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Looking over the comments to this page, it is good to see that Gary Gygax wrote a comment here ten months before he died. Since it hasn't been done yet here, I thought I should note his passing here and comment on his life. Gary Gygax died on March 4th, 2008 at the age of 69. I've known who Gary Gygax was most of my life, because as a teenager I played Dungeons and Dragons, the game he is most famous for inventing. Even though I stopped playing D&D in high school, mainly due to the lack of a good gaming community to support my interest in it, I always appreciated D&D and admired Gary Gygax for creating D&D and for founding TSR. I had a subscription to Dragon magazine when the Dragon Chess article appeared in it, and I can recall reading it. At that particular time, I had created a Chess variant based on D&D, which involved dice-controlled combat between pieces, which I used to play in study hall with a friend of mine. Unfortunately, I've lost the rules to this game. However, I was not into Chess variants at that time as much as I am now, and lacking the equipment for Dragon Chess, I never thought to play it. But I'm glad he did create a Chess variant. It hearkens back to his roots with war games, which is more closely connected with what we do here, and which is the link that connects Chess variants with D&D. Chess variants are abstract, simplified versions of war games, whereas D&D is an RPG extension of wargaming. I'll also add that it was good to see Gary Gygax in Futurama: Bender's Game. Even though I no longer play D&D and never knew Gary Gygax myself, it's still sad that someone like him has passed away. He will be missed.