This is off the D&D topic, but as we age, these sad moments will keep happening to us: writers, actors, musicians etc., along with friends and family. We must remember them and how they made us feel.
Humans don't live long. But I agree, at 72 you can still be running and playing frisbee these days. The reminder is to contribute while you still can. You never know when you played your last session.❤
Indeed, I've been struggling with seeing all these wonderful people pass, and the realization that people of my age (middle aged now) need to remember those who have passed and that we're the elders now. Time is so strange...
@@AnthonySimeone Well, as someone that's at least a Millennial, I can say that I've also had thoughts about who I'll be and how I'll be when I'm older. Not sure if it's at your level, but I get that part, at least. I've also seen some old folks pass that I've cared for outside my family.
As mentioned on a previous video, I have the first 2 Pools books (and didn't even know there was a 3rd until googling for the previous comment.) I've managed to get my hands on Deities with the 'thanks' but not the pantheons. Still hoping to cross paths with an earlier printing.
@@daddyrolleda1 Unfortunately the video quality isn't good on the first ones, as Bill was still new to the video thing, but they're still good listens.
Ya, plenty of backwards names in my games as well. Currently in the world I’ve built, I’ve got a city named Arnestone, a small town called Blumeford. And the continent of Gygax. They all speak “high gygaxian”, an odd, archaic version of the common tongue, ruled over by the undying Lord Thaco. While the citizens tend to agree Thaco is a hold over from a time long gone, he’s become a source of pride for them, internationally, to stick to their Gygaxian roots. 🤓
Our hobby is in its 50th year. While this is something wonderful, and worth celebrating, it also brings with it the irony that it is just old enough that we are losing the last of the first generation of TTRPGers. This was a very nice tribute, Martin.
Thanks for your kind words. What you say is so true, and it's so sad to think about. I am glad that so much technology and different platforms exist these days (blogs, RU-vid channels, social media, etc.) that have given a chance for these original creators to tell their stories for posterity.
@@daddyrolleda1 Indeed. It is fortunate that our hobby also grew up during a rise in technology which has allowed us to preserve a significant amount of our history. They never truly leave us, as long as we remember them. I will be raising a toast to James Ward at my table this Sunday night! Hail, and farewell, brave adventurer!
Thank you for this tribute to James. His contributions to the hobby are priceless. I'm sure Gary and his friends are welcoming him at the game table in the great halls.
It is fun to think of Gary, Dave, Tom Moldvay, Len Lakofka, Dave Trampier, and others pulling out a chair and welcoming Jim to their game. Perhaps they would play a few sessions of Metamorphosis Alpha together.
DM of 40+ years here. I read James Ward's "Pool of Radiance" back in 1989, and that novel spawned my love for D&D fiction that lasted for many years. The novel was integral in defining how I run and play priests in my D&D games, and I'll be forever grateful for Ward's work. RIP. 😢
I’m a player of 40yrs and a DM of 35. My best friend got into playing the Pools of Radiance PC game then we met very shortly there after. We still play AD&D together with most of the group we’d gathered back in ‘89. Great memories thanks to Mr Ward.
I absolutely loved James Ward. Thoughts and prayers go out to his family with their loss of such a wonderful man. ❤. Thank you, Martin. This is the best tribute I have online for him. Love you brother. 😊
Jim Ward was kind enough to reach out to me (on a D&D forum) around 15 years ago wishing to send me a book. I was hugely flattered and was curious. He sent me a signed hardcopy of his newest Metamorphosis Alpha version, at the time. I was so honored and he said he just thought I would like it. He just liked my goofy posts and knew I liked his work. He was simply being kind to a fan and I will cherish that book forever.
Thank you for making this video. Jim was such a kind person. I exchanged several posts with him on FB over the past few years. He was so approachable, answering questions and giving updates on the projects he was working on. He was a legend. 🥃 to James. You will be missed.
DRa1 - Thank you for this lovely tribute to an icon of the D&D luminaries. As far as I can tell, based on interviews of Mr Ward that I’ve seen, he was as kind and charming a soul as one could hope to encounter. His love and devotion to DnD and TTRPG was very evident. His passing is a great loss but his life in the game was a great boon. He will be sorely missed.
