Jim Ward Dies

[geneweigel]

I guess he was supposed to be or was at "FOUNDERS AND LEGENDS", a bleed off of Gary Con according to Ernie, this past weekend.

I summarized my mixed feelings on a Facebook post:

www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid02fd7ahrqSyspWB5sydQ3J58mkrkk1x5CQrJGGXGpumsbFKi3pVfJsZ2PNvMmgHMjjl&id=100073774356834&__cft__[0]=AZXL_Wu7sGje8tN8b_cnD17JP5G8AxmX5ffQOZWj5vG0bt_SFHoAmdDkvM7z0WGQfk5vKSAEaGlG6suwmtnPkmoWGPh0IPgx5q_18L443-rELaM8dWIKSoPP_Rw3H1s2dwe0_LJDi8MhrT8lgnj41PF4AMJGpT9v4THPcmntYaFjUQ&__tn__=%2CO%2CP-R

Speaking of that last comment, about being attacked recently when I made that other "rough eulogy" of a rpg designer who was in a protected PC type, I just discovered that a certain person that I have been heartily bashing for years is loud and proud "victim" in a certain very loud group. I can't win...

[GRWelsh]

You just can't win, Gene. Every time you post on social media the reaction is like "Who invited the balrog?" "Gene shall not pass!" etc.

RIP James Ward. I will always appreciate my memories of playing GAMMA WORLD and especially the stories by EGG and others about their adventures on the Starship Warden either with D&D or METAMORPHOSIS ALPHA. By all accounts Jim Ward was a great but tough GM. I always loved the story about how EGG and Ward met and struck up a conversation because they both picked up identical books to purchase!

[geneweigel]

I keep seeing people treat Jim Ward like he was the golden unicorn and it is a crying shame. There are so many people who did not pay any attention to Ward (Gary included post-TSR) and just genuflected endlessly to the mighty "Drawmij".

Here is more of the truth about GAMMA WORLD and Jim Ward from POLYHEDRON #4 (FEB 1982) interview with Gary "Jake" Jaquet(NOT EDITED BECAUSE I ONLY HAVE A FEW MINUTES TODAY):

SNIP

HO: Let's back up a bit In time. What was your part in making the GAMMA WORLD'~ game?

