Posted by TJ
on 3/5/2008, 1:36 pm, in reply to "In memory of Gary...."
Message modified by user TJ 3/5/2008, 1:54 pm
One of the things I always seem to hear is that Dungeons and Dragons is a plagerized game, having borrowed heavily from Tolkien, but Tolkien only borrowed from those before him.
It is an ancient and honorable tradition that each storyteller, each generation, take the stories that were passed to them, add something of their own, and then pass them on again to the rest of us. Gary did that, and more.
That doesn't lessen his achievement, it confirms it. Gary Gygax took the same material, the same tradition, and told a new kind of story that everyone could enjoy: young and old. It is fitting that he be given the same high praise once given to Tolkien himself.
"He is a great enough magician to tap our most common nightmares, daydreams and twilight fancies, but he never invented them either: he found them a place to live, a green alternative to each day's madness here in a poisoned world. We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers - thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams."
- Peter S. Beagle
Farewell, Gary.
Message Thread:
« Back to thread