By Patricia Sullivan, Washington Post Staff Writer
E. Gary Gygax, 69, who co-created the fantasy game Dungeons & Dragons
and inspired the $1.5 billion fantasy game industry, died of an
abdominal aneurysm March 4 at his home in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.
Mr. Gygax, a high school dropout who was fascinated by the Dark Ages,
and Dave Aronson created the heroic quest game with $1,000 in capital
in 1974. Their game invited players to invent imaginary characters,
such as dwarfs, elves, knights and wizards, and set off on adventures
with a roll of the polyhedral dice. The game's multiple rule books and
character studies gave its obsessed fans thousands of pages of
instructions to consider.
"I don't think I've really grokked it yet," Mike Mearls, the lead
developer of the upcoming fourth edition of Dungeons & Dragons, told
Wired blogger Lore Sjoberg, referring to Mr. Gygax's death. "He was
like the cool uncle that every gamer had. He shaped an entire
generation of gamers."
It took 11 months for Dungeons & Dragons to sell its first 1,000
copies, but the game took off and became a cultural phenomenon among
college and high school males in the 1970s and 1980s. No publisher
would touch the game when Mr. Gygax and Aronson were ready for market,
so they assembled copies themselves. Sales were $8.5 million by 1980
and more than $14 million by 1981.
Other game designers began creating copycat versions; D&D eventually
inspired a whole genre of computer games, influencing everything from
immersive computer CD-ROMs to Magic: The Gathering.
"People said, 'What kind of game is this?' You don't play against
anybody. Nobody wins. It doesn't end. This is craziness!'' Mr. Gygax
told the New York Times in 1983.
He told Gamespy.com that games are "an interesting diversion from
everyday life."
"Games give you a chance to excel, and if you're playing in good
company you don't even mind if you lose because you had the enjoyment
of the company during the course of the game," Mr. Gygax said.
Some parents and religious fundamentalists objected to the dark,
magical nature of Dungeons & Dragons, and after two youngsters
committed suicide while reportedly under its influence, Mr. Gygax
found himself defending the game and the whole industry on "60
Minutes." The controversy passed, however. Within a few years, a D&D
cartoon was created and broadcast on Saturday mornings.
Mr. Gygax lost control of the game in 1985, and his former company,
TSR, sued him over his subsequent game, Dangerous Journeys. TSR
eventually sold D&D to Wizards of the Coast, publisher of Magic: The
Gathering. That company in turn sold it to Hasbro.
Mr. Gygax turned to writing fantasy novels, most of them based on game
scenarios, including the Greyhawk series and, in collaboration with
Flint Dille, the Sagard the Barbarian series. Mr. Gygax returned to
writing role-play games in 1999 with Lejendary Adventure.
Mr. Gygax also founded the world's largest annual gaming convention,
Gen Con, which started in 1968.
Ernest Gary Gygax was born in Chicago [Illinois] and moved to Lake
Geneva at the age of 8. His father, a Swiss immigrant who played
violin in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, read fantasy books to his
only son and hooked him on the genre.
Although he dropped out of high school, Mr. Gygax took anthropology
classes at the University of Chicago. He was working as an insurance
underwriter in the 1960s when he began playing war-themed board
games.
When the games got boring for him and his friends, Mr. Gygax added
fantasy characters. That was such a hit that he published the
innovations as the game Chainmail. To free up time to work on a game
with more fantasy, he left the insurance business and became a shoe
repairman.
His first marriage ended in divorce.
Survivors include his wife of 20 years, Gail Carpenter Gygax of Lake
Geneva; two sons from his first marriage; and four children from his
second marriage.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/04/AR200...
