Remembering Dungeons & Dragons

Gary Gygax, creator of the popular role-playing dice game Dungeons & Dragons, died this past Tuesday. I never played D&D as a kid, it seemed too complicated and I didn’t care for the whole swords and sorcery bit. Still, it affected my life because so many of my peers were playing the game, and because it was constantly being discussed in the media. This was during that twilight time, after pinball machines, but before arcade video games would become the new scourge of America’s youth. In honor of the man that made goofing off in your parents’ basement a serious pastime, I thought I’d reminisce about Dungeons & Dragons and its younger, but apparently more wise sibling, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

My brother was a big Dungeons & Dragons fanatic for a little while. It really fit in with his whole metalhead aesthetic. I was strictly forbidden to attend or even watch his D&D games, which suited me fine because it seemed incredibly boring to me. I was fascinated, though, by the Monsters Manual, a hardbound book of all the available monsters one might encounter in the D&D world. I marveled at the terribly-drawn pictures of monsters like Black Pudding and Hippocampus. I wondered what I might do if I encountered an “Eye, Floating,” as was described on the pages within the manual. I mean Eye, Rolling I could deal with. But Eye, Floating? I guess I’d have to hide in a garbage can or something.

Much more than the game or its monsters, I was entranced by news reports about how obsessed kids got over this game. I would read any article, watch any special news report, or hear any anecdote about these poor fucks that lost charisma points and hung themselves in their parents’ closets. I don’t know why I found it all so amusing. I definitely didn’t think I was too cool for the game; on the contrary, I felt like somewhat of an outsider because all of my friends were playing it. Maybe I felt it was their just desserts for pursuing something so mind-warping, and not fawning over the things I enjoyed, namely Smurfs cartoons and die-cast Transformers toys. When the movie Mazes & Monsters came out, I was an instant fan. Why did I care so much about these wayward retards that couldn’t tell the difference between a board game and real life? Was it jealousy that I wasn’t playing along, or just my natural inclination to laugh at losers? I like to think it was for the latter reason.

So RIP Gary Gygax, a visionary who devised a game that made geeks around the world feel cool, if only for a moment. It goes without saying that, without Dungeons & Dragons, games like The Legend of Zelda, DOOM, and Final Fantasy might never have been created. Don’t get it twisted, though. If you like these video games, you’re twice the nerd that a D&D player is.