Gary Gygax

While the specifics may be open to debate, it’s agreed that Gary Gygax invented the roleplaying game. He passed away on Tuesday, 4 March 2008.

It made me think about how young a hobby roleplaying is, effectively formulated in 1974, some years before my birth. Okay, videogames are an even younger medium, but mainstream roleplaying has not changed all that much in thirty years.

It made me think about life. Gygax was active in gaming all the way to the end, but apart from starting up the whole roleplaying scene, he has not had much of an influence on it since the original Dungeons & Dragons. I’m not saying this to put the man down, he has all the humble recognition I can give to a man who has defined much of what makes me through his work. This is in no way an exaggeration, either: I am a gamer through and through, only second to being a husband and a human being, and Dungeons & Dragons really started it all. Although I play far fewer roleplaying games these days than I used to, I don’t think I’ll ever stop playing.

I don’t mean that it’s a failure on Gygax’s part that he wasn’t more visible in the roleplaying scene since his visionary initial work. It’s weird how your work can surpass and bypass yourself. When I think about great things I might achieve in my life, it’s always with myself in the picture, too. Maybe I’m just being narcissist or maybe it’s easy to get lost in great things. We’re all just humans, after all.