General Discussion

Playing a computer version of D&D -The pools of Radiance - on those big old foppy's (5"something and you could actually bend them) on my father's Apple saved me from a nasty depression that I felt comming on.

I could step out of myself so to speak, and forgot my troubles in the real world. I played that game intensivly for about a week untill my dark tidings passed.

At worst D&D made my life bearable and not so negative but at best that game might have saved my life.

So I thank you from the bottom of my heart Mr. Gygax for giving me, and lots of other humans, a fantastic world with the greatest playground of them all where we ALL are heroes: our mind.

May a thousand stars light your path, in this world and the next.

Vortigen.

A legend...

 The Empty Chair - Eulogy for a Gamer

There is an empty chair,
at the table this day.
A hallowed place where,
a friend once played.
The roll of his dice,
my ears long to hear.
Or perhaps it would suffice,
if he should suddenly appear.
With character sheet in hand,
and a bag of Cheeze-doodles to share.
All his friends would stand,
as he sat in the empty chair.
I hear his voice a-callin’,
and it ties my heart in a knot.
For he cries, “Though a comrade has fallen,
You must play for those who cannot.”
We conquered worlds on the run,
he and I in the name of fun.
And as others may come and go,
I make both both friend and foe.
But what I long for most,
is our past now long a ghost.


- Poem from our pals at KenzerCo.

God Bless, Gary. May you Rest In Peace. cry

I have been playing D&D for almost 21 years now, Gary thank you for all you have done and gamers all over the world will miss you. As a side note i made a Gygax tribute toon on coh 5 mins after i heard about our (the gaming community's) loss. Gary god bless you for giving millians of gamers years of enjoyment.

Gary, you truely were a heroe among heroes.

I have played D&D now for over 20 years, and D&D has allowed my creativity to take shape. I have been severall different persons over all those years, not in reall life, as there is only me, but on the gaming table. I have experienced life as a holey man and i have commited truely evil deeds.

All in all these experiencess have made me a better person in real life. Also my experiencess as GM and story teller have helped me a lot, I am a teacher now, and not a boring one for that.

Some of my most kindest memmories come from the time that i spend among good friends in our old home experienceing our own adventures. I turned from a min/maxer intoo a true roleplayer. living and breathing another life one evening a week.

Well, Gary....its been a long road, but you finally made it to the level cap. There isn't much I could say about him that hasn't been said, but I hope my story pays proper respect....

I started playing D&D when I was 12. I played as often as I could(which wasn't much because I had no friends to play with, only cousins when they came around) until I hit about 15. That was when Vampire:The Masquerade came out. As a teenager, Vampire held a bit more appeal than D&D(sex, blood, violence, intrigue, anti-establishment themes, etc) and so I set aside the d20s for a few years and just kept my d10s in pocket. Well, when I hit about...18, I moved and found new friends who were into..yep...D&D. We gamed very little but had deep discussions of class, race and rules.

I was never a typical 'gamer geek' or nerd. My uncle started training me in aikido and kempo at age 5, so bullies didn't tend to mess with me more than once(not physically at least...verbal attacks are so much worse). However, I grew up dirt poor surrounded by rich kids, so I was always the outcast. D&D was my escape from my miserable life where I was a staff swinging monk or a marksman greater than Robin Hood.

Well back to the point....I found a girl and got married, which ended most of my gaming. She pretended to be interested, but it never got past character creation. Shortly thereafter I joined the Army. I was US Army Ranger Sniper for 4 years and spent most of that time deployed or on lockdown. Well, computers and game consoles don't pack in combat packs very well, so my D&D gear went with me. Lo and behold, the geeks came out of the cracks after about 3 days in Egypt. I forged some amazingly deep friendships with many fellow soldiers who gamed also.

Some of those friends aren't with us anymore, but without D&D, I never would have called them 'friend'. Gary Gygax is the father of the RPG. Without Gary, this site would not exist. Period. Had it not been for Gary's brilliance, we would be stuck in a world without Zelda, without WoW, without Hellgate. It would be a gaming world of FPS, RTS and *shudder and vomit* more stupid dance/music games. Every member of this site owes Gary Gygax their respect and honor, because without Gary, none of us would even be here.

And so, Gary Gygax, those about to rock salute you. I raise my dwarven mead(yes dwarven mead...made with molases, not that fruity elven honey :P)  and toast to you.

Here's to Gary Gygax, the man who created the medium by which we all come together. You were to gaming what Michelangelo was to painting, what Donatello was to sculpture. You didn't invent gaming, you simply perfected the platform and launched it into greatness. From the bottom of my heart, I honor you Gary. Whooah!

(For those who don't know the full story behind the creation of D&D, go check out 30 Years of Adventuring from WOTC publishing....just...wow...)

1983 I bought the Swedish version of D&D (Drakar&Demoner) I tried to play it with my younger brother but a dispute about the rules made me put it on a back shelf until.

"I didn't get the awesome power a GM/DM had it in it's hand and I was confuzzled when my brother argued that he wanted to use a spell I do not remember the name on now, but it could make things grow at a fast rate and he wanted to use it on an acorn and that way traverse a wall that locked the party out from a town. Unfortunately since I couldn't find anywhere in the rules that he could/couldn't we ended that game session and it took a few years..."

1988 When me and my GF started a company selling computers&computergames in my hometown Helsingborg. One day a person stepped into my shop and said since you sell computergames why not try tabletopgames and such too? I said whats that tabletopgame? From then on my life changed in so many ways I can't say.

"I remember when my newlyborn son sat on my lap "painting" a 40K "Squat" miniature by dipping it in a bottle of blue paint. He told me lately that his careerchoices as a 3D graphic designer stems from when I in a roleplaying fashion drew his goodnight stories"

1990 I became the chairman for a local gamingclub www.spelamera.se that exists and flourish today even though it had a downtime during the peek years of the computer-age 1999 - 2005.

"Down the memory lane when I travel I see all the kids that are now grown up. People who I know most of them fostered in the spirit of roleplaying games and thinking strategically from all kind of games have become all kind of good citizens and pillars of the community, despite some of them where having all kind of problems as kids. They are a tribute to the liberating and soulsearching abilities of RPG-Games. I also think that one of the strength of RPG games is the way you learn to deal with alien lifeforms that make the everyday life encounters with people that seem strange and alien for whatever reason as trivial and that the way to treat all is with respect until proven wrong by their actions."

1992 - 94 We arranged a gaming convention for all kind of boardgames, tabletops and RPG-Games.

"I draw to mind a special session with a person that I had as a close personal friend who never had tried to play RPG games before. Stefan who had told me that he had some problem with an inner rage appearing at all the wrong times and for all the wrong reasons. and that he attended a karatedojo to temper that rage. I said to him I may be able to help you. We had several roleplayingsessions where he played this IQ liberated Human Barbarian. After a while he told me with tears in his eyes that for the first time he was able to feel serene and tranquilminded due to acting out his rage ingame instead of keeping it under lock.

1994 - 98 It was all about Magic the Gathering and other cardgames.

"I even invented a cardgame/boardgame/RPG hybrid for MtG which everyone down at the club loved."

1999 - 2005 The Club was converted into a cybercafé.

"During this time I went into hiding from the rest of the world by hiding in EQ and later EQ2 where I founded a great guild North Star" Many are the good and bad memories from all those times. One memory in particular strikes my mind it was when the guild got a ventrilo server up and running and I was roleplaying my character a shaman being a bear and my fellow female friend who was a kinky girl couldn't think of anything else than shaving my bears butt because it was rubbing her bears nose when she was on autofollow". I read somewhere Mr.G.G. had some feelings against MMO and computergames in general. I think though with tools as ventrilo we will get the same possibilities in the future to form our own worlds , but atm it's a question of the hardware will have to get better to be able to house the endless content I am sure we all would fill such a universe with. "

2006 to present time. I have gotten involved with the running of the gaming club once again and a new brood of gamers have joined it. Also a few old school people like me have returned with their offsprings to get some more social interaction that you unfortunately can't experience in a MMO (And to get away from the monotone grinding that isn't necessary in a board/RPG or tabletopgame.) My oldest son I hope will return to us and play games wherever he find himself to be in the world. We plan on going to GenCon together this year to experience what I did once before. My youngest has just begun to discover all the fun with all the games even though his preferences is all manga like Yu-gi-oh TCG.

To all the good things I have gotten out of the original ideas of Mr Gygax I am ever grateful. R.I.P. and you are always a part of this world forever.

RIP Gary, you made this world special for so many people.

I can't even imagine life without having played pnp and gaming, It's pioneers like that that pave the roads we walk on.

D&D changed my life--which is another way of saying that GG did.

I was raised in an orphanage and was withdrawn from the world.  After I got out I ran into some people at school playing D&D.  I immediately went out and bought the original three books.  I loved to ad