Mike Herron

 Those of you who were in the SIUC SGS during the 1980s and 1990s should remember Mike Herron or "Wheelchair Mike" as he was also known. He played many different war , board and RPGs but I remember him as an avid Car Wars player.

According to his Facebook page, he had suffered from lung disease for several years and recently developed congestive heart failure, to the point that his weary body just gave out.  Rest in peace Mike

TimeLloyd

 In case you missed it, Lloyd Rich, better known in Carbondale as TimeLloyd, passed away July 16.  For 25+ years, TimeLloyd was a familiar sight around town, wearing multiple layers of clothing, even when the weather dictated otherwise and riding his beloved fringed bicycle. For someone who used the bicycle as much as he did, he never seemed to develop great control of it, as anyone who saw him wobbling inthe Lights Fantastic parade can attest.

He would often show up at the store whenever we held giveaways. One time, for a Halloween drawing, in order to get an extra ticket, he came in dressed as normal but brandished a prop Doctor Who sonic screwdriver, saying he was dressed as a Time Lord. What could we do? We gave him the ticket.

He suffered a couple of falls within the last five years, which made him far less mobile and the last time I saw him about two years ago, he appeared confined to a wheelchair.

Visitation is 9 a.m. on August 5 at the Newman Center, where he often attended Mass, with a funeral mass at 10 a.m.

Farewell TimeLloyd. So Long and thanks for all the fish. Carbondale was a bit more lively with you here.

RIP Klaus Teuber

 On a sad note, Klaus Teuber, the creator of Setters of Catan, later Catan, passed away this past week after a short illness (See “RIP Klaus Teuber”). Settlers of Catan was the first of the Eurogames, which relied more on strategic play and less on chance, to sell successfully in the US.  NPR ran an obituary for Teuber this week, replaying part of his 2020 interview with Rob Schmitz. Catan had its roots in the pretend battles Teuber waged as a child with toy solders over fields, woods, and mountains. However, Catan grew out of his boredom with his job as a dental technician. Spending his free time in his basement developing games, his first games won three Spiel des Jahres awards but sales tapered off quickly. Inspired by stories of the Vikings and what they would need as they explored and colonized, he developed the Settlers of Catan, originally a much more sprawling game than the single island in the core set (the other pieces were eventually added as expansions such as Seafarers of Catan and Cities and Knights). Core tenets of the game were that no-one could ever be eliminated from play and players could take actions on every one’s turn, ensuring no one spend time just sitting there. The game worked, and has sold over 30 million copies since its introduction in 1995. 

I remember stocking the game back in 1995, wondering if boardgames would fit into our product mix of RPGs and miniatures since our customers at the time showed no interest in boardgames. It did and we have sold Catan for over 25 years. Thank you, Mr. Teuber for all the fun and sales over the years and yes, I

Leiji Matsumoto Dies

 Leiji Matsumoto, the creator of  such early classic space scifi manga as Queen Esmereldas and Galaxy Express 999, has died of actute heart failure at age 85.  His best known works were those derived from his Space Pirate Captain Harlock series such as Space Battleship Yamato.

RIP Steve Perrin

 

I was sorry to hear of the passing of Steve Perrin this past Thursday. As was fitting, most of the game industry learned of it through the obituary Chaosium Inc. posted on its website, as that is the company most associated with his work. Also a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, Perrin brought his first games, the boardgame White Bear & Red Moon and the RPG RuneQuest, to Chaosium, which published them in ’76 and ’78. Although Perrin only remained employed by Chaosium for a few years, his work is inextricably linked with the company as he developed or contributed to the RPGS,  Call of Cthulhu, Stormbringer, Worlds of Wonder , SuperWorld, Elfquest and many others, over 125 at least. If you played an RPG during the 1980s, chances are it was influenced by his work. Over the next 30 years, he worked in both the tabletop and computer gaming industry, recently returning to Chaosium as a creative consultant. Saying goodbye is never easy but the world is better for having had Steve Perrin in it.

 

RIP Andrew Hackard

 

On a somber note, Andrew Hackard, the line editor for Steve Jackson Games Munchkin line passed away this week from  glioblastoma , an aggressive form of brain cancer.  I did not know Andrew Hackard well but I met him several times at various game industry functions and found him gregarious and enthusiastic whether it was discussing Munchkin, other SJG products, Ravenloft or any other topic . If you have played a game of Munchkin in the past decade or ever ventured into the realm of Ravenloft, which he helped keep alive during the years it was out of print say a silent “Thank You” to him the next time you play.

