Friday 7 March 2008

Who's Gary?

I've always wanted to try D&D, but never really found anyone else who was interested. Hence I don't really have anything to add to Gary Gygax's death. I never really knew anything about him, my experience being limited to his appearance in Futurama, and what I have read since his passing. In either case, D&D was clearly a massive milestone in the development of modern RPGs, both tabletop and digital, and the news has reawakened my desire to try it out.

In addition, his death has been very well represented in the webcomic section of the blogosphere by (in order of preference of the comic in question): PA, xkcd, OOTS, Weregeek.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

YOU ANSWERED MY QUESTION!!!!

hurrah

also I'd quite like to play D&D at some point, maybe when I've moved. I used to play Warhammer4K and other such geeky things, so it'll rekindle some of the old geekery!

Hanspan said...

I only ever played D&D when I was younger.. and then we played Labyrinth more, which was the LARPing version. Interestingly, all the people I played with were members of my church youth group.

So burn on all those American churches who say it leads to witchcraft...

On the other hand, I did a lot of online role playing between the ages of 13 and 16. Mainly writing alternate reality Harry Potter fan fiction with small groups of other fans on online message boards. Possibly the two are connected. We called what we were doing an RPG, though it was probably more accurately multi-author fanfic.

TheTelf said...

Dude, didn't you realise D&D = Satanism.

Or, you know, not.

Hanspan said...

Seen the first. Always worth a re-read. Though I can never decide whether to laugh or cry. Fucking hate Jack Chick.

The debunk is good, but a bit long-winded.

And if D&D does lead to Satanism, it's certainly a slow-burn conversion as far as I'm concerned...

On a personal note, I find the image of the silhouetted man against the bonfire particularly hellish. But I suspect the irony is lost on Jack Chick somehow...

TheTelf said...

The guy doing the deconstruction has done a ton of them for different Chick tracts - v funny and def worth a look (though sometimes repetitious).

Hanspan said...

Danke schon.