Gygax Biographical Comic

[geneweigel]

This looks interesting:

www.polygon.com/2017/1/16/14285398/gary-gygax-d-and-d-graphic-novel-rise-of-the-dungeon-master-release-date

[GRWelsh]

I believe this is the profile of EGG that is being referred to:

archive.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/news/2008/03/ff_gygax?currentPage=all

[geneweigel]

Hey he mentions the cicadas from that 2007 con. Now that was fucking weird.

[GRWelsh]

Around here, a lot of people mistakenly refer to cicadas as "locusts." But cicadas are the fliers, locusts are more like grasshoppers. I used to find the cicada shells (exuvia) on trees when I was a kid.

The book looks promising -- I just pre-ordered it.

[geneweigel]

My wife last year went to some weird festival downtwown and got me a locust in glass box.

I admit that was terrified of cicadas for years because of a black-bodied, green legger jumping in my hair when I was 6 or 7 but that Lake Geneva trip cured my fears. I was holding them in my hands and they were quite pleasant.

[GRWelsh]

One of the best parts of that article was:

Gygax was fascinated by the way the rolling of dice affected — and enlivened — the game experience. "Random chance plays a huge part in everybody's life," he says. He learned this first hand in his job as an insurance underwriter, which was a game in itself. His work involved evaluating policies and calculating how much to charge in premiums based on salary, age, medical reports, and the potential for long-term disabilities. He did special risk underwriting as well, such as evaluating the payout for a Major League Baseball team that wanted to take out a policy on one of its players. "I wasn't popular in the home office because I wasn't chicken," he says. "I'm just a risk taker. I have gut instincts."
Gygax took similar liberties in war games. He had little time for people who played too by-the-book. "They'd write in and ask the publisher of the game what to do," he says. "Whatever they were told, they did. And I said, that's silly — just make it up."

Evaluation of risk and willingness to make things up are two important key elements to always keep in mind. Adventuring should always have some evaluation of risk by the players. And D&D grew out of a culture of "we can do it ourselves" rather than slavish adherence to the rules.

An example that comes to mind is that one of my friends, Brian, was DMing for us and we knew there was a white dragon up ahead. If he was going purely by the book, we all knew about how powerful white dragons were and roughly what our chances were. But Brian made up his own white dragon that was neutral, more intelligent, and more powerful than the white dragon in the Monster Manual. So we had to drastically change our approach mid-encounter! It turned out it wasn't just a dumb brute monster to kill, it was an intelligent NPC that we talked to and got some important information from. I thought it was great that he did that, and in the spirit of true D&D.

[geneweigel]

Here it is:

[geneweigel]

My 6 year old son's new obsession is THE SIMPSONS and he's been projecting whats on his tablet on to the TV. He put Gary Gygax on FUTURAMA completely at random and my other two kids (tried to make D&D characters when they were little but have no interest so I don't encourage) were confused as to why he was rolling the dice before he answered. The first response was from my 12 year old and she was wondering why he would do that as it doesn't seem fair. I responded without thinking, even though I've pondered in the past, that its the only way you can have heartless bad guys. When I said its like something that I knew was true but never put a pin on it.

[GRWelsh]

Yeah, that's a good point. Things like the random reaction tables and random encounter tables help a DM stay neutral and get away from his own subtle bias of how he might like the game to go.

Save versus the siren call of becoming a storyteller DM!