Dungeons and Dragons Co-Creator Gary Gygax Dies

I remember my first time. It was spent sitting in my living room with my older cousin sitting next to me trying to help me draw up my first character. The funny shaped dice that had to have wax smeared over the etched numbers so you could read them as they stopped rolling, were idly rolling around in my palm. I had no clue what constitution was or what my dexterity was going to be used for. But those dice just looked so interesting.

Let's face it, at the time I had to about 8 years old and all I knew about Dungeons and Dragons was that it was a cartoon show that I loved to watch and there was all this news on and on about it being "satanic" because it had magic. I never did understand that concept, even at an early age because didn't the bible have magic in it? I mean how else can someone raise the dead, feed the multitudes or part the seas? My cousin tried to point me, at what he thought would be an easy character.

I was a half-elf fighter with some healing potions. (I had wanted to be an elf mage of some sort but wasn't allowed as at my tender age of 8 I was not to have the intelligence needed to play this race.) The next couple of hours was probably very taxing for my cousin as he tried to walk me step by step thru a solo dungeon which was part his imagination and part out of a book. I won't say he was the best Dungeon Master as he had very little practice as his brother and sister were of the sort who thought it was all devil worship, but it was enough to leave an impression on me and make me want to find more opportunities to become lost in other worlds where even I, at 8 years old, could become a hero.

For the next several years I would see him off and on and sadly, there would be no more gaming of the pen and paper sort between us. Instead, much to my father's woe, he got me interested in the old Nintendo and Sega role playing games. Games like Ultima and Phantasy Star. Although these games were fun to play and I very much enjoyed their story lines, it just was never the same as having someone else with you on the adventure. The best thing happened then, when I got to high school and found people of like minds. Somehow we ended up coordinated so our free hour was spent together in the lunch room, at a table for about 10, and the games of old were brought out again.

Never had I played Dungeons and Dragons with so many others, never had I played with anyone other than my cousin as Dungeon Master, and apparently never had any of them played the game with an actual human female. So many times I should have died. So many times I should have just found some trivial treasure, but instead got something with so many stats on it, I wouldn't use it as it confused me. So many times, many things were in my favor, many drinks were bought for me at the tavern we always gathered in to start our adventures, or just handed to me because I was female (and believe me it got old fast even tho it was amusing.) So many times we gamed, and had a great laugh, and then high school ended, I moved away and they were gone.

Since then, once or twice, I did some old pen and paper style gaming, however it was with the Vampire series. I did enjoy this game , but it wasn't the same. The world was too close to what I was sitting in, and the imagination didn't have as many places to roam. And there were no elves, dwarves, and halflings, no other races too much different than us so that you didn't have to look at the person next to you and try to picture them differently. The stories were there, but we were no longer crawling on top of some ancient ruin as some beasty was coming out of the woods behind us, instead we were in a setting much like what we were sitting in, dressed about the same and perhaps just being more political than adventurous.

I moved again. It was now sometime in 1997 and I never thought with the friends I now had that I would ever game again. Then there was a tiny ray of hope. Ultima Online. Even tho I was in another world, it wound so closely to that of the world that Gary Gygax once created, that I felt I was home again. I stayed with that game for many years, and also tread into Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, Asherons Call and many other online worlds (last stop Everquest 2). To me it was obvious, whether the developers would admit to it or not, that had there not been a Dungeons and Dragons years before, then these worlds would be vastly different than what they are today. And tho we may have lost the creator, he will forever live on in each and every one of these games. My childhood fantasy worlds were shaped by Gary, and my adult relaxing worlds are products of his creation too. Because of him, I have been able to be an assassin and a thief, a healer and a mage, and even from time to time, tho I am now 31, a hero. We will miss you.