I learned a while back that Tom Moldvay had passed away around April 9 (some reports say March 9) of this year, but I hadn’t been able to verify it independently. I’ve seen enough details now to believe it’s true.

Along with Mark Acres, Tom developed one of my favorite roleplaying games ever: Gangbusters. As a teenager at Gen Con, I made it to the finals of the Gangbusters tournament two years running and absolutely loved it.

Tom also made many substantial contributions to Dungeons & Dragons while working at TSR. My pal Steve Winter, who knew Tom far better than I, sums it up well in his appreciation.

I never met Tom in person, but I had the privilege of talking with him on the phone and working with him on some material for Silent Death: The Next Millennium, back when I developed the line for ICE. That never saw print, as Tom’s poor health prevented him from finishing the work before I left that gig. That was something like 15 years ago, and I’m sad to say we lost touch over the years. Still, I remember being thrilled that I would get the chance to talk games with someone whose work I’d so admired.

Farewell, Tom. Wherever you may be, I hope you’re finally resting easy.

Two bits of news came out of Madison last week. First, the good news.

Big Rooster, a new studio founded by some of the people I worked with at Human Head Studios, has landed the job of computerizing Talisman (the classic board game from Games Workshop) for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and PC. Congratulations, guys!

The bad news is that a serious fire damaged the offices of Human Head Studios. Fortunately, no one was hurt, and the team recovered most of its data. A lot of their equipment was damaged, but that can all be replaced. I know how disruptive something like this can be, but I know that the people at Human Head are a resourceful and tenacious lot. Good luck in finding new offices and getting back on track soon!

My old pal Drew Bittner just started up a blog. In it, he reminisces about his days as an editor at WildStorm Productions. In this installment, he writes about the genesis of the WildStorms CCG I designed with him, including a bit about how I was brought into the project.

It’s interesting to hear the story from an insider’s point of view. Although I was heavily involved with the game and spent two weeks at Homage Studios developing it with Drew, in the end I was the hired gun they brought in. And that’s just the way I like it. (Cue the Ennio Morricone music.)

It’s true. Paizo just announced that the last print issues of Dragon Magazine and Dungeon Magazine will ship this fall. Their license is up to be renewed and, well, it won’t be.

Wizards of the Coast plans to use the magazine brands as part of a renewed web presence. In the meantime, Paizo will transition to publishing series of d20 adventures instead, among many other things.

Dragon Magazine is the great-grandaddy of gaming magazines. It’s last issue will be 359. Little brother Dungeon (which covers adventures as opposed to material useful to all players) makes it a nice around 150.

I read Dragon religiously when I was a kid, and I’ll miss it for sure. Oddly, I bypassed the industry standard of placing an article in Dungeon and went straight to working on games instead. An article I wrote about the heroes in Secret of the Spiritkeeper appeared in Dragon in 2004, and a short-story prequel to Marked for Death showed up in issue #330.

Farewell, old friends. You’ll be missed.