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In paradisum, Steve Perrin
Aug. 17th, 2021 05:57 pmA few days ago (August 13) Steve Perrin passed away, 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 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 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 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.
Steve Perrin was the lead author of RuneQuest by Chaosium, the first roleplaying game I participated in, and one of the most influential books 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 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 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.
