Post a Comment On: Internal Monologue

Here's one of the best Gygax tributes for those of you for whom Gygax's passing is a significant event.

For those of you who don't understand, I'll try to explain: Gary Gygax didn't just co-invent Dungeons & Dragons. He co-created the entire genre of role playing games. That's like someone inventing the card games, not just bridge or poker gin rummy or any single specific game. He co-created a system for enacting and sharing swords & sorcery-based fantasy. He and Dave Arneson are to Role Playing Games what George Lucas is to Star Wars or Gene Roddenberry is to Star Trek. But that analogy isn't quite right because Lucas and Roddenberry didn't invent science fiction or television or cinema, they just created extremely popular examples of pre-existing categories. Gygax & Arneson really brought something different to the table.

When I think about it, it seems odd that something like the role playing game could have been invented by specific people at a specific time. It seems like the sort of thing that always should have existed. But it didn't. (I had a similar reaction upon hearing that instant ramen noodles had been invented by a specific person, Momofuku Ando.)