D&D General Let He Who Is Without Sin Cast the First Magic Missile: Why Gygax Still Matters to Me

[Bedrockgames]

Which is why I'm a huge advocate of never deifying anyone. Anyone. Hero worship is the path to disappointment or a whole heck of a lot of cognitive dissonance. I learned this lesson the hard way with David Eddings. I find it exceptionally damaging in our own community when we got Dave Arneson camps vs. Gygax camps. I have no idea why people who don't personally know either of these guys take sides in that war.

I think this is where a lot of the angst comes in the hobby. People hero worship and look for father and mother figures. You see it in other fandoms as well. And camps forming can be very bad because usually each camp is only getting one side of the story, only looking at the events through one perspective. I've never been into hero worship. There are artists whose work I respect, even artists whose lives I consider interesting and worthy of examination, but everyone is flawed and human, and many will disappoint you if you expect perfect or are naive about human nature.

 

[Velderan]

At least for me, I do in fact struggle to read it. Which, I admit, is a mite hypocritical, as I also dump out words like water. But something about it just...I get lost in the layers of clauses.

Same. Aside from the cup of coffee I had with BECMI in probably 1987 or so, my real introduction to D&D was 2e and for years I've heard people who played 1e say how much better the game is. I've tried a few times to read the 1e PHB and DMG books to figure out what the big deal was and I just can't get past the writing. I could see how if that was my first version of the game I could probably have overlooked it and gotten into it, but I had already played several different TTRPGs by the time I came across the 1e books and they just didn't work for me. To each their own, I guess.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Same. Aside from the cup of coffee I had with BECMI in probably 1987 or so, my real introduction to D&D was 2e and for years I've heard people who played 1e say how much better the game is.

I had pretty much the same introduction, with 2E being the real formative entry point for PHBs and DMGs. I guess for me where I really fell in love with the 1E DMG was around the early 2000s. I would say up to that point I tended to see it as a bit old fashioned, even silly and clunky. But something about the frustrations I had with 3E, going back and finding so many things that worked for me at the table, I saw those 1E books with new eyes. It helped that the language was colorful and held my attention. I prefer playing 2E these days and use the 2E books mostly, but the one thing I will say about them is they are extremely dry, maybe not 3E dry, but still dry, and it can be a slog if you need to review sections.

 

[Belen]

I had pretty much the same introduction, with 2E being the real formative entry point for PHBs and DMGs. I guess for me where I really fell in love with the 1E DMG was around the early 2000s. I would say up to that point I tended to see it as a bit old fashioned, even silly and clunky. But something about the frustrations I had with 3E, going back and finding so many things that worked for me at the table, I saw those 1E books with new eyes. It helped that the language was colorful and held my attention. I prefer playing 2E these days and use the 2E books mostly, but the one thing I will say about them is they are extremely dry, maybe not 3E dry, but still dry, and it can be a slog if you need to review sections.

I miss 2e a great deal.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Same. Aside from the cup of coffee I had with BECMI in probably 1987 or so, my real introduction to D&D was 2e and for years I've heard people who played 1e say how much better the game is. I've tried a few times to read the 1e PHB and DMG books to figure out what the big deal was and I just can't get past the writing. I could see how if that was my first version of the game I could probably have overlooked it and gotten into it, but I had already played several different TTRPGs by the time I came across the 1e books and they just didn't work for me. To each their own, I guess.

I can totally get how lots of folks who didn't start until the late 80s just can't grok Gygaxian or 1e. For me, I started in 1981, so I joined when Gygax was D&D. Wanted the D&D experience? You had to deal with Gygaxian prose, which wasn't a bad thing at the time. It was part of a whole of this wonderful new game that no one saw or experienced before.

