In a truly sad day for the nerd realm, Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, has passed away today.

Gygax (a pretty neat name for a wizard character if you ask me) had been suffering from heart and other health problems over the past few years, including an abdominal aneurysm. He died in his home in Lake Geneva, WI, and is survived by his wife and six children.

Though it’s the butt of many jokes — and certainly has been shrouded in a good deal of controversy over the years — it’s hard to deny Dungeons & Dragons’ influence on popular culture over the past three decades. The tabletop role-playing game spawned a Saturday morning cartoon, countless fantasy novels and films and inspired many fantasy-related video games.

Gygax helped created the Dungeons & Dragons and Advance Dungeon & Dragons game systems in the early 1970s. The first rule books were released in 1974. The game was originally released by TSR, but has since been revamped by Wizards of the Coast, which also produces the popular fantasy-themed card game Magic the Gathering. Though Gygax hadn’t been involved in Dungeons & Dragons for years, he also had a hand in creating other RPGs for Troll Lord Games.

At your next gaming session, raise your goblets and tip a little mead to your buddy Gary. Rest in peace.

I don’t know how many times I’ve seen Lord of The Rings at this point - probably an embarrassing amount, I’m sure. I’m pretty much a sucker for epic movies involving journeys of personal discovery, great battles, teams of erstwhile friends who must band together to triumph over a greater foe, and anything with swords and/or magic. I swear, if I wasn’t so busy with pop culture/bands/life of excess all the time I would still be rolling two 10-sided dice to determine my saving throw to see if my wizard was resistant to poison or whatever.

So I’m probably going to see Beowulf when it comes to theatres on November 16th. I’m probably going to be stoked, too. Even if it kinda sucks I’ll still secretly be excited.

Some dudes did a Podcast interview with some of the folks from the movie (John Malkovich and Robin Wright-Penn), and it’s on iTunes. For no charge. Did I click below? Yes. Yes I did.

DIRECT LINK TO THE FREE PODCAST

Did I subscribe? That’s another story… Okay, off to the Ren Faire! Huzzah!