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Message: <blockquote data-quote="O-Castitatis-Lilium" data-source="post: 9449868" data-attributes="member: 7044618">Good article, as far as always (I have only had the pleasure of reading two so far). I have to agree with it, personally. To be fair, never really "worshipped" Gygax, never really thought much about him outside of just 'the guy who invented DnD'; he was just an author and nothing else growing up. Not even my dad and family "worshipped" him like some people do. I don't understand how people can look at a person and just...fawn all over them and act like that person is some sort of Deity or God...they are human just like the rest of us with flaws and issues. To me, it doesn't matter how Gygax was in his private life, as it has no bearing on how I play and run games; much like I have said in a few posts about this whole thing. I don't think I could ever "worship" a celebrity or anyone else like that for that matter, as it just seems weird to me. Sure, I have people like that, that I like more than others in the same category, but none that I would absolutely loose myself over and treat as a God or Deity. Gygax gave me a great game, he wrote books to explain how to play this amazing game, and even then the books were just tools for myself and my family to make our own adventures and stories up. Again, how he was in a very small section of his life means nothing to me 50 years after he made the game.Sure, he had some sexist views, and? that doesn't really bother me all that much. I was raised to view those views as idiotic and move on, not to take offense to them because that's what some people want you to do; and by allowing those views to effect you in some way, means you are giving that person some form of hold over you. Being and adult, I can see where his views on women seeped out into his game, but as a kid and even a teen that just wasn't something I was looking too deeply at. Even now that type of stuff doesn't bother me, and looking at the harlots table and stuff now; I laugh at it because I think it's funny. It's funny because it's nonsense to me, it makes no sense because of the way I was raised to believe that I could do anything that my brother and my male relatives could (I had FAR more of them than female lol). It's funny to me because I don't view it as a personally attack towards myself, or women in general, because it truly is just an idiotic point of view to have and the only response it should get is laughter and being ignored and not acknowledged as a legitimate argument. I guess Gygax and original DnD still hold a place in my heart, but more so because I have so many great childhood memories of spending weekends with my family and playing this game for hours on end. Ordering out for the weekend and setting up the living room and bedrooms as camp sites. Listening to the din of my family laughing, talking, joking, and everything else. With that, I still reference those book sand use them when I don't like something in 5E now. Not only that it shaped the way that I do creative writing and how I view magic as a whole in the entirety of the fantasy genere. Also, I think it still holds a special place in my heart because it was how my parents and myself realized that I had a learning disability believe it or not. I think that if my dad hadn't of introduced me to this game so early, that it wouldn't really have been caught an I probably would have fallen through the cracks...and my education would have faultered considerably. I was about 8 when we discovered I couldn't do math as fast as others, and while I could count and read numbers as written I was struggling to read larger groups of numbers, anything into the 100's, and do basic numerical things. with that my parents had a small bit of evidence and I was able to start testing for it. At the time Dyscalculia wasn't truly recognized, even though the term had been made official in the 70's. Children were still considered not to have it and were just lazy well up to the late 90's. I'm going off topic though. Point is, Gygax to a very little degree, and the original game more so, still hold a place in my heart for different reasons, reasons that really don't disappear despite the man's flaws.</blockquote>

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