My "Mook" story begins 3+ years ago, when I saw the post on his blog about possible GURPS support on Fantasy Grounds. I was really excited by this, and jumped in "whole hog". I even developed some code for FG (including the precursor to our current "On-the-Fly" system). But alas, FG just didn't work for our group.
Fast forward 2 years, and I see a demo for Foundry and get very excited. I investigate and see that GURPS support is just beginning, and Mook is there, providing encouragement. As a software developer, I thought that I finally had the chance to "make Mook proud", so I started the "GURPS Game Aid" for Foundry. After a few weeks, I thought I had enough of the code working to show him, but, fan-boy that I am... I was nervous to reach out to someone so famous.
But I did... and he responded with such warmth and encouragement. He was very excited by our progress, and we started talking. I kept asking him what he would like in an online GURPS system, and we (Nick Coffin and myself) would code it for him. We invited him into our dev Discord, as the official "muse" to our project (our /mook generator was named after and specifically designed for him).
Mook was constantly telling us how the software exceeded his wildest dreams... he complained once that he didn't have enough synonyms for "awesome", and finally had to resort to his commonly used "horns" emoji... to let us know that we "rocked".
Over time, I got to know him more as more and a person, and we became friends. The past few months had been hard on him, as his health deteriorated, and he was having a hard time finding the passion to create. I was having fun making Youtube videos and writing code, and one day asked him if he would be interested in recording a video podcast. Just me and him talking about GURPS. He really liked that idea (he had already helped me with ideas for my videos), so he started brainstorming names for the podcast. This is what he sent me:
Quote:
GURPS Coast to Coast
GURPS Talk
Everything GURPS
GURPS, Past, Present & Future
Gurps Galore
All Gurps, All The Time
Gurps Gab
The Gurps Gasbags
Gurps Chat
Gabba Gabba Gurps! lol
Gregarious Gurps
Gurps Gleanings
Go Go Gadget Gurps
Gurps Glee
Gurps Generically
Gurps-a-Go-Go
Genial Gurps
Gurps Guides
Gurps-apalooza
Gurps and Games
Gurps Griddle
Gurps Goulash
Gurps Grabbag
Gurps Gateway
Gurps Garage
From Chris/Nose
Developer of the amazing GURPS Game Aid for Foundry Vtt!
Mook
Author of the beloved 'How to Be a GURPