A giant among geeks

Gary Gygax, inventor of Dungeons and Dragons, died last week. But the idea he created will live on - in traditional role-playing games, but also in massive-multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft, single-player video games like Final Fantasy, and even online communities like second life.

Geekdom has been called an escape from reality, and it's guilty as charged. But who doesn't need an escape once in a while? Whether it's a TV show or a book or a video game, everyone needs to spend a little time away from the unpleasant truths and repetitive sameness of reality. And hey, if Eliot Spitzer had just played Dungeons and Dragons for his personal escape from reality, he'd still have a job.

But the kind of geekdom Gary Gygax created and championed was something better than mere escapism. At the center of role-playing is pure creativity - bringing new worlds out of nothing by sheer force of imagination. That's the same force that drives entrepreneurs to build new industries, or inventors to create technologies that change how we live, or political reformers to envision better societies. Without imagination, we simply optimize given the world into which we're thrust - with imagination, we consider changing the very rules of the game. And when we manage to do that, big things happen.

Geekhood can be taken too far, but some element of geekiness is absolutely necessary to have anything but a plain and ordinary life. Without new worlds to explore and create, without the possibility of a tomorrow that's better than today, there's not much to life beyond money and sex.

Gary Gygax, I'll miss having you on this planet.