So Long, Dungeon Master

N'Gai Croal: I discovered D&D through classmates of mine in elementary school. But it wasn't until we got to junior high that we really began to play in earnest. Myself and three other guys—all of whom are still good friends of mine today—would go to the library every Saturday morning and play from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., taking breaks only to hit the bathroom or to run over to the nearby Safeway and fill up on the samples.

What I liked best about D&D was that it was a form of shared storytelling. Like all fine young geeks, we were all into fantasy and sci-fi, and this was a way to create and participate in our own variants on those high adventures. We could be heroes, just for one day, until the next Saturday came along. I don't remember exactly how it happened, but I quickly gravitated to the role of Dungeon Master. I started out using the classic quest Temple of Elemental Evil as my training wheels, but after a while I started crafting my own adventures. I loved poring over the Player's Handbook, the Dungeon Master's Guide, the Monster Manuals, the Deities & Demigods book. With these pages of evocative drawings, skillful descriptions and, of course, the stats, TSR provided the raw material for aspiring storytellers like myself to create entire worlds in the minds of my buddies. We were the medium. And it was fun.

The irony is that while I loved D&D—and I'd play it again in a heartbeat with my friends, as we did for kicks a couple of Christmases ago—I have no appetite for role-playing games on PCs or videogame consoles. My eyes glaze over when I see attributes and stats, as if my mind simply Does Not Compute. Ultima Online? EverQuest? World of Warcraft? No interest whatsoever. When I play videogames, I want action—the faster and more furious, the better. But Gygax's death triggered a handful of twilight memories of how it felt to disappear inside a pen-and-paper role-playing game for hours and hours, only to all of a sudden look up and wonder where all the time had gone.

Enright: The cool thing, like Carl points out, is that D&D allowed us to create worlds in which we could do anything, which forced us to make up our own ethical guidelines. If you suddenly wanted to attack your traveling companions with a broadsword or a Finger of Death spell, there was nothing stopping you. The amazing thing is how rarely that happened. Unless the neighborhood bully joined in (and almost never did those tanned, skinned-kneed fellas venture into our dank lairs), we all helped each other and together defeated whatever dragon or monster we were battling. Yes, I'll say it: Dungeons & Dragons taught me everything I need to know about teamwork.

Admitting the following might severely hurt my cred with hardcore fans and get me pelted with well-worn copies of "Fiend Folio." But I was so into D&D that I got up early on Saturday mornings to watch the half-hour TV cartoon based on the game. (Before you scoff, know that the ever-reliable Wikipediacalls it "unusual … in children's television for the amount of ethical awareness and empathy displayed to and encouraged in the viewer.") And don't even get me started on the arcade games that clearly owed Mr. Gygax a great debt-into which I dumped pockets full of change: Dragon's Lair and especially Gauntlet. Oh, 2-D dungeon crawl games, how I miss thee.

I'm sure that one of these days I'll be digging through a box in the basement and come across an old copy of "Unearthed Arcana," and I'll leaf through it and think of how Gary Gygax shaped my youth. But until then, I'm going to cue up High on Fire on my iPod and pop in the extended DVD of "Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King." It's as close as I'm going to get.

Sullivan: I remember stumbling across my old D&D folder in my parents' attic a few years ago. It was stuffed with pencil-smudged graph paper where we drew maps of our quests. I'll definitely have to dig that out again the next time I head home. We spent hours creating floor plans for our own castles and lairs, even though they were never used in the actual games. It was just an extension of the very detailed lives we fleshed out for our imaginary characters. For us, D&D was a lot like the Harry Potter obsession for many of today's kids, but we weren't just reading about adventures; we were living them. This vivid fantasy life was not without controversy. Our Dungeon Master and another player were the sons of the pastor at our Southern Baptist church. In fact, we usually played at the preacher's house, sequestered in dark air-conditioned rooms on hot summer days. This was an era where we were told by our Sunday school teacher that playing rock records backward would reveal hidden messages like "praise Satan" and "smoke marijuana." And D&D, with its sorcerors and magic spells, was looked at with great suspicion. "What are those kids doing all afternoon in that dark room?" Just escaping the boredom of small-town America, ma'am. And finding a place where we finally felt like we belonged. A place where a scrawny unathletic kid like me could be a brave monster slayer who protected his friends and for once, could be a hero.