Gary Gygax Died

God dammit.

Gary Gygax, legendary co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, died this morning aged 69.

This is seriously sad. I remember perfectly my very first games of D&D: It was the Yellow Box starter set, and I was all of about 12 years old. I DMed (narrated the story), and my two younger brothers played the heroes (Lordan the priest and Sneak the thief, if memory serves). Later I introduced the game to my school friends, and I've been playing various RPGs on and off ever since.

But D&D was the first game to really crack open my mind and show me all the infinite possibilities of shared narratives. If anyone back in 1979 could have predicted World of Warcraft, it would have been Gary Gygax.

(It's also worth mentioning that Gary had an incredibly bizarre writing style unlike anything I've ever read. Not only was his prose purpler and more esoteric than Lovecraft on an absinthe bender, Gary, an anthropology student, loved to pepper his work with the kind of arcane terminology found only in leatherbound Medieval tomes. Thanks to Gary, an entire generation of impressionable youth grew up knowing what a 'philtre', a 'wight', a 'catoblepas' and a 'glaive-guisarme' are.)

It's hard to overstate the influence RPGs have had on my writing, and on my understanding of narrative in general. It's even harder to overstate the influence they've had on video games and popular fantasy.

Levelling your Gnome Rogue in World of Warcraft? You can thank Gary for that. Playing Legend of Zelda on your Wii? Gary again. Watching the Lord of the Rings on DVD? If it wasn't for Gary, those elves and dwarves probably wouldn't look like that.

I don't know what else to say, except: Thanks, Gary. You'll be missed.

Oscars for Dummies

Is it just me, or are the Oscar nominations really bloody awful this year? For Christ's sake, the list includes Surf's Up, Transformers and Elizabeth.

And fucking Juno got nominated for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay?

Look, I've seen Juno, and that screenplay deserves to be fired into the sun, not nominated for an Oscar. Transformers may have been a shit film, but at least the script didn't jump out of the actors' mouths and clobber you over the head with its desperate relevance. Juno is basically a poor man's Knocked Up, except that Knocked Up was actually, y'know, funny.

At this point I'm sort of hoping the strike holds on until just after the Oscars. That way I won't have to suffer the craven image of ex-blogger Diablo Cody on my TV screen.

On a cheerier note: Holy shit, Brendan McCarthy now has a blog. The man's a stark raving genius, and you should check that link out right now. I mean, seriously: unicorn chicken eyes!

Shout-out numero deux goes to my friend Luke's new blog, soon to be full of designy goodness. Welcome to the blogosphere, mate.

Right. Less than 24 hours until I get on the plane. Mel and Austin: Save me one of those minty hot chocolates.

Cloverfield

So JJ Abrams revealed nothing but a new poster. And it's not Godzilla.