Ancestors

Toot

Written by Robin Marx on 2024-11-28 at 06:27

I’ve been playing D&D and RPGs for 35 years. Not as long as the original crew, but a pretty decent stretch of time. And Gary Gygax hero worship has never been a part of my involvement with the hobby. His quality as a human being is irrelevant to my gaming.

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Descendants

Written by Moreau Vazh on 2024-11-28 at 07:27

@Ashigaru I'm old enough to remember that all of Gygax's post-D&D games were laughably awful and that his time in charge of TSR had alienated a lot of the hobby.

His late-in-life attempt to pull a Stan Lee and reinvent himself as everyone's favourite gaming uncle didn't fit with what I knew of him.

Then I went and read a few histories of D&D and concluded that he was a hack, a jerk who took credit for others' work, a coke-fiend, and a small business tyrant.

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Written by 1 tripod in 3 trenchcoats on 2024-11-28 at 09:35

@Taskerland @Ashigaru I'm not sure about the coke-fiend part (that seemed to be something made up by people at TSR that didn't like him)

But yes, his great achievement for the hobby was getting DnD published in some form (more or less) usable by others, because Arneson himself likely wouldn't have bothered. And he did ADnD and a few modules that were good.

But the success went to his head quickly, and the hobby itself moved on without him soon enough.

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Written by Rev. Roger BW 😷 on 2024-11-28 at 12:01

@kyonshi @Taskerland @Ashigaru Not forgetting that AD&D was specifically "a new rule set where I don't have to credit Arneson as co-author so I don't have to pay him royalties". I mean, it's not as bad as Roddenberry and the Star Trek theme "song", but…

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Written by 1 tripod in 3 trenchcoats on 2024-11-28 at 13:32

@RogerBW @Taskerland @Ashigaru yeah that was the sign of his move into proper dick territory I think. When you read about him before about '77 and after '77 it's like it's two different people. Mind you, I think the tendencies were there from the beginning, I just think the success and the money went to his head badly

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