Farewell JD Conrad

It is with a heavy heart that I learned of the passing of my friend JD Conrad. JD, you will remember was the mind behind Rhym.

I met JD at Imaginareum in late 2016, after a panel I gave called "How to get your stuff published" He approached me asking for clarifications. So we got to talking...

... and talking ...

Our first conversation ended with him telling me about the campaign world he created, wrote, and ran games in. I was intrigued and quite excited by the unique elements: the religion, the history.

We left each other with JD promising to send me what he had. I was excited but based on previous experience, I expected either getting nothing OR four pages of indecypherable material.

Oh how little I knew JD at that time...

A few weeks later, he sent me a zip file (which I still have) in mid-December (told you I still had the file).

Wow.

The material was more than just a few pages of scattered notes. It was a full-fledged setting 160+ pages of material. The years of games he put in showed, from 1e/2e to 5e. True, many elements in there were personal GM notes that were not useful for a book or product. So I sat down, went through it and gave it a rough round of editing and told him to distill the core of each nation and the history. A major rework to be fair, but one that would allow a prospective reader to get information needed to create a character or run an adventure.

Finally, Rhym came out in 2017.

I since published a few extra products to round out and add more as JD and I spoke about creating more material that was never completed.

I could talk more about our relation, the flow of idea, and our meetings at the Chinese restaurant he loved. We hadn't spoken as often these past few years with Covid but still I thought we would be doing more.

That hope will not be realized.

So it is with a heavy but grateful heart that I bid JD farewell as he travels on the Great Wheel and looks down upon us from the Bridge of Stars.

Farewell my friend. And thank you.