Obituaries

The ‘nerd’ who invented Dungeons and Dragons

Gary Gygax

1938–2008

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In the late 1960s, a high school dropout and insurance underwriter named Gary Gygax was tiring of the board-based war games that he and his friends were playing. So he started adding fantasy figures, such as trolls and dragons, to the board just to make the setting more interesting. The feedback from his friends was so positive that he kept refining the notion of creating a fantasy environment. Eventually, Dungeons and Dragons, a fantasy role-playing game that would become a global phenomenon, was born. Some 20 million people have played “D&D,” purchasing $1 billion in game-related merchandise.

D&D, which Gygax developed with his business partner, Donald Kaye, was revolutionary in that it existed entirely in the players’ imaginations, said Slate.com. There is no board, only graph paper, pencils, an instruction manual, and a 20-sided die. To carry participants through various adventures, such as slaying monsters or locating treasure, Gygax devised an elaborate system of levels, strengths, and other measures. “I cast a Level 3 lightning bolt at the basilisk while averting my eyes so I don’t turn to stone!” was a typical move.

First marketed in 1974, D&D sold only 1,000 copies in its first year, said The Ottawa Citizen. “People said, ‘What kind of a game is this?’” Gygax recalled. “‘You don’t play against anybody. Nobody wins. It doesn’t end. This is craziness.’” But gradually, “as teens across the U.S. met for furtive games in their parents’ basements, D&D became an underground hit.” Eventually, D&D would morph into a culture unto itself, with players attending vast gaming conventions and dressing in doublets, flowing medieval gowns, capes, and other fantastic regalia. Some adults became so concerned about D&D’s dark, mystical overtones that they accused Gygax of promoting Satanism—a charge he always denied.

Gygax, who died last week of an abdominal aneurysm, continued to host weekly D&D sessions at his home in Lake Geneva, Wis., until this past January. His fans revered him, Sync magazine placed him first on its list of ���The 50 Biggest Nerds of All Time,” and he even had a strain of bacteria named after him: Arthronema gygaxiana. He is survived by his second wife and six children.

The tenor whose career was cut short

Giuseppe Di Stefano

1921–2008

Giuseppe Di Stefano, who has died at 86, was one of postwar Italy’s most thrilling tenors. He made hundreds of acclaimed appearances at the world’s leading opera houses, and forged an enduring relationship, professional and personal, with the legendary soprano Maria Callas. He died of injuries he suffered in November 2004, when unidentified assailants struck him in the head at his family’s villa in Kenya. He emerged from a coma following the assault, but remained largely incapacitated in his final years.

A Sicilian by birth and a seminary school dropout, Di Stefano served in the Italian army in World War II, said the Los Angeles Times. His lieutenant “thought his voice so glorious that he used every trick he could think of to get him removed from the battalion before it shipped out to the Russian front.” He spent most of the war entertaining troops. None of Di Stefano’s comrades returned alive; he kept a picture of the lieutenant who saved him “on his desk for the rest of his life.” After the war, he debuted as Des Grieux in Manon, making his first appearance at Milan’s La Scala in 1947 and the first of 112 appearances at New York’s Metropolitan Opera the year after. Di Stefano was particularly outstanding in the title role of Faust. “I shall never as long as I live forget the beauty of that sound,” said Rudolf Bing, the Met’s longtime director.

“But Di Stefano’s behavior soon caused Bing to sour on him,” said The New York Times. When he failed to show up in time for the 1952–53 season, falsely claiming he’d been sick, Bing “banned him from the Met for three years.” He was a profligate womanizer, and his offstage shenanigans became legend. “We never knew from day to day whether he would show up,” said Bing. “By the late 1950s, Di Stefano’s career was in decline, with his failing voice often forcing him to cancel appearances.” But for more than two decades, crowds loved to hear him sing with Maria Callas, with whom he had a years-long affair.

The officer who fought an underground enemy

Robert Haldane

1925–2008

On Jan. 7, 1966, Lt. Col. Robert Haldane was leading Operation Crimp some 25 miles northwest of Saigon when his 8,000 troops came under enemy fire. Attempting to fight back, the soldiers were baffled when the Viet Cong seemed to vanish amid the open terrain. After three days of combat, one of Haldane’s soldiers stumbled upon a trapdoor that led to a series of underground channels. It was the notorious Cu Chi tunnel system, which would bedevil American troops until 1970.

A 1947 graduate of West Point, Haldane served in Germany and Korea before embarking for Vietnam, said The Washington Post. But nothing had prepared him for the 125 twisted miles of the Cu Chi labyrinth, which housed enemy soldiers, supplies, and many booby traps. “Haldane ordered red smoke grenades dropped into the entrance.” Within minutes, he got reports of smoke erupting all over from holes in the ground. “The smoke didn’t rout the enemy, so Haldane ordered his troops to pump in CS, a nonlethal riot control gas.” The VC didn’t budge. Finally, Haldane had his demolition specialists set off explosives. When his troops began probing the “dark, vermin-infested earth,” they found a network so extensive that it would take four years, thousands of troops—including the fabled “tunnel rats”—and tons of bombs dropped from B-52s to finally destroy it.

Haldane would complete two tours of Vietnam. After the war, he became chief of staff for the U.S. Army in Europe and chief of staff for the European Command, retiring in 1982 as a lieutenant general. He died of cancer.