A big day in gaming history today. Today would have been the 79th Birthday of Gary Gygax, Lord of Geeks and DM Extraordinaire. Gygax was the author, co-publisher, and co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons, released in 1974. Since then the game has gone through several iterations, spawned countless modules, and is still loved by millions to this day.

There is a fantastic email that got published by Reason (the online blog) when Gary Gygax died in 2008. It was from the musician “Chicken” John Rinaldi (full source here) in which he describes the impact of D&D saying:

Human nature, science, play, stats, history, geography, logistics and encumbrance… hit points, armor class, fantasy colliding with fact to make it all so real you just got swept away and actually forgot that you were a teenage idiot with no way out. Gary Gygax saved more lives than pennacillian. 

I think a lot of us, as players of roleplaying games, can relate to that statement. D&D has been more than a game to so many of us. Through D&D so many new worlds have spawned, so many games influenced and created, and so many great times have been had. So many friendships made, and heroes made of us all.

Gary Gygax once said:

I would like the world to remember me as the guy who really enjoyed playing games and sharing his knowledge and his fun pastimes with everybody else.

I would just like to end this very short post by saying: “We do Gary, we do.”

Published by Luke

Board game nerd, comic book geek, Rubik's Cube solver, Splendor player, and Blogger. View all posts by Luke