Reminiscing

It’s a sad thing in some ways when the first thing I post in a while is about Gary Gygax’s death. Gygax, for those of you who don’t know, was one of the co-cre­at­ors of Dun­geons & Dragons.

But if it wer­en’t for Gary Gygax, I’d be a very dif­fer­ent person, I think. Almost all of my friends for a long time there were role­play­ers. Many still are. If I hadn’t sat around in the North Sydney Girls’ High School lib­rary aged 12 with Naomi Adam and rolled up Quil­lian, my first half-elf magic user, who knows where I would be?

I cer­tainly would­n’t have enjoyed those long, fab­ulous week­ends with Justine, Jamie, Phil and Glen in the house in Dul­wich Hill, and I would­n’t have met a bunch of my good friends now who I grew to know at role­play­ing con­ven­tions when David, Phil, Justine and I played in Sydney. It’s through those con­ven­tions that I know 

, whose wed­ding I went to over a year ago, and 

, through­out whose preg­nancy we trained at the New­town gym, and now a bunch of Mel­bourne people, including 

, and

, because I went straight to a con­ven­tion when I hit Mel­bourne as a sure-fire way to meet like-minded folks.

Last but not least, it’s how I met my best friend, 

, even though she’s not a role­player, because she knew 

, who is.

Through D&D, I dis­covered War­ham­mer Fantasy Role­play and SLA Indus­tries and Cyber­punk. My favour­ite com­puter game of all time, Zork, would­n’t have exis­ted if it wer­en’t for D&D.

I don’t role­play any more and many of my friends are from dif­fer­ent back­grounds now, or I met them through other means. Some of my nearest and dearest – Doug, Matt, 

– I met through friends or ran­domly in deserts protest­ing inhu­mane con­di­tions for refugees, but, as “my type of people” often turn out to, they have all got role­play­ing skel­et­ons in their past.

So, vale, Gary Gygax. Know that withoutyou, Inter­net dae­mons prob­ably would­n’t be called that and BBSs would never have had wiz­ards. Know that you gave a lot of nerds and geeks a social life and a feel­ing we belonged for the very first time.

Also, go read the Salon​.com obit­u­ary and watch the extremely bizarre video at the end. Yes, Gary. We blame you for WoW too.