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<blockquote data-quote="Greg Benage" data-source="post: 9445906" data-attributes="member: 93631">I know you said &quot;watch for it in the comments,&quot; but the hero worship is not something I ever experienced in the hobby, even entering as I did in 1980, until...probably these forums, when he started posting, certainly in the OSR--the retrospectives on Grognardia and the like. I don't think anyone I played with thought about Gygax much at all, but if we did, it was probably with some form of bemusement. Everything from his name, to the rules, to the writing style, to many of the naming conventions, to the D&amp;D &quot;setting&quot; or &quot;genre&quot; itself was just so intensely weird and sometimes outright goofy that no one I knew took it very seriously. We sure had fun with it, though.We read Dragon every month, but not especially for the Gygax contributions. My first visit to GenCon was in Kenosha, so '83 or '84, and I have no recollection of Gygax whatsover--not a panel, not a game, not a sighting. I literally have no evidence that he was even there, and assuming he was, none of us sought him out as some kind of celebrity. When I got to college and encountered my first actual grognards, the prevailing attitude was basically &quot;this is just fantasy wargaming and we'd been doing it for years before 'D&amp;D' came along.&quot; Whether or not this was true in the sense they intended it (I suspect not), that was the attitude. This is also when I started to meet a lot of gamers among whom D&amp;D was not highly regarded. They were more likely to hero-worship Steve Perrin, Greg Stafford, Sandy Petersen, Marc Miller or Steve Jackson.All of this is just to say that when I did finally encounter Gygax hero worship, it was more as a revisitation of his legacy as a game designer. It was like, &quot;Holy naughty word, this guy did something really amazing, and he was underappreciated, uncelebrated, sometimes derided and even run out of his own company, let's take another look.&quot; I'm always a little surprised to learn he had devoted fans back in the day, even if intellectually I know someone had to be writing all that fan mail!</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Greg Benage, post: 9445906, member: 93631"] I know you said "watch for it in the comments," but the hero worship is not something I ever experienced in the hobby, even entering as I did in 1980, until...probably these forums, when he started posting, certainly in the OSR--the retrospectives on Grognardia and the like. I don't think anyone I played with thought about Gygax much at all, but if we did, it was probably with some form of bemusement. Everything from his name, to the rules, to the writing style, to many of the naming conventions, to the D&D "setting" or "genre" itself was just so intensely weird and sometimes outright goofy that no one I knew took it very seriously. We sure had fun with it, though. We read Dragon every month, but not especially for the Gygax contributions. My first visit to GenCon was in Kenosha, so '83 or '84, and I have no recollection of Gygax whatsover--not a panel, not a game, not a sighting. I literally have no evidence that he was even there, and assuming he was, none of us sought him out as some kind of celebrity. When I got to college and encountered my first actual grognards, the prevailing attitude was basically "this is just fantasy wargaming and we'd been doing it for years before 'D&D' came along." Whether or not this was true in the sense they intended it (I suspect not), that was the attitude. This is also when I started to meet a lot of gamers among whom D&D was not highly regarded. They were more likely to hero-worship Steve Perrin, Greg Stafford, Sandy Petersen, Marc Miller or Steve Jackson. All of this is just to say that when I [I]did[/I] finally encounter Gygax hero worship, it was more as a revisitation of his legacy as a game designer. It was like, "Holy naughty word, this guy did something really amazing, and he was underappreciated, uncelebrated, sometimes derided and even run out of his own company, let's take another look." I'm always a little surprised to learn he had devoted fans back in the day, even if intellectually I know [I]someone[/I] had to be writing all that fan mail! [/QUOTE]

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