I’m saddened to let you know that James Wade, one of the foundational members of the RPGA, has passed on from brain cancer. When I was in Chicago, Jim became my best friend, gaming partner, and roommate. 

Jim and I were Lake Shore Drive misfits. We lived on the top floor of a lakefront skyrise in Edgewater, our balcony overlooking the beaches and the downtown skyline. That’s not something college kids get to do, but I did, thanks to Jim. We saw every band that came through the Avalon or Cabaret Metro. We gorged ourselves on stuffed pizzas from across the street at Tedino’s. We held Third of July parties where Jim would be the first tester of whatever new drink I invented under a name like “The Iron Constitution.” We played games with our friends.

Jim was a rock. He kept people focused. Whatever West Coast chaos I brought to the table was countered by his stalwart Midwest upbringing. He put up with the predictable tumult in my twentysomething work life and love life. Eventually, we both found women that could tolerate the thought of living with each of us forever, married them as quickly as possible, and served as each other’s best men.

“Best man” is a funny phrase. When you’re the best man at someone’s wedding, the expectation of who’s the best man in the room falls on the groom, not on you. When I was Jim’s best man, I looked up at the gleam he put into Fatou’s eyes and was sure I knew that I was at most the second best man there. But at my wedding, when I looked, in moments I wasn’t in awe of Evon, at Jim standing beside me as my best man, I knew the true meaning of the term. You want someone like that at your side, one time if you can get it. I got it.

On the RPGA side, Jim was one of about twenty people who set the framework for what tournament roleplaying is all about. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the “Paragons” (a group of top-ranked judges and players and, most importantly, writers) defined what a convention game session was. Those were raucous events; because rankings were on the line, they defined “play for attention.” If the internet had existed then, they would’ve been the most popular liveplay games online. I met Jim at one of those tables. We played at hundreds together, at conventions all over the country. We co-wrote some events that people still talk about in a “wait, you were there?” tone today.

If you ever played a LIVE/WIRE event — that’s the live-action troupe that ran all the biggest events at Gen Con’s Safe House and elsewhere back in the pre-Masquerade days — you probably played with Jim too. He was a core member of the original Conductor Corps crew that Tim Beach and I put together, usually playing an “anchor” like the Flawed King in the first Maze of Games event. Typically, you couldn’t get through one of our events without doing what Jim made you want to do.

Jim was many more things. He was a football player. He was a technological wizard. He had a legendary knowledge of music. In his later years, inspired by the prodigious talents of his offspring, Jim became a soccer coach, shaping the athletic careers of a generation of kids. 

Most significantly, he was a loving husband to Fatou and a loving father to Natalie and Adelle. Evon and I share their grief at the loss of a great person.

If you knew Jim, I know you’re grieving now too. I hope you can remember the good times, because there were quite a few. Rest in peace, Jim.

Your friend, Mike