I liked Penny Arcade's, which was that he was "rolling in his grave".

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*rimshot*

Probably at the success of AD&D 3e, if what I've heard about his opinion of the newer systems is accurate.

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I object. I object hard. Fortunately, I do not seriously object.

• I like to think of Gygax as the Paul of Tarsus to Tolkien's Jesus - he remixed a little and popularized the existing corpus, spread it far and wide, and spawned bickering sub-communities beyond measure, the largest of whom became massive institutions that did battle among themselves. Which might make Mark Rein·Hagen Martin Luther, but anyhow. He was also influential enough to have people invoking his name as an authority long past his actual working period.
• THAC0 still makes me wince, and the only thing that can get me to put up with it and 18/nn strength is Planescape:Torment. The system did, in fact, improve.
• My favorite is the euphemism that Gygax is "rolling in his grave," which I suspect will rise in primacy since PA grabbed it early.
• It's kind of amusing how Lore faded sideways after Brunching closed. He went to small things, then to Wired, and I've heard lots of people with your experience (same as mine). I'm glad he's still writing.

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Responses, in random order (seriously - I've gotta do something ubergeeky in memory, so I can at least spare a few tosses of the d4):

• Nice link!
  
• Also glad he's still writing. The man deserves more exposure.
  
• I never personally had any problems with THAC0, because I'm a math whiz. However, that doesn't mean the system is not utterly retarded. Pretty much every AD&D2e gaming group I ever played in, I had to either explain THAC0 to half the players, or else give up and translate rolls for people to speed up combat. In most cases, both. (Same complaint for AD&D1e, except that the only guy I ever played it with was an equally brilliant childhood friend who had no problem with the translations either.)
  
• That's mostly true. If you look at things like the systems rules, and the world background, Gygax did virtually nothing original. World from Tolkien, magic from Vance, items from everywhere (Moorcock and Carroll spring to mind) -- hell, the first printing of Deities and Demigods had stats for the Cthulhu mythos until the Lovecraft estate sued! But he did have a knack -- a quite disturbing knack, full of ridiculous gotcha-traps -- for adventure design. I never actually played Tomb of Horrors as a kid, but I read the whole thing, and dude could do deathtraps, srsly.
  He gets a tremendous amount of credit as a compiler, but he did produce some original material that will stand the test of time (mostly because no modern game designer is that single-mindedly sadistic, so you have to go back to the source for the full effect).

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That's mostly true. If you look at things like the systems rules, and the world background, Gygax did virtually nothing original. World from Tolkien, magic from Vance, items from everywhere (Moorcock and Carroll spring to mind) -- hell, the first printing of Deities and Demigods had stats for the Cthulhu mythos until the Lovecraft estate sued! But he did have a knack -- a quite disturbing knack, full of ridiculous gotcha-traps -- for adventure design. I never actually played Tomb of Horrors as a kid, but I read the whole thing, and dude could do deathtraps, srsly.
He gets a tremendous amount of credit as a compiler, but he did produce some original material that will stand the test of time (mostly because no modern game designer is that single-mindedly sadistic, so you have to go back to the source for the full effect).

I am going to go ahead and say that these facts, which I have heard before, are more support for the Pauline parallel. Tomb Of Horrors can be his Letter To The Church In Romans.



Watch me agree with you in an an argumentative and curmudgeonly fashion!

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Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes!

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No it isn't!

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Honestly? Gygax opened the gates. I give him credit for that. The system wasn't good, but it was important.

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Exactly.

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I can agree on a number of points. Yes, the rules were arbitrary. Yes, THAC0 made no sense. Yes, D&D suffered significant flaws.

Still.

He started it, he championed it, he lived it. Roleplaying would've eventually developed without him, but he left indelible marks on Geek culture, the ramifications of which are still felt today.

I don't much like the idea of levels, I hate classes, and the spell system is ~still~ stupid, but they're part of a culture in which we all participate. You can't compare the features of a model T to a modern sedan, that doesn't mean the Ford wasn't an innovator.

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1e is this weird mix between "arbitrary and strange" and "a nice simple game." I think it's because there wasn't anything else in place at the time. Similarly, I think Gygax is up there with Henry Ford or Walt Disney; the man's importance isn't defined so much by what he made so much as stuff that was sheer force of personality. Zeitgeist means things happen, but it's specific people like that who determine how.

With the munchkinism, I think you have to take the old 1e modules with a grain of salt;

1. I think that Gygax was very much into gaming, as gaming. So for the original group to have character fatalities wasn't a big deal, wasn't the massive horror that we feel for it. More like losing a hand of poker.

2. I think that the original group was far more into diplomacy than comes across. For instance, if you read my favorite module, The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, it's heavily implied that you can - and some of the playtesters did - ally themselves to the gnomes and pech. Clearly negotiation rather than fighting could help your character escape the dao. You could assume that the gorgimera was intended to be so fearsome that a savvy player might decide to talk their way around the encounter. Some of Gygax's old columns in Dragon talk about characters recruiting monsters while in the dungeon, as much as about death traps. And remember, he's not really into Tolkein - he's a lot more into Howard or Lieber and their morally grayer characters.

I think that fits into the overall gamesmanship of the thing; if you can get goal C by doing unexpected action B instead of painfully obvious action A, why not? And yet we simply read and see the obvious A action. Then throw in the sheer doom that's also a part of this less-serious approach, and you've got something which seems rather foreign and horrid.

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I keep thinking about getting into DnD because it really looks like fun, but the crippling RL shyness makes it less than likely. I never even heard of the guy until his death appeared on the Internet, but now I'm interested again. Huh.

I like the xcd comic about this.

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