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How Gary Gygax lost control of D&D
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<blockquote data-quote="increment" data-source="post: 6348869" data-attributes="member: 52672"><p>PatW does indeed show that other people were experimenting with many of the same ideas that ultimately constituted D&D. Tony Bath was coming quite close, perhaps. But it's important not to underestimate the extent of Gygax's personal achievement.</p><p></p><p>When it comes to inventing a technology, often times it's not the idea for some new widget that matters, it is the vision and perseverance required to create a world for that widget to live in. Glowing metal in a glass bulb was not a new idea, but it took an Edison to create a world of power plants and standardization that would make it cheaper to light your house with electricity than candles. MP3 players were not a new idea, but it took a Jobs to create a world where record labels allowed their songs to be sold on iTunes and eventually, where even your phone could just download a new song when you're walking down the street.</p><p></p><p>Gygax's singular talents were all invested in community, in collaboration and consensus-building. He created structures like wargaming clubs and conventions (you know, like Gen Con) and used them to get ideas in front of people, get people playing in similar styles, to drive innovation. He created this huge community apparatus, and when the time for D&D came along, he packaged the game in a form he had trained that community to understand and then unleashed it through the outlets he created or influenced. That is one of the main lessons of the first chapter of PatW, that this is who Gygax was and why he was important.</p><p></p><p>And that's why the "Ambush" is so tragic, and why it was such a hard story for me to write. It doesn't belong in PatW, which is a story about the triumphs of that amateur community. The "Ambush" is the story of how that machine grew into something with knobs and levers that Gygax no longer knew how to operate. But the very end of the piece makes one thing clear: even without that apparatus, the community never forgot Gary, and he never forgot the community.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="increment, post: 6348869, member: 52672"] PatW does indeed show that other people were experimenting with many of the same ideas that ultimately constituted D&D. Tony Bath was coming quite close, perhaps. But it's important not to underestimate the extent of Gygax's personal achievement. When it comes to inventing a technology, often times it's not the idea for some new widget that matters, it is the vision and perseverance required to create a world for that widget to live in. Glowing metal in a glass bulb was not a new idea, but it took an Edison to create a world of power plants and standardization that would make it cheaper to light your house with electricity than candles. MP3 players were not a new idea, but it took a Jobs to create a world where record labels allowed their songs to be sold on iTunes and eventually, where even your phone could just download a new song when you're walking down the street. Gygax's singular talents were all invested in community, in collaboration and consensus-building. He created structures like wargaming clubs and conventions (you know, like Gen Con) and used them to get ideas in front of people, get people playing in similar styles, to drive innovation. He created this huge community apparatus, and when the time for D&D came along, he packaged the game in a form he had trained that community to understand and then unleashed it through the outlets he created or influenced. That is one of the main lessons of the first chapter of PatW, that this is who Gygax was and why he was important. And that's why the "Ambush" is so tragic, and why it was such a hard story for me to write. It doesn't belong in PatW, which is a story about the triumphs of that amateur community. The "Ambush" is the story of how that machine grew into something with knobs and levers that Gygax no longer knew how to operate. But the very end of the piece makes one thing clear: even without that apparatus, the community never forgot Gary, and he never forgot the community. [/QUOTE]
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