People love to bitch about what they love. Even those who bitched about the D&D and AD&D rules loved the game.
Gygax, Anderson, and the others who worked on the *early* versions of D&D didn't just create a single game, they created a *type* of gaming. Role Playing games, whether table top, LARPS, or computer based, would not exist at all if it wasn't for Gygax and Arneson.
In many ways Gygax was the "public face" of D&D. He was the co-creator, so his name was on the early books, and he stayed with the company and the game after Arnerson left.
Most of us old-time, die hard D&D geeks have a special fondness in our hearts for the older versions of the game. The original brown books, the first edition of D&D in the "blue box" and the first edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons with the demon artwork on the Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide and the early "dungeon crawl" adventures. Those were the products we loved and the ones Gygax was most involved with.
The later, "write rules about anything and publish it to make a buck" largely came after Gygax left the company. He himself complained and fought against the prolieration of rules for the sake of rules and the direction D&D took right before he left.
As to "why wasn't he recognized when he was alive?" well, he *was.* If you read the tribute thread at Troll Lord games, where Gygax worked last, countless people are relating stories of meeting Gygax, thanking him for creating D&D, and telling him how the game changed their lives. I think that qualifies as "recognized while he was still alive."
I can make a parallal argument, but it won't mean anything to you unless you are a shooter. When Jeff Cooper, the man widely hailed as the creator of the "Modern Technique" of pistol shooting and first instructor to set up a serious civilian shoot school died, the gun community at large went into mourning. There were tributes and stories about Cooper and his legacy everwhere. A few people reacted like you did with, more or less, "What's the big deal?" They didn't understand Cooper's impact on the shooting sports and firearms training world and didn't understand the impact of his death. He was a pioneer in his field, just as Gygax was in his.
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Gygax, Anderson, and the others who worked on the *early* versions of D&D didn't just create a single game, they created a *type* of gaming. Role Playing games, whether table top, LARPS, or computer based, would not exist at all if it wasn't for Gygax and Arneson.
In many ways Gygax was the "public face" of D&D. He was the co-creator, so his name was on the early books, and he stayed with the company and the game after Arnerson left.
Most of us old-time, die hard D&D geeks have a special fondness in our hearts for the older versions of the game. The original brown books, the first edition of D&D in the "blue box" and the first edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons with the demon artwork on the Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide and the early "dungeon crawl" adventures. Those were the products we loved and the ones Gygax was most involved with.
The later, "write rules about anything and publish it to make a buck" largely came after Gygax left the company. He himself complained and fought against the prolieration of rules for the sake of rules and the direction D&D took right before he left.
As to "why wasn't he recognized when he was alive?" well, he *was.* If you read the tribute thread at Troll Lord games, where Gygax worked last, countless people are relating stories of meeting Gygax, thanking him for creating D&D, and telling him how the game changed their lives. I think that qualifies as "recognized while he was still alive."
I can make a parallal argument, but it won't mean anything to you unless you are a shooter. When Jeff Cooper, the man widely hailed as the creator of the "Modern Technique" of pistol shooting and first instructor to set up a serious civilian shoot school died, the gun community at large went into mourning. There were tributes and stories about Cooper and his legacy everwhere. A few people reacted like you did with, more or less, "What's the big deal?" They didn't understand Cooper's impact on the shooting sports and firearms training world and didn't understand the impact of his death. He was a pioneer in his field, just as Gygax was in his.