Picture #296: "I once caught a Venger THIS big!"

The 80's cartoon Dungeons and Dragons, while not particularly well-animated or written, was wildly entertaining for me as a youth. Seeing the creatures and the items of a game that I was quite fond of being (sort of) brought to life was greatly engrossing, and I spent many hours daydreaming about what I would do with a magic bow, staff or hat if I were in their position, whisked off to a magical land of danger and adventure. And just HANDED artifacts... yeah, WTF was with that, DM? Why not just hand them Baba Yaga's Hut or all the Orbs of Dragonkind?! Way to break the f-ing game! This show sucked! Just kill him already, Tiamat! (Anyway, this is a much longer rant for another time...)

This picture was actually taken New Year's Eve at my friends' John and Terry's house, who hosted a fabulous Nerd New Year's Eve party with games and bad movies. They've done a beautiful renovation of their place all by themselves, which is both a depressing reminder and a motivation to get working on fixing up and cleaning out my family's co-op which has been sitting vacant for some time now. (Long, angry story there...) It was also shortly after this photo was taken that I took ill - about 10 minutes to midnight. Good timing.

Speaking of which, woke up still sick but showing signs of progress. Somewhat good news as I had a performance of my Godzilla rap scheduled in the evening, and also because I'm tired of feeling like crap.

But the performance at the Nerd Nite Magazine Launch party went well and the evening was very entertaining. The presentation on the rise and fall of Atari was particularly enlightening. Did you know the creator of Atari, after being forced out of the company and made to sign a non-compete, went on to found Chuck E. Cheese's? And that Steve Jobs was the 40th employee of Atari? Good stuff! Sadly, I was unable to stay and dance very long, not just because my head was whirling from all the medication, but because also because my 8-year old guest was getting sleepy. Then again, so was I, so it was good timing once again.

Gary Gygax ran out of Hit Points.

Gary Gygax, co-inventor of Dungeons & Dragons, the fantasy-based role-playing game, died today at age 69.

And while today is a day for D&D puns and jokes to run amok (see title of this post), it's also quite sad, as the man had far-reaching influences, not just in his industry, but in other areas of imagination; film, tv, literature, video games and so forth. And there's a nostalgia for the game that is shared by many, many people.

I'm not a huge player of role playing games these days, even though many of my friends are and one of my roommates is even a very successful RPG designer himself.

But as a kid, I spent countless hours flipping through pages of the various D&D books; the Monster Manual, Dungeon Master's Guide, Players Handbook and Deities and Demigods kept me company on many of the long, summer vacation road trips with my mother. Not even playing with anyone else, I amused myself just building characters, rolling out battles with various monsters, collecting random treasure off the treasure tables... all sitting on the floor of the backseat of my mom's station wagon as we headed to whatever camp ground or farm was on the agenda for that summer.

I don't play today, but Gygax's work was a steady companion for an only child on long stretches of highway.

So rest in peace, Gary. May the Gods of Greyhawk tremble at your approach.