[Runequest] In paradisum, Steve Perrin

[Lev Lafayette]

A few days ago (August 13) Steve Perrin passed away (https://www.chaosi
um.com/blogvale-and-farewell-steve-perrin-1946-2021/), aged 75. It has
taken some time for me to compose my thoughts on this.

Steve Perrin was the lead author of RuneQuest by Chaosium, the first
roleplaying game I participated in, and one of the most influential
books (https://tcpip.dreamwidth.org/167593.html) in my life. His wife,
Luise Perenne was responsible for the iconic cover of that 1978 book.
Unlike other FRPGs that essentially provided late 20th century life
transported to a fantasy setting, with RuneQuest there was a greater
fantastic and immersive quality of a premodern worldview. The game
design was firmly based on the principles of "playable realism", and
the writing was a superb example of clarity, depth, and brevity.

Steve Perrin was also the author or co-author of several other RPGs,
including Worlds of Wonder, Stormbringer, ElfQuest, and Superworld.
Overall, he contributed or wrote almost one hundred publications for a
variety of roleplaying games and publishers. Superworld has been cited
as the game that inspired the famous Wild Cards series, edited by
George R.R. Martin, and Perrin was the creator of three of the
characters in that series. He was also a founding member of the Society
for Creative Anachronism (SCA) in 1966, and worked in the
console/computer game industry in the 1980s, doing game design and
writing manuals.

If records serve me correctly, it was in 2005 that Steve and I started
to correspond, initially through a playtest mailing lists for the
Mongoose edition of RuneQuest, and then with other RuneQuest mailing
lists, the Deluxe Basic Role Playing list, and the Quest rules mailing
list for his own (never finished) game that effectively combined
RuneQuest and the Hero System (which he'd also worked on) called SPQR
(Steve Perrin Quest Rules), which I used for the Questworld by
Chaosium.

Steve was kind enough to be an interview subject for the first edition
(https://rpgreview.net/files/rpgreview_1.pdf)of the online RPG 'zine
that I founded, RPG Review, in 2008 as well as writing an article for
that issue on how RuneQuest was designed. Ten years later, when I
organised the third RuneQuest Glorantha Con Down Under (the first in
some twenty years!) he wrote an article
(https://rpgreview.net/files/rpgreview_40.pdf) in RPG Review issue 40
on how RuneQuest happened, which included the revelation that
Glorantha's Ducks were effectively the Hobbits of the world, except
with a fatalistic and even morbid personality.

We were friends on Facebook, of course. Whilst I never met the man in
person, what I did know of him was that he was always considerate,
open-minded, creative, clear-headed, and polite. These are good
qualities for a person to carry even most of the time, but Steve did so
without variation. He was incredibly influential during my formative
years, and it was an honour and a pleasure to correspond and work with
him over the past sixteen years.

I have even started looking at the correspondence we shared SPQR. I'd
like to revive that, in his honour. For aesthetic reasons, I think it
should be set in the late Roman Republic, Senatus PopulusQue Romanus.
It's the least I can do.

In paradisum deducant te Angeli, Steve Perrin. Thank you.

https://tcpip.dreamwidth.org/324081.html

Photos of Steve and Luise's wedding some fifty years ago!
https://www.facebook.com/rangleme/posts/10158691751544685