龙与地下城桌面游戏的缔造者加里·吉盖克斯

龙与地下城桌面游戏的缔造者加里·吉盖克斯




Mar 13th 2008
From The Economist print edition




Ernest Gary Gygax, a dungeon master, died on March 4th, aged 69




地下城城主欧内斯特·加里·吉盖克斯于三月四日去世，享年69岁。











thomashandkeefe.com
FOR most people, “role-playing” conjures up dreary afternoons at management retreats, pretending to be an irate customer or a difficult employee. But if you are under 45 and possibly something of a nerd, more evocative memories may surface. You are Jozan, adventurer-cleric of the sun-god Pelor, travelling the world of Greyhawk, battling orcs and evil wizards, righting wrongs and seeking treasure—at least until you and your friends run out of beer and crisps and stagger off to bed. This is Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), the first of the role-playing games and the reason for thousands of misspent youths.
对大多数人来讲，“角色扮演”让人想起在沉闷的下午里举行的经营策略讨论会，与会人员假装成愤怒的顾客或者是难以相处的雇员。但是，如果你不到45岁，或多或少又有点“宅”的味道，那么你的脑海中会有更多的东西浮现。你是太阳神Pelor投胎转世的冒险教士Jozan，游历于灰鹰部落，你和兽人作战，对抗邪恶巫师，纠正错误，搜寻宝藏——直到你和你的朋友们喝完了所有啤酒，吃完了油炸马铃薯片，然后才摇摇晃晃地回家上床睡觉。这些回忆就是有关“龙与地下城”(D&D)的，它是第一个角色扮演游戏，成千上万人为它浪费青春。

Gary Gygax was perfectly equipped to bring this fantastic world to basements and dining-room tables all over the world. As a boy he was fascinated by games of all sorts, from pinochle to chess. His father, a violinist, read him countless pulp novels featuring dragons, wizards and elves. Even the family name, he once said, had fantastic origins, proving that the Gygaxes were descended from Goliath.
加里.吉盖克斯有足够的条件把这个魔幻的世界带到全世界的地下室里和餐桌上。童年时代，他就对从皮纳克尔(一种纸牌游戏)到象棋的各式游戏着迷。他的小提琴手父亲向他读那些讲述龙、巫师和矮人的没完没了的通俗小说。他有一次提到，甚至家族的姓氏都有个奇幻的来源，并证明说吉盖克斯(Gygaxes)家族就是歌利亚(Goliath)(注释1)的后裔。

An interest in history lured him into war-gaming, the re-enactment of historical battles with miniature men and a simple rulebook. For several months the members of the Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association (a grand name for a group of friends that met in Mr Gygax's basement) entertained themselves by re-fighting old battles. One day, to spice things up, Mr Gygax turned a plastic dinosaur into a dragon and mixed in wizards and trolls among the men-at-arms.
对历史的兴趣使他迷上了战争游戏，那是一种用一本简单的规则指南册和一些微型的棋子重现历史战役的游戏。这个日内瓦湖畔策略研究协会(聚集于吉盖克斯家的地下室的一群朋友为他们自己起了一个很严肃的名字)的成员用重演古老战争的方法自娱自乐。有一天，为了调节一下气氛，吉盖克斯把一只塑料恐龙演绎为一只真龙，并加入了在重骑兵队伍中游荡的巫师和巨怪。

His fellow-players loved it. Abandoning a career in insurance and in collaboration with Dave Arneson, a fellow gamer, Mr Gygax refined his ideas. From large groups of combatants he moved to individual characters, cooking up rules for magic spells and creating a menagerie of monsters for his heroes to fight.
他的玩伴们喜欢这个点子。在放弃了他的保险事业后，吉盖克斯和玩游戏的搭档戴夫·阿纳森合作，对自己的想法进行改进。他撇弃了成群的战士，转而关注个体角色，为魔法符咒另起锅炉定下规则，并创造了一个怪兽大观园，让他的英雄们同那些怪兽进行搏斗。

Manufacturers, when he approached them, were less keen. There was no board and no way to win—and those weirdly shaped dice looked confusing. So Mr Gygax and his colleagues set up their own firm, Tactical Studies Rules (TSR). Business was brisk, and D&D became an underground hit on campuses around the world. A moral panic about devil-worship only drove sales higher.
当他和游戏制造商开始接触的时候，他们并不看好这个游戏的前景。没有棋盘，也没有具体的赢的方法——还有那些形状古怪的骰子看起来也让人摸不着头脑。因此，吉盖克斯和他的拍档成立了自己的公司：TSR战术规则研究会。生意从此蒸蒸日上，D&D (即龙与地下城)在大学校园里获得了巨大成功并风靡全球。恶魔崇拜的思想狂潮只不过让其销量锦上添花而已。

As a creative endeavour, Mr Gygax's invented world was deeply unoriginal: he borrowed shamelessly from authors such as Jack Vance, Robert E. Howard and J. R. R. Tolkien. But rather than merely describing these worlds, as their authors had done, his invention—a blend of mathematics, theatre and imagination—allowed his players to live in them. Players built their alter egos by using numbers to represent characteristics such as strength, toughness and intelligence. A “games master” or “dungeon master” would create adventures and provide the opposition—an evil wizard, say, or a manipulative king. A complicated but flexible set of rules allowed players to do almost anything they liked, provided their characters were competent. The crucial element of chance was provided by rolling the game's iconic 20-sided dice.
尽管有过颇有创意的努力，但是吉盖克斯所臆想出来的世界却绝非原创：他明目张胆地借用了杰克·万斯、罗伯特·E·霍华德和J·R·R·托尔金等作家的著作。不过，他并不象作家们那样仅仅用文字描述这些世界，他的创新(一种随机数学算法、一个设定的场景再加上想象)允许游戏的玩家置身于这些世界之中。通过把诸如力量、耐力和智力等一些属性用数字外化出来，游戏玩家就建立属于自己的可变角色。“游戏管理人”或者说“地下城城主”会创造冒险任务以及提供对立阵营情景——比如一个邪恶的巫师，或者一个傀儡国王。繁杂但是灵活的整套规则几乎允许玩家做任何他们想干的事情，给这些角色提供了足够多的游戏内容。抛掷这个游戏里带图标的20面的骰子能带来至关重要的冒险机会。


