Dungeons & Dragons creator dies

I've received word that Gary Gygax died today at the age of 69. Together with Dave Arneson, Gygax helped invent the legendary role-playing fantasy game Dungeons & Dragons.

Probably a majority of American teenagers in the '80s were at least somewhat familiar with Dungeons & Dragons. Maybe they played it themselves, or they had a family member or a schoolmate who did. I remember how as a parody I designed my own monsters for Dungeons & Dragons, and one of them was the bus monitor on my school bus who slapped kids. Every so often, the game came under fire from moral panic types for some reason or other. (One such controversy resulted because one of the official manuals for Dungeons & Dragons featured a topless drawing of a female monster.)

Ah yes. Good ol' Dungeons & Dragons. Before today, it had been years since I had even thought about Dungeons & Dragons. I was quite good at drawing blueprints on graph paper for the actual dungeons. Players actually used these maps that I made.

Dungeons & Dragons brings back one hilarious memory that could fit into a modern political context. I remember one of the books for the game included a section on dealing with uncooperative players. It was an uproarious set of paragraphs. It said something like, "Every dungeon master will inevitably host players who throw tantrums, start arguments, and cry about the dice being 'rigged.' Such players are the type who will always try to use the books as their defense."

I don't know whether this meant the obstinate players tried using information in the books to help their cause, or if it meant they held the books in front of their face to protect themselves when other players got fed up and started throwing punches. Either way, it's quite a comical memory.

The uncooperative players described in that section remind you of the scoundrels of the Republican Right who throw little shitfits when elections don't go their way, don't they? Bush, Bob Dornan, Louis Jenkins, and that clod in Memphis who got the state legislature to overturn the election because he lost wouldn't have been too welcome at a Dungeons & Dragons gathering. (There was some Republican county clerk candidate in southern Kentucky who threw a similar tantrum about a year ago and got the election overturned by some GOP judge.)

(Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080304/ap_en_ot/obit_gygax)