GARY GYGAX
AS SEEN IN:
'Futurama'
"Anthology Of Interest I"
TV DIMENSION:
The Tooniverse
SYNOPSIS:
With Professor Farnsworth's What-If machine, Fry learns what would have happened had he never been frozen and thawed out in the year 3000. It's up to former Vice President Al Gore, actress Nichele Nichols, physicist Dr. Stephen Hawking, and Gary Gygax (the creator of Dungeons & Dragons) to save the day.
From Wikipedia:
Ernest Gary Gygax (July 27, 1938 – March 4, 2008)[3] was an American writer and game designer best known for co-creating the pioneering role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) with Dave Arneson. Gygax has been described as the father of D&D.
In the 1960s, Gygax created an organization of wargaming clubs and founded the Gen Con gaming convention. In 1971, he helped develop Chainmail, a miniatures wargame based on medieval warfare. He co-founded the company Tactical Studies Rules (TSR, Inc.) with childhood friend Don Kaye in 1973. The following year, he and Dave Arneson created D&D, which expanded on Gygax's Chainmail and included elements of the fantasy stories he loved as a child. In the same year, he founded The Dragon, a magazine based around the new game.
In 1977, Gygax began work on a more comprehensive version of the game, called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Gygax designed numerous manuals for the game system, as well as several pre-packaged adventures called "modules" that gave a person running a D&D game (the "Dungeon Master") a rough script and ideas on how to run a particular gaming scenario. In 1983, he worked to license the D&D product line into the successful D&D cartoon series.
After leaving TSR in 1985 over issues with its new majority owner, Gygax continued to create role-playing game titles independently, beginning with the multi-genre Dangerous Journeys in 1992. He designed another gaming system called Legendary Adventure, released in 1999.
In 2005, Gygax was involved in the Castles & Crusades role-playing game, which was conceived as a hybrid between the third edition of D&D and the original version of the game conceived by Gygax.
Gygax was married twice and had six children. In 2004, Gygax suffered two strokes, narrowly avoided a subsequent heart attack, and was then diagnosed with an abdominal aortic aneurysm, from which he died in March 2008.
O'BSERVATIONS:
As you may have noticed with yesterday's showcase (Mr. & Mrs. Mel Brooks in honor of tonight's Tony Awards), the theme for these two weeks of vacation won't all be from that episode of 'Just Shoot Me'. However, even if I had more than enough to cover, I still would have used Gary Gygax for today.
And that's because my cousin Paul Dabkowski is marrying the loverly Angela Jacobs.
Paul owns and manages a company that runs live action role playing game weekends in Massachusetts. And through that venture he met Angela, a fellow enthusiast who is a brilliant artist and costume designer. I would imagine she's also a fierce and feisty competitor in the field as well.
So who better than the creator of the Owlbear to be today's showcase to serve as a small tribute to these kids on their special day?
Congratulations and all the best for your own Futurama, Angela and Paul!
Or should I say, "Congratulations, 'Isolinde' and 'Brent'?"
BCnU!
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