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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sundragon2012" data-source="post: 2545604" data-attributes="member: 7624">I have to preface this by again saying that I appreciate Gary creating D&D in the first place and that I have nothing against him as a person.Having said that....What is it that is so compelling about Gygax except the romance of old familiar names like Xagyg and Mordenkainen or the broken bindings of your lovingly fondled 1ed DM's guide with the efreet on the cover? In fact I think that the 1e DM's Guide was more interesting by far than the later incarnations of the same book. There was cool, obscure stuff in that book.When people talk about gygaxian I see a set of assumptions that seem IMO reminiscent of the RPing experiences of adolescents at best and my brother and I at 11 at worst. I am not trying to be insulting, but the things I read about Gary's campaigns ie. the nazi soldiers in a dungeon and other wacky crap seems to me about as similar to mature RPing as Hercules, The Legendary Journeys is to real greek mythology. I'm not even talking about some pretentious "mature" role playing, I am talking about:Dungeons that have a reason to exist.Monsters with ecologies that seem believable.Paladins who do more than kill critters in holes in the ground because their detect evil ability rang off.Actual 3-D characters who have motivations outside of their next gold piece.Naming conventions that are believable within their millieu.Moral complexity to plotlines.Internally consistant environments.And so on...I'm not claiming that none of Gary's stuff was deeper, but that which is considered gygaxian seems well......very unsophisticated and a throwback to a time when gaming was just starting out and its potentials were far from realized. There is an old phrase that goes like this, "You can never go home." In gaming, I would take this to mean that even though we have wonderful memories of old gaming experiences, those experiences have been romanticized somewhat and that going back to those times really isn't possible because we mature and our tastes mature and change.Some things, like Drawmij and Gygaxite deserve a fond spot in our memories but that IMO is where they belong.Chris</blockquote>

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