Sad day for me. I started with Chain Mail and then onto Blackhawk and 1st edition DnD in 1976. My gaming group split time between Avalon Hill games (D-Day, Tactics II, Gettysburg, Diplomacy), wargame miniatures (Tractics) and DnD. By 1978 the DnD group split off for a twice/week campaign. It sure didn't help my grades but it was a lot of fun. I wish I had met him but I never did meet him at any of the GenCons. Such is life. The RPG genre, and especially the western RPG games, owes Gary Gygax a big thanks as the inspiration and template for most of what came after DnD.

FishyJoe said: http://www.vgchartz.com/news/news.php?id=885

Beat you by a good 20 minutes.

 

And yeah, this ranks up there (or down there) on the sad day list as if Miyamoto died.  Gygax was just as inspirational as Miyamoto and it's hard to imagine what things would be like without him. 

fkusumot said: Sad day for me. I started with Chain Mail and then onto Blackhawk and 1st edition DnD in 1976. My gaming group split time between Avalon Hill games (D-Day, Tactics II, Gettysburg, Diplomacy), wargame miniatures (Tractics) and DnD. By 1978 the DnD group split off for a twice/week campaign. It sure didn't help my grades but it was a lot of fun. I wish I had met him but I never did meet him at any of the GenCons. Such is life. The RPG genre, and especially the western RPG games, owes Gary Gygax a big thanks as the inspiration and template for most of what came after DnD.

 Diplomacy rocks.  We use to get fairly serious about that game where we would have little whiteboards to write our moves, very specific syntax for the boards, and designated diploming spots with maps of the world spread out in whosever apartment we  were playing in.

I knew someone who was into that. He paid someone to create him an avatar representing his character. He would get dressed up as his specific character and have meetings with his dungeon master. Pretty strange sometimes.

Oh I forgot, I gotta give him mad props for laying the foundations for all the roguelike games I got obsessed with. D is for Dragon, d is for my dog. I'll never forget. Rogue, Hack, Moria, Ancient Domains of Mystery. @'s, ?'s %'s !'s and $'s are what dreams are made out of.

twesterm said:  Diplomacy rocks.  We use to get fairly serious about that game where we would have little whiteboards to write our moves, very specific syntax for the boards, and designated diploming spots with maps of the world spread out in whosever apartment we  were playing in.

A little off-topic, but yeah, the best multi-player "machiavellian" game ever. And then there was Cosmic Encounters. Gaming days...

 

Gygax stopped being important a long time ago, but it's still sad to hear of his passing.

 

  

Sad news. I tried playing D&D briefly back in the day but never got into it that seriously. I did get hooked on those old Goldbox DOS games from the 90's though!

I read a couple of Gygax's books, the ones that had had featured the character Gourd the Thief, but I cant remember the exact titles. Enjoyed them immensely.

 

I'd be sad, because Gygax lived a full life, and died peacefully. Wherever he is now, I hope he is having the time of his eternity.