Gary Gygax R.I.P.

[DonCorazon]

For those of you who, like myself, were brought into the fold of geekdom and love of the fantasy genre including Dominions through D&D:

Gary Gygax passed away today.

[Wokeye]

RIP GG

Was a big fan.

[Randvek]

Gygax, to me, was a lot like Tolkien: I never much cared for his work, but hugely influential towards a lot of things I do care very much about.

[Cor2]

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Sick.gif he was only 69.

He was f'ing the man. he used to have an open door at his home to players. Played D&D until his death.

[Ballbarian]

It has been roughly 24 years since I DM'ed a game of D&D and his contributions to fantasy games still influence me today.
RIP GG

[Yucky]

: salute

[capnq]

Some links:
AP news report on CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/03/04/obit.gygax.ap/index.html)
The Order of the Stick tribute (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0536.html)

I particularly recommend the OotS tribute.

[chrispedersen]

Randvek said:
Gygax, to me, was a lot like Tolkien: I never much cared for his work, but hugely influential towards a lot of things I do care very much about.



Well said. I had the privelege of meeting him, and playing in the original blackmoor setting - he will be missed, and I wish his fans had had a chance to tell him bye....

[Ming]

Sorry to see him go...

[jimkehn]

/threads/images/Graemlins/Martini.gif

[Lingchih]

My teenage years were either greatly enhanced or totally ruined by him, depending on how you view it. However you look at it though, he was a big influence in my life, and will be missed.

[Saulot]

He lives on in through his works.

[Salamander8]

I started playing D&D in the early 80s and that jumpstarted me to try many others. He was a big reason we have these games.

R.I.P. Mister Gygax.

[DonCorazon]

in dark times like these we must turn to the father of all fantasy geeks for guidance

[Humakty]

Alas D&D 4 is a sad mutilation of the creation of GG. Hopefully his spirit wil live through other productions.

[Jarkko]

Rest in peace GG.

[Lingchih]

Yes, rest in peace, Gary.

[Wrana]

Alas D&D 4 is a sad mutilation of the creation of GG. Hopefully his spirit wil live through other productions.
Among others, there exists his own Lejendary Adventures. I think to look at it one day - though lately I prefer EarthDawn for fantasy RPGs.

[Humakty]

I'm not that much on D&D either, but GG did much for RPG players in general. He is kind of a first stone in the cathedral you know, symbolic and all, that's why I'm offended with what DD4 is. (some kind of MMO crap, to me at least, seeking 'perfect balance' whilst killing the fun. Pen & Paper is just not adapted to play like a MMO : first, normally, you're with friends around a P&P table, so no real need for a competitive system, uh ? :) )

[kennydicke]

My bro claims that D&D 3.5 'Pathfinder' by Paizo is quite good. Better balanced and way more fun than 4. I haven't played for a pretty long time, though...

RIP GG.

[Wrana]

I'm not that much on D&D either, but GG did much for RPG players in general. He is kind of a first stone in the cathedral you know, symbolic and all, that's why I'm offended with what DD4 is. (some kind of MMO crap, to me at least, seeking 'perfect balance' whilst killing the fun. Pen & Paper is just not adapted to play like a MMO : first, normally, you're with friends around a P&P table, so no real need for a competitive system, uh ? :) )
Yes, certainly. That's also why I mentioned his last system even if I didn't play it myself. ;)
As for competitive system(s) - well, there's Munchkin, and it's muchmore fun than DD$ or even DD3. And tabletop wargames.
But, of course, bringing elements of computer games on the table was... well, I'd still call that stupid. Computer games use computers to crunch numbers and here you can have additional fun from graphical elements and real time occurrencies. Tabletop RPGs have live master who can modify story on the fly as needed. And make opponents react as living persons, not as machines (unless they are). WoC took the course of taking the responsibility from the master's hands a long time ago - 4th edition was only the last nail into the system's coffin.

[Burnsaber]

I'm kind of sick of people dissing 4th edition right away. It's sort of easy to just read intercepts of the book and instantly hate it (to be honest, I did too). Is it a completely different game than the previous editions? Yes. Is it a good game nevertheless? Yes.