JJ: The game first started off as a concept from a series of notes that Tim Kask had, compiled by someone within the company; it was an anonymous piece of material. He asked me to look at it from an editor's standpoint, in terms of what it would take to get this into publishable shape. After looking at it for a little while using my professional skills and evaluations. I said "Hey, this won't be an editing job, this will be a rewrite at the least, and probably just throwing it all out and starting over will be the best way.·' So that was how the GAMMA WORLD game started off. At that time it was called Mutant, by the way; the working title, as it were. The concept was given over to Jim Ward for his evaluation of what it could be turned into, as a rate playing game. Jim worked on it for a while, and then I received some more material from Tim, my connection with the company. 1"11 backtrack a bit here and say that originally Tim, as an editor for TSR Hobbies in early 76, was very busy and prevailed upon me because at that time I was doing some ·'contract for labor" editing work for him. When he first came u~ here he had all sorts of responsibilities with the company: everything from sweeping the floors to editing the Strategic Review to working on the D&D supplements, as did all the people in the company at that time. And more came on Tim's shoulders: editing several yearly pieces of work: Eldritch Wizardry, Blackmoor, Greyhawk, and so forth in the D&D line; Classic Warfare,and a few others. When this project was sort of dumped on him, he in turn dumped it off to me, and eventually to Jim to work on. Sometimes
Tin kicks himself now, because it was a nice opportunity to become a game designer by credit, and it fell on myself and Jim. At any rate, the initial batch of notes
actually evolved out of nothing. Portions of the manuscript were turned back over to me, and I was working on some of the game mechanics, the wording of the written text, and so forth. Jim, at the time, was working a lot on the creatures and the Cryptic Alliances and the organizations that would exist within the GAMMA WORLD setting. At that time, also, I wrote up the initial premise, or justification, for the scenario existing: that introduction that appears on the first page of the rules. That was probably my biggest piece of creative writing. After that the majority of the text was created by Jim, drawing upon the METAMORPHOSIS ALPHA scenario. You'll notice a lot of similarities between - well, for example, the mutated creatures. Most of the mutations that you find in MA you find in the GAMMA WORLD game; indeed, how many different mutations can there be, by definition? Taller and smaller and so forth. But Jim did a lot of that work, and then it turned to me. With Jim having done a lot of the mechanical work with it, I also threw in some of my own thoughts on game mechanics at that point - some of the combat systems, that were worked on even further after I got done. I should add here that although Jim and I were the primary persons involved with this, other people with TSR at the time worked on it, and indeed, the finished product was different from what Jim and I had seen as the final manuscript. So that was my involvement with the GAMMA WORLD game. Jim and I were given equal credit, and the number of hours we spent on the project was roughly equal. He was much more the mechanicist, putting the elements in, and my role was more of wordsmith, in conveying those elements so a reader would make it all come together. It seemed to work out very well for us. It was a rather odd project, 100; I don't recall, now, if I had met Jim be fore the game came out or not. We worked through the mail, by telephone, and so forth, and it was an entirely non-face-to-face project. which may have been unique,
HQ: This original manuscript just sort of arose? Jim gave reference to one or two science fiction classics, of course, like "Mutie', "Orphans in the Sky", and
so forth; but from what you said, it seems that the ideas just sort of appeared, Was this in the course 01 a group effort of the TSR staff, just an interest in the subject, or what?
JJ: Well, source material for any thing someone says "Now, where did the DUNGEONS& DRAGONS®game come from?" - y'know, you can cite any reference you like back to the mythology of early man, which the tales came from originally. The same holds true to a degree with the GAMMA WORLD game; it came directly from MA, and definitely
drew upon the D&D game, It also drew upon a number of pieces of literature, all revolving around the "after the cataclysm" scenario, where "A Canticle for Leibowitz" or "Armageddon 2525" or whatever, The GAMMA WORLD system could conceivably be expanded, and you could use a lot of the same things to create a whole universe. However, it was designed to be a closed universe, just this one small world. Where the original concept for having game based on a "role playing science fiction in the post cataclysm future" scenario came from, I can't say, It may have had a "committee birth", if you will.
HQ: Interesting. You rewrote or edited this manuscript, adding your own ideas for rules. Where did you get your ideas for game mechanics, and what made you think that you had the ability to do this sort of thing?
JJ: I was a gamer in college, which is where my gaming experience lies; roleplaying games in particular. simulation games in general. My gaming experience prior to college had been limited to some board games that I found interesting - Risk, for example, andsome of the obvious class ics like Scrabble and Monopoly and so forth
thaI everyone plays. When I got into college, my first exposure to simulation gaming was in , 969, as a freshman. J saw these people playing this strange game with a hexagon map grid and lillie paper counters. As it turned out. it was Gettysburg, which isone of the introductory games that most Old-time garners played first.
And I was really fasci nated by it. Waler- 100 was another one that I saw played, and I was just flabbergasted by the concept of Simulating en ti re armies at this scale. So that was exposure; after that, I went out and bought something ridi culous (something realty complex) and then had the problem of trying to find someone to play itwith! You go to a friend and say. "Take these rules" - boom ph. throw them on the desk - ~and try i\." Anyway, when t got to SIU there was a game club. and that was where I was introduced to the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS game. Being a theorist by nature. I like to examine why the rules are written the way they are, or "Why Richtoffen's War isdlflerent from Red Baron" orwhatever. A system of mechanics, by its very nalure, is something you can pick apart. You can examine it almost l ike scientistwill pick apart a chemical compound. I found that to be an in teresting mental exercise: "Why was th is game designed this way. and what could I do to make it better?" You start experimenting with concepts. Maybethey're workable, maybe they're not. bu t at least it starts you thinking in that direction. Or you come across an ambiguity in rules, and you have to make a determination: "Well, does it really mean this, or does it mean this?" Using Risk as an example, you can interpret "the third set of cards" as meaning the th ird time everyone has turned in a set of cards, or just "the third set of cards to be turned in ." You have to gel a group consensus. That's a part of game design word smithing, where you make that presentation to the reader clear enough that there is no possible misunderstanding or misinterpretation. So that was where I got into theory of game design - at that basic level, which wasn't a practicing level. When you got into the original DUNGEONS & DRAGONS game in '74, you became a game designer almost by necessity, because there weren't rules there. They were suggestions on what you could do as your own game designer. This relates lathe GAMMA WORLD game. Having experienced this basic game design from interpre ting ambiguities in rules. having played the 0&0 system from its beginnings and both seeing how it evolved (which was almost a step-by-step course In game design) plus the "hands-on" training in
terms 01 whalthe game required of me as a OM and as a player, I got a good background in how a game could be designed. The 0&0 system was a very logical and workable (if not somewhat arbitrary) system for applying mechanics to a game of role playing. so there are six prime characteristics for GAMMA WORLD characters, determined
by 3 six-sided dice, and so forth . Obviously you could reline that: have percentile dice, characteristics that go Irom zerotoa hundred, and thena lillie more ... but the original and additional concepts 01 the DUNGEONS & ORAGONS game were a good starting point, and we just built upon them. A lot of the GAMMA WORLD syslems
are rather basic. They're sound in terms 01 design, and obviously players feel so loa, because it still conltnues to be a very good seller and people play it
a lot. But they are really basic and rather arbitrary, Now ilyou want to get Into thai old "realism versus playability" argument, they're very playable. They're
not necessarily a simulation of realism; y'know, poison hits you and iI's all or nothing, Maybe that's not quite realistic. but it does work, and if you're gOing
to be SO arbitrary as to say that 18 represents a maximum strength, fine, that's OK too. There are original ideas In the GAMMA WORLD game, in terms of mechanical things, and all very logical. Game design is more of a science than an art il you 're starting with something that exists; more refinement, and more 'how can we make this game more playable?" Whereas. when the 0&0 game first came out, though it wasevoI utionary it was much more the "art" of game design,

