D&D General Anybody know what ever became of Rick Swan?

[Tyler Do'Urden]

ENWorld has long been frequented by many legends of D&D's early days, and most recently we've been enjoying Jim Ward and Ed Greenwood's reminiscences, among others. In that light, I was just wondering today... what ever happened to Rick Swan? Back in my early D&D player days in the mid to late 90s, he was both the author of many of my favorite 2nd edition AD&D books and adventures, and the humor columnist at InQuest magazine - and many of bon mots remain inside jokes among my old friends to this day. A quick search, though, shows nothing written by him in almost twenty years... is he deceased? Did he retire from and abandon all things gaming? He just seems to have up and vanished about the same time InQuest ended and 3rd edition D&D came out.

Anybody know what happened to him?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

He does seem to have completely vanished but I wonder is he just stopped being a Rick and became a Richard or something similar, along with leaving tabletop gaming. Zeb Cook, who was responsible for Planescape being Planescape left tabletop gaming and never seems to have looked back in the mid-late 90s I note.

 

[Tyler Do'Urden]

David "Zeb" Cook was still writing for RPGs at least as late as 2010; I was just flipping through a Pathfinder module with his name in the credits a minute ago. According to Wikipedia, he's primarily been in computer game development since 2001... and in any case, he's older than Gary Gygax (though, unlike Gygax, still very much among the living).

 

[Prakriti]

For what it's worth, I couldn't find anything. Is it possible "Rick Swan" was an alias?

 

[Tyler Do'Urden]

Yes, that certainly could be. He pretty much ceases to exist after 2000 or so, as far as Google is concerned.

 

[David Howery]

I've read that Carl Sargent, another old-timer at TSR, seems to have disappeared. Maybe him and Swan are retired and holed up in a small town somewhere, running campaigns for old gamers.

 

[jasper]

I've read that Carl Sargent, another old-timer at TSR, seems to have disappeared. Maybe him and Swan are retired and holed up in a small town somewhere, running campaigns for old gamers.

He is dead David

Carl Sargent - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[David Howery]

He is dead David

Carl Sargent - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

that's sad. The guy had an odd life, according to that article, being involved in parapsychology before his D&D career. Anyway, his disappearance was noted in one of the product notes on DTRPG for one of his TSR notes... he seemed to have disappeared on his way to a job. Apparently, he was later found...

 

[Tyler Do'Urden]

Huh. Never knew that Carl Sargent the game designer was the same guy as Carl Sargent the parapsychologist. Not terribly shocking, though. Sad about his death... he wasn't that old.