Finnish seems obscure but the Kalevala was super influential. Both Tolkien and Moorcock were highly influenced by it and it is one of the settings in DeCamp and Pratt’s Incompleat Enchanter stories, which were very influential for Gygax and his circle. Mordenkainen is basically a reskin of a wizard from the Kalevala as I recall.
A finn here, I didn't know Moorcock was also influenced by Kalevala. That is so cool since he seems to be a major inluennce on everything I love. Mordenkainen might have some Väinämöinen in him.
@@neutraljump Yes, Elric is highly inspired by Kullervo. Tolkien, too, in the form of Turin Turambar, one of the heroes of the first age. Both had homicidal talking swords, serious family problems, and raging cases of PTSD. Moorcock claims that he had no direct influence from Tolkien... eh, who knows? As to Mordenkainen, Gygax claimed that he never actually gave out Mord's stats, so we don't totally know. I think the name was inspired by Lemminkäinen, but you're right that Väinämöinen is probably closer to the inspiration.
Oof, I see that now, about Elric. Kullervo is a real gut punch of a character. The smaller major characters of Kalevala, Kullervo and Lemminkäinen, are interesting. Imperfect yet powerful beuriful dudes with flaming or talking swords and giant blood. I suddenly feel like playing a fighter/bard.
The influence continues into FR with Loviatar, Ilmater and Mielikki appearing as deities in Ed's Dragon 54 article (and later material) though only Mielikki really resembles her namesake (oddly, Deities also associates Loviatar with pain rather than blindness, death and disease).
I really appreciate you saying that. Thank you for watching, especially all the way through to the end, and then taking the time to write this comment. It means a lot. Thanks.
Kalevala was a collection of finnish folklore and oral tradition put into one epic. Before Elias Lönnrot journeyed Finland's countryside by foot and ski to collect all the stories in the early 1800s, we didn't have any of them in written form, not in verse anyway. It's not a minor part of our cultural identity. So it's awesome to see it mentioned in anything, even more so in DnD :)
I for one really appreciated it because in school we of course learned Greek mythology, and I was aware of Norse and Egyptian through doing my own research (Egyptian was really big when I was a kid because Tutankamun's exhibit came to the United States then), but I was unaware of pretty much all of the other pantheons in Deities and Demigods. The Finnish pantheon seemed to interesting to me, but I'm pretty sure if it weren't for James Ward and D&D, I wouldn't know anything about it. Thank you for watching and commenting.
I recently acquired an illustrated leather bound edition from the Easton Press. It's one of the most elegant books I've ever seen and the most beautiful I own. Signed and numbered by the artist. I always watched for one since D&Ds D&D came out. Also, Tolkien mentioned a Finnish Grammar as one of his earliest influences. His Elvish languages are inspired by Finnish.
@@daddyrolleda1 "I'm pretty sure if it weren't for James Ward and D&D, I wouldn't know anything about it. " That applies to a whole lot of mythology, knowledge of the Medieval era, and so on. It's not that those early D&D books were *accurate*. They weren't. They were *interesting* and inspired a lot of people to go further. I have joked that many statisticians of my age (roughly the same as yours) got our start trying to figure out things like dice probabilities and whatever the heck Gygax was talking about in the DMG1E.
@@danielrowan4716 Gary told a lot of different things about his own campaign and characters, but I think he was pretty clear that Mordenkainen's name came from altering Lemminkäinen.
I saw that Professor DM mentioned it today in the intro to his latest video. I stumbled across the news late Tuesday evening and recorded about 2/3 of the video yesterday, but wasn't able to finish it and edit it until today.
Still have Metamorphosis Alpha, Gamma World, the original Deities & Demigods, Greyhawk Adventures, etc. James Ward written books have always been a part of my roleplaying experience, so I was very sad to hear of his passing. This was a nice tribute to Jim, Martin. Thank you!
Thank you so much. I appreciate you taking the time to let me know. I've heard from a few folks that they enjoyed meeting him and that he seemed like a very nice guy.
I tended to think of JW for MA and GW. I bought 1st ed. MA in '76 and loved it. In addition to being the first SF RPG, it was also the first RPG I can think of that came with a setting detailed enough that you could play the next day. There were no modules for D&D - the Judge's Guild stuff was starting to appear but you had to (1) be aware of it, and (2) buy it separately.
