I feel compelled to say something here to mark the passing of a man whom, though we’ve never met, changed my life. Yesterday, Ernest Gary Gygax died. He was best known as one of the co-creators of Dungeons & Dragons, and as the Wikipedia article says, is “generally acknowledged as the Father of role-playing games.”
I’d like to think that RPGs have had a positive influence on me over the years. For one thing, I met my wife through D&D, and made many lasting friendships as well. I’ve been playing since I was 8 years old, and have spent probably thousands of hours playing and writing game material, and hope to spend many more; the stuff is fuel for my imagination. It’s like a great book that never needs to end. Maybe I’ll even get my own stuff published one day, who knows. If I do, I should dedicate my first book to Gary.
Over the years, the man made some enemies, even if most didn’t even bother to find out who he was. The genre he helped create, and D&D in particular had its critics, and to those who would denounce it as unhealthy, I have this little story to relate.
I don’t remember how old I was at the time, but if I had to guess, I would say maybe 12-14. Young, in any case. I lived in Blind River at the time, I remember that, and my friends and I were always looking for places to game. Many of my friends’ parents were not fond of the game, for whatever reason. Most just wouldn’t allow us to play at their house, though they didn’t actually try to stop their children from playing, save for one, however, that is a story for another day.
My parents were always willing to let us play at our house, but we lived a short distance outside of town, about 8 km or so, and this created logistics problems. So we thought we’d hit pay dirt when the town built a new arena, and sold the old one to a company that turned it into an amusement hall, complete with arcade games, miniputt, and pool tables. We thought we had found the perfect solution; it was fairly centrally located, they were open late, and sold all kinds of refreshments.
We were wrong. They threw us out for “playing the devil’s game” and told us in no uncertain terms that we were not even permitted to bring the books with us into the building. Something to the effect of, “don’t let me catch you with that shit in here! It’s the devil’s game!”
While we had no choice but to respect their wishes, I did ask them why this was so. All I could get out of them were pseudo-religious proclamations of inherent devilry in the game. So we were forced to continue playing when we could, at my parents’ home, infrequent as it was for my liking. My parents were very tolerant, but even they needed a break from us sometimes too.
I should get to the point. The point is, what did we do on all those nights that we otherwise would have been playing D&D? We got up to no good, that’s what. Mischief. Vandalism. Drinking. Smoking. Perhaps even Fornication for some.
I’d like to close with a quote from Steve Jackson’s eulogy for Gary, “For the last few years, roleplayers have celebrated March 4 as “GM’s Day.” (March Forth, get it? 
-ed.) And now it’s the day when the best-known GM of all time put down his dice. Going forward, this should also be a particular date on which we recall Gary and his contributions.”
Posted by Ron as Games at 12:30 PM UTC