François Froideval Passes Away

French RPG creator and developer François Froideval has passed away at the age of 66. Born in France, Froideval is best known for his work as an early French RPG pioneer, serving as the editor in chief for the French RPG magazine Casus Belli. He moved to the US in 1982, where he worked for TSR for four years as an assistant to Gary Gygax. Froideval co-wrote Oriental Adventures and Monster Manual 2 alongside Gygax. After returning to France, Froideval continued to translate various D&D rulebooks into French until 1989. Gygax also credited Froideval for the creation of a comeliness stat to measure the attractiveness of various characters and NPCS.

Froideval later transitioned into video games and then comic books, where he wrote 22 volumes of Chronicles of the Black Moon, a dark fantasy series. The last volume of the series was dedicated to Gygax and was published shortly after Gygax's passing.

 

[Genghis Don]

No doubt. He did write a draft, Gygax probably just put his name on it.

he wrote a draft, Zeb Cook didn't like/use it, wrote his own (he said), and then Gygax put his name to it. Reminds me of Stan lee in that, but Gary did plenty of writing earlier on & even not that much prior. While it rubs me (& some others) the wrong way, he was likely correct that his name on the cover helped sell more copies.
Whatever the case though, Francois is dead & certainly this sort of game history & gripes can be done elsewhere.

I did go grab his black moon chronicles comic to check out. That will give me a much better understanding of his abilities & talents

 

[TerraDave]

he wrote a draft, Zeb Cook didn't like/use it, wrote his own (he said), and then Gygax put his name to it. Reminds me of Stan lee in that, but Gary did plenty of writing earlier on & even not that much prior. While it rubs me (& some others) the wrong way, he was likely correct that his name on the cover helped sell more copies.
Whatever the case though, Francois is dead & certainly this sort of game history & gripes can be done elsewhere.

I did go grab his black moon chronicles comic to check out. That will give me a much better understanding of his abilities & talents

This is basically also my understanding. This was one of those TSR is almost bankrupt moments, and Gygax had said he put out a lot of things with his name on them to save the company.

As for M. Froideval, he was also supposed to be working on 2E with Gygax. What that may have looked like has been a perennial source of speculation.

 

[Genghis Don]

yep, Gary spoke highly of Francois even years later. I don't know what went on at TSR, I only know some stories, and that there was all manner of malfeasance & rancor at times. It's very easy to imagine an outsider, and a foreigner at that, being brought in & favored by the top dog, could draw flak, be it deserved or not.

hmm, makes me think, ENworld had all sorts of great Gygax posting early on, it's what drew me here ages ago. Let's see...

 

[Genghis Don]

Gary mentions Francois here on ENworld

 

[Genghis Don]

That's only from the first 1/4 of the posts, or so, if people are interested, they can check it out, or I'd happy post more. Don't want to bog the place down with unwanted walls of text either, so we'll see what people think. I'd forgotten our Tarrasque was brought to Gary's attention, and thus into D&D, by Francois. I'd known of it via a YA myth book on dragons, and knew it was from France (& pretty different to D&D's!)

 

[GoodGame]

Travel well, François. I wouldn’t have recognized your name but I’m very familiar with your work. With any luck, we will all meet at the great game table beyond.