I said "hey, I've always wanted to play that" and I was in. We played every saturday for a year, and nearly all of us got killed in the grand finale installment of the Temple of Elemental Evil module.

After college, I wanted to try my hand behind the DM's screens and rounded up some of my geek friends who were itching to play again. But I didn't want to do stock modules. My players had played them all already, so I made up my own.

And with it, a world, maps, cities, pantheons, nations, back-story, hidden locales, languages, and cultures. It was a hell of a lot of fun, and I DM'ed them through a story-arc every saturday for about three years.

Then in 2005, a buddy at work convinced me to participate in National Novel Writing Month. I didn't know what I wanted to write, so I fell back on an idea I'd had while DM'ing. To novelize the campaign I had run. After all, I already _knew_ that story--I didn't have to write it so much as just write it _down_. So I did. I pared down the cast of characters to just the NPCs that mattered to the story arc (my poor PCs never even got cameos), pared down the plot to the essential quest story of those NPCs doing what they needed to do to Right the Tragic Wrong of the past, and 36 days later had a manuscript in my hand and a new vision of what I wanted to do with my life.

Two years and two more manuscripts later, I'm saying siyonara to corporate life to do the starving writer thing.

I'd never have learned that I could write, nor how fun and fulfilling writing can be, without D&D. Thanks, Gary.

[scotth]

Wil, I know you're still recovering, but do you have any firm plans to put "Happiest Days of Our Lives" on audio? I bought "Just a Geek" that way when it came out and love it. I have much more free time in places where I can listen to my iPod but can't read, and I'd love to hear your latest that way (this passage from it made me wish for it again). Please make it a priority when your energy level returns to normal. Thanks.

[Celtic Mama]

Wil, when I read that he had died you were the first person I thought of. It's a sad day, indeed. My dice are in mourning...

[Thane9]

Wil,

Your story always strikes a chord with me, no matter how many times I read it. I'm sure various situations and places and people can just be swapped in and out by almost any gamer and we've all got the same basic story.

If the measure of a man's life is the amount of joy they brought to the world I can only think there is a very special place set aside for Mr. Gygax.

[Fraize]

His work meant so much to me growing up.

As a geek among geeks, it was the COOL geeks that played D&D, and I certainly wasn't even counted among them.

I nearly cried when, at twelve years old, my dad bought me the Basic Set. I read it constantly, even having it folded in my textbooks so I could read in class. The Expert Set came later. In the 8th grade, I gave up my lunch money to a classmate for 8 weeks to buy his AD&D books. I spent every waking moment pouring over Player's Handbook, DM Guide, Monster Manual, Fiend Folio, and Deities and Demigods.

You'll be missed, Gary.

[angie k]

When I saw the news online today I immediately thought of all the people I would not know if there hadn't been Gary Gygax and D&D and how my life would be different (I wouldn't have the friends or job I have now without D&D and probably wouldn't have had such an immediate connection with my other half if we hadn't had D&D to bond over.). I'm so thankful he existed and brought such a wonderful social tool to my life. I failed my save vs. incredible sadness throw. :(

[thespian]

I don't normally pimp my blog, but my response to this news was very similar to yours, to tell a story about starting to game, set in 1984 ;-)

If it's of interest to you, it's here:

http://thespian.livejournal.com/1160327.html

[Sally J]

I wish every kid could have an Aunt Val.

[Alan]

I prefer to think that he has just moved on to the next RPG.

[Daelin82]

I clearly remember the first orc I shot. D&D had a lot to do with who I am today(I love dodgeball, tho) I remeber in 81 or 82 I wrote Mr Gygax a couple of letters with some questions. He responded on the letters and returned them to me. I still have them. Now they mean even more.....

[Xaqtly]

When I get home from work, I'm pouring out my dice for a fallen homie. Much love for the GG.

[Soo]

It's never easy being different, but Gary Gygax and his fantastical D&D filled our void by giving us dorks, geeks, freaks and losers a calling. With dice in hand, we found each other, banding together to form a tight-knit community.

Sure, we're still pretty weird compared to whatever society claims is 'normal,' but I'll take us over them any day.

I'll miss Gary forever.

[Rogue Risa]

I have only been a gamer girl since 1994, but it has been one of the best things I have been a part of in my life. I had never met Mr. Gygax, but I would see him at the GenCons over the years and hear stories from those who had met him. He seemed like a wonderful guy and I am sad that he won't see the rollout of 4e. At least he had been around for the preview at DDXP...

