I don’t know if anyone has heard this yet, but apparently Gary Gygax died this morning.
It’s sad; playing D&D was a major passtime of mine back in college and heavily influenced my and many other peoples gaming careers.
Goodbye Gary, and thanks for the enjoyment you helped give all of us.
I just heard. Sad news indeed.
Wow. His passing is real millestone for me. Starting the year after high school, I and four or my friends played D&D pretty regularly. We even played a couple times in the past couple years (it ain’t easy for guys in our 40s to make time for that sort of thing), and we used the old original Gary Gygax rulebooks (the rules were too burnt into our brains to learn any new ones.)
GG RIP. Of course, you can say this with any number of things, but there’s two kinds of people: People who know who Gary Gygax was, and people who didn’t. And the divide between 'em is an exceptionally wide one.
I’m gonna go cast a Chromatic Orb in honor of my dead homie right now…
http://easydamus.com/character.html
In memory of Gary Gygax:
What kind of character are you?
Neutral Good Human Cleric/Sorcerer (3rd/2nd Level)
Ability Scores:
Strength- 15
Dexterity- 18
Constitution- 14
Intelligence- 18
Wisdom- 15
Charisma- 15
This is my actual D&D character, that I had since I think the 80s. And we played a couple times even as recently as a year ago (although that’s about it in the last 10 years—although we have played other RPGs (non-computer RPGs).
Matthew
Duke of Wesselton, Siridar Governor of East Albion: House of Gildhelm-Avignon
Race: Human
Deity: Eru/Jusa
Level: 13th level Cavalier
Alignment: Lawful Good
Hit Points: 106
Age: 30, Birthday: May 5, 2522 (Albion calendar).
Strength: 18 (100)
Intelligence: 13
Wisdom: 16
Dexterity: 17 (28)
Constitution: 17
Charisma: 14 (46)
Comeliness 17
Luck 72%
…that quiz is WAY too long. Can’t we just roll up some characters? And damn straight I want to roll for Psionics, too.
As a misspent youth (sic), I played a chaotic evil tag team of an Illusionist and Fighter (18/76 strength). I like to think I’ve since turned away from the power of the Dark Side.
I miss playing D&D. One of the few things I really enjoyed growing up. Never got to play as much as I would have liked, but it always opened up this amazing world in my mind.
Go with peace Gary. You done good.
Eulogy for a Gamer
There is an empty chair,
at the table this day.
A hallowed place where,
a friend once played.
The roll of his dice,
my ears long to hear.
Or perhaps it would suffice,
if he should suddenly appear.
With character sheet in hand,
and a bag of Cheeze-doodles to share.
All his friends would stand,
as he sat in the empty chair.
I hear his voice a-callin’,
and it ties my heart in a knot.
For he cries, “Though a comrade has fallen,
You must play for those who cannot.”
We conquered worlds on the run,
he and I in the name of fun.
And as others may come and go,
I make both both friend and foe.
But what I long for most,
is our past now long a ghost.
Ahh, Duke Matthew. My favorite D&D character. I remember him well.
Bumping this thread cuz of its relevance to the Dragon Arc.
I’d love to restart the conversation about GWCers experiences with D&D and other table top role-playing games.
How’d you get 18 (100) strength? That’s a wicked set of stats.
I had a fighter with 18/76 strength, but I think I may have used Unearthed Aracana (1st edition) rules to bump it up that high.
I did roll for psionics once, for a magic user. But that was late out campaigning days, and he didn’t go very far.
Don’t think I have the character sheets in my files, but the fighter was named Rogue. Chaotic evil. I ran him at the same time as a CE Illusionist, Cronos. I was terrible thinking up names. Anyhow, Chromatic Orb was an awesome spell.
They used to wreak all kinds of havoc. My DM played a paladin when he was a player. He hated my characters and our chaotic evil hijinks. When Rogue got killed, he had the guys that killed him, who had some kind of good alignment, behead him, so’s I couldn’t have him Resurrected. Total bullshite, say I.
I don’t think I’d play CE today. But, you know, kids will be kids.
I think it’s time to start a “Dungeon & Dragons Stories and Memories” thread, but to answer you questions:
For my Matthew character I rolled really lucky when I first rolled him up.
And I think we also played that certain attributes could advance ? I forget.
All that said, I don’t think my 18 (100) strength was natural. I think something magical bumped me up to that strength.
Bear in mind though, that we played with these characters for literally years in real time and in game time. So all sorts of stuff --good and bad – happened to Matthew over the years.
As I mentioned on Twitter, Matthew died a couple times. And as you know in D&D death is rarely the end— especially when our group had a Rod of Resurrection handy.
When you die and come back your Constitution goes down a point.
My Matthew character actually died once and remained dead for a year and it was made into a campaign to retreive his body. But during that period another player character --Matthew’s BFF Bartholemew actually “lay” with my NPC wife Elaine. Matthew never held it against Bartholmew of course, because I …I mean Matthew was dead at the time.
So my Constitution got down pretty low but through magic and various other forces my Constitution went up again.
LOL that you had a character named Rogue. I had a Hobbit Thief character named Rogo Emptypipe. He was a poor hobbit and poverty forced him to a life of true thievery. I had Rogp quite some time before rolling up Matthew.
Rogo was for a long time very powerful because he became “possessed” by a “tween”. A tween inhabits your spirit but has no adverse effects but rather the postitive effect of extreme luck. In game terms that meant I got to roll Two 20 sided To Hit dice every time and I could choose the higher result. And meanwhile, any enemy attacking me ALSO rolled two 20 siders and picked the lower result. I won a lot of fights and backstabed many a foe.
Anyway, more to say on the new thread.