Triumph of the nerds “御宅一族”的凯歌
As time went on, Mr Gygax became more remote from his creation. His company, having thrown him out, was sold in 1997 to Wizards of the Coast, an upstart fantasy publisher that made sweeping changes to the rules. Mr Gygax disliked that, worrying that the focus was shifting to mathematical questions of maximising players' power. He wrote several new games, working six-day weeks even in his 60s, attending conventions, replying to fan mail and taking time off only for his beloved American football. But none of his new games matched D&D's success.
随着时间的推移，吉盖克斯越来越无法控制他的创造物。他的公司把他扫地出门，并于1997年出售给了Wizards of the Coast，这个狂想的暴发户出版商对游戏规则进行了大刀阔斧的修改。吉盖克斯不喜欢这样的改动，担忧游戏的重心已转移到了把玩家的能力最大化的数学问题上了。他又创作了几个新游戏， 60岁的高龄仍然保持着一周工作六天，并参加会议，给游戏崇拜者写回信，唯一抽出时间来做的事情是观看他所钟爱的美式足球赛。但是这些新游戏没有一个象龙与地下城那样成功。

The game was spreading beyond basements, particularly influencing the nascent computer-games industry. Mr Gygax didn't like that either; he thought computer graphics cheapened the experience by substituting an artist's imagination for the player's. And while computers were ideal for streamlining tedious dice rolls and arithmetic, those, for him, were never the point. He considered role-playing a social thing, a form of group storytelling. Nevertheless, his impact was enormous. One gaming website voted him the joint 18th-most-influential person in computer games, quite an honour for someone who hardly played them.
龙与地下城流行的范围超越了地下室，尤其对初生的电脑游戏产业影响巨大。吉盖克斯同样不喜欢电脑游戏。他认为电脑图形取代了艺术家为游戏玩家所创造的想象空间，降低了游戏的体验度。虽然在改善乏味的掷骰子和数学算法上计算机可谓典范，但是，这些在吉盖克斯看来根本就是无关紧要的。他把角色扮演游戏看做是社会活动的产物，是一群人聚在一起讲故事的一种形式。尽管如此，他的影响还是巨大的。一家电脑游戏网站投票选举他为对电子游戏界影响最大的18个人之一，对一个几乎不玩电脑游戏的人来说，这是个相当高的荣誉。

His influence extends even to people who have never conjured a fireball in anger. Today's world is a nerd's world, and Mr Gygax did much to shape it. Blockbuster fantasy films like “The Lord of the Rings” are produced and directed by people who grew up with the game. Computer games are part of mainstream culture; “World of Warcraft”, an internet-based D&D clone, boasts 10m subscribers. Many of the people who built the internet (and their fortunes) spent their childhoods playing the game. The entry for D&D on Wikipedia is twice the length of the article on Proust.
他甚至影响到了那些从来没有召唤过愤怒的火球的人。现在的世界是个“宅”的世界，吉盖克斯对此功不可没。象《指环王》这样的轰动全球的魔幻电影，就是被一群伴随着龙与地下城的游戏长大的家伙导演和监制的。电脑游戏已经成为了主流文化的一部分；基于网络的龙与地下城的克隆版游戏——《魔兽世界》，吹嘘自己有了一千万的付费用户。互联网（以及互联网财富）的缔造者中有很多人都曾在童年时代玩过龙与地下城的游戏。维基百科上有关龙与地下城的条目是有关普鲁斯特(注释2)作品的文章的两倍多。

But despite its influence on mainstream culture, D&D as a pastime is still a minority pursuit. Its fans perversely enjoy the opprobrium it still attracts, as well as its deeply cryptic side. “Gary Gygax Fails Fortitude Save” read one online epitaph, intelligible only to the initiated. And as for the qualities he gave his own D&D characters, Mr Gygax would never say.
尽管龙与地下城影响了主流文化，但是，作为娱乐消遣，它仍然只有少数追随者。它的“粉丝”们一反常态地陶醉于它所招惹的责骂中，恰如对其神秘的一面的深深迷恋。网上有一条悼词写道：“加里·吉盖克斯失败了，但是坚强的意志永存”，只有此道中人才能明白它的含义。如果按照吉盖克斯所给予龙与底下城游戏的本质属性来看，他永远不会那么说。

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(注释1)：歌利亚，Goliath，旧约圣经里的腓力斯人巨人勇士，被大卫用石头打死。腓力斯是中东古国
(注释2)普鲁斯特，马塞尔：(1871-1922) 法国作家，他共分七部的小说追忆似水年华 (1913-1927年）是现代文学中的伟大作品
a French writer of novels, who many people consider one of the greatest writers of modern times. His best known work is a series of novels called in English Remembrance of Things Past, which is a detailed description of French society in the late 19th century, and is sometimes mentioned as a typical example of a very long book. Many people also know how the book begins, when one of the characters eats a "madeleine" (=a type of small cake) and the taste reminds him of an earlier time.

(注释3)Nerd：
郎文有如下解释条目：
someone who seems only interested in computers and other technical things - used to show disapproval
synonym
geek