HQ: If you could change part of Ihe GAMMA WORLD game, would you, and what?

JJ: Uh, yeah; if I were going back to do it all over again ... (pauses) I would tinker with Ihe mechanics. specifically. There are some things that, while playable,
are unnecessary or a little too cumbersome. For example, there's Ihe whole Route Movement/Search Movement time thing: varying time scales lor varying geographical distance scales to accomodate both traveling across continents and exploring buidings. I would throw that all out and do it over again.

HQ: Would you recommend thaI a typical GAMMA WORLD player or game master thinker with it like that?

JJ: I assume that they already have. From what I've seen, most people stay on one level or the other. They don't say, "Well, we're going to go out and take a 20 mile hike first of all, and have an outdoor adventure that winds up in a city, and then explore some ruins, and use another scale." I would make that clearer. I'd also put a little more emphasis on Artifacts other than what's listed . There's a rationale for having the weaponry and so forth that exists as Artifacts, but I'd put in more thing s. The Mech Alliance and the robot farms could be elaborated upon. I mean, how did that society have its 'ood? What about ocean farms? What did the people dolor recreation?Would you come across a sports complex that looks like one day, or would it be something entirely different? There wasn't enough emphasis on the sociological aspects, and what would be left behind. There's much more the military conflict stuff. Indeed. at that lime, back about '76, games were really designed with that in mind: CONFLICT, Now, role playing games, especially, are much more involved with the ongoing worlds that are created, and you have to have that detail.
I would probably argue with Jim a bit on this, but I would go through and change the names of a lot of the creatures. Just arbitrarily coming up with weird names seems a little silly to me, reading through it now. The same goes for some of the Cryptic Alliances, And I'd tinker some with the mutations; one that allows a touch 10 turn any object into foam rubber, or something, is a little out of left field . You can have a mutation do anything as long as you know what, but I think it detracts a little bit. So the changes and additions I would make would be minor; the basic framework would remain the same.
SNIP

