

Dungeons and Dragons Co-Creator Dies at 61 - DanielBMarkham
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30147390/

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MicahWedemeyer
Without Arneson & Gygax, I never would have created my first startup:
<http://www.obsidianportal.com>

Plus, I would have been nerdy, unpopular, and bored in school, instead of
nerdy, unpopular, and entertained :)

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LBRapid
Wow, your first startup looks like something that might interests me.

Even though I never played D&D, I definitely appreciate the creators for the
great contribution they made to the genre.

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MicahWedemeyer
Sign up for free :)

Then get a premium account and send me your delicious money!

~~~
zitterbewegung
Do I get a bag of holding with my premium account?

~~~
MicahWedemeyer
Plus a portable hole. But, if you ever stop paying, I stick one into the other
and...

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DLWormwood
It looks like this year's GenCon's going to have the same air of melancholy as
last year after Gygax passed... /-:

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vorador
By the way, I've always been looking for a good introduction to d&d. Do you
know a good computer game for beginners ?

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tristmegistus
I suggest that playing in person would be a better introduction to D&D than
any computer game. The publisher, wizards of the coast, organizes D&D game
days at local game stores around the country. They are free and very newby
friendly. A key ingredient of D&D for many, myself included, is the time spent
around a table with friends. Online interactions don't fully capture this
experience.

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DanielBMarkham
The first program I wrote from front to back was a D&D character generator.
But there was something I was taking away by substituting 3d6 with Random().
Somehow computerizing it made part of the tactile experience go away.

There's nothing like announcing "Okay, we're going to enter the room" and then
hearing those dice rattling around behind the DM screen. Everybody looks at
each other in anticipation.

They said he taught courses on how to make games more playable. I imagine some
of those lessons have direct uses in making web sites more "sticky" and
programs more immersive.

He'll be missed.

~~~
thomaspaine
Wow, the first program I wrote was a D&D character generator too. My friend
always has a giant excel spreadsheet open when he's DMing. The tactile
response of the dice is fun, but calculating stuff like weight modifiers can
be tedious.

Btw, For the 3d6 problem, you could do:

sum([random.randint(1,6) for i in xrange(3)])

That's the python version. I have no idea what I did when I first implemented
this in C++ 10 years ago.

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lacker
Just FYI, you can clean this up a teeny bit by removing the square brackets to
make it a generator expression. Not a big deal but someone might be
enlightened.

    
    
      sum(random.randint(1, 6) for _ in range(3))

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thomaspaine
Doh! You're right. And I just read an article yesterday comparing the speed of
generators with list comprehensions
[http://ikanobori.jp/weblog/2009/04/08/python-sum-of-file-
gen...](http://ikanobori.jp/weblog/2009/04/08/python-sum-of-file-generators-
vs-list-comprehensions/)

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beza1e1
"personality is as important as combat prowess"

I didn't expect such a quote from a creator of DnD. Isn't DnD the essence of
hask'n'slash without much personality?

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davi
No. D&D can be played as a dungeon crawl series of encounters, but for me the
best campaigns are ones with narrative arch and great characters with strong,
cohesive, and complicated personalities.

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swillden
I think D&D gets the hack'n'slash reputation mostly because people start
playing it when they're too young to really understand role playing.

I play with my wife and kids, and I'd really like to push more roleplaying
because that would allow my wife to enjoy the game a lot more (she really only
plays because the kids like it), but the kids (ages 7, 11, 13, 15) just don't
get it. They get bored with any sort of play that isn't heavy on combat -- a
couple of days ago we played through a section of an ancient wizard's keep
that was loaded with traps, tricks and puzzles and all but one of them got
really bored, though my wife thought it was somewhat interesting.

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davi
I'm kind of curious/concerned about the future of role-playing -- will it get
picked up by kids today? What's your perspective on this a as a father of
today's children? Seems like the 15-year-old at least could get into the role-
playing aspect.

That said I have buddies in their 30's who still love the hack-n-slash aspect,
the superhero, rolling dice, throwing fireballs fun of it all, and who kind of
get bored & check out when role-playing comes to the fore of a gaming session.
So it could just be a component of the gamer's personality.

Related quote from Dave Arneson:

"Pegasus: What other changes have you seen in gamers, rather than in gaming
itself? How are we different?

"Dave: Well, it seems like they're a lot older. Used to all be young – high
school kids, college kids – you don't see that too much any more. I don't know
if that's because they're off playing video games or card games, or they're
just not interested. I think some of it's the video games because you get much
more of an instant feedback response from a video game than you do from a
roleplaying game. Again, is that good or bad? I think that's bad, because I
think they ultimately have a lot more fun playing roleplaying games than
shooting up spaceships and aliens."

([http://www.judgesguild.net/guildhall/pegasus/pegasus_14/inte...](http://www.judgesguild.net/guildhall/pegasus/pegasus_14/interview.shtml))

