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Gary Gygax has passed. RIP beloved father of RPG's. (merged)
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<blockquote data-quote="Storm Raven" data-source="post: 4089217" data-attributes="member: 307"><p>Well, maybe. While it is important to give Gygax his due, I don't think even he would have denied that D&D followed the rise in popularity of fantasy fiction rather than preceded it. In point of fact, much of D&D wouldn't exist had it not been for the fantasy fiction antecedents: the Dying Earth books, the Newhon books, Moorcock's writings, many of the works of Poul Anderson and so on, from which D&D directly drew many of the tropes that have become regarded now as "D&Disms". In his own writing, Gygax pointed out that the "Tolkienesque" elements placed in the D&D game were done so consciously to try to exploit the already significant popularity of those books.</p><p></p><p>Gygax brought us a great game, and launched and molded a hobby that without a doubt most of us have loved and enjoyed for many years. He was the right man, in the right place, at the right time, with the right idea. But fantasy fiction would probably have done just fine without him. It would have been different, but it would have flourished just the same.</p><p></p><p>As an aside, I never heard him talk on this subject, but I wonder if the style of fantasy that has developed since the 1970s, with much of it clearly aping, if not imitating the works of Tolkien, was really something Gygax was fond of. The style of fantasy he appears to have preferred - written by Lieber and Howard and so on, was very different from the epic Tolkienesque tales that litter the genre now.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Storm Raven, post: 4089217, member: 307"] Well, maybe. While it is important to give Gygax his due, I don't think even he would have denied that D&D followed the rise in popularity of fantasy fiction rather than preceded it. In point of fact, much of D&D wouldn't exist had it not been for the fantasy fiction antecedents: the Dying Earth books, the Newhon books, Moorcock's writings, many of the works of Poul Anderson and so on, from which D&D directly drew many of the tropes that have become regarded now as "D&Disms". In his own writing, Gygax pointed out that the "Tolkienesque" elements placed in the D&D game were done so consciously to try to exploit the already significant popularity of those books. Gygax brought us a great game, and launched and molded a hobby that without a doubt most of us have loved and enjoyed for many years. He was the right man, in the right place, at the right time, with the right idea. But fantasy fiction would probably have done just fine without him. It would have been different, but it would have flourished just the same. As an aside, I never heard him talk on this subject, but I wonder if the style of fantasy that has developed since the 1970s, with much of it clearly aping, if not imitating the works of Tolkien, was really something Gygax was fond of. The style of fantasy he appears to have preferred - written by Lieber and Howard and so on, was very different from the epic Tolkienesque tales that litter the genre now. [/QUOTE]
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Gary Gygax has passed. RIP beloved father of RPG's. (merged)
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