Gary Gygax, who co-created the game Dungeons & Dragons and helped start the role-playing phenomenon, died this morning.  I owe my love for storytelling to many people … My dad, of course, because he’s always been a good, old-fashioned yarnspinner … many of my teachers, especially in high school, for showing me that a well-told tale can get you out of homework, tests, and extra-curricular assignments … and Gary Gygax for creating a game that fueled my creativity and interest in creating not just stories, but characters and heroes and villains and entire worlds.  

I think Gary Gygax was one of the first fantasy writer/creators I knew by name.  I remember being fascinated by the possibilities presented in the original Monster Manual.  (The beholder being my favorite critter.  I sometimes imagined it floating slowly down the hallway of my house, its central eye scanning for prey, its numerous eyestalks wriggling around.)   And the first adventure I played was Tomb of Horrors, written by Gygax and DMed by my friend, Vardell, who even sang a little song about the demi-lich. 

I was 8 years old.

Some elements of that strange song still haunt me—and scare me—more than the beholder ever could.

So … I’ve been thinking about all the role-playing games that have meant something to me over the years.  I know, tabletop gaming isn’t as popular as it used to be.  These days, online gaming is far more popular.  But these are the RPGs that got my friends and I together to have fun, listen to DIO, and tell some stories.

Dungeons & Dragons – The granddaddy of them all.  You know the drill.  Elves, dwarves, wizards, and knights crawl through crypts and caves to spit some Beechnut in the eyes of orcs and dragons.  Hey, I grew up in the country.  Rural D&D has its own special vibe.

(We had to sneak around a lot when we played this because my buddy Jamie’s mom thought it was satanic.  Curse you Mazes and Monsters!)

Gamma World – It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.  A fun little apocalyptic setting, and the characters you created could be randomly mutated human, animal, or vegetable.  That’s right, I played a rutabaga … the Jack Bauer of all rutabagas. 

Villains and Vigilantes – Superhero role-playing, complete with random superpowers and a system for calculating how far the bad guys flew backwards when you walloped them.

Call of Cthulhu – My favorite system, drawing upon the cosmic horror of H. P. Lovecraft.  This one is perfect to be played with the lights down low and some creepy music playing in the background.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Sure, it could be played as an angst-filled night of reading Byron and sipping red wine.  But whenever I played, it always seemed to stray more towards the I’m-gonna-betray-my-buddies-until-they-catch-me-and-we-spend-the-rest-of-the-night-in-a-superbattle-so-we-need-those-Villains-and-Vigilantes-knockback-tables type of game.

Kult – What a sick, twisted little game.  I loved it.  The premise is simple – the world we live in is a lie, a picture painted by the gods long ago.  When horrible things happen, the real world bleeds through a little, opening the way for even more horrible things.  It’s a lot like a visit to the proctologist in that way.

Deadlands – Horror in the Old West.  This was a neat game because of a rich background story and a cool rules system that incorporated dice, poker chips, and playing cards.  Weird western at its most crazy and fun.

GURPS – The Generic Universal Role-Playing System.  You could pretty much play in any setting you wanted, and they had the rulebooks to prove it.  Some of the rulebooks were actually really neat basic reference works.

Twilight 2000 – It’s the end of the world as we know it again, only in this case it’s pretty realistic. I liked this game because it was something I could play in between re-runs of Red Dawn on HBO.  If it weren’t for paintball, I would have played this game a lot more.

(We had to sneak around when we played this, because Jamie’s mom thought martial arts, which every red-blooded soldier in our game knew at least as well as Michael Dudikoff, were satanic.)

QAGS – The Quick Ass Game system.  The rulebook is worth reading simply because it is laugh-out-loud funny.  But the game is exceptionally playable and, like GURPS, you can pretty much play in any setting your heart desires.  Plus, the rules system includes candy.  What more could you ask for?

I like to think Mr. Gygax would have approved of my list.  There are plenty of other games I’ve played over the years, but this list includes the systems I most often recall when I think about the good times I’ve had sitting around rolling dice with my pals.

Rest in Peace, Mr. Gygax.  Thank you for a lifetime of fun memories.

You’ll be missed.