The Death of a Pirate King

As of right now, I am not sure where Peryton found this article but it is about the death of my T&T friend James L. Shipman. Which according to this obituary looked something like this in his prime, at least according to his mother.

His snarling look and spit about to come out his mouth are rather untypical for the man that I chatted with back in the Oughts (99-o8). He was a man that refused to be flustered by the conventions of life around him, as well as in love with his fiance, a medical grad student that teased him relentlessly. The conventions of flustering life around him were apparently those of a smallish, but affluent, batch of fans clamoring for GM-guided adventures of the T&T (Tunnels and Trolls (TM) ) RPG game system. Because of him, I would not only publish "outlaw" adventures that were not solo-adventures for the system, I would go on to get to know the creators, in person, while he demanded his dues.

Perhaps his snarling and spitting visage comes from his frustration at not being able to steal T&T from the first robber-barrons that stole their fame from pre-1st Edition D&D. They organized against him, with my help, when it was found out that he was using people's artwork without accreditation and not paying them. Indeed, I was the one that helped the scandal get some mileage-- he had tried to steal my New Khazan from me. By the way, I knew he was stealing other people's artwork about two years before the party. Anybody paying attention should have already. In his acquiescence, he'd exclude me from his Russian Troll-Factory-like theft of T&T products from others producing anything after his fall from grace. Lest people forget he was not just graced but beloved among the T&T delvers at one time.

In any case, if this is the Shippy that would interrupt my Civilization games with Yahoo messages back in 1999 with request for specifics on "gunnes" from 1577 for Tunnels and Trolls, I'll miss not having him around. Unlike others, I have nothing to blame him for, except being a little too smart compared to his competitors but not having the money to do anything about it.

In a Yahoo Chatroom Verse, somewhere,
My ork Wizard will always ask into the nothing, "Are you there?"
A hobbit thief will always step out of the shadows to answer, "Yes."