Gary Gygax dies; bloggers, geeks despondent

More at MM.com and Ace of Spades, where one of my comments is quoted.

Seriously--the vocabulary building for me when I got these books at, like, age 6 was phenomenal. I could never figure out what "misc. magic" meant and I went around telling my friends their gnome had found some "misk magic". Had no idea what that was until I was forced to learn the word "miscellaneous".

You learn scale mapping. Currency conversion. And probability theory--there were graphs of a bell curve in the DMG, I think, explaining why 2d6 gives you different expected results than 1d12.

You learned all kinds of things. Like the, um, picture of the sylph. Apparently women have all sorts of interesting different body parts, including gauzy, diaphanous wings...

Yes, D&D made me the pathetic geek I am today.

More to say tonight; got to run.