bryan stratton dot com

(If you don’t get the headline, turn in your nerd card now.)

Gary Gygax, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons has passed away at the age of 69. I went back and forth on whether or not I should write anything about it. After all, it seems kind of creepy to eulogize a man whose life’s work influenced you on the day that your dad is retiring. Plus, I’m supposed to be working. Really.

But although the timing is a little unnerving, I’m relatively certain that my dad has at least 10d6 years left in his tank. As for the work that I should be doing? Well, if it wasn’t for Gygax, I probably wouldn’t even have it. Right now, I’m writing a strategy guide for a Japanese action-RPG that uses a ruleset that is a direct descendent of the basic D&D rules. This game wouldn’t exist if Uncle Gary hadn’t hooked smart social misfits on lead miniatures and polyhedral dice in the 70′s.

In fact, my entire career in video games stems from the love I had for D&D in my early teenage years, before girls would talk to me. I didn’t play many video games in the 90′s, but just after graduating from college, I got hooked on Baldur’s Gate, which was the first really good translation of the D&D universe into a PC game. When I moved to San Francisco a few months later, I interviewed for a job at an online video game magazine and was asked which video games were my favorites. Not having much to go on, I talked about BG in detail. A week later, I had the job, and my video game career began.

Some of the best friends that I’ve ever made were the ones I spent weekends with playing D&D in someone’s basement. And D&D probably kept us out of a lot of trouble. When you’re a gang of restless teenage boys in a podunk town in the middle of nowhere, and everything except the bars is closed down by 9 PM, the temptation to have the kind of fun that keeps the local cops busy is almost overwhelming. But D&D was the excuse that we needed to hang out and stretch our imaginations and slowly learn the social skills that had eluded us up until that point.

So, godspeed you, Gary Gygax. Thanks for helping me become a well-adjusted professional nerd, with friendships that will last a lifetime.