So they confess here that Ward and him are editors of Tim Kask's and an unknown's manuscript called "MUTANT". The names of the monsters seem to be argued over instead of adding creativity. All this interview does is confirm that Ward was not as involved as the obvious proof of not doing adventures showed.

In POLYHEDRON #2 (AUG 1981) Ward pretends to have created some mutants. Just look at the wording as he mockingly distances himself from the the actual creator (Kask perhaps?):

There are many Gamma World creatures too terrible to even think about. These beings roam the newly created swamps and plain;; of the war ravaged Earth. Several intelligent races have started cataloging them to increase the chances of others surviving encounters with the things when met in the wilds. One such chronicler was Random of the Many Names. What follows is a brief portion of the creatures he has observed in his travels over the planet. They are many and varied but I think you will agree all are worth avoiding if possible.

[GRWelsh]

It would be interesting to see a detailed review with credit given for the development of GAMMA WORLD. My assumption always was -- as I'm sure it was for many people -- that GAMMA WORLD was the logical expansion upon the METAMORPHOSIS ALPHA game. The former had a similar or perhaps even identical premise to the latter, only differing in setting (world vs. generation ship). The Jaquet interview sheds some light on how that assumption may not be accurate. I'd also like to know how involved EGG was in the development of both MA and GAMMA WORLD. Someone more knowledgeable than I will have to weigh in on that as to the facts. My conjecture is that Ward began DMing D&D games with characters being teleported via a cursed scroll or similar means from the dungeon to the Starship Warden to deliberately have a "sci-fi" adventure. This may not have been that odd or unexpected in that era considering some sci-fi elements had been in D&D from the beginning with the inclusion of Barsoomian creatures, robots and androids. Perhaps EGG enjoyed Ward's D&D games on the Starship Warden so much that he then assigned the development of the separate "science fantasy RPG" to Ward as a result. In any case, we know EGG loved the adventures Ward ran when they ended up on the Starship Warden. Dave Arneson also has sci-fi elements in his Blackmoor game and was a great fan of Star Trek and adapted some characters and themes from the show and Snider's STAR PROBE game to his campaign, such as with Stephen the Rock in the Temple of the Frog, the crashed spaceship FSS Beagle, and the City of the Gods.

[geneweigel]

I really can't stand being judgemental of D&D all the time but its a compulsive curse that I felt like it has to be justified "even though the ring has lain dormant".

For example, someone on FB this week took a pic at the Gary related museum display in Lake Geneva with a pile of his books in a display case that were right next to material unrelated to his time at TSR just for some sort of context with crap he had nothing to do with creatively just as "original design" credit (From The Ashes, Oriental Adventures, Greyhawk Adventures Ward hardcover, Greyhawk Wars.) How can we appreciate him if no one ever wants to put him in context? I could understand if it was in a separate display especially Oriental perhaps with a sign reading THE BOOK BY GARY GYGAX THAT WASN'T with detail of how a hostile new owner scammed fans.

[geneweigel]

You know I hate gloating but if I get a feeling than its usually worse than my feeling. Ernie Gygax just posted this video where he comments on random photos related to his dad or his Dad's work:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=O83oRnkVIJU

At the 7:58 mark Ernie tells very briefly the real story about Jim Ward completely vindicating everything that I've been holding a grudge for about Jim.

I feel like I just won the ultimate booby prize!

[GRWelsh]

Yes, but Ernie says a few seconds later that they made up in the end... So EGG didn't hold that grudge.

[geneweigel]

I only heard the softer "getting along now after a time apart" version. This new, at least to me, "Traitor" version just made my millenium...