I think the biggest problem of the game is the "D&D" in the title. It sort of gives a wrong picture for the veterans of the game on what to except. As for the "videogamish" abilities and rules, it's sort of silly at first but once you play the game you see it in a different light. It just plays so well. The combat is fluent, cinematic and really gives you the feel of being a hero. Team work is rewarded by the in-game rules and there are a lot abilities that allow you to support others while doing something yourself. I'm currently playing in a D&D 4th edition campaing as a cleric and I can use one of my healing powers as a sort "extra" action so that I can whack a dude and heal my friend in the same turn. In the previous versions if you healed someone, that was basically your turn. (and the dude you healed quite probably got whacked again, so your next turn also went to healing him and so forth..). The healing as a extra action is just a example of thing that looked silly on paper when I made the cleric, but when I actually *played* the character it just worked like a charm. I had a blast.

That's sort a the biggest thing I look in a system. The combat is the point of the game where the rules matter the most. When the game is on outside of combat, like interacting with NPC's it is the players who roleplay, not the rules.

It's not a perfect game of course, the skill system is pretty much mutilated and the classes have lost some of their old charm as they have been balanced. But that is sort of a give-and-take. D&D 3.5 class balance was a joke afterall and I feel a bit silly complaining now that it is fixed. I admit that I wouldn't play a "intrique" campaing with it, but in it's niche (high-fantasy heroic adventure), D&D 4th edition is a damn good game. If you don't like playing high fantasy heroic adventure type of games, it's not the system for you and that is fine. But that does not make it a poor game.

[Humakty]

I don't like the system mostly because it changes D&D to the very bone : if dominions 4 was a FPS, I'd complain a lot. D&D4 is that much different than it causes the various game worlds created for it to need major overhaul, which is sad, those were great. There is no solution of continuity between 3.5 and 4. Of course this will allow to publish tons of new books, to fill the gaps.

My only real gripe with 3.5 was the advanced class system, which was seemingly only here to allow maximum optimization of a given character, but no one forces you to use it.

For my part, the automatic healing you can use to magically recover between combats has a bit too much of a PC game feel, as well as many other options. It's simplified too, streamlined, and that is totally unDDish.

A level 15 mage/priest in 3.5 definitely add a high fantasy feel to the game, and they're far from invincible.

[Burnsaber]

I don't like the system mostly because it changes D&D to the very bone : if dominions 4 was a FPS, I'd complain a lot.


D&D 3.5 was a high fantasy adventure RPG. Characters in D&D 3.5 are nearly demi-gods starting from about 6-9nth level* and up bending reality, teleporting and jumping 20 meter long jumps with every turn they take. It's a not "serious" RPG, not by any standards. This might perhaps be because I didn't play 3.0 or the older editions (I started with rolemaster and move 3.5 from that), but D&D was never a "serious" system for me. The fourth edition really embraces the point of the series (for me), easy to play high fantasy adventure and cuts all that extra baggage that was weighing it down in the previous edition.

*depending on the character builds


For my part, the automatic healing you can use to magically recover between combats has a bit too much of a PC game feel, as well as many other options.


And the cleric casting four or more "Cure Light/Minor/Serious Wounds" after each battle did not feel like a PC game?

"I pray to my god to *slightly* heal you" [rolls dice]
OC:You still wounded?
"I pray to my god to *slightly* heal you, again" [rolls dice]
OC:You still wounded?
"I pray to my god to *slightly* heal you, once more" [rolls dice]
OC:You still wounded?
"I pray to my god to *slightly* heal you.."
OC: *sigh*

And 3.5 Cleric had no incentive to heal *anybody* during battle because it cost them their whole turn. But if the battle got rough, the cleric was forced to sit in the sidelines healing while others do the fun stuff.

It's a heroic fantasy game and I like it that wounds work like in movies -> a'k'a bandages and being a general badass can cure anything. If you want a more gritty campaign, you can just cut the amount healing surges the playes have to half.


It's simplified too, streamlined, and that is totally unDDish.


I know it's a matter of opinion but rules should be simple and fluent. There is no reason to make rules more complicated than they need to be. Grappling? "Change Shape" spells? Any of those ring a bell? By making the rules simple you eliminate the time needed to flip books and make the game a lot more newbie friendly. I really see no harm in eliminating that part of the game and also I see no reason to make rules complicated *just because* it's a tabletop RPG.


Now that I wrote this I have to admit it's kind of moot. This is a issue with taste afterall. If you don't like something you just don't. But I really don't like all the hate that 4th edition gets. It's a good game, it's just not for everybody. It's a silly game but isn't coming to some guys house and pretending to be elves sort of silly in the first place?

