gary gygax

just found this out via my dungeon master chris smith but yeah let us all d&d and A d&d bros take a pause for the guy that i know from first hand expanded my imagination from the fifth grade on:

Dungeons & Dragons Creator Gary Gygax Passes Away; Interview on Gadgets
POSTED BY JOEL JOHNSON, MARCH 4, 2008 10:18 AM | PERMALINK
According to a post on Troll Lord Games, the company that had published his most recent work, Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons & Dragons, has passed away. In 2003, on the now defunct kcgeek.com, we ran an interview with Gygax. I have republished it over on Gadgets.
Tiamat consume you fully, Gary. You brought untold amount of fun and joy into my life.

This excerpt tickles me:

Q. As far as you know, what was the basic evolution of polyhedral dice? If they existed prior to the creation of Dungeons & Dragons, what were they used for?
To the best of my knowledge I introduced them to gaming, en masse, with D&D in 1974. I found sets of the five platonic solids for sale in a school supply catalog back in 1972, and of course ordered them, used them in creating the D&D game.