RIP Steve Perrin

[skars]

Steve Perrin has passed away, here are some notes from Chaosium:

www.chaosium.com/blogvale-and-farewell-steve-perrin-1946-2021/

I will miss seeing Steve each year at DunDraCon, he was always friendly and fun to chat with.

[Vile Traveller]

Very sad news, Steve was by far and away my favourite and most influential RPG writer.

[Deleted]

It's gonna suck for his friends and family, and all the people he worked and gamed with. By all accounts a solid guy.

[tetramorph]

RIP.

[jeffb]

Aug 14, 2021 6:52:59 GMT -6 Vile Traveller said:

Very sad news, Steve was by far and away my favourite and most influential RPG writer.

Agreed.


My heart completely sunk when I heard this.

[jeffb]

As I think about it- He and Gary were directly responsible for most of my RPG fun during my glory days of youth in the 70s and early 1980s.


Gary. Steve. Tom. Greg. RIP Gentleman.

RQ was such a massive impact and turning point- it completely changed/help me figure out what I really wanted out of RPGs.

I've got alot of thoughts/memories but my mind is a jumble. I'll go have some more coffee.

[Vile Traveller]

I have lost a lot of heroes recently, and I never do this, but I've decided to write a blog post.

dreamscapedesign.net/2021/08/14/steve-perrin-1946-2021/

[jeffb]

Aug 14, 2021 8:05:08 GMT -6 Vile Traveller said:

I have lost a lot of heroes recently, and I never do this, but I've decided to write a blog post.

dreamscapedesign.net/2021/08/14/steve-perrin-1946-2021/

That was a great post. Love the pic of him, Luise (she looks like her many female depictions!) AND your rulebook. I wish I still had my originals.

Between Family members, Game Designers, And Guitar players/Musicians, most of my Heroes have left as well- that is the worst part of getting old. Losing those who have meant something to you.

[jeffb]

I did not know the man. Never spoke to him. But I'm sitting here this morning absolutely crushed because of all the good memories his game/s brought me in my youth. I saw the ads in The Dragon for years but never could find RQ. I was so intrigued by the names, and descriptions of the products. Ballastor's Barracks. Snake Pipe Hollow. Scorpion Men & Broos..WTF are Broos??? Masters of Luck & Death. Cults of Prax. White Bear & Red Moon. Nomad Gods. Gateway Bestiary (Gateway?)

One day it showed up in the LGS, and uncontrollably I yelled out loud "YES". The other customers and shop workers were not as excited as I was unfortunately.

I remember bringing it home, opening it up and the first thing that struck me was a "What's in this box" page...I'd never seen such a thing. The next thing was the dice, It was the first time I had seen the smaller D6' with white pips and a solid color (black, red, green, etc). And I remember the light mustardy yellow D4 and D20, and especially the very pretty blue D8 (which got yellow crayon). I still remember the smell of the box and books, and that it was a very hot humid day in VA, and I can remember our air conditioner coming on while I was in my room and pumping out cool air which always had a much "fresher" smell to it.

The game had a very polished and modern look to it, compared to other things I owned- Arduin, older TSR products, Judges Guild. It seemed much more "Grown Up" and "Serious" than my MCM sets or AD&D books. I felt like I had graduated into an entirely new category of gaming. Seems silly now, but that's how I felt.

I was a bit taken back at the cartoony cover to Gringle's Pawnshop and the computer generated monster stats of FANGS. I skipped right past BRP, and dove straight into the rulebook. The two page intro to Glorantha and the maps completely captivated me, and then reading through the book- which was the most well written and easy to understand rulebook I'd ever seen*- seeing how Rurik's Saga played out. That was it. I was hooked, and I went out and bought or ordered as much as RQ materials as I could afford (and other Chaosium games as they showed up). Within the span of a few hours RQ became my Fantasy game of choice and would be until I quit TTRPGS around 1985.


As I recall, my original D&D group had mostly disbanded, and the majority of the group I was in by 1981 mostly preferred modern/war/espionage/PA games, but I had a long span where I only ran RQ and two of the other guys took up the GM mantle for the modern era games. We played out Gringles** and The Rainbow Mounds, a few homebrew adventures, parts of Borderlands, and then the last bit I remember was an excursion of the PCs ("undercover" Lunar Soldiers) into The Rubble and they all got wiped out by a group of Baboons with an allied spirit, IIRC.


* Still might be.


** I removed Quackjohn and Ducks immediately from my games- I knew I would never get anyone to play it otherwise.

[jeffb]

Most folks probably don't recall or know, but Steve did some great freelance work in the 1980s for TSR as well.

Three of the absolute best products for the original AD&D Forgotten Realms setting (before it went off the rails) were authored/co-authored by Steve.


N5 Under Illefarn (parts of which I ran for DCC RPG many moons ago for The Kids)


FR4 The Magister

and

FR6 Dreams of the Red Wizards



Here are the D&D products he is associated with at DMs Guild

Steve Perrin @ the DMs Guild

[jeffb]

He is credited with 96 products at Drive Thru (and God only knows how many more products he was involved with that are not available for sale through there because they are long OOP)

Our very own tdenmark co-wrote Colonial Troopers with him.

[howandwhy99]

Sad news. He created so much for the hobby. We are not the same without him.

[Vile Traveller]

I think he was the most humble and down-to-earth people in the industry, especially given his importance.

Aug 14, 2021 9:29:23 GMT -6 jeffb said:

** I removed Quackjohn and Ducks immediately from my games- I knew I would never get anyone to play it otherwise.

I never used them in RQ2, but by the time of RQ3 my dislike of them had grown to the point where I Tippexed out every instance of "duck" in my GW Avalon Hill hardcovers and wote in "goblin" in biro!

[tdenmark]

This hurts.

I've known Steve a long time, he always kindly took time to chat with me at Dundracon, and we worked together on a couple of things. He was a brilliant designer and writer, and a great guy. He'll be sorely missed.

[tkdco2]

Sad to hear about his passing.

[arkansan]

Ahh, that's a shame.

[jeffb]

George RR Martin posted about Steve-

Farewell to an Ace