[Folket]

Interesting how that one OOT comment resurrected a serious discussion in this thread.

Dark times indeed, but D&D 4 is probably some light.

[Quitti]

Well, from my limited experience with 4ed, it's not bad if you're not expecting continuity for 3,5ed. It's hard to make completely useless character in 4ed, while in 3½ any optimized class around lvl 10 can probably just waltz into a large city and proclaim him/her as it's ruler. 3½ has some serious issues with how stuff works, and 4ed just simplifies lots of those rules, like the whole magic spells -thing. I liked 3½ for it's complexity, and I dislike 4ed for its simplicity. I've still had fun playing 4ed games though, but that's more to do with DM+players than the system.

[RadicalTurnip]

Pretty much all but 1 of my D&D friends hates 4e, we bought the books they day it came out and I was running a campaign within two weeks, but I didn't like it. Magic doesn't feel like magic anymore. At all.

My primary gripe is that I think of D&D as a fantasy world simulation. 4e was not a simulation, it was a battle game with a few extra things thrown in, if I wanted battles, I could play Warhammer. My players (and I when I play) have a hard enough time roleplaying and not just metagaming. 4th Edition makes that even more difficult.

4e is great for its simplicity, but I don't want simple, I want realistic (I know, elves, dwarfs, magic, etc), 4e feels like there's a disconnect between the real world and the battle world, and I don't like that. Just my 2cp.

[chrispedersen]

Pretty much all but 1 of my D&D friends hates 4e, we bought the books they day it came out and I was running a campaign within two weeks, but I didn't like it. Magic doesn't feel like magic anymore. At all.

My primary gripe is that I think of D&D as a fantasy world simulation. 4e was not a simulation, it was a battle game with a few extra things thrown in, if I wanted battles, I could play Warhammer. My players (and I when I play) have a hard enough time roleplaying and not just metagaming. 4th Edition makes that even more difficult.

4e is great for its simplicity, but I don't want simple, I want realistic (I know, elves, dwarfs, magic, etc), 4e feels like there's a disconnect between the real world and the battle world, and I don't like that. Just my 2cp.


Right on the money. 4e is not a rpg - its tabletop gamin.
Wizards more or less directly said
a). they want to simplify to attract wow-ish gamers.
b). they wanted to simplify to attract younger gamers.

Did they succeed - more or less. A sigificant percentage of the grognards switched to pathfinder.

I'm not much of a vancian person. But my favorite edition is still 2nd. A lot of the problems in 3e sprang from the changes to gygax's design.

Standardizing exp resulted in very powerful wizards, for example.
Still, if you wanted a "cugel the clever" type milieu.. hard to argue against dnd 2e. And there were a lot of good productsin its time - mind flayers, vault of the drow.

still I prefer gurps, fantasy hero, pathfinder, dnd 3.5, dnd 2.0 and mowing the grass to dnd4.0

[Knai]

Of course, Cugel and similar were tricksters first and foremost, and it is what they were mentally that defined them so much. Meaning either they are universal to basically any system without mental stats getting in your way, or functional best in a system where social actions actually get some focus. I would consider Burning Wheel far better for them than D&D ever can be.

Ultimately, I don't particularly like Gygax's work. But what I love in fantasy, what I love in gaming, next to none of that would exist without him. Without Gygax (and Arnerson, both of whom are deceased:() there would be no tabletop roleplaying industry, there would be drastically different mechanics in nearly every video game, and it hugely influenced literature. And for that, I salute the man, and his partners way back in the day. The order of the stick tribute did him well.

[Wrana]

I'm kind of sick of people dissing 4th edition right away. It's sort of easy to just read intercepts of the book and instantly hate it (to be honest, I did too).

