Gary Gygax

There's a new piece in Wired on the late Gary Gygax. For you non-gamer folk, Gygax was the creator of Dungeons & Dragons. Mark Stricherz of GetReligion comments on the end of the article, which mentions Gygax's religious beliefs. Apparently towards the end of his life he came to believe in some sort of Creator, as well as in prayer.

In the GetReligion comments section, a person says that Gygax was actually one of Jehovah's Witnesses, and that the religious turn wasn't anything new. Perhaps the Wired article is wrong, or perhaps Gygax at some point left the J-dubs and then later adopted revised religious beliefs.

Personally, I'd find it hard to believe that Gygax was a JW in good standing when he was working on D&D. My impression is that the wave of apprehension and outright hysteria about devil-worship and D&D in conservative evangelical circles quickly jumped social barriers to affect many JWs. (Except they called it "demonism." The same thing happened with Smurfs: there was a frantic purge of all Smurf-related objects. Later it happened with Harry Potter.) When I was growing up as a JW (in the '80s and '90s) there was still a lot of suspicion surrounding role-playing games and, to a lesser extent, fantasy stories that included magic. I managed to evade these prohibitions, and I knew at least one adult JW who was into fantasy and gaming. But I never did play D&D proper, and I remember tensing up when friend and I were questioned by a circuit overseer (something like a travelling bishop) about role-playing games. We managed to make them sound like harmless fun. I think.