{"id":82,"date":"2020-05-29T18:26:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-29T18:26:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2025-09-02T01:29:58","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T08:29:58","slug":"arnold-hendrick-rest-in-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wormwoodstudios.com\/blog\/index.php\/2020\/05\/29\/arnold-hendrick-rest-in-peace\/","title":{"rendered":"Arnold Hendrick, Rest in Peace"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n<\/p>\n
\n<\/a><\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nOn May 25, 2020, Arnold Hendrick, the creator of the revolutionary board game <\/span>Barbarian Prince<\/a><\/i> and the revolutionary computer game <\/span>Darklands<\/a><\/i>, was taken by cancer, just shy of the three-score-and-ten years the <\/span>Psalmist<\/a> allots us. \u201cIt is too soon cut off, and we fly away.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nI never met him; I know next to nothing of his life story. But all the same, Mr. Hendrick had a direct and significant impact upon me. Fallen Gods<\/i> is inspired<\/a> by both Barbarian Prince<\/i> and Darklands<\/i>. Both games are marvelously inventive and brilliantly realized. Sometimes works of fantasy are called \u201cescapism.\u201d To \u201cescape\u201d literally means to shed one\u2019s cloak<\/a>. (One can ponder the age of brigandage when slipping a robber\u2019s clutches in that manner was frequent enough to coin this expression and put it in common currency.) Mr. Hendrick\u2019s games were the opposite\u2014the player does not shed his cloak so much as garb himself in another\u2019s clothes. Contrary to the genre\u2019s name, most RPGs do not achieve this effect. The player\u2019s<\/i> role is not that of a hero, but that of a hedge fund analyst, crunching numbers, maximizing upside and minimizing downside. But in Barbarian Prince<\/i> and Darklands<\/i>, the player is immersed in the characters and the setting. For a while, he sees a different world through different eyes. A person is greatly enriched by such an experience, while merely shedding a cloak\u2014in contrast\u2014leaves one a little poorer, even if we sometimes need to escape to survive.<\/o:p><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nWhen I began designing and developing Fallen Gods <\/i>years ago, I tracked down Mr. Hendrick\u2019s email address. When our game was ready, I wanted to show it to him as tangible evidence of the impact and inspiration of his work. But I kept delaying the email because I wanted to make sure Fallen Gods<\/i> was worth his time. Now there is no time left.<\/o:p><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nSo I must end where I started: I never met Arnold Hendrick; I know him only through his published<\/a> games <\/a>and articles<\/a>
\nabout game design. To me, all of them bespoke an abiding curiosity, a creative vision, and an overflowing generosity toward his players. The man put 136 saints<\/a> in Darklands<\/i>. May they speed him to his Maker.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On May 25, 2020, Arnold Hendrick, the creator of the revolutionary board game Barbarian Prince and the revolutionary computer game Darklands, was taken by cancer, just shy of the three-score-and-ten years the Psalmist allots us. \u201cIt is too soon cut off, and we fly away.\u201d I never met him; I know next to nothing of his life story. But all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wormwoodstudios.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wormwoodstudios.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wormwoodstudios.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wormwoodstudios.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wormwoodstudios.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.wormwoodstudios.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":290,"href":"https:\/\/www.wormwoodstudios.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions\/290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wormwoodstudios.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wormwoodstudios.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wormwoodstudios.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}