💾 Archived View for tilde.club › ~winter › gemlog › 2024 › 2-03.gmi captured on 2024-08-31 at 12:35:27. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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Yesterday I mentioned I found out that Steve Steffler had passed away almost a decade ago; this morning I remembered that twenty years ago, I had a similar sort of experience, when I heard about the death of Noah Morgan.
Noah Morgan wrote the roguelike Larn. It's a strange one: the original had no colour, and you were journeying to find the medicine needed to wake your sick and dying daughter. In an era where the major roguelikes were Angband (Tolkien, kitchen sink) and NetHack (just generally kitchen sink), it stood out for having something of a plot, and a feel. I've always grouped it with Laurence Brothers' Omega: games that were never really major works in their genre, but important in their own right.
Years ago, I read that Noah had passed. After some poking around I was able to find the post. Google's making it harder and harder to find information I know exists...
I don't if Steffler ever influenced comics beyond his weird, strange strip. I don't know enough about Edmonton's experimental music scene to ask as to his influence there. But I suspect people remember him fondly. We can all list the people who treated us well when they didn't have to. And Morgan's Larn is a funny. It lay dormant for years after his death. And then some people picked it up, found it fun. There are variants (XLarn), there's a Larn.org where you can play in your browser. I can't check the dates anymore, but we're at least 25, and maybe closer to 30, years since Morgan's death, and his work still lives on:
Welcome home winter.
The latest word from the doctor is not good.
The diagnosis is confirmed as dianthroritis. The doctor guesses that your daughter has only 299 mobuls left in this world. It's up to you, winter, to find the only hope for your daughter, the very rare potion of cure dianthroritis. It is rumored that only deep in the depths of the caves can this potion be found.