In highschool in the 90s, I liked a lot of the stuff Nigel Findley put out, and I remember reading in Dragon that he had died in a car accident on his way to a convention in 1995. But according to his wikipedia page, it was a heart attack, not a car accident (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Findley). But it looks like there has been some back and forth on that. Looking online it looks like there are two conflicting accounts of his death. Anyone have more information on this. Anyone have a copy of the Dragon obituary?

It doesn't talk about car accidents or heart attacks, although "at his home" is consistent with the heart attack version.

QuoteGame designer, author, and editor Nigel D. Findley passed away suddenly on February 19, 1995, at his home in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Quote from: EOTB;862023It doesn't talk about car accidents or heart attacks, although "at his home" is consistent with the heart attack version.

Is that from Dragon?

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;862024Is that from Dragon?

Yes, the quote in my earlier post is from the letters/editorial notices from Dragon #217.  The rest of it details his accomplishments in the industry.

Nigel Findley had a heart attack at home. I so enjoyed his Shadowrun material.

It was Carl Sargent who may or may not have been badly injured in a car accident and unable to continue writing (http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2lrh2?Bring-Back-Carl-Sargent#7)

Given that Sargent used to live in Nottingham, he's listed at an address in the same city on the UK electoral roll for 2015.

I think you may be thinking of Curtis M. Scott ?
Dragon #187 is the obituary notice according to Wikipedia.
Used to have a copy of Complete Spacefarer.

AFAIK, Carl Sargent was indeed badly injured in a car accident and has never been the same person since. There's some confusion about whether that was what led to his disassociation from the hobby as he apparently was having serious misgivings beforehand.

And IMO...the only Shadowrun novels worth a shit were written by Nigel Findley.

P.S. This may be really too morbid and off-topic, but have any rpg authors died from something other than an accident or an ailment (ex: murder, war, etc.)?

Mr. Findley's name seems to crop up in a lot of stuff I like. He even did work on some of The Whispering Vault books.

Quote from: Kellri;862163P.S. This may be really too morbid and off-topic, but have any rpg authors died from something other than an accident or an ailment (ex: murder, war, etc.)?

Considering how many just drop off the map. Could be and we'd never know.

Considering some of the dirty deeds some have done. Wouldnt surprise me if one has met a less than fortunate end.

Considering how utterly psychotic some fans can be. One or two have come to blows or violence. But not death over the decades. Least none have died that I know of.

Quote from: Shemmy;862050Nigel Findley had a heart attack at home. I so enjoyed his Shadowrun material.

It was Carl Sargent who may or may not have been badly injured in a car accident and unable to continue writing (http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2lrh2?Bring-Back-Carl-Sargent#7)

Given that Sargent used to live in Nottingham, he's listed at an address in the same city on the UK electoral roll for 2015.

what happened to carl sargent is one of great misteries of our hobby.

Quote from: ostap bender;862639what happened to carl sargent is one of great misteries of our hobby.

A pity, since Sargent's work on Greyhawk was amazing.  Highly under-valued by a lot of D&D gamers mostly because they felt like he was stepping on Gygax's toes.

I always liked his Greyhawk stuff. It was really interesting and well-written. To say that he was trying to blaspheme Gygax's creation would be ridiculous. Just a few years earlier Gygax's Gord the Rogue novels climaxed with the complete destruction of Greyhawk. Of the two holocausts in Greyhawk, Sargent did it better, IMO.

TSR certainly did much, much worse where Greyhawk was concerned. Shit like Rose Estes' GH novels and Castle Greyhawk are either deliberate attempts to take a giant dump on the setting or sarcastic boredom on par with the last few seasons of Happy Days. It's hard to tell if they were saying 'I don't give a fuck about Greyhawk' or 'Fuck Greyhawk'.

When Sargent came along, he really did turn things up to 11 with that setting. Today, if you wrote From the Ashes, people would say you were doing a WFRP grimdark Game of Thrones ripoff. He did that 25 years ago, and it stands up as a really original piece of work. I'd say it's definitive -  no one nowadays, despite all claims of being an innovative old-schooler, has the big hairy balls and writing chops necessary to take on a big popular setting and convincingly lay apocalyptic waste to it over 100,000 words.

The only serious criticism of Sargent's Greyhawk work is this: there was no index. Something that densely wonderful needs a good index.

Ken Frank's art in From the Ashes is great.

At the time they came out, I didn't think Sargent was stepping on Gygax's toes, I thought TSR was stepping on everyone's toes by embracing the metaplot fad of the 90's.

Sargent's work though, I thought was full of great stuff to steal and Fold, Spindle and Mutilate into my campaign.

Findley was -- at the time, as a teenager -- one of my favorite Shadowrun writers.  In retrospect, looking at the projects I've pitched, the chapters I've written, the fiction I've put together, he was clearly one of the most influential writers to me, also.  I always take it as a compliment when folks compare Kincaid with his man Dirk.