Just heard about this, and I can't believe it. We will be raising a glass to him at our next game. Thanks very much for the game itself, Mr. Gygax, without which I would not have half as many friends and family as I do today. You make me proud to be named Gary.
Just found out about this now myself...
Sad news indeed! But, as many have mentioned, his legacy will live one. Greyhawk Lives!!!
Long live 1st Edition! (and all those that followed in its tracks)
And, as I saw elsewhere here, I hope they put in a dedication into the 4E core books - or at least one of them!
Thanks, Gary, for the game that has, in part, defined me.
Thanks, Paizoians, for your tributes. I'll be carrying my dice in my pocket today.
-Casey
"You survived Orc and Pie? I survived Against the Giants. I liberated Geoff."
I found my first sparks of creativity as a young boy when my father played me through "Keep on the Borderlands" in the late 70s. Thanks for you inspiration, Gary...may you play your games eternally.
I first learned about D&D from an article in a magazine called Fantasic Films. It was 1979 and I was 11 years old. Very shortly, my mother purchased me the original blue boxset with the module B1: In Search of the Unknown.
D&D has served as a connecting point for so many of the people I now know. Some of my closest friends come from having met while playing D&D (or some other TSR game).
It is wierd thinking how much this game has affected my life. It is even responsible for me meeting my Fiancée.
Mr. Gygax,
Thank you for the game that has helped bring so much joy into my life.
Rest in Peace.
D&D kept me sane in apartheid South Africa. I have played since I was eight years old. It is impossible to think of a Taliesin Hoyle without this hobby.
Thank you for being a part of me, Mr Gygax.
D&D and all the things related to it constitutes a very important part of my entertainment. The stuff that makes life fun. Thank you for the game, Gary.
Gary had probably the single largest influence on me outside of friends and family. Such a massive chunk of my life was devoted to this hobby he created that I cannot express how profoundly sad the news of his passing makes me.
Gygax is dead. Long live Gygax.
The more I think about it, the more I realise just how much I (and a lot of us) have to thank Gary for.
There's D&D. The countless hours playing the game, sitting around a table with friends having a great time. The countless hours writing about the game on message boards like this. The countless hours creating character concepts and putting them on the sheet. All the hours thinking of adventures and writing up NPCs and enemies. The countless hours just reading D&D rulebooks, and D&D inspired novels!
And there's the other Roleplaying Games I play, like World of Darkness and Legend of the Five Rings, and more time playing all this, making adventures for all this, reading about all this in books and novels.
And then there's Computer Role Playing Games. I remember playing through Baldur's Gate I and II many times, playing Neverwinter Nights day after day. I fondly remember playing Deus Ex (one of the few First Person Shooter/CRPG hybrids that work, and one of the best games of all time) and Vampire Bloodlines (another such hybrid) time and again. I remember playing games like Secret of Mana and Chrono Trigger on consoles.
And even other types of computer games borrow Roleplaying Elements, even if they're not roleplaying games per se. I have been playing many of those as well.
Without Gary, none of this might exist. Would someone else have come along to invent roleplaying games? Fantasy Literature has been around for many years, and children have been playing make-belief for centuries I'd wager. Yet it took Gary and Dave to make the connection and create D&D. Would somebody else have done it?
I don't know, but I know that Gary did, and I'm more than glad that he did.
For I didn't only get a hobby out of this: Many of the people I consider friends today I have met through D&D.
I say Rest in Peace, Gary, but more than anything I say Thank You!
Everyone please check out the latest Order of the Stick.
What a loss ... what a gift ... what a time to say goodbye.
Thank you, Gary.
You changed my life!
Thanks Gary.
Everyone please check out the latest Order of the Stick.
Thanks Sharoth. That was funny!
*Gently places a D20 20 side up on top of afew 1E books, salutes and quietly walks away.* You will be miss Mr. Gygax.
Great... I was doing okay until I saw the Penny Arcade tribute...Someone Great is gone, but not forgotten.
And... This.
RIP
As was I.
Thanks Gary, without you, my world would been a lot more boring and a lot lonlier. Rest easy on the Great Wheel.
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Gary Gygax may have passed from this plane but his spirit lives on.
Whenever a new player picks up a set of dice to roll up a character, Gary will be there.
Whenever a party of 1st level adventurers arrives at the Inn of the Welcome Wench on their way to the Moathouse, Gary will be there.
Whenever an overconfident group ventures into the Underdark and are ambushed by drow, Gary will be there.
