With the news of Gary Gygax’s death last week, it caused me to sit down and think about the way D&D has impacted pretty much every aspect of gaming we see today and my life in general. Now, I’ll admit that I’ve played a little bit of Dungeons and Dragons in my younger years, but it never sparked my interest as much as video games. Games inspired by rules laid down decades before their release.

Shooters and sports games are the least partially affected by the rules set forth in D&D. You may not get a saving throw from that grenade, but the way a computer calculates trajectory and impact is influenced by D & D rules.  While there’s no D6 roll to see if your reciever catches the ball, however, most action games and pretty much every RPG on the market follow the rules set down by Mr. Gygax back in ‘74. Without that foundation, I don’t think Final Fantasy would exist, meaning Square as we know it would have ceased to be a long time ago. Think about the impact of that scenario for a moment.

In my opinion, MMORPGs have been influenced more by the D&D ruleset than any other game to date. Every time your character in WoW attacks or is attacked, the computer calculates in the background much like players would do in a D&D campaign. Critical Strikes, resistances, hits, misses, parries, dodges – all of them are triggered in the background by basically the computer throwing a die and coming up with a number.

So I salute Gary Gygax, even if this article is a bit late.  I salute Gary Gygax and the huge impact he and Dave Arneson has made on the world of video gaming. You have given me countless hours of fun, sir, and I hope wherever you are now that every roll is a Perfect 20.

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