Jim Ward has died | Hacker News Reader

Jim Ward has died

gamedeveloper.com

163 pointsPaul-Craft20 comments

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_M._Ward

Related from earlier in the year with lots of anecdotes and discussion:

Dungeons and Dragons turns 50 today

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39141413

another morbidly timed passing away. This year was also the 40th anniversary of the Dragonball franchise.

Jefferson-Adams energy.

Another legend has passed on. Farewell, Drawmij.

James Ward is responsible for two of my favorite TSR products: Deities & Demigods and Gamma World.

I thought Drawmij's Instant Death was a parody spell and not actually real. I still remember that being in one of the Outrages from the Mages spells in Dragon magazine. [1]

[1] https://www.greyhawkonline.com/greyhawkwiki/Drawmij#Trivia

DnD had the mindshare, but Gamma World was the game I really got into. Keep your dragons and bugbears, I wanted to battle it out with radioactive mutants with a laser gun.

Wizards/Hasbro might not do it the justice it deserves (see Spelljammer) but Gamma World needs to return.

Various versions of Metamorphosis Alpha are also available (print and PDF) and the original game was reprinted a few years ago.

The cover artwork of the D&D manual Deities & Demigods is a core memory of my early teens. I poured over the writings and studied the black and white line art found within countless times.

I came to Pool of Radiance later and was completely enchanted.

RIP James M. Ward. Your work had an impact on me and hundreds of thousands if not millions of others.

> I poured over the writings and studied the black and white line art found within countless times.

This prompted me to see if there was one I could check out on the Internet Archive to satisfy some nostalgia. There was - and I didn't have to check it out either. https://archive.org/details/deities-demigods-1st-print/mode/...

His signature is on page 4 along with a preface and dedication (that will probably bring a bit of a tear to the eye...)

It was that book that had me go check out Swords and Deviltry and Elric of Melniboné in my youth.

Not too hot on DND these days but I still see the DBZ Card Game as an amazing achievement in terms of game design. People often see games as fitting into certain categories. Crunchy, Narrativist, Gamist what have you. But the DBZ card game managed to deliver narrative, crunch, versimiltude all in one package. I had never watched DBZ or had any special interest in it when the game was demoed at my club, but the cards as martial art moves, with a martial arts style, and a character that brought their own dimension with power level, power stages and their very own gimmick was immediately wonderful.

In terms of card game design, without the help of a computer, I have never seen its equal.

I never tried that one, but I did try his previous, Spellfire.

Presumably he leaned from his experiences with that one, because Spellfire was infuriatingly bad gameplay-wise (the art was great though, being classic D&D art).

Guess they’re working on a new one now.

72 is too young to be passing away.

Median life expectancy in the US for males is 73.5

Life IS short.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...

US seems not to be the best place for becoming old.

From his Wikipedia page:

> In 2010, Ward was diagnosed with a serious neurological disorder that required treatment at the Mayo Clinic. His friend Tim Kask helped to establish a fund to help Ward offset some of the medical bills.

I mean, good on his friend, it was a very kind thing to do. But also, wow, what a messed up place the US is...

> But also, wow, what a messed up place the US is...

Quite a lot of the things that would simply be untreatable in many places are treatable in the US, but it's expensive.

I don't know if that's the case here, but knowing that can help you understand that the place where a lot of things originate (and start out expensive) is the place that eventually commercialises them to the point where other countries can buy them as a package.

Godspeed Warden.

Drawmij has teleported to another plane.

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