Hacker News Reader

A fun story of an old D&D player who meets and interviews Gary Gygax.

1. It's funny that he's so dismissive of the roleplaying aspect of D&D. Some groups I've played with got tons of laughs from roleplaying, the more competitive players less so.

2. What a mess copyright seems to have made! Avatars and Ilfs? Let the guys play!

My initial takeaways as a 10 year off and on player and dungeon master. RIP Gygax!

View on HN

Dave Arneson was the other creator of D&D and in retrospect, I think he was the one who really drove the RPG and world creating aspect of it. Gygax was more interested in designing the rules, but Arneson created the first campaign (Blackmoor).

There's a book called "Playing at the World" that goes into the details of all this, but my takeaway was that Gygax was more of a rules guy, and Arneson was the story teller.

Also a great read if you want to know a lot about the corporate side of the whole situation...

"Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons & Dragons" is good as well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com