Geeks Across The World In Mourning

You might not know who Gary Gygax is, but about a million people who dress up at comic book conventions do. Gary was the co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons and he died yesterday. Now, I know many of you have played the game online or as a video game. But let me tell you something. Long before video games or cable, and not too long after electricity, people were forced to play board games at night or when it was raining. See, when it was sunny we were required to go outside and play until dark, and sometimes later. Funny thing is I don't remember a lot of fat kids when I was growing up. Hmmm. Maybe the playing outside thing was a pretty good idea.

Anyway, all the cool kids listened to their 8 track players and played spin the bottle, so the geeks needed to find something to do instead of counting how long the couple was in the closet and so Dungeons and Dragons was invented. I was not a big player of the game. I enjoyed it, but couldn't keep track of the 30 different dice needed to play, and the fact that games went on for what seemed like weeks. I have the patience of a gnat so that wasn't going to work. Thank God, PONG came along almost at the same time.

Gary and Dave Arneson created D&D in 1974, in which the adventures of fictional characters are decided by the roll of a dice. An estimated 20 million people are thought to have played worldwide and more than $1B worth of equipment and books have been sold. It also spawned a huge number of video games, books and films.

Gary also wrote adventure books including the Greyhalk series.