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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 9599584" data-attributes="member: 7023840">There is so much awesomeness* in those posts.Obviously, my first post in the thread went for the low-hanging fruit. But I've always believed you have to truly love something to know it well enough to find the humor.**But I have written a lot about Gygax, <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/let-he-who-is-without-sin-cast-the-first-magic-missile-why-gygax-still-matters-to-me.706322/" target="_blank">and recently</a>. Because he matters to me. But he was also a person, and like all people was flawed. He did amazing work that matters to our hobby, but that work in the TTRPG field was basically done in less than a decade. It might have been an insanely productive decade that for all practical purposes started this entire field ... but ... that was a long time ago.Other than a few die-hard defenders of Lejendary Adventures,*** I don't think anyone believes that Gygax had creative relevancy past 1986 (and I am being generous). And that's okay! What he gave to us when he was pumping out material and starting GenCon and all that (and also bringing in other amazing creatives doing work) is more than enough!!!But it also means that people shouldn't be name-dropping him as an appeal to what should be happening today. I love and still play AD&D (1e), but it's heavily modified, and I would never say that Gygax is an authority of how things should be in 2025. And he wouldn't either.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. 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...*A little not-awesomeness, too, but that's been covered.**There's a lot to unpack in that, but it's why some jokes feel good, and others don't.***If you meet a diehard defender of Cyborg Commando, let me know.</blockquote>

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