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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SSquirrel" data-source="post: 4099715" data-attributes="member: 5202">Personally, I was very sad when I heard Gary died.  Never met the guy in my life, but a 6th grade teach of mine introduced me to Tolkien and when I liked that she mentioned the D&D group she sponsored on Friday afternoons.  This led me to Basic D&D and the influence of Gary.  I've spent the past 20 years playing D&D and a ton of other RPGs, reading lots of sci-fi and fantasy and I point directly to my teacher.  I've told her a few times how important it has been in my life and I'm glad I've told her.If Gary and Dave hadn't designed the game they did, I'm sure someone else would have made something similar at some point.  But would it have been as good?  Would it have gotten as popular as it did?  Would the industry be even a fraction of its current size?I really don't know.  Maybe everything would have been even bigger and more mainstream years earlier.  I do know the way things actually did go down and the result they've had on the world and me in particular.I've never heard of this game designer or his games.  Hopefully he's earning a decent living after either having played the game Gary helped create or games that came about from people playing Gary's game.  Here is a rather telling quote to me:"Clinging to Gary so you, the self-conscious gamer, can avoid feeling alone and awkward in your nerd shame is giving Gary a lot more credit than he deserves."How many of the people are doing this?  Not many that I can tell.  I'll be very sad when Stan Lee dies too.  Stan Lee created a lot of great characters and wrote great stories that I have enjoyed over the years.  I give Gary his due and say that my life would have been less than it is if he had not existed.  Just imagining not having the hours of time my D&D group spent together in high school alone is staggering.  Some of us would not have hung out if it hadn't been for the game.  Just didn't run in the same circles really.  We almost moved an hour away from my hometown to Cincinnati OH when I was about to go into high school.  I would have likely had a very different life if we had.  It's possible I would have gotten deeper into RPGs just like I did, but maybe I would have been more active in sports and not done the gaming thing.  I might have gone to a different school and not had the friends I did and thus never have met the woman I eventually married and soon have 2 children with.  I try not to go back and ponder these what ifs anymore, b/c while there are some things I do regret doing or not doing, I love where I'm at and who I am and that's what matters.Matt Snyder has made sure that I'll avoid his work in the future instead of just not knowing who he is tho, so I guess he helped me to potentially save money.  How often does that happen? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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