This month has been a tough one for tabletop game industry veterans named James. First, the community lost James M. Ward, who was widely regarded a legend of the industry. Then, the following week, it lost James A. Moore, who cut his teeth writing for White Wolf, just like I did.
I knew both gentlemen personally and professionally. Both men impacted my life and career in different ways, and I have thoughts about them both that I’d like to get down in black and white — for myself, if not for capital-P posterity.
Jim Ward got his start with TSR in 1976, and as tabletop work goes, that fellow came in hot: His first two projects were Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes (with OG Rob Kuntz), and later that same year, Metamorphosis Alpha, TSR’s fourth RPG ever and its first science-fantasy game. Jim worked his way up the executive ranks at TSR, eventually becoming VP of Creative Services, before exiting in 1996 after a run of disagreements with his fellow decision-makers.
After leaving TSR, Jim designed a collectible card game for Dragon Ball Z, which dovetailed into designing similar games for Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time, Core Design’s Tomb Raider, and J. Michael Straczynski’s visionary TV series Babylon 5.
The Ruins of Adventure supplement Jim co-wrote with David “Zeb” Cook, Steve Winter, and Mike Breault was adapted into the hit video game Pool of Radiance. Even more important, in my opinion, Jim wrote the seminal Greyhawk Adventures setting tome that effectively defined the game for a generation. Even after the Forgotten Realms came along, eventually surpassing Greyhawk as the ‘default game setting’, that one was still The D&D Setting Book™ at my table.
And of course, tabletop fans know him as being the inspiration for the famed wizard Drawmij, whose name spells “Jim Ward” backwards.
For his creative and professional output by then, James M. Ward was inducted into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design (GAMA) Hall of Fame in 1989.
Jim Moore is lesser known to the tabletop game industry these days, but only because he left it at the end of the last century for ostensibly greener pastures writing original and tie-in fiction, mostly in the horror and dark fantasy realms. Prior to that, though, he was fairly productive.
Jim Moore wrote early-era World of Darkness supplements like Berlin by Night and the infamous crossover story The Chaos Factor. He also contributed a fair bit to Wraith: The Oblivion, which may well be this game designer’s favorite roleplaying game of all time.
It’s clear the two Jims had a lot in common. But where they differed, they differed significantly.
After members of the HWA (Horror Writers Association) conspired to target my family, my career, and me with racist false accusations of harassment, Jim Ward reached out to get the facts first, and later, to express his condolences at the cruelty and unfairness to which my family was being subjected yet again. (He’d watched racists try it before, when I was with White Wolf.)
After I was falsely accused, the other Jim’s reaction was to unfriend me across all social media, block me on the apps/sites where he intended to speak ill of me, and then torch my name and behavior in public (when it wasn’t truly my behavior), all without ever reaching out to me directly.
Jim Ward was interested primarily in being there for a friend and colleague, and secondarily, in caring enough about the truth to get the actual facts of my situation before arriving at any conclusions, let alone acting on those conclusions in a destructive and/or highly visible way.
Jim Moore’s primary interest seemed to be the same as the racists’: Promoting himself on social media at the expense of my family, the truth, and all notions of good form or common decency.
Even to this day, some eight years since the #MeToo movement first began to gather steam, I still have not heard a single rumor of a whisper of actionable misconduct on Jim Ward’s part. By all accounts, he was a respectful and engaging colleague, boss, and when applicable, mentor.
By contrast, Jim Moore was credibly accused of a protracted (nearly three-year) campaign of harassment against a fellow fiction writer and her mother(!) — a campaign serious enough to warrant the acquisition of a formal restraining order against him. (As was often the case at the height of the movement, news of Jim Moore’s alarming behavior broke roughly one hot minute after he was out there railing against others on social media. That pendulum swung fast.)
When he finally agreed to apologize in public, Jim Moore tried to excuse his behavior by saying, “What can I say? I like hugs.” before wiser minds converged to advise him to edit that part out.
The Eulogizing
A couple days after news of Jim Moore’s death started filtering through the communities who knew him best, Lisa Morton (writer and former president of the HWA) wrote up the following euologistic message and sent it out as a portion of her (usually excellent) newsletter:
“The wonderful author James A. Moore recently died. Unlike so many others, I didn’t know Jim well… We’d talked virtually, we’d exchanged e-mails, and when we finally met face to face in 2018 he was just as lovely a person as I’d always heard.
My social media has been filled with dozens of remembrances of Jim since he died earlier this week; he had a positive impact on many lives. That legacy is worth remembering, I think; to have that kind of effect on so many others is something people will think about for years to come. Of course, as writers we want our work to live on after us, and Jim Moore’s work will, but so will his support of fellow writers.
It’s too easy these days to be at best guarded or cynical, at worst cruel. Social media exists first and foremost to sell us something, and if it can do that by stoking anger or outrage, it will. At in-person events, we can sometimes be overwhelmed and say the wrong thing at the wrong time. We’ve all done it.
But I’d like to think we can also overcome those moments by being more compassionate. The next time you feel that urge to spew something unkind, maybe remember how many people will remember Jim Moore’s benevolence, and reconsider.”
For some context: I went out of my way to hire Lisa Morton, specifically, at a time when she didn’t know me from Adam. Lisa knows the respect and high regard in which I held her and her writing, in both the fiction and award-winning nonfiction realms. She knows me just well enough, I suspect, not to question the validity of that high regard. Alas, Lisa also happened to be sitting in the big chair when members of the organization she oversaw targeted my culture, my career, my name, and my health with racist and disgusting false accusations of harassment.
Lisa Morton knows me better than almost anyone else in that community, and she knows that I was falsely accused by those close to her.
To be clear, I find this talk of compassion and consideration from Lisa to be laudable, generally. (Given my own experience with the folks Lisa deals with most often, calling for compassion and consideration out of that crowd seems a Sisyphean ask to me, but it’s no less laudable on that account.) Anyone who knows me or has followed me for any length of time knows that I not only counsel both of those things, but further try to embody them both, each and every day.
What anyone who knows me or has followed me for any length of time could also tell you is that I view those two concepts as incomplete and ineffectual without a third component; that the trinity of being only comes into focus when you draw its circle to closure with a third concept:
Courage.
If there is a great trinity of being in this life, it is Compassion, Consideration, and Courage.
With all due respect to my colleague and one-time friend Lisa, the trinity’s first two concepts are all but meaningless in practical terms without the presence and implementation of the third.
Lisa, if you’re reading this, I hope you won’t wait until I, too, shuffle off this mortal coil before you do the right thing — before you exercise courage and speak out on my behalf, like you did for an actual harasser like Jim Moore; before you stand up and condemn what happened to me on your watch; before you actualize your compassion and consideration by adding the necessary binding agent that is the conviction to actually live one’s principles, even in the face of criticism.
You’re better than the racists who hijacked your voice in 2017. Your defense of Jim Moore — of the essential humanity of the man, even against his substantial failings and flaws — proves it.
You had the wisdom to see past the mistakes of one who did good things for numerous people; the wisdom to counsel compassion and consideration among those who’d judge him harshly. But the world will never see that unless you have the courage to stand up for the innocent, too.
Surely, the innocent man deserves at least the same exhortation you just proffered on behalf of one who publicly admitted to doing far worse than the innocent man was even accused of doing.
By eulogizing Jim Moore, you’ve shown us that your compassion and consideration are real.
Now show us your courage.