Gary's world

Gary Gygax, the creator of Dungeons and Dragons, died last week.  But his world lives on, and I'm not just talking about Ciniath, my fourth level barbarian who wields a triple damage war ax.  You're living in his world.  Wired's Adam Rogers:

The most popular books on earth are fantasy novels about wizards and magic swords. The most popular movies are about characters from superhero comic books. The most popular TV shows look like elaborate role-playing games: intricate, hidden-clue-laden science fiction stories connected to impossibly mathematical games that live both online and in the real world. And you, the viewer, can play only if you’ve sufficiently mastered your home-entertainment command center so that it can download a snippet of audio to your iPhone, process it backward with beluga whale harmonic sequences and then podcast the results to the members of your Yahoo group.

[snip]

Facebook and other social networks ask people to create a character — one based on the user, sure, but still a distinct entity. Your character then builds relationships by connecting to other characters. Like Dungeons & Dragons, this is not a competitive game. There’s no way to win. You just play.

Which means that the joke's actually on the jock Alltel guy:

Don't believe me?  Check this out:

Sorry, but that's all I got. I've been waiting for Elliot to blog something more profound, but to my surprise he hasn't said anything yet about Gygax's passing.