I was on the phone with a long time friend of mine who delivered the news to me. I thought it is definitely should be mentioned in this geek forum. For those of you who do not know, Gary Gygax is the co-creator of the legendary "Dungeons & Dragons." The first of my feeds to pick it up was SCI FI wire.

Gary was 69 and is survived by his wife and six children. Gary Gygax is actually survived by many many more. I am one of the geeks that spent countless hours as an adolescent as a dungeon master and as a player. His creative mind co-created a game that impacted, at the least, 10s of thousands and, more likely, 100s of thousands. I passed the passion on to my kid brother who still is very into the gaming scene and is actually a judge for Magic tournaments.

The original game was all paper and pencil and role-playing. I loved it. I spent entire weekends in marathon sessions. Before the advent of readily accessible PC games, it was the game. Latter in life, I also got very into the Commodore 64 versions that were release. When Mr. Gygax passed I did a bit of digging in my feeds and discovered something interesting. Did you know that the word w00t actually evolved out of this game?