Gary Gygax, the creator of Dungeons & Dragons, died today at age 69. Like many geeky boys, I was a huge fan of the game during grade school and junior high school. I didn’t play a lot but I owned most of the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons books published in the 1980s and constantly read and re-read those books. Later, in college and in the professional world, I realized how much I had learned from studying the game

Gygax’s writings delved deep into a wide variety of literature. The games were deeply based on Tolkien but there was a huge amount of influence from the classics, folklore from around the world, science fiction and fantasy. Still to this day, I am thankful for my AD&D reading and play when I come across a concept that I was first introduced to by the enormously creative Gary Gygax. Examples include polymorphism in genetics which I learned about initially as a shape changing spell. I also learned about the the basidiomycota, a phylum of fungi which was a fungal monster. Gary Gygax’s creativity will be missed by generations of role playing fans.

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