Farewell Brian Dalrymple

 

“Hope everyone has a great day”—Brian Dalrymple.

The above is one of Brian Dalrymple’s favorite farewells. I was shocked Friday when I opened up my social media and saw he had passed away.  https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/47899/r-i-p-brian-dalrymple   Numerous people had already posted tributes to his life and expressions of sorrow at his death. As of this writing there is no word as to the reason, save for “natural causes”. I had known Brian for a couple of decades, primarily through meeting with him at various GAMA Trade Shows. I remember the cheerfulness with which he greeted everyone, the smile and especially the hat.  Brian could easily be picked out of any crowd just by his white fedora. He was also well known for the length of time he had spent in the game industry and his willingness to work for the betterment of the industry.

I had the opportunity to work with Brian on a GAMA project a few years ago, which gave me a greater understanding of both his willingness to volunteer  on assorted projects and to work to improve the industry.  At the time I had been talking about the increasing influence of Kickstarter projects on the gaming industry and had asked if GAMA had a position on them. https://icv2.com/articles/columns/view/36691/rolling-initiative-crowdfunding-the-future-distribution GAMA responded ”No we don’t. Would you like to write one?” Having been neatly outmaneuvered, I said yes and Brian almost as quickly volunteered to work on it as well. Michael Stackpole would up taking lead on the paper but Brian did much of the writing. I have no idea whatever happened to the finished product but I do remember how quickly and enthusiastically he threw himself into it.

During several years of turmoil at GAMA, Brian remained a calming and steadying influence who never had a bad word to say about anyone and about whom, to my knowledge, no one ever had a bad word to say. His nearly 2 decades of service on what could sometimes be a fractious Board of Directors is tribute to that.

Looking over the comments and tributes posted about him on Facebook shows a person who was deeply integrated into the game industry and the Florida gaming community, both as an RPG writer and as a game retailer, co-owner of one of the oldest gamecentric stores in the country.  He had spent decades building a community for gamers in central Florida, especially for those who were outcast, whether by school or family. One writer indicated they knew of at least 10 people who had contemplated suicide who were alive today due to Brian’s intervention.  That is quite a legacy to leave behind.

Brian also loved to talk, rather to converse. He had that trick of making you think, while you were talking with him, of making you think you were a brilliant conversationalist when much of it was due to the way he would listen and respond to what you said. A number of people remarked on how easy he was to talk with and how an hour’s worth of conversation felt like only minutes had passed.

Some of the eulogies posted are a couple of sentences long, others are a full page. Brian Dalrymple will be missed by a lot of people and that is as good a tribute as any. 

RIP Jim Holloway

Jim Holloway, whose art graced a number of early TSR adventures as well as publications from companies like Goodman Games and Pacesetter, has passed away.

Hugh Williams

Here is more on Hugh Williams' passing. Posted with permission from Car:

I found out from Hugh's friend Karen that Hugh had heart blockages and some fluid buildup around the heart, but was too weak for bypass surgery. He was working on getting his strength back and doing much better so his death was unexpected. When he was in the hospital he was not quite calm. He was very weak but the speech problems were mostly caused by the tranquilizers they gave him. He was laid to rest at Grandview Gardens in Champaign.

RIP Bill Levy

 I was sorry to hear that small press publisher Bill Levy passed away from a heart attack last week.  Anyone who attended a SF convenstion in the Mid-South region for the past 40 years likely had at least one, and probably  many, encounters with Bill, usually in the gaming rooms or con-suite where he could  (and did) talk on dozens of topics for hours.  I have carried games from his Godiva Games imprint (Brandub, DeepSlieep, Club, Spirax) since the 90s and planned to restock when I saw him later this year. I was also a big fan of his Night Mart strip, which he had published off and on for years ( I still sit down and flip through the one collection of the strips he published whenever I run across it in my library). From what I understand, he had suffered from chronic pain for a number of years, but my last memory of him is him at a convention panel enthusiastically reading from his first novel, which he expect to see published sometime this year.  He was a big man, with a big personality and his passing leaves a big hole. Rest in Peace Bill.

