Beginning Geekness

A couple weeks back, I'm sure you know about it if you are a roleplaying geek, news came out that on March 4th, 2008 E. Gary Gygax passed away. Most of you might know who he was and what impact he had on the world of gaming, but for those who don't here's a little background.

In the early 1970s Gary along with Dave Arneson came up with an idea for a game by the name of Dungeons & Dragons. It wasn't like any other game out at the time. It was one where the players didn't compete with one another to win, but one where players cooperated to attain a common goal. Usually that goal involved, at least in my gaming group, chasing down monsters, taking their treasure and helping hapless victims they had captured. It was a game that turned many shy geeks into heroes.

Since then their idea has gone on to spawn an entire gaming industry. It has changed ownership and has evolved in format, including the upcoming fourth edition. But during that time it affected the lives of many thousands of geeks in a positive way. I count myself as one of them.

I first came in contact with D&D at the beginning of the 1980s when my dad brought home from work a photocopied flier promoting it. One of his coworkers had passed it along since they knew he had kids. Soon after that he took me in town to a tiny hobby shop that carried everything from model trains and cars to rockets and the all new D&D game. At that time the game came in a basic set (the red box) and an expert set (the blue box). I no longer have those original sets but I do have fond memories of playing with my friends. It was something that we could get together and play that didn't accentuate those things we were not good at but gave us a way to exercise what we loved, our imaginations.

Soon after that initiation into roleplaying we found the company producing D&D also had other similar games. Our next was Star Frontiers, which was a science fiction based game with different species to encounter on many different worlds, and the third was Marvel Super Heroes, where we could play all those heroes we read about in the comic books. We used to get together anywhere we could find table space enough to play and we had the best time in the world.

Since then I have accumulated and played many different roleplaying games. I'm proud to be a gamer geek and have been greatly saddened to hear the news of Gary's passing. Even though I didn't know the man, I have heard how great he was from others who had, and in some small way, through playing the game he and Dave created, I feel I've gotten to meet him too.

So, even though this is a sad post, this news has spurred me to create a blog about my favorite hobby. Hopefully it will be around for a long time so I can share a bit of my enjoyment with others.