Yes, definitely! I've talked about the lack of adventures/modules before, such as in this video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-H6V7Pd8QgkY.htmlsi=QW5MYRJSSMM83dGk Thank you for watching and commenting. I appreciate it.
Classy bonus content. I poured a Highland Park 12yr old and joined you. You rolled a 20 this time - from a former Hudson Valley resident. My original Gamma World box is gone, but I still have that book.
This is such a nice comment. Thank you so much for sharing this, and I really appreciate that you took time to poor a dram and join me in a toast. Thank you so much. Cheers.
Okay, I was watching your latest video but ended up here to comment because you mentioned James Ward in that other video so I came to check it out. BTW, congratulations on 10k subs! That's awesome. I know I've watched some of your older videos but I've never subscribed-that's now changed! I wanted to say that James Ward's contributions to the Deities & Demigods changed my life for the better. That book has been such an incredible inspiration to me, I can't even describe it. I was always into Mythology, but having stats for Odin and Zeus and many other personalities was the icing on the cake. I was sad when I heard of James' passing and at such a young age. Thank you for making this video and being an awesome RU-vidr for the D&D community. You rock.
Had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Ward at a local comic con twice. First time, he had signed my copy of the 1E Deities and Demigods. Second, he was running a game and I played in it; 4 character, mine was next to last to pass on.
To James. I'm sure when the distillery burned it seemed pretty apocalyptic at the time. Apocalyptic whiskey seems an appropriate toast for the creator of Gamma World.
That's a really interesting and fun way to look at that. Thank you so much for watching and commenting, and especially for watching all the way through the bonus content. I really appreciate it.
Another great tribute that was also informative. We met James Ward and Rob Kuntz at Gencon and Rob asked my dad to help on the Cthulhu mythos. So Deities and Demigods is by three of my favorite designers. I was lucky enough to meet Jim Ward a few years ago and he was as nice and funny as everyone said. ❤
Thank you so much for sharing this story! I've "met" some incredible people via this channel and it's so nice to hear their stories. So great that your dad was helped to help with the Cthulhu Mythos. What contributions did he add? Thank you very much for watching and commenting.
No thanks needed Holmes and Kuntz and Ward met at Gen con 1977. Kunzt wrote an article in the Dragon-Lovecraftian Mythos in D&D shortly after in which he thanked Dad. Don't know the issue but the Dieties chapter was pretty much that article.@@daddyrolleda1
Yes! I just found it: Issue #12. Thanks so much for alerting me to this. I didn't start reading Dragon until around 1983, so this was before my time. While I have the CD-ROM collection (issues #1 - #250) I haven't read through all of them yet. Your dad was so inspirational to so many folks, and getting a copy of the Holmes Basic Set (I started with Moldvay) has long been on my wishlist. Cheers and thanks again for sharing your knowledge and history here!
It really snuck up on me. I knew he'd been in not-great health but I didn't realize the extent. As recently as just the past few months, he'd been pretty active in leaving comments on Facebook posts in the TTRPG community.
@@daddyrolleda1 IIRC, from the Metamorphosis board about a dozen years ago, he'd been struggling for a long while. On a positive note, his work sparked creativity among many gamers; a wonderful legacy.
Very much so. I was aware of his neurological illness but didn't quite realize the extent of it. I hope he is at peace now and knew before he left us of how much of a positive impact he had, especially on gamers and dreamers.
Yes, it's an unfortunate part of us being in the 50th anniversary of the game. It means a lot of the original creators are on the elderly side. We could probably all do a better job of celebrating them while they're still with us.
Curious, were you so determined to play that you let heads into your game? I did. We even played over at one guy's house because his grandma didn't care if anyone smoked "cigarettes" in the basement. There was one country guy, I kid you not he referred to Elric as "Ear-lick" from Mel-knee-bone. I'm not even casting negative on them. They were who they were. And they played, and played, and played, sometimes into marathon sessions. Unique individuals. I would do it all again. Oh yeah, one thing. Can't help notice the music and libations. Your drink is your own, but D&D and everything related is METAL.
