Author Topic: ICE Announcement - Terry Amthor RIP  (Read 5263 times)

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Offline dreameling

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Re: ICE Announcement - Terry Amthor RIP
« Reply #20 on: October 19, 2021, 09:46:57 AM »
Kepeät mullat, Terry, as we say in Finnish. Sit tibi terra levis.

Thank you for Shadow World, one of my favorite RPG settings of all time, and thank you for your contributions to Rolemaster, my favorite RPG system of all time.

My condolences to Terry's family and friends.

Offline Teresch

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Re: ICE Announcement - Terry Amthor RIP
« Reply #21 on: October 19, 2021, 11:50:45 AM »
Condolences to the friends and family of Terry Amthor.

The news of his passing made me reflect on the past 30+ years of playing Rolemaster and working with the material Terry Amthor put forward. If you had asked me a few weeks ago, who my biggest influences as a gamemaster and storyteller are, I would have said Monte Cook and after a moment of thought Terry Amthor. Today I know, that there was always Terry Amthor and as a distant second maybe Monte Cook (genius that he is). I spent an unproductive day at work today reminiscing how I became the GM I am today.

Before December 1989 (I was 14 then), I only knew the German rpg The Black Eye as a player. I loved it. I wanted more of the same. And I wanted something set in my favorite world: Middle Earth. Lucky for me the German edition of MERP had just hit the market and alongside the German starter box my parents that christmas presented me with the German editions of "Rivendell" and "Teeth of Mordor".

I was delighted. And about a day later I was confused. The books were not was I had expected. I was looking for a play by the numbers adventure, a narrative structure that would guide me (and through me the players as well) from opening scene to unexpected end. What I discovered was a book so rich with lore, details, people, places and ideas that at first glance I overlooked the adventure ideas tucked away neatly at the end of the books.

It dawned on me that this was the work of someone who had a slightly different idea of how an rpg adventure should be run. I decided to be delighted to have come across books, written by people who apparently loved middle earth just as much as me, but were vastly more versed in the lore. Within the next few months I got every German MERP book there was and then I looked for the English editions (remember: this was 1990).

I was bad as a gm, really bad for a really long time. But my players kept coming back. Week after week they would show up, as I was quite obviously offering something that they liked. It took me years to understand what that was. It was the gift Terry Amthor had bestowed upon me: I lived in middle earth at that time and he had provided me with the intimate knowledge of Rivendell, Tharbad, Mordor and other places. The players could go where ever they wanted and do what ever they wanted, I knew the place, knew the names, knew the lore and basically let them run wild on the vast canvas of Tolkien's creation. The men who had put me into the position to do this, were Coleman Charlton and Terry Amthor.

I thought that I was a bad gm, because no adventure ever ran the way I had planned it. It took me more than 20 years to understand, that this freedom and sense of wonder and exploration was exactly what kept the players coming back. Terry's books were always around, when I later on created my own worlds and the campaigns in them. I never played in SW, but used Loremasters, Navigators, Dragonlords, Eidolon, Lorgalis and many other ideas and concepts constantly in my campaigns.

Just last week I finished a six year RM campaign and in the very last scene, Dragonlord Vorig Kye made a last ditch attempt to persuade on of the characters to join his cause, hinting at a possible intimate relationship between the two, only to be rejected by the pc, because he had discovered over the last third of the campaign that he wasn't gay but asexual. For me, not an unusual scene in my sessions, and once again I have Terry to thank for that.

When he began to talk openly about his experiences as an openly gay man in the rpg industry in the 1990s I was still a closeted asexual that found his words resonating, but I could, at that time, not fathom what they resonated with. It took me eighteen more years to finally come out. But the idea of diverse rpg worlds with vastly differing takes on gender, sexuality, power, morals and relations has always stuck with me and made my campaigns so much better for it. The ease with which Terry weaved female and queer viewpoints, experiences and whole cultures into his creations, paved the way on which I could travel rather effortlessly.

In so many different aspects he was the titan on whose shoulders I could stand to enjoy the broadest of views. A magnificent vista of fantastic storytelling fueled by complex rules, all of it better for having been touched by Terry Amthor. I am endlessly thankful, grateful and feel humbled to have been led through decades of this wonderful hobby by someone so inspiring, so prolific and yet so humble and unassuming, that for years he would influence me, shape me, guide me along - yet remain a mere afterthought, even though no other rpg author has come even close to the influence he had on my own story.

Thank you for everything Terry, you will never be forgotten!

Offline Carl Layton

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Re: ICE Announcement - Terry Amthor RIP
« Reply #22 on: October 19, 2021, 03:58:37 PM »
That is very sad news. My condolences to his family and friends. I have great respect for the system he helped create. He was an inspiration.

Offline Crivens

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Re: ICE Announcement - Terry Amthor RIP
« Reply #23 on: December 08, 2021, 02:26:22 PM »
I finally found the energy to contribute to this post.

Like some (or most ?) of you I discovered Terry work with MERPG a little more than 30 years ago (gosh...).
Of course I switched to RM2 to be able to go further than the 20th lvl.
And then I was lucky to put my hand on the SW Atlas (the box, with this wonderful map of Kulthea)...and I was amazed by this universe.
Then It was too late for me, all my money was spent in SW & RM2 supplements.
I one hand I was regularly broke but on the other hand, being French, my written english level increased dramatically (but with some specificities...my english teachers never unterstood how my medieval-related vocabulary could be so developed compared to my every day life english).

RPG is a big part of my life, I met most of (all?) my best friends through RPG and I still play with them regularly.
Terry contribution to RPG in the most significant one for me...

So RIP Terry, thank you for everythink.
I will remember you while having great adventures in Kulthea...
Need to find a good signature...

Offline arakish

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Re: ICE Announcement - Terry Amthor RIP
« Reply #24 on: September 27, 2023, 10:16:32 AM »
So sad.  I am so sad.  Many of his imaginations lead to worlds of Udava and Onaviu.

I've no other words for my sadness.

RMFR
"Beware those who would deny you access to information, for they already dream themselves your master."
— RMF Runyan in Sci-Fi RPG session (GM); quoted from the PC game SMAC.