No, the Brawler is not referring to Brett Favre, who's just retiring. He's talking about Gary Gygax, the mad genius of Lake Geneva and co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons, who today abandoned the prime material plane for the Seven Heavens.
From Wired:
Gary Gygax, one of the co-creators of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, died Tuesday morning at his home in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, according to Stephen Chenault, CEO of Troll Lord Games.
Gygax designed the original D&D game with Dave Arneson in 1974, and went on to create the Dangerous Journeys and Lejendary Adventure RPGs, as well as a number of board games. He also wrote several fantasy novels.
"I don't think I've really grokked it yet," said Mike Mearls, the lead developer of the upcoming 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons. "He was like the cool uncle that every gamer had. He shaped an entire generation of gamers."
Yes, the Brawler wiled away many, many of the best hours of his life playing D&D. (But he feels he was in good company knowing that Stephen Colbert did the same.) Slaughtering Orcs, destroying demons, saving elfin damsels in distress was all the order of the day.
The Brawler recalls Ma Brawler driving him and some of his extremely cool friends to Gen Con one year. We joked about how the Ents were going to rise up and destroy James Watt for wreaking havoc on the environment. Geek political humor at its finest.
The Brawler shudders when he looks back at those years -- and not only for the literally hundreds of dollars he poured into books, dice, little lead figures and adventure narratives known as "modules" (not long after the Brawler made the shrewd decision to spend all his money on cassette tapes).
The Weezer classic In the Garage describes the Brawler in his youth in chilling clinical detail ("i've got dungeon masters guide/i've got 12-sided die/i've got kitty pride/and night crawler too/waiting there for me/yes i do).
Trolling the internets (and to no small extent Gygax's games anticipated the concept of 'virtual reality'), the Brawler was amused to find this ad for a womens D&D t-shirt. Because, obviously, the Brawler never met a woman who confessed to having once willingly played D&D until sometime in the second Clinton Administration (for the record, the Brawler dropped the habit during the Reagan era).
While the game was demonized as a tool of devil worship, and no doubt retarded the social development of some youngsters, it did provide fuel for kids who had imagination to burn. And for that, I thank you cool uncle.
As I use my +4 hankie of sadness to wipe away a tear, I will admit that I also squandered many a hour rolling the dice. Although I seemed to have a fixation on half-elf characters. I wonder what that means.
Posted by: capper | March 04, 2008 at 09:10 PM
i love this... NOT!
Posted by: James Carrey | April 15, 2008 at 07:21 AM
sad
Posted by: | October 08, 2008 at 07:23 PM
This game is new in Bulgaria, so I'm new in all this world of dragons and other mythical creatures... Actually, I've always prefered to read books (and write) than playing games, but this one is something different, it has many things in common with books! Being a fantasy and sci-fy writer I couldn't refrain from posting this and give my condolences... When I hear that a like-minded person is gone a part of me is going away too...
Posted by: Ivan Stoikov, Allan Bard | May 16, 2010 at 10:48 AM