I came across something today that made me reflect deeply on how we, as a community, engage with the people who shaped our hobby. Tim Cain (creator of Fallout and lead at Troika) posted a heartfelt video about his team’s work on Temple of Elemental Evil (2003) being omitted from “D&D: Art and Arcana” - the comprehensive art history book from 2018. This got me thinking about how we remember our hobby’s creators, particularly in light of the recent online debates about Gary Gygax’s legacy and his critisism in the recent D&D publications.
What struck me wasn’t just the omission itself, but how Tim spoke about it. He talked about his team physically cutting up his personal original ToEE module to share with artists because they couldn’t get official copies. He spoke about how they transformed Zuggtmoy’s appearance so dramatically that it became canon. These weren’t just professional grievances - they were personal investments of passion and creativity that somehow got lost in the historical record.
This resonated strongly with me, particularly given our ongoing discussions about Gary Gygax’s legacy. I think we’ve lost something important in how we talk about these creators. Gary has become something of an internet token, deployed either as a shield or a target depending on the argument being made. But those of us who remember the pre-internet days know a different Gary - someone who was essentially every D&D fan’s pen pal, who you’d actually meet at GenCon, who would run games for fans and engage in real conversations.
I’ve been following the recent YouTube discussions on this topic, and the contrast is telling. Dan “Professor DM” of the DungeonCraft channel approaches Gary as a complex human being, acknowledging both his contributions and his humanity. Meanwhile, Bob World Builder’s Video take was uncharacterisiticall un-kind and dismissive. His commenary feels more like a response to a meme, conflating Gary with current cultural battles that have nothing to do with his actual work or person. Combined with Bob’s departure from X to Bluesky, it’s clear there is a lot going on there beyond the topic, which makes feel like deflected anger.
Tim Cain’s video serves as a powerful reminder that there are real people behind everything we love about this hobby. His team’s work on ToEE might not have achieved the commercial success they hoped for, but it represented real innovation - they were the first to implement 3E rules in a computer game, the only ones to bring Greyhawk to digital life, and they created artistic interpretations that became canon.
The community’s selective empathy is something we should examine. We’ll passionately defend creators against AI or corporate overreach, but then turn around and reduce past creators to caricatures when it suits our current cultural arguments. Whether it’s Gary Gygax, Tim Cain’s team, or any of the countless others who’ve contributed to this hobby, they deserve to be remembered as real people who did real work.
None of these oversights or mischaracterizations are tragedies in the grand scheme of things. But they matter to the people who poured their creativity and passion into building this hobby we all love. When we reduce them to mere symbols in our cultural debates, we lose something valuable - the human story of how D&D became what it is today.
I hope we can find ways to discuss the history and future of D&D that honor the humanity of everyone involved - even (perhaps especially) when we’re being critical. After all, isn’t the human element what makes this hobby special in the first place?
What are your thoughts on this? How do you think we can better preserve and discuss the human side of D&D’s history?