Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons died today. I should be (but refuse to be) ashamed of the amount of time I spent as a youngster playing Dungeons & Dragons. Like a lot of folks my age, I became interested in the game well before I was old enough to really play it. Fortunately, by the time I was in junior high school, my friend Karl’s dad–a longtime D&D player–had taken us young folk under his wing and, playing dungeon master himself, taught us how to play the game properly. Probably (also like a lot of other folks as well) I stopped playing D&D in the 80s when it became a pop culture phenomenon, cartoon series included. Since then, though, I’ve often reminisced about the great times I had years ago, and contemplated starting playing again but never really got around to it.

The last time a remember playing D&D as an adult was when hurricane Hugo swept though North Carolina while I was attending Davidson College. While we were trapped in our dorms without power, a few friends–including the woman who would later become my wife–and I struck up a game, remembering as best we could how to play with what little reference we had at hand.

So, enough reminiscing… Now I gotta (as they say) pour out a little liquor for my homey:

(By the way, if you recognize this dragon, you’re as big a goon as I am.)

To take things back a few years, here’s a drawing of a D&D lizard man (Armor class 5, Hit dice: 2 + 1 hit point!) I did as a child. Like a lot of folks, I sort of worked my way back to Frazetta from those little illustrations in D&D books. I may not be drawing sword and sorcery stuff these days, but there’ s no mistaking the influence the D&D artwork had on me as a young man: