The Wizard Gygax

Lisette Kaleveld

News of the death of Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax spread through digital space like an elemental swarm. Tributes claimed his life passion for role playing games led to the development of RPG computer games, and changed the way we tell stories forever.

But a quick whiz around the Internet shows that myth-making about Gygax began long before his passing on March 4. Gygax, who died at 69, is seen as a cultural innovator and hero, the devil incarnate, and the world's geekiest geek. And occasionally we also get a more mundane glimpse of a man called Gary who liked playing fantasy role playing games.

The day Gygax died, gaming communities bowed down in honor of his memory. The King is Dead, they said. Of all people, gamers understand the Gygax effect: that cultural leap he sparked and nurtured.

Those who claim Gygax transformed the world begin their argument in a basement in 1967 where, famously, twenty people gathered for a gaming session. For years afterward, the like-minded gaming group met regularly to tinker with military miniatures. And their role playing grew increasingly complex as an intellectual and socially interactive forum.

The game Chainmail (written by Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren in 1971) added fantasy elements, and by the time Dungeons & Dragons was developed, the game was completely immersed in a fantasy world inspired by the likes of Middle Earth.

D&D's wizards, elves, dragons, and quests are nothing new, being drawn from our familiar store of Arthurian Legends, European fairytales and folklore from the Middle Ages. The story of the hero being called forth, usually unwillingly, and adventuring and undergoing a change has been with us probably since stories were told round campfires, Gygax said in 2005.But with D&D - friends, world sharing, acting, imagination, a rule book, Dungeon Master, magic, math and dice are all you need for a fantasy adventure with your character.

A 'pen and paper' game hardly sounds convincing as a 'leap of technology', but what D&D did was transform passive enjoyment of story into creative play, and blasted traditional concepts of narrative structure out of the water. For the first time storytelling was socially shared and user generated. It's an idea we’re much more familiar with today, as described in some part by catch phrases such as Web 2.0 (although the concept of authorship still asserts an iron-fisted grip, even where it’s not welcome).

The popularity of the role playing genre lead to many other equivalent games, and for the video gamer inevitably led to the likes of such RPG magnificence as World of Warcraft and Eve Online. Pen and paper RPGs inalienably created a fertile market for the introduction of computer games (many fantasy and science fiction based) and eventually the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG). That's the world Gygax led us to today. Social networking sites, user generated content, Second Life and Cos Play could be argued to contain elements of Gygax's creative genome within.

Of course it could just be an attempt to join the dots, retrospectively. But with hindsight, D&D was in the very least a training ground for possibilities of 21st Century interactive technology.

But while Gygax was pollinating the world with imaginative possibilities, for some, Dungeons & Dragons was seen as violating God's will, specifically the commandment 'abstain from all appearance of evil'. There was a time when extreme Christian groups actively objected to the use of ideas of magic in games and inevitably concluded that D&D was a platform for evil.

The mainstream media, always happy for copy, were complicit in helping Christian opposition to Gygax. In the sleepy suburbs of 70s and 80s America, Gygax was looked upon like a creature from his very own Monster Manual (don't panic Gary because Pokemon was spawn of Satan too). News outfits were too happy to spread reports of RPG-inspired suicides and murders. Urban myths of people becoming comatose upon the death of their level 12 Knights were popular conversational topics at Mom's book club. Role Players were for the most part misunderstood, seen as nerdy or simply strange.

In this bright new century with interactive technologies at its core, all of this sounds ridiculous. There are many other new and shiny things for people to worry about. It's fascinating that Dungeons & Dragons was once seen to wield such great power. Maybe the two D-words bring to mind dark, threatening forces locked away. Christians conjured up a demon behind the door and Hollywood was happy to explore and fuel the cringe with the likes of made for TV 'Mazes and Monsters'.

Today moral outrage is more likely to find an outlet in Second Life, social networking sites or violent video games. Dungeons & Dragons seems now, to many who used to play and have moved on, antiquated and quaint. Yet it still has a strong core of players, fans and enthusiasts. Like the other beasts society fearfully locks away underground, when we're finally ready to open the door we usually find something much more harmless than we imagined - like a squirrel.

Which brings us to the man behind the game - Gary himself. A man of imagination and mischief. His glasses, beard and wizardly grin suggest someone who was probably just quietly bemused by the whole thing.

He once said I would like the world to remember me as the guy who really enjoyed playing games and sharing his knowledge and his fun pastimes with everybody else. It sounds like the plea of someone trying to steer their personal mythology away from saving or ruining the world - he just wanted to play some games alright?

Just after his death the most sincere expressions of sorrow poured onto forum threads and blogs. So Gygax touched the lives and imaginations of millions of fans. Or, at least, convinced them he was a pretty nice bloke who left behind something fun for us to play with.