I was saddened to read that the co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons recently passed away.

To be honest, I never actually played a complete D&D game, but my buddies in sixth grade -- Dennis Klein, Chris Kennedy, and especially Chris Lucas -- and I were mad about the game. I collected and read the modules, got a bunch of the little pewter figures, prepped for a gaming session, but whenever we got together, we never had the attention spans to play. We just played the Atari instead.

I do remember writing a few of my own modules, such as "Victory at Castle Deepmoat," a companion to my buddy Chris Lucas' "Diamond of Terror Mountain." Of course, now that I think about it, I never really finished any of those modules...

But man, it was fun coming up with new locales and new challenges. And making maps, of course. So I have Mr. Gygax to thank for helping to inspire me to be a writer (along with Mr. Tolkien, of course!). My story "A Game of Contact," coming out this summer in the Exquisite Corpuscle anthology, has a scene of D&D-playing in it that I really had fun writing.

And in honor of Mr. Gygax, here's a fun snippet from the wonderful "Freaks & Geeks" -- the one about Carlos the Dwarf:



"Definitely cool guys." Thanks, Mr. Gygax! Later...