Yesterday I heard that Gary Gygax, inventor of Dungeons and Dragons, had died at 69. And I don't understand, I truly don't, why that of all deaths should affect me the way it does.

Every day, people die; 150,000 of them, in fact. Every now and then I read the obituary of a scientist whose work I admired, and I don't feel like this. I should, of course, but I don't. I remember hearing about the death of Isaac Asimov, and more distantly, the death of Robert Heinlein (though I was 8 at the time) and that didn't affect me like this.

I never knew one single thing about Gary Gygax. I don't know if he had a wife or children. I couldn't guess his political opinions, or what he thought about the future of humanity. He was just a name on the cover of books I read until they disintegrated.

I searched on the Net and just found comments from other people feeling the same way. Stopped in their tracks by this one death, and not understanding why, and trying to come up with an explanation for their own feelings. Why him?

I never even really played D&D all that much. I played a little with David Levitt, my best friend in elementary school - I think it was how we initially met, in fact, though the memory fades into oblivion. I remember my father teaching me to play very simple D&D games, around the same time I was entering kindergarten; I remember being upset that I couldn't cast a Shield spell more than once. But mostly, I just read the rulebooks.

There are people who played D&D with their friends, every week or every day, until late at night, in modules that Gary Gygax designed. I understand why they feel sad. But all I did, mostly, was read the rulebooks to myself. Why do I feel the same way?

Did D&D help teach me that when the world is in danger, you are expected to save it? Did Gary Gygax teach me to form new worlds in my imagination, or to fantasize about more interesting powers than money? Is there something about mentally simulating D&D's rules that taught me how to think? Is it just the sheer amount of total time my imagination spent in those worlds?

I truly don't know. I truly don't know why I feel this way about Gary Gygax's death. I don't know why I feel this compulsion to write about it, to tell someone. I don't think I would ...

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