"Game Designers That Impacted the Hobby (Round 2A)" Topic

Difficult to select 5 only.

Had to leave out HG Wells – he's clearly a grandfather of the hobby, but his direction has become a dead-end. A beautiful, exquisite looking and great fun dead end, but it's also a long long long long way from the modern gaming experience for most people.

A good bunch, certainly. I think of Wells as I think of those really early arboreal mammals: he's not how I play, but you couldn't get to where I am without him.

Gygax is one I dropped. Immensely important to A hobby, but not to MY hobby. You can do a whole detailed history of miniature warfare without him. But if you were discussing RPG's, he'd get about half the book, and deservedly so.

I disagree with Robert. The miniatures hobby is quite broad, and goes beyond historical settings, as this website has long established. As such, Gygax's contribution includes concepts other than RPGs. In fact, the whole structure of fantasy wargaming is heavily dependent on Gygax, particularly in the area of dungeoncrawls, but also generally. No Gygax, no D&D; no D&D, no Warhammer or any of its spinoffs. I believe I'm correct in that Gygax introduced the concepts of hit points, specific individual stats, distinct characters and persistent character changes between games, which have influenced historical tabletop gaming, too. And, of course, RPGs with miniatures, which are clearly an immense part of "the Hobby" as a whole, whether one participates in that aspect or not. (If we define "the Hobby" only as what a particular individual participates in or likes, then "the Hobby" becomes very narrow indeed-- to the extent one could say that wargames with armies of another culture or period than one chooses to game in are therefore not "part of 'The Hobby'," which is an absurd notion.)
So, yes, even if one does not participate in Gygax's most notable area of "The Hobby," one's area of participation has still been influenced by Gygax, and certainly "The Hobby" has been influenced as a whole.