Dungeons are no strangers to Star Trek. "Errand of Mercy" has one, there's a well lit one in "Return of the Archons," and a fantastic one in "Catspaw." Dragons are introduced by Spock after seeing them on Berengaria VII and in the clouds of Omicron Ceti III. Why am I talking Dungeon and Dragons? Because last week nerddom lost another of its heroes, Gary Gygax. Gygax was the genius behind the Dungeons and Dragons gaming franchise, an entire industry that grew beyond a humble foundation of unlimited imagination, scrap paper, and oddly shaped dice.

Gygax is widely acknowledged as father of contemporary role playing games, a method to visit the worlds of. Tolkien and Howard from the comfort of an often more mundane one. After a fireball of popularity the rules of D&D progressively grew more complex and less enjoyable, eventually reaching a tipping point to which they no longer enhanced the game. (This effect appears in the development of 3D chess that deteriorate under the weight of ambiguous if not inconsistent rules that fail to improve the game.) As we grow we learn to use props to enhance the experience of gameplay. With the more complex need for play comes the need for complex props. By their nature computers are perfect to act as programmable props. Even before computers were realizable chess programs were written by the very pioneers involved in their creation.

Subsequently in the mid to late 70's, during the lull of Star Trek, computer games raced ahead. By now modern computer development exists to play "Star Trek" and improve upon earlier versions. Imagination fuels title after title in but a branch of their entire Trek franchise. Yet the only other genre able to arguably challenge this would be the massive MMORPG's evolved from a simple maze of twisty little passages all alike: "Colossal Cave." "Adventure," as it's better known, was inspired by D&D as gamers sought to teach this imaginative new experience to their algorithmic allies.

Roddenberry did something similar with "the great creation" of Star Trek, sharing a method at a historic moment of television for us to hope and imagine a peaceful path into humanity's future. I think the Great DM and the Great Bird would have got along well, mutual believers in the philosophy expressed by Gygax himself: "I would like the world to remember me as the guy who really enjoyed playing games and sharing his knowledge and his fun pastimes with everybody else." By improving the game, the work justifies itself.