Gary Gygax Reaches Zero Hit Points - March 4th, 2008

I just read on Reddit (where I lifted the joke in the title–there are many others) that Gary Gygax, the creator of Dungeons and Dragons, passed away at the age of 69.

I played D&D and sundry other role-playing games (hmm…BattleTech, Car Wars and a bunch of others) in my early teens. I credit it with broadening my vocabulary, invigorating my imagination and teaching me the basics of storytelling and public speaking. It also kept me out of trouble.

I played nearly every Sunday with a strangely international rogue’s gallery (+2 obscure D&D reference there) group of my fellow nerds. There was Richard, the emaciated British kid with a thick head of, well, pubic hair. There was Albert, the shy Chinese kid whose house smelled funny (though his Mom made awesome won ton soup). And there was Christian, this incredibly tall Swedish kid with an awesome accent. Oddly, he did some modeling on the side.

We rotated houses each week, and probably played for six hours during each session. We’d always order pizza (I expect that it was Pizza 222, which the locals will no doubt remember). Christian had a killer basement gaming room, with axes on the walls and the whole nine yards. In retrospect, he was probably a likely candidate to shoot up the school. Hurray for tight Canadian gun laws.

It was immensely dorky, but I have fond memories of that time before girls, summer jobs and World of Warcraft.

What’s your favourite D&D memory, ye fellow dorks? First commenter gets a -3 Cursed Keyboard of Public Shame.

Random Local News - May 25th, 2007

Just because I’m in Malta doesn’t mean I’m not keeping up with the local goings-on. Mind you, I did miss that whole DemoCamp thing. I must have been snorkeling and missed the memo:

  • According to the supporters of the Whitecaps downtown stadium proposal, apparently the Gastown-based opposition has conceded, given up or come onside. I don’t know how true that is, but their website is gone.
  • Via MetaEffecient, Victoria is building a mondo-huge, green community comprising over 1000 residences on an otherwise bleak part of the upper harbour. What took them so long? The land is waterfront property that’s a stone’s throw away from downtown. Will it be Yaletown 2.0?
  • Via Jules (who apparently only orders pizza online–I didn’t even know you could do that), GreenDimes will stop your junk mail, plant a tree and conserve water for CAN $37. Apparently it only works on junk mail with your name on it, though. Who will stop all the random fliers which I received and never, ever read? In our apartment, there was a fistful every day that went from the mailbox to the blue bin.