Alas. A roll of the d20 for the man who gave us Dungeons & Dragons, the game (and language) of many a socially dysfunctional youth. He died today at 69.
Oh, I can’t resist quoting the way CNN described Dungeons & Dragons:

Dungeons & Dragons players create fictional characters and carry out their adventures with the help of complicated rules. The quintessential geek pastime, it spawned a wealth of copycat games and later inspired a whole genre of computer games that’s still growing in popularity.

Is that what geeks sound like when we try to sound cool? Anyway, no one since Tolkien has done as much for sword and sorcery entertainment as Gygax did.

Edit: For a truly belabored, but ultimately insightful, obit of Gygax and explanation of D&D, check out the Slate.com obit.