The Dungeons & Dragons game was invented in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Why no statue in the town square?

When Ed Schwinn thinks about the history of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin — and as president of the board of directors for the Geneva Lake Museum, he thinks about it quite a bit — he thinks of a summer retreat, a tourist town that has fewer than 10,000 year-round residents. He thinks of his own family living there year-round for 34 years. He thinks of his grandfather, who helped steer the Schwinn Bicycle Company into becoming a household name, buying a second home on the lakefront in the 1920s. He notes that a lot of summer families have long since become permanent residents, though “when I grew up on Lake Geneva, people with homes on the lakefront shut off the water on Labor Day, slipped a key under the mat and went home until May.”

He thinks of all those wealthy, famous names associated with the history of the town — the Schwinns, the Wrigleys, the Maytags, the Wards — then admits, “No matter how many well-known families have been coming here a century or more, I’m not sure any of us have done as much for the city of Lake Geneva as Gary Gygax.”

If the name doesn’t ring a bell, you’d be hard-pressed to learn more in Lake Geneva.

True, there is a combination store and small museum there centered on Gygax’s inventions. And yes, one of Gygax’s homes is now something like holy ground for true believers. But there are no historic markers or formal signs of civic pride, and the closest thing Lake Geneva has to formal recognition of Gary Gygax is a maroon brick alongside the lake itself, set into a promenade and inscribed with the following:

“In memory of E. Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons & Dragons.”

“Call me biased because he’s my dad,” said Luke Gygax, one of Gygax’s six children, “but I don’t know another figure from Lake Geneva