Ryan Dancey's letter on the death of TSR

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Just a small town girl, livin' in a lonely world
She took the midnight train goin' anywhere
Just a city boy, born and raised in south Detroit
He took the midnight train goin' anywhere
 
Why can't Gygax be a guy who found that people liked his game (nuance around the "his" both irrelevant and completely relevant), and wanted to make a game company out of it, and made decisions as best he could (which was clearly not good enough in the eyes of many)? Why does it have to be more complicated than that?
 
Willie the Duck said:
Why can't Gygax be a guy who found that people liked his game (nuance around the "his" both irrelevant and completely relevant), and wanted to make a game company out of it, and made decisions as best he could (which was clearly not good enough in the eyes of many)? Why does it have to be more complicated than that?
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Because the only thing people like more than making someone out to be a hero is tearing them down. There's a point in celebrity where people seem to stop regarding a person as a human being, and begin to hold them to Saint-like standards, and Gygax seems to be just north of that line.
 
Willie the Duck said:
Why can't Gygax be a guy who found that people liked his game (nuance around the "his" both irrelevant and completely relevant), and wanted to make a game company out of it, and made decisions as best he could (which was clearly not good enough in the eyes of many)? Why does it have to be more complicated than that?
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He could be that guy. He was that guy.

But he can't just be that guy, because it's not the truth. He invented an amazing game that's changed all of our lives for the better. He also flat-out attempted to cheat all of his business partners, whether they were his fellow creatives or the pencil-pushers he invited to invest in his business. He wrote beautifully and evocatively, while also desparately needing an editor-- as attested to by the differences between D&D and AD&D, or his work after being ousted (for good reason) from TSR. He had a wonderfully inventive, playful mind that he loved to share with others... but he could also be an egotistical domineering jerk.

And the thing is, if you cannot love him for the positives while loving him despite the negatives, you don't really love him; you're just worshipping an icon that represents something other than reality in your heart. I think it is disrespectful to Gygax's memory to worship him instead of remembering him; it is disrespectful to his living memory to whitewash it into something politically correct for the sake of having a hero to look up to, instead of looking up to the heroic within him.
 
Baulderstone said:
Riffing off your comment and Faylar's about rules not gatekeeping, one thing that D&D did well in early editions was get players to the table quickly. Roll 3d6 six time. Pick a class, maybe a race depending on the edition, buy some equipment, and you were playing. You could even have the equipment purchasing happen in character if you wanted to get into play sooner.
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It's all relative. To an experienced roleplayer, older versions of D&D character creation may seem really fast and simple compared to Gurps or even D20 but I think you are underestimating the amount of page flipping, chart hunting and general confusion (who the hell is Rod and why do I need to be saved from him?) that it entailed compared to creating a character in something like D6 Star Wars.
 
PolarBlues said:
It's all relative. To an experienced roleplayer, older versions of D&D character creation may seem really fast and simple compared to Gurps or even D20 but I think you are underestimating the amount of page flipping, chart hunting and general confusion (who the hell is Rod and why do I need to be saved from him?) that it entailed compared to creating a character in something like D6 Star Wars.
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No. I simply wasn't comparing it to D6 Star Wars at all.
 
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