Whenever a party returns to the Keep on the Borderlands laden with treasure and glory after defeating Breeyark, Gary will be there.
And whenever a high level character establishes a fiefdom, or travels to the Free City of Greyhawk to consult with Mordenkainen, or visits the Seven Heavens, Gary will be there.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 8
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D&D meant so much to me.
I was a smart kid but maybe a little too smart. I had good character but a terrible speech impediment that made it impossible for people to understand me. By the time I was 13 I was shy, messed-up, bullied, and pinching prescription drugs. Speech therapy helped but D&D helped a lot more. I made friends, learnt to organize and run events, drew, painted, wrote, acted, and laughed. Laughed a lot.
I don't think I'd be a professor who is widely respected by my students if it weren't for our wonderful hobby. This isn't a sappy exaggeration. I think being a dungeon master teaches you almost everything you need to know to be a teacher: how to organize, plan, predict confusion, hook the audience, give them the information they need but only enough to get them to find the rest, connect things, tell a story, let the story be taken over by someone else, and cheer when you are outsmarted by the person across the table from you.
I may never have had the honor or pleasure to meet Mr. Gygax in person, but I have been a fan ever since HE sparked my love of reading and introduced me to a world that forever changed who I am.
His work has spanned the continents (from helping people in the war torn parts of the world escape from the grim realities of everyday life to a better place) and the generations (through my daughter and many other gamers who will take up the dice long after he has passed from this world).
His direct influence on MY life cannot be measured, and his indirect influence on our entire world also cannot easily be quantified. There are VERY few people in human history could ever make that claim about, Mr. Gygax was one such gem. He will be missed by all.
Rest in Peace oh great father of gaming.....condolances to your family first, your personal friends second, and to all gamers as well....and last but not least, from the bottom of my heart: THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING!
This is what I posted over on the Wizards boards. I'll repost it here:
Goodbye, Mr Gygax.
Though I never met you, without you, I never would have played, never would have rolled dice, never would have had so much fun.
Though many people didn't understand a lot of the jokes you came up with in Greyhawk, (Such as naming pregen tournament characters after companies that produced appliances and industrial hardware) I got a number of them and was greatly amused.
I am certain that when you sit down with the angels, they called you up because they were bored and said "Hey! What's all this about? Maybe you could run a game for us?"
Yeah. That's it. That's how it should be.
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We’ll play again
Don’t know where
Don’t know when
But I know we’ll play again
Some sunny day.
Keep laughing too
Just like we always do
And the DMG will guide you
Along the way
And won’t you please say “Hello”
To NPC’s that I know
Tell them I won’t be long
They’ll be happy to know
That as you saw me go
I was singing this song
We’ll play again
Don’t know where
Don’t know when
But I know we’ll play again
Some sunny day.
I found it inspiring that so many people are picking up their 1st edition DM's guide in honor of Gary's passing. I did the exact same thing, and it seems plain to me that even for those of us who never met him, he has been a powerful influence in our lives.
I thanked him in my blog, and I'll thank him here again... he followed a dream of his own, and that led to me following mine.
To the man who helped me find the magic in myself...thank you from the bottom of my heart and soul.
Check out this great OOTS tribute!
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0536.html
Drinks to remember him by
Dragons Blood
-3oz club soda
-3oz absolut vodka
-4oz aftershock
Dragons Breath
-1/2oz Firewater (aka 100 proof cinnamon schnapps)
-1/2oz Bacardi 151
The Drunken Elf
-1 1/2oz green creme de menthe
-1 1/2oz cinnamon schnapps
-1oz cream
-2 cups ice
-10 cinnamon candy pieces
I know my game group will be drinking these in memory of Lord Gygax
I'm not going to grieve that Mr Gygax has passed on. I prefer to rejoice in the fact that he lived.
Thank you Mr. Gygax. You won't be forgotten.
Drinks to remember him by
Dragons Blood
-3oz club soda
-3oz absolut vodka
-4oz aftershockDragons Breath
-1/2oz Firewater (aka 100 proof cinnamon schnapps)
-1/2oz Bacardi 151The Drunken Elf
-1 1/2oz green creme de menthe
-1 1/2oz cinnamon schnapps
-1oz cream
-2 cups ice
-10 cinnamon candy piecesI know my game group will be drinking these in memory of Lord Gygax
AWESOME Drac... simply awesome.
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I never got to meet you, Gary; many were the times I tried to figure a way to make it to a con to do so, but never had the luck.