So yeah, my love of 1e is largely nostalgic because that was how I grew up with the game. When say I prefer 1e over 2e, it's not due to clarity of rules. It's because it was what I was playing when that door to a wonderful new experience was happening. It's not just the rules, it's the aesthetic and playstyle. I much prefer Tramp, Holloway, Otus, Easley to any other edition's artwork for those reasons.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Yes, I did. My language is not English, so sometimes I need help to make everything cohesive and not seem like a jerk writing long texts. So I used it to translate and organize my writing

I just wanted to followup, since I noticed you haven't posted since. I can appreciate that if English isn't your native language, you might use an AI assist. I certainly wouldn't criticize that.

If I can make a suggestion? I would recommend using AI to assist you, but not to use it to generate longer essays, simply because it feels weird.

I hope you continue to post here!

 

[mamba]

Exactly. I want the experience to be enjoyable, not just a technical manual dutifully conveying data. Reading such prose is evocative, inspirational, and fun for me.

I don’t want a technical manual either, but Gary is too far on the opposite end of the spectrum for me. I want evocative and inspirational, but also clear and concise instead of convoluted and archaic

 

[mamba]

I can just see him responding in sarcastic hyperbole because he is annoyed by hearing it for the 100th time.

if you are hearing it for the 100th time, maybe there is something to it

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don’t want a technical manual either, but Gary is too far on the opposite end of the spectrum for me. I want evocative and inspirational, but also clear and concise instead of convoluted and archaic

I enjoy the richness of convoluted and archaic, but I also appreciate precision.

 

[MGibster]

I still run AD&D on occasion, but when I do I make sure not to incorporate some of the elements that I believe shouldn't be in there- like the gendered ability caps, or the harlot table.

But...but...the people....they demand the random harlot table! I admit I'm not particularly offended by the random harlot table, though I don't really want to see it make a comeback, but I'm just surprised by how often it comes up these days. Back in the day, it just wasn't something any of the people I gamed with were particularly focused on. In fact, I remember an anti-D&D tract that specifically quoted the random harlot table as evidence for how bad the game was. Even back then, I felt they were cherry picking their quotes to give the most negative spin possible.

I tend not to care much about the personal lives of authors, actors, directors, etc., etc. As a huge fan of Star Trek, I knew very little about the personal lives of William Shatner, DeForest Kelly, or Leonard Nimoy. i.e. I had no idea Shatner was a ham who tried to steal lines from other actors on the series. I'm a little more interested in how the sausage gets made these day than I was when I was 15, but as someone who studied history, I'm comfortable with the idea that even people who created things I like might have been bastards and I'm happy to acknowledge their bastardity.

His racism was disturbing at the time. There are records of some of his contemporaries being highly uncomfortable with it. Lovecraft, while a seminal author who massively influenced both fantasy and horror, was a bigot through and through. That doesn't change the power and impact of his writings, but if you view them with the knowledge that he was racist, the bigotry really shows.

I am unsure why it's so important to paint Lovecraft as particularly racist even for his own day. It's true, many of his contemporary peers (other writers), didn't share Lovecraft's views on race. However Lovecraft's ideas on race were not radically different from that of millions of Americans during the 1920s and 30s, which is considered by many historicans to be the nadir of race relations in the United States following the Civil War. Lovecraft could have traveled to Ohio, Texas, Vermont, or Kansas and found plenty of white Americans who agreed with him about race and immigration.

I think this is where a lot of the angst comes in the hobby. People hero worship and look for father and mother figures. You see it in other fandoms as well. And camps forming can be very bad because usually each camp is only getting one side of the story, only looking at the events through one perspective. I've never been into hero worship.

We human beings love a good narrative and sometimes it just makes our lives easier when historical narratives center around individuals. By the time I really started getting into AD&D, when I had the money to purchase my own books on a regular basis (it took me two weeks to save up for an $18.00 PHB), Gary had been outsted from TSR for about five years. In spite of Cyborg Commando, I always respected him for being the creator of D&D only learning much later that others deserve credit later. Dave Arneson is almost like Bill Finger only it didn't take as long for Arneson to get the recognition he deserved. In our little narratives, we like having heroes (Gygax) and villains (Lorraine Williams). And we like to use those narratives to teach us important lessons.