D&D General I wish people would avoid name-dropping Gary Gygax

[KYRON45]

It means that both of us believed that Bards should be stuffed into an appendix, because the appendix can be cut out.

You should run for high office.

 

[Emerikol]

One of the serious issues faced by consciously old-school play is that it can take weeks or months to get a PC that survives more than 2-3 sessions. A lot of gamers today simply do not have that kind of time to invest. But they still want to play, and they still want to have an experience like the experiences of yesteryear.

I've actually seen as many superheroes in real life as I've seen this happen. I suppose if everyone was a complete noob including the DM.

 

[Maxperson]

Finally, the problem with appealing to Gary is that Gary contains multitudes. If you want to use Gary to support your position, you can find a quote from him. And if someone else wants to use Gary to destroy your position, they can find a quote from him. And the thing is ... you can probably find both of those quotes in the same paragraph.

This.

The man was so contradictory in his writing that we pretty much all had to house rule 1e to make it how WE wanted it to be. That's why I don't understand why some people who played back then treat his words as law. The man literally trained us to ignore him and do our own thing with the game.

PS- As for the thread, I don't understand why people ever name drop. In fact, the topic of avoiding name-dropping is covered by Jon Peterson in The Elusive Shift...

Dude! I was talking to Gary just the other day and he said he liked when we name drop his name.

 

[Maxperson]

You should run for high office.

I believe that I established that it's bards that are high.

 

[cranberry]

Gary Gygax was largely a product of his generation, and socioeconomic status.

I bet you could find a lot of people from his generation with similar world views.

That era has passed and attitudes have changed. It's time to move on.

And if you want to make orcs the good guys, no one is stopping you from doing so.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

I have a background in philosophy, literary studies and art criticism. I firmly believe games are art, tabletop games are art and D&D is art.

There is the notion of a separation of "high" and "low" art- contrast the images we associate with "opera" to what we associate with "folk songs." High art is significantly more respected than "low art" (though one could argue that in the modern era low art is far more useful for propaganda), and any new art form that seeks prestige will attempt to present itself as high art. High art is defined, in part, by its canonicity (hence where we get the nerd fandom term "canon"); that there are iconic works in an art form that everyone knows and if you know anything about art, you know the canonical examples inside and out. A big part of artistic canons are the personages and figures we associate with art; a canon is a codified mythology and a pantheon of gods at once.

We as RPG fans trying to prove our worth with a nascent artform, barely 50 years old, are attempting to create and assert our canon in order to have the art be seen as "high". To do that, we engage in hagiographic appeals to authority, picking guys who were, frankly, just schlubby midwestern nerds and treating them like philosophers treat Plato or political scientists treat Machiavelli.

TLDR: The idea of "Gary Gygax" as a great artist is significantly more important to the rhetoric of tabletop games and the cultural position of tabletop games than the man made of meat ever was or ever will be.

 

[Blue]

***If you meet a diehard defender of Cyborg Commando, let me know.

Owned it but never ran it. I remember being shocked that the true nature of the character was hidden from the characters and players.

But having read those rules, I (too?) would be surprised if there are any diehard defenders of that system.

 

[The Firebird]

I have a background in philosophy, literary studies and art criticism. I firmly believe games are art, tabletop games are art and D&D is art.

There is the notion of a separation of "high" and "low" art- contrast the images we associate with "opera" to what we associate with "folk songs." High art is significantly more respected than "low art" (though one could argue that in the modern era low art is far more useful for propaganda), and any new art form that seeks prestige will attempt to present itself as high art. High art is defined, in part, by its canonicity (hence where we get the nerd fandom term "canon"); that there are iconic works in an art form that everyone knows and if you know anything about art, you know the canonical examples inside and out. A big part of artistic canons are the personages and figures we associate with art; a canon is a codified mythology and a pantheon of gods at once.

We as RPG fans trying to prove our worth with a nascent artform, barely 50 years old, are attempting to create and assert our canon in order to have the art be seen as "high". To do that, we engage in hagiographic appeals to authority, picking guys who were, frankly, just schlubby midwestern nerds and treating them like philosophers treat Plato or political scientists treat Machiavelli.

TLDR: The idea of "Gary Gygax" as a great artist is significantly more important to the rhetoric of tabletop games and the cultural position of tabletop games than the man made of meat ever was or ever will be.

I see your point but I think there is something to the hagiography. The main thing I'll emphasize is the ubiquity of the mechanics introduced by Arneson and popularized by Gygax--especially hit points and experience points. These weren't completely original to OD&D, but they were quite innovative and the form that they took there has persisted largely unchanged and become ubiquitous in board games, video games, and pop culture. Not bad for schlubby midwestern nerds.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

I see your point but I think there is something to the hagiography. The main thing I'll emphasize is the ubiquity of the mechanics introduced by Arneson and popularized by Gygax--especially hit points and experience points. These weren't completely original to OD&D, but they were quite innovative and the form that they took there has persisted largely unchanged and become ubiquitous in board games, video games, and pop culture. Not bad for schlubby midwestern nerds.

Descartes was a schlubby French nerd and his rationalism has led the western world for 400 years.

 

[Kurotowa]

Invoking the name of a (mostly) beloved founder is an Appeal to Authority. Citing the legacy of the early days is an Appeal to Tradition. Both are well known logical fallacies. So yeah, using the name of Gygax as a weapon in a debate is not a cool move. No contest from me.

It's the same as when anyone in a geek space pulls out "But actually, according to the lore..." Anything with enough history to have "lore" will have decades of material from dozens of creators, many of whom contradicted each other either unintentionally or very intentionally. There are retcons, new editions, and outright character assassination as a new creator slanders the old one's pet favorites. When "according to the lore" gets invoked, it's always highly selective in both sources and time periods to conform to the speaker's personal preferences. I feel like we need a new geek fallacy named for it.