Two separate items of note this week related to gaming.

First off, I have to mention the passing of E. Gary Gygax. I can still remember when I first discovered Dungeons and Dragons and role-playing gaming with the first edition of the blue box set and the Temple of Elemental Evil dungeon. No RPG game that I've ever played has ever matched the sheer joy of discovery that first adventure supplied. Gygax, it seems, was "one of us," a fellow who loved games and gaming, not to mention science fiction and fantasy, much of which he incorporated into the game, albeit with credit only, rather than royalty payments, which got him in trouble when TSR released the Dieties and Demigods book with entire pantheons lifted from Fritz Leiber and Michael Moorcock. I don't know what happened to my first edition of that book; J had her Advanced D&D books stolen at a garage sale, which is like adding insult to injury.

Second, the Agitator mentions a new Chicago ban on "self-sealing plastic bags under two inches in either height or width," ostensibly a new front in the never-ending "war on drugs." That's most unfortunate for Chicago gamers, who will have to use larger ziplocks to bag and separate all those little chits that profligate in nearly every wargame ever released from Avalon Hill or SPI, but we all must make sacrifices.