After a very long and rough time with failing health, my old friend Steve Pearl died this week.  If you were involved in Anime fandom in the late 1980s or 1990s, you may already know his name (he maintained a lot of the old Usenet anime FAQs and moderated rec.arts.anime.info for quite a while).  He was my best friend in high school and a roommate during and for a while after college, though my contact with him over the past few years had been infrequent enough that I didn't realize how bad his health had become (in the past few years had to endure dialysis and the diabetes-related loss of a leg).  We were less than a month apart in age and he died between our birthdays.  You can easily find out about Steve's life in anime fandom on anime sites.  But here I'm going to talk a little about Steve and role-playing.    

Before internet game discounters, Steve found a place called "Gamers Guild" (they had to change their name to The Guild of Adventure Gaming" at some point, but I still think of them as "Gamers Guild") that sold role-playing games via mail-order for up to 40% off with a membership.  After the hobby shop in my home town started to phase out role-playing games, I got a lot of my old games from there (including Chaosium's Ringworld and Elfquest, a comic book that Steve also introduced me to while the original was still coming out).  My old copies of Runequest (1st) and GURPS Fantasy were originally Steve's, that I borrowed and wound up getting him replacements rather than returning the used copy.  We once typed the long lists of skills from various Tri-Tac games into his TI-99/4a to sort them into a master list and talked about a fantasy setting based on a ringworld.

I played my first game of Call of Cthulhu in the Sukkot on his patio and we played in an ill-fate game of Palladium Role-Playing together, the only game of Palladium that I ever played in.  It was with Steve that I ran a quick one-on-one Star Trek game without rules, using a coin as a randomizer (a game I've mentioned when I've talked about the things I experimented with years ago).  His house had two things that my house lacked (cable television and a VCR) so it was over his house that I first saw Conan the Barbarian and Excalibur.  And we played Car Wars, with a turning key instead of a map, on his living room table.  

For a guy who told me that when he was a young child, books were his friends, he did pretty well for himself in the world of geeks, making plenty of friends and no enemies that I can think of (he did his best to stay above the political infighting that consumed parts of anime fandom).

Here is a picture from an anime convention that someone put up on their LiveJournal of Steve in happier days:



Rest in peace, Steve.

I am sorry for your loss. That always sucks.

Sounds like a pretty stand-up guy, overall.

Sucky, indeed.

Too young to go. As Levi said he sounded like a great person to know.

I'm sorry for your loss.

That's terrible news John.  I'm sorry for your loss.

Aren't you glad you knew him?  It sounds like he made good of his life by sharing his joy for nerd stuff.  You have my condolences.

My condolences.

My condolences.

John

Way sorry,man. Wish I could give you more than the condolences of an internet stranger.

peace,
-Joel

Thanks for the condolences, everyone.

Quote from: Dr Rotwang!Aren't you glad you knew him?

Absolutely.

Quote from: Dr Rotwang!It sounds like he made good of his life by sharing his joy for nerd stuff.

Yes, he did.  And this comment helped me put my finger on why he came across as such a nice guy when other people turn their enthusiasm into a liability.  He was enthusiastic about the stuff he enjoyed and was happy to share it but didn't try to push it on others or use it to fuel his ego.  As one of the people who knew him from anime fandom put it, "He was the grunt who did the hard work but wasn't enough of a meglomaniac to blow his own airhorn to make sure he got the credit and remind you how wonderful he was."  As another anime fan put it, talking about fandom politics, "Of course Steve always seemed to stand above all that. [...] Steve was strictly in it for the love of anime." and "He was simply a fan who was passionate about anime before it was cool."  Every hobby could use more people like that.  You'll notice that in the picture I linked to above, he's not wearing con gear, an anime shirt, or trying to look cool.  That's what Steve always wore.  He was just being himself.

He sounds like he was a good guy.

My condolences.

I was a member of The Guild of Adventure Gaming!  Loved getting stuff from them.  Thanks for bringing back a happy memory of a more innocent time.  I seem to remember they had a catalog and then you could phone your order in?

Anyway,

I'll say a prayer for him, his family and you tonight.

Take care,

Rich

Quote from: rcsampleI was a member of The Guild of Adventure Gaming!  Loved getting stuff from them.  Thanks for bringing back a happy memory of a more innocent time.  I seem to remember they had a catalog and then you could phone your order in?

If I remember correctly, you had to mail in a check.  Steve handled all of that for me.  The catalog was really nifty, though.