The passing of Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons is a true loss not just to the pen-and-paper or traditional RPG industry but to the entire gaming community.

There is much that we owe D&D – part largely to Gary’s ideas and imagination. From the rudimentary rules of miniatures war gaming, Gary culled the rules for the first D&D system. He, together with Dave Arneson, opened the universe to gaming. Imagine what fantasy gaming, video games and MMORPGs would be like without D&D and without Gary’s legacy?

What a bland landscape that would be. There wouldn’t be any Lynx, no Cloud or Final Fantasy and certainly Ragnarok or WoW would never have been conceived.

What MMOs Owe to D&D

1. Cooperative Gameplay – before online gaming was born, D&D was the only unique game that you play as a team. True, it would be sometimes hard to gather a group of friends on a Saturday evening. But everyone who grew up with the game ANTICIPATED that weekend evening of rolling up stats, gulping down Mountain Dew and killing a score of orcs. Cooperative gameplay was born. And that’s the essence of MMORPGs, right? Try to imagine raids without your friends or guildmates? It’s the idea that being part of the team and contributing to a goal is what creates fulfillment and not mention, a sense of satisfaction in a game.
2. Experience Points - everything boils down to numbers. The concept of experience points is the universal metric of MMOs today. This is where we compute all the grind, figure out the optimized way to power-level and how we get to the pinnacle of your character’s power. D&D gave us experience points and we should thank Gary for that.
3. Character Classes – MMO games try to outwit each other with game balance and myriad ways for us to believe that classes are different. I honestly think that they are not. Each class can be traced to the 4 basic classes of D&D: the “tanker” is simply a warrior, the “nukers” – heck, they’re magic users, the “healers” or “support” are plain dull clerics who, in the old days of D&D, cannot wield a bladed weapon. Finally there are “Rogues” which break off into thieves and rangers. Call it what you will in any game, but D&D gave us that. Make no mistake.
4. Personalizing your character - every individual is unique. That’s why Gary’s game made us roll stats and then add personalities, alignments, feats, skills and even flaws to our characters. Who wants to play a stupid goody-two-shoes Paladin who’s as predictable as Big Ben (well, I know a friend who does). But that fact is, D&D gave us the parameters that WE CAN customize our characters. That’s the Holy Grail of gaming and MMOs. Again, Gary opened the doors to this. Now, you can Snorg, the half-orc Barbarian who likes collecting history books and has a phobia of elves! It’s this level of customizing that makes for a unique and fun game.
5. Game Masters – I already told you several myths about MMO Game Masters. But the concept of GMs (Dungeon Masters in the case of D&D) is another Gary Gygax legacy. Someone MUST control the game and give it order. Someone must see to the story arc, flesh the milieu and generate/populate it with interesting and unique Non-Player Characters. It used to be a single guy’s job. Now, that tasked is shared by a development team hard at work trying to make the next World of Warcraft. DMs/GMs have a great responsibility. Call it cliche but “with great power comes great responsibility”.
6. NPCs - Non-Player Characters are also something that MMOs owe to Dungeons and Dragons. In the old days, D&D had charts and tables to determine the temperament and moods of the NPCs. It’s fun to roll up these things. I looked forward to it every weekend when I would write down my “module” for the current campaign. As Dungeon Master (DM) to my friends, I would write down notes about the personalities of these NPCs, gave them names and breathed life into them by nuances and even with distinct voices and personalities. In MMOs, it’s difficult to get the same amount of detail. One can only put scripts and a semi-linear way which the NPC will react. Ask any gamer and chances are he’s not THAT interested in talking to every NPC in town. In D&D, it’s quite different. NPCs ARE interesting and can make or break an adventure.

Gary Gygax and D&D are a huge part of MMORPGs and video gaming today. It’s a fact. It was Gary’s gift to all of us. It’s the lasting legacy that D&D and Gary will leave us, the generation that grew up with it, and the generations to come. From a simple typewritten manuscript that Gary Gygax shared with his friends, D&D and its many incarnations grew to scales that can topple the might of any media. Gaming and fantasy has come mainstream. It’s no longer a nerd’s hobby, it’s everywhere.

And we will see it grow for years to come… with more innovations, more ideas, more games and certainly with that comes lasting stories of adventures that we shared with our friends.

Whether it be online or in some damp basement, Gary Gygax has passed the torch to us. It’s our job to keep the flame burning.

Thank you, Gary… for everything. My life has been changed because of your gift.