[Jennifer Harper]

I had the opportunity to meet Gary at GenCon about 20 years ago. If I recall, it was the first Con after he lost TSR in his divorce. My friend and I were in the dealer room looking for something or other, and there he was, sitting all by himself in the booth of his new company.

We found him very approachable, and after the obligatory book signing requests spent the next 20 minutes or so just chatting with him, although in truth we spent more time discussing alcohol than gaming. He was, at least at that time, quite a drinker. He told us about his local bar and how he didn't even have to order when he showed up (they had an ice cold stein of gin ready for him as he sat down) and shared with us his favorite aphorism - "Work is the curse of the drinking class."

Once I got past the "OMG, I'm talking with Gary Gygax" thing, it was great. Here he was, the guy who created fucking D&D, just sitting and chatting with a young couple he'd just met. He was excited about his new company, and their new game, Cyborg Commando.

After we left, we found a place making custom engraved pins. The next day we stopped back and gave him one. "Work is the curse of the drinking class" Every time we ran into him that weekend he was wearing it.

The world is a less magical place today.

[Chris Hanrahan]

I was sitting in the back office of my Game Store, eating lunch and reading Mr. Gygax’s Wikipedia article, when it hit me like a freight train that without his work…I wouldn’t be sitting in the back of my game store. I vividly remember 3rd grade, sitting at recess (every recess) playing D&D for the short periods we had. We couldn’t get enough. I suppose in a greater sense, I still haven’t.

I wouldn't own a game store and wouldn't have YEARS of memories

Thank you Gary Gygax. You sure did do an awful lot for us.

[Eric Lee]

If you haven't already seen it, Gabe at Penny-Arcade drew this up:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/03/04

[Beaver1224]

I still remember walking around Jr. High, playing diceless between classes. It was a great challenge because you had to keep the map in your head, remembering which way that treasure room was and the best escape route from the ogres you'd just stumbled across. I also remember having twice the books at my disposal because my best friend's mom was convinced D&D was satanic, so he kept his books at my house.

A lifetime of my memories can trace their roots to the creations of Gary Gygax.

Roll well on your new character, Gary. You can join the party again.

[Celtic Mama]

I commented earlier, but reading everyone elses comments sent me off on a journey remembering my D & D days.

My hubby and I bonded in our group before we started dating. He was gnome with a tendency to be a clepto. I was a mage. He saved me with his cloak of invisibility once and 15 years and 4 kids later, here we are. This game brought us together. We're still friends with the people we played with. I have nothing but fond memories. Our original DM kind of turned us off when he brought in other people who were not cool, so one of our members decided to break out on our own and DM us herself and we had the most fun then. She actually got me started gaming. She took me to the comic book store to pick out a figure. Then I had to get the right paint and I painted that thing that night. She had long red hair, a burgundy and green vest, and brown pants and knee high boots. And a staff. I named her Gwyneth and I still have her. ALong with polyhedral dice. They are my most prized possessions. Were it not for this game, I would never have met my husband and had the 4 beautiful children I have now. One of them is a geek like me, but my 2 boys are into my hubby's old game of Might & Magic for the PC. I think we'll turn them on to D & D now...

[MikeN]

My "Red Box" was actually the boxed set of MERP, I still take it out of storage in the attic every now and then remembering afternoons spent adventuring with my mates or late nights fueled by several cups of tea designing ruined keeps to explore.

Without Gygax and D&D, MERP or the many other rpgs I played (and still play) might never have existed and for that I'm truly grateful for his work. In a poignant way it was fitting that he passed away on "GM's day".

[NeuroMan42]

Keep on rolling 20's in the Astral Plane, Gary. I will catch ya on the flip side and bring the Mountain Dew.

[starshine_diva]

Great tribute.
Propelled!
http://tech.propeller.com/story/2008/03/04/wwdn-in-exile-across-the-sea-a-pale-moon-rises/

[JohnB]

Badly as I wanted to be a hardcore D&D player when I was in middle school, my town was just too small, and my friend Mike & I were the only kids interested. And neither of us wanted to be the Dungeon Master. And yet we still managed to have a blast faking our way through "The Lost City" and "The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh", and spent many many hours at each others' houses soaking up the pages of the rule books and the Monster Manual and the Fiend Folio.