You are welcome to be. :) Well, I looked at the 3 ed. I didn't like it (though there were good ideas and things which were past time to implement - including, by the way, advanced class system taken from Warhammer RPG). I was told that it's unreasonable and that I should take part in test-play. I took - and was bored out of my brain. The same for 3.5. How much more tests I need you say? If something looks like a duck, walks like a duck... ;)
Yes, it's videogamish - but that wouldn't probably be a problem if, like you said, it wasn't called D&D. But such a name should require a continuity within worlds - which are already described in their realties. And this changes completely. If so - why should I play completely different thing? There are many other systems. As for D&D worlds, I, like Chris said, still consider 2nd edition "the One and True".
And as for a simple and dynamic system - there is always Feng Shui RPG, Rune (actually better videogame system than DD$), Forgotten Futures (free, by the way) and many others. While if I want a game within a detailed world (and it's more interesting than an abstract goblin-bashing) the system itself should detail many other things besides combat. And there are many such systems too. Though I won't consider Rolemaster among them - not because it's made needlessly complicated (I played TriTac Bureau 13 - and it was quite good!), but because it managed to be complicated without being actually realistic and - mainly - because it's tried to be universal and never managed a good game world. Middle Earth Roleplaying it started from was better regardless of obvious holes in its rules. By the way, what I like very much in Dominions is a detailed game world with a number of detailed cultures and their complex interactions.

[Gregstrom]

Just to be odd, I rather liked 3E/3.5. It pretty much worked, and some bits I felt were silly in 2E got resolved. Some of this may have been related to using Arcana Unearthed, though.

[Wrana]

Just to be odd, I rather liked 3E/3.5. It pretty much worked, and some bits I felt were silly in 2E got resolved. Some of this may have been related to using Arcana Unearthed, though.
I said that some things which should have been fixed were fixed in 3ed (thief skills and general ones were made the same, advanced classes, etc., more broad base for martial arts and similar "special tricks"). Still, it added much silliness of its own - but in any case not to the degree 4ed. did!
Unearthed Arcana for 3 ed. I didn't read - maybe it fixed something. Unearthed Arcana for 1ed. was certainly quite a good book - we even hybridized it with 2ed. (which was the time when we actually got it)! :)

[chrispedersen]

loved unearthed arcana...

[Gregstrom]

In 3/3.5 Unearthed Arcana =/= Arcana Unearthed (just to add confusion). Arcana Unearthed was done by Ed Greenwood, and was great fun.

[Lingchih]

Umm. the last D&D I played did not have any numbers attached to it. In fact, I think I played the first edition. Does that make me old? Yeah, I guess it does.

But it doesn't discount the fact the GG was a pioneer, and visionary.

Edit: acutually, the last D&D that I played was AD&D, so I guess I am slightly more current.

[Soyweiser]

Edit: acutually, the last D&D that I played was AD&D, so I guess I am slightly more current.

Iirc that is the second edition. It had advanced added to it.

[chrispedersen]

you and me lingchi.

I actually have a copy of chainmail, (several actually) which tsr released prior to dnd as well as copies of all versions of dnd

[Gregstrom]

the last D&D that I played was AD&D, so I guess I am slightly more current.

1978 is slightly current, I guess :D

[nordlys]

Edit: acutually, the last D&D that I played was AD&D, so I guess I am slightly more current.

Iirc that is the second edition. It had advanced added to it.

Nope, before 3e D&D and AD&D were two different games. AD&D had 2 editions from 1977 and 1989, D&D had 5 or 6 editions between about 1974 to 1994 or so.

3e D&D is actually 3rd edition of AD&D, they just dropped the "advanced" part since it made marketing people nervous and the original D&D was long discontinued anyway.

[S.R. Krol]

J.Eric Holmes (first D&D blue box author) has passed (http://cyclopeatron.blogspot.com/2010/05/j-eric-holmes-1930-2010.html).

And now today, Frank Frazetta has also gone to the great realms (http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/10/frank-frazetta-fantasy-illustrator-dies-at-82/).

[Wrana]

Umm. the last D&D I played did not have any numbers attached to it. In fact, I think I played the first edition. Does that make me old? Yeah, I guess it does.

I don't know. Probably it does me too. ;) But yes, without numbers it was a 1st edition AD&D - I started with it too, and at that time we had about a pair of physical books of it in Moscow (one of them ended up in my bookshelf at the end :) ). And some guys I played with started with Original D&D (Cyclopedia edition). Some of them continue still, though it's now mainly Warhammer and some other systems.

[Wrana]

J.Eric Holmes (first D&D blue box author) has passed (http://cyclopeatron.blogspot.com/2010/05/j-eric-holmes-1930-2010.html).

And now today, Frank Frazetta has also gone to the great realms (http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/10/frank-frazetta-fantasy-illustrator-dies-at-82/).
A pity. Though I like Les Edwards' pictures more.
The age is almost gone. :(