RIP Rick Loomis

It was only a few weeks ago that  game industry mainstays Bill Jafee, James Mathe , Lee Garvin and Steve Creech passed away. Saturday brought notice that Rick Loomis, owner of Flying Buffalo Games and publisher of the Tunnels and Trolls RPG and Nuclear War card game, passed away after a lengthy struggle with lymphatic  cancer. Loomis’ position (much of the following information comes from Rick’s Wikipedia page) as a major figure in the gaming industry dates back to 1970 when, while serving at Fort Shafter in Hawaii, he picked up a copy of Avalon Hill’s Gettysburg. Finding himself fascinated by the game, he soon developed his own game, Nuclear Destruction, one of the earliest, if not the earliest boardgames to feature hidden movement. Offering to moderate play by mail games of Nuclear Destruction with fellow soldiers, he soon had  some 200 servicemen signed up to play, leading  Loomis to ask friend and fellow soldier Steve MacGregor to write a computer program to moderate play. When this proved successful, Loomis and MacGregor founded Flying Buffalo Inc. in 1972, to run play by mail games as a for-profit operation, making Loomis, as far as he knew, the first person to ever purchase a computer solely for gaming.  While focusing on play by mail games at the time, Loomis also acquired the rights to Nuclear War, which (I remember owning a white boxed copy of the game back in the early 1990s) became one of the company’s best selling products, with multiple expansions, including a randomized set of 40 cards released during the first TCG craze in 1995.

In 1975, Ken St. Andre approached Loomis with the new RPG he had developed:  Tunnels and Trolls. RPGs were still very new then, with Dungeons and Dragons the only published one. While the rules for D&D fell under copyright protection, the concept of roleplaying was not and Tunnels and Trolls, or T&T as players soon shortened it to, approached the genre with a much looser feel and more clearly written rules, making it the second published RPG. Loomis took 40 copies of the game to the Origins Game Fair and sold every copy, leading him to acquire the rights to T&T and bring a second edition of the game out under the FBI imprint. Loomis then wrote Buffalo Castle using the T&T rules, arguably the first solo RPG adventure, even pre-dating the “Choose your own Adventure” books . FBI’s newsletter SuperNova contained some of artist  Liz Danforth’s first work in the gaming field (FBI printed three magazines over time. The third, Sorcerer’s Apprentice, is still one of my favorites). In 1981, Loomis published  the first of the Grimtooth’s Traps books, one of the first RPG sourcebooks not tied to a specific system (although Judges’ Guild predated the release of the Grimtooth books, its early supplements were all tied to specific RPG systems such as D&D and RuneQuest).

In 1978, the Association of Game Manufacturers formed, soon renamed the Game Manufacturers Association, nee GAMA, and elected Rick temporary president and treasurer. He went on to serve as GAMA President for a number of terms, then moving to the President-Emeritus position, regularly attending board meetings. Loomis and Flying Buffalo were fixtures at both national and regional gaming conventions, setting up for decades in dealer and exhibit halls at Origins, GenCon, Eisen Game Fair and the GAMA Trade Show to name a few. After I got to know Rick, I learned we shared a fondness for Diet Mountain Dew, so if I knew he would have a booth at a convention , I made it a point to always bring in a couple of twelve packs of Diet Dew and drop them off at his booth.

Even with his veteran’s benefits, the family’s medical bills will run in the tens of thousands. If you are of a mind, you can contribute to the Go Fund Me campaign or purchase a Catalyst Bundle of Holding .

During the decades he spent in the industry, I never heard him speak a bad word about anyone and never heard anyone say anything negative about him. Thanks for everything Rick. The world is a better place because you were in it.

Steve Creech Obituary

Steve Creech of Decatur Indiana passed away today. Active in the game industry for over 20 years, he owned both Bastion Press and Dragonwing Games. If you played D&D 3.0 or 3.5, you likely owned a Bastion Press product as the publisher was a major creator of OGL materials during the run of the two editions and still produced new material focused on the D20 system.  While Bastion Games was a solo operation, Creech ran Dragonwing Games in partnership with Kevin Rusch, producing material for the Pathfinder RPG.

Creech also spent over a decade as the chair of the RPG selection committee for the Origins Awards. As such, it was his job to contact publishers each year for submissions for the Award, then pull together a committee to vote on which dozen or so titles, selected from the hundred or so under consideration, should advance to the final vote by members of the gaming community. I had the opportunity to work with him on the 2019 awards and it amazed me how well organized he was and how attuned to detail. The Origin Awards and the gaming community as a whole have lost a vaulable member and friend.