gridlore: Doug looking off camera with a grin (Sunburst)
Douglas Berry ([personal profile] gridlore) wrote2006-09-25 06:18 am
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Lower the flags

John M. Ford, 1957-2006

Author, gamer, and wonderful weirdo. Out of all the things he wrote, my favorite had to be Road Show.. an Amber Zone article from the old Journal of the Travellers Aid Society that had the characters hired as roadies/security/stand-ins for the platinum rock band VeedBack. About four pages but is spawned possibly the best campaign I've ever run.

What's your favorite work by Mr. Ford?
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[identity profile] filkerdave.livejournal.com 2006-09-25 01:42 pm (UTC)(link)
IIRC, he wrote "Street Legal" -- a Car Wars piece that was...umm...it predated Autoduel Quarterly so I guess it was in The Space Gamer? Really good piece that I can still recall bits of the exact wording today.

[identity profile] taschoene.livejournal.com 2006-09-25 02:25 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm so shaken by this that I actually broke down a little bit. THe world si a darker place today.

I do believe Growing Up Weightless is my favorite story of his, but there are so many others that come close.

[identity profile] cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com 2006-09-25 05:11 pm (UTC)(link)
Other than the wonderful PYRAMID sigs? Probably a little something from Autoduel Quarterly, "Alkahest" (supers in CW, both fake pretending to be real and real pretending to be fake).

damn. damn damn damn.
cleverthylacine: A picture of Mara, the only female Klingon in TOS (k'haia Selkereina)

[personal profile] cleverthylacine 2006-09-25 05:24 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, just about fucking everything. I'd read that man's grocery lists.

One of my asshole exes stole his books--I used to have them all. Web of Angels is the one I miss most.

He also contributed to the Captain Confederacy comics, which I loved with all my heart, and of course Final Reflection and all the Klingon stuff.

Dude. I would have loved to play the Veedback scenario with another deadhead. Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. That I missed that!

[identity profile] grimmwire.livejournal.com 2006-09-25 05:50 pm (UTC)(link)
Sorry to say that I haven't read his fiction, that I can recall. But I did read GURPS: Traveller: Starports, one of the best books in the series. I felt very proud to have illustrated that one.

[identity profile] melchar.livejournal.com 2006-09-25 05:59 pm (UTC)(link)
Easily my favorite is 'The Dragon Waiting' - a great alternate world fantasy that incorporated vampirism and Arthurian myth. Loved that book!

[identity profile] shadowcat48li.livejournal.com 2006-09-25 10:38 pm (UTC)(link)
Street Legal was in Space Gamer #57

I agree with Doug, Roadshow was absolutely magnificent, then there was his Star Trek masterpiece "How Much for Just the Planet"

CmdrX ran a variant of roadshow where the players were the actual band, high energy and high caliber

[identity profile] lysana.livejournal.com 2006-09-26 02:57 am (UTC)(link)
The one of his I'm sure I've read is How Much For Just The Planet, but as it is one of the only Trek books that could stand alone as fiction to someone who had never seen the show, I think that's pretty damn good.

[identity profile] caraig.livejournal.com 2006-09-26 01:25 pm (UTC)(link)
The Final Reflection is probably amongst the best Trek books I've ever read; How Much For Just The Planet was probably the funniest. He'll definitely be missed, he was an excellent author-gamer. =(
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