As many gamers know, Gary Gygax (left), the famed creator of Dungeons & Dragons, passed away earlier this year.
By way of honoring the man and his achievement, the folks behind GenCon’s yearly charity auction decided to donate the proceeds to Gygax’s favorite charity, the Christian Children's Fund. The auction, held at this year's GenCon, raised more than $17,000.
Unfortunately, according to a post on Live Game Auctions, the CCF refused the donation when it found out that the money would partially come from the sale of D&D merchandise. GenCon instead donated the money to the Fisher House Foundation, an organization that enables family members to live nearby their hospitalized loved ones.
A curious member of the Giant in the Playground forum e-mailed the CCF about its decision and received the following reply:
Christian Children’s Fund made the decision to decline the gift from GenCon, LLC as the request presented to us gave the appearance that CCF (the organization) was an endorser or supporter of a gaming convention, which CCF was not.
As [with] many non-profit organizations, CCF is selective in its endorsements or support in order to maintain the integrity of its name and logo. We cannot lend our name to an event for which we have no involvement. This decision should in no way be interpreted as CCF holding an opinion on Mr. Gygax, gaming enthusiasts or the game Dungeons and Dragons.
GU Comics offers an amusing take on the situation.
-Reporting from San Diego, GP Correspondent Andrew Eisen
Comments
Re: Children's Charity Turns its Back on Gygax Memorial Donation
Wow, just wow... This figures, those idiots... Yeah, I would be willing to accept the return of any of those donations to build up my retirement off of, haha. Even if it totaled $50,000 it would be a hell of a boost.
I just can't believe that they are acting like this. I kind of want to know more about this group, but then again, a stupid religious based group/organization is a stupid religious based group/organization.
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Re: Children's Charity Turns its Back on Gygax Memorial Donation
They state it is his favorite charity, he obviously donated before. Would they retroactively return old proceeds as well instead of be affiliated with Gygax? @__@
They claim it isn't becase of it being gamed based, but isn't that an outright lie since the money wasn't denied until after they learned it came from D&D profits?
Re: Children's Charity Turns its Back on Gygax Memorial Donation
The ridiculous thing is, that if everyone donated the same amount of money in their own names instead of as a group, they'd have taken it without any problem. How silly.
Hear Hear for Anonymity!
Re: Children's Charity Turns its Back on Gygax Memorial Donation
Well, now we can ignore how guilty they try and make everyone with their commercials since they have chosen that the "damn dirty D&D players" are better to ignore and rebuke...then to take the money and help out a crap load of kids as they always claim. Just a bunch of BS to me.
@ Jes: I agree completely.
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Re: Children's Charity Turns its Back on Gygax Memorial Donation
Re: Children's Charity Turns its Back on GenCon Donation
Various groups decide to come together to host events to receive donations which, then, are distributed to major organizations such as CCF.
Many have positive and negative stances. While the CCF CLAIMS that it isn't about its attitudes towards the gaming community, one wonders if they would accept money from a religious group who had ties to "family values" that included promoting bigotry and hate against whole groups of Humans. Would the CCF, after discovering this, argue religious freedom and accept the money or decline/return the money? Would it be acceptable if it weren't widely publically known?
Selective acceptance, at the cost of those who would receive the financial help, will always be seen as a form of bias, no matter what the political response is by them.
It's good that SOMEONE can see past the games and see the help being offered. The Fisher House Foundation clearly sees that the needs of those they help are far more important than any personal, religious, and/or political agenda.
Nightwng2000
NW2K Software
Nightwng2000 has also updated his MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/nightwing2000 Nightwng2000 is now admin to the group "Parents For Education, Not Legislation" on MySpace as http://groups.myspace.com/pfenl
Re: Children's Charity Turns its Back on Gygax Memorial Donation
So a bunch of 20-30 year olds enjoying roleplay is apparently a danger to the CCF's integrity?
Sounds more like a refusal based on religious views to me!
Re: Children's Charity Turns its Back on Gygax Memorial Donation
Wow, even GamePolitics didn't do its homework.
If you'd read past the headline, you would have realized that the convention also included pornographic materials, and THAT was the real problem, not D&D. So this was not those evil uberconservatives out to destroy the world again with their hate. It was PR, plain as that.
Dennis, you owe your readers the FULL STORY. I am disappointed in the fact that you didn't dig deeper than this.