“Gary Gygax,” Hubby repeated, “He died.”
“Oh, okay. A friend of yours?” I said cheekily.
“He’s only the man who made it possible for us to play Everquest and World of Warcraft” he replied.
“Really? I thought that was Bill Gates.”
“He invented Dungeons & Dragons. You know, the game on which almost every other role-playing venture is based.”
“Oh, that Gary Gygax.”
“Okay, you don’t have to pretend you care. I’m just saying the man is dead is all.”
So, it didn’t mean much to me personally but I had a very different childhood than Hubby and I had never even heard of an RPG until I met him at the age of 22. Neither had I read any Tolkein, Anthony or Brooks. At that time, my mind was firmly (I’ll admit, a bit too firmly) grounded in reality.
When Hubby and I met, his adolescent interest in D&D had evolved into a three year stint in the SCA and then into becoming involved in co-running an on-line text based RPG. He was really into that stuff and by association my own interest in fantasy became peaked.
Unfortunately, with the advances in image technology, the text based on-line game soon went the way of the dinosaur to make room for the modern graphics based versions. Which of course we play, individually, as a couple and as a family.
The only time we ever sat down to try and play a real game of D&D the kids, were about 9 and 16. After forty-five minutes of trying to organize our character sheets, the kids were bored and wanted to know if they could just go play on the computer.
A real sign that it’s the end of an era.
Maybe we’ll break out a module in honour of Gary Gygax and his contribution to geekdom.