Even so, I know that you'd have laughed along with the rest of the people I've known at the tales I've had from this game of yours. Regardless of what the future holds for all of us, you've easily bridged divides that others thought insurmountable.
We who are about to roll salute you, old friend.
RIP Mr. Gygax, Thank you for the Beautiful Game.
Thanks, Gary. You changed my life for the better - as you did for almost everyone posting here, and for millions of gamers around the world. That's an amazing achievement!
Mr. Gygax passed away just 4 days after I finished my campaign "Rappan Athuk - The Adventures of the Mithral Band"
I never got to meet the man, be he and his imagination were a big inspiration to me. I only hope the rest of us can be as much of an inspiration for a future generation.
-Roth
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For some reason in my minds eye I see the whole Greyhawk pantheon stooped over a casket with a velvet dice bag over the sealed lid. Mordenkainen is alone and silent in the corner with but one teardrop escaping his eye which he is hiding from the gathering.
But even the very gods cry as one of their own die;
and every one of us knows that Gary was simply that: Gary was one of us.
He was the first among equals at the gaming table, he was our old great grand game master.
And now his chair will be kept open, he will be missed.
May your road go ever on and on, Gary.
And if The Almighty keeps rolling 20's up there don't give him a saving throw.
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Though I am not old enough to remember 1st edition, I had always hoped to meet Gary, even if it was only to shake his hand and thank him for creating such a wonderful game. I always thought that there would be more time, but this just goes to show how fragile and short life is. I will remember you with every roll of the dice, and you will always have a place at my table. R.I.P. Gary, this world wasn't good enough for you.
Thank you...
Elcian
Sad news for us all; was just trying to get a handle on the scope of the number of lives he has changed and enhanced; wow; second in our end of the universe only to the original ball roller - that guy who wrote the Hobbit and LOTR. Gary put in on paper with a few of his buds so we could all enjoy a richer life and great social environment; sad day for us; Thank you Gary; may you be blessed and be richly rewarded; good karma and thank you.
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I didn't get this news until late yesterday, and let me add my own thanks to Gary Gygax for the game that has been my primary leisure activity for 23 years now. I still remember the fateful day in th 4th grade when a classmate of mine asked me if I wanted to play D&D. Since that time I have never stopped playing the game I love through any of its incarnations.
*drops to one knee and bows head in gesture of respect*
Rest in peace well Gary Gygax. I will be expecting to play the latest dungeon of death and doom you are running when I get up there to heaven with you. D&D will never be quite the same now that you are gone.
I found this on the net.
Nothing much more to add than what's been said a million times. Just Thank you. Thank you for your life's work, which has become my passion and inspired me to things I love.
May your d20 roll well at the gaming table in the sky.
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I owe you thanks for so much, but especially Gord, Raistlin, Drizzt, and all the others who have followed in worlds spawned from inspired imagination and the desire to do something cool with a few friends. It was your example and sample DMG dungeon that gave me my desire to be the local DM. Thanks, and no roll needed to spot those Pearly Gates.
I remember starting to play D&D when I was 8 with my friends during the summer. We never played it correctly, and I don't recall ever getting past 1st level, but it so much fun. The World of Greyhawk has always been my favorite. That was created over time. It wasn't put together to fit some kind of hook or selling point. Like the real world over, it grew over time.
I remember seeing Gary on 60 minutes defending D&D when some idiots wanted to blame a game for the death of some teenagers who committed suicide. He was the face of D&D; it always has been and he always will be. In my world, Gygax is the god of games. I hope they (WOTC) will dedicate 4 ed to him, and I will actually buy it. I want D&D to live on forever...
As a DM not started out before 3.5, I still know where it all came from...
so thank you very much Mr Gygax for your legacy...
rest in peace...
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For some reason in my minds eye I see the whole Greyhawk pantheon stooped over a casket with a velvet dice bag over the sealed lid. Mordenkainen is alone and silent in the corner with but one teardrop escaping his eye which he is hiding from the gathering.But even the very gods cry as one of their own die;
and every one of us knows that Gary was simply that: Gary was one of us.He was the first among equals at the gaming table, he was our old great grand game master.
And now his chair will be kept open, he will be missed.
May your road go ever on and on, Gary.
And if The Almighty keeps rolling 20's up there don't give him a saving throw.
this was on another Gary Gygax thread
Funny and a little sweet, think it would have made Gary smile a little.
http://www.unclemonsterface.com/MP3s/ThankYouGaryGygax.mp3