Dungeons and Dragons Co-Creator Gary Gygax Dies

Gary Gygax best known for co-creating the role playing game Dungeons and Dragons died today. Gary Gygax along with Dave Arneson created the game Dungeons & Dragons. Gygax is often called the father of role playing games. They published the first version of the game in 1974. He also created a Dungeons & Dragons TV show that ran from 1983-1985.

Its amazing to me that almost thirty five years after it was created Dungeons and Dragons is still the most popular and best selling role playing game. I first learned about Dungeons and Dragons when I watched the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon on TV. I loved the cartoon it was about a group of kids that went to a carnival and were sucked into an alternate world. After becoming interested in the show I started to become more interested in the game.

While I never became as involved in playing Dungeons and Dragons as some people did, I did enjoy playing it. I have to admit playing it was addictive. I first started playing because I wanted to see how it was like the show. Soon I was playing the game because it was so much fun. I liked it because it was such a unique game. Dungeons and Dragons was different that any other game I had played. The dungeon master has so much control in how the game plays out it makes it fun. I also loved how each character had their own special talents. Most times games would take a long time to finish so we had to get back together several times to finish the game.

I know a lot of people would meet weekly (or sometimes more often) to play a campaign of Dungeons and Dragons. I never had that much time to put into it, so I could never get that involved. I could only play it with people who took it less seriously and we would just get together once and a while to play. We formed a group of people who enjoyed playing it, but didn't have the time to make a large commitment to playing it every week or even more often. I made some good friends from playing Dungeons and Dragons, when you spend a lot of time playing a game with somebody you get a chance to really y know them.

More recently Dungeons and Dragons have been the center of controversy with religious groups saying that it promoted devil worshiping, and that some of the pictures in the original manuals. I think it is pretty amazing that anybody could find fault with a simple role playing game where people use their imagination, when there are so many games out there these days with so much violence and killing. I think Dungeons and Dragons was a good game for kids to get involved in playing. I know I always had a lot of fun playing it.