Earlier this week Gary Gygax, the co-creator of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, died at the age of 69 of an abdominal aortic aneurysm. Heartfelt tributes proliferated across the Interweb swiftly; Fimoculous did a good job collecting some popular sites' responses. One of my favorites was a very cool interview with Gygax from 2003 that Boing Boing Gadgets reposted.

I was first exposed to D&D back in elementary school, and although I tried to get into it, creating and equipping characters with the help of my class' "dungeon master," I never really played through an actual campaign. However, I've since played many a computer-based role-playing game that owed its existence to the influence of Gygax's creation, and I can say that I've enjoyed most of them immensely. It's been quite a while since I've immersed myself in games like that; maybe it's time again...

Gary Gygax's influence over many of us is huge. He will definitely be missed, but there is no doubt that his legacy will live on. I'll leave you with a particularly poignant comic from xkcd: