Legendary game designer Ernest Gary Gygax died yesterday morning at his home in Lake Geneva at 69. He is survived by his wife, Gail Gygax. He was also father to six children, five of them being from his first marriage.

"It really meant a lot to him to hear from people from over the years about how he helped them become a doctor, a lawyer, a policeman, what he gave them," his widow Gail Gygax said to AP. "He really enjoyed that."

He was known to have severe health problems and an abdominal aneurysm, but struggled to attend and host games of Dungeons & Dragons as recently as January, his widow said to AP.

Gygax and Don Kaye founded the publishing company Tactical Studies Rules (TSR) and published the first version of D&D in 1974. Gygax said recently that he believed they would sell something like 50,000 copies. However, an estimated 20 million people worldwide have played D&D to date, BBC reports. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) was created a few years later, with a different set of rules.

Tabletop fantasy role-playing game (RPG) Dungeons & Dragons is believed to be the foundation of all future RPG games, both tabletop and video games such as World of Warcraft. The current version of the game was released in 2003. It is Dungeons & Dragons v.3.5 (a.k.a. the Revised 3rd Edition or D&D3.5). A fourth edition of the game is slated to be released in May this year.

Dungeons & Dragons is considered the best-known and best-selling role-playing game ever.