Tuesday, March 04, 2008

The Grand Dungeon Master has passed

Gary Gygax, the man who gave millions of teenage boys something to do besides swap dirty magazines, now travels in elephants.

I played D&D back in the early 80s, when it was still fairly new and not very structured. My folks took away my books and destroyed them when the rumors of satanic stuff started going around. (Ironically, I never started messing around with the actual occult until after I was forced to give up the innocuous fantasy gaming.) But there was this preacher who came across as oh-so-knowledgeable about the dire threat to the faith of the youth, and my parents decided to err on the side of caution.

In another irony, the same preacher who convinced my parents that Dungeons and Dragons was a greased firepole to hell now has a new book out lumping Catholics in with Scientologists, Moonies and (of course) satanists. What I've read by this guy absolutely drips ignorance. I'm sure he doesn't remember me (I questioned him at one of his diatribes once), but if he knew I'd ended up Catholic, he'd probably take it as vindication. Clod.

If I had a bag of Doritos and a two-liter of Coke, I'd hoist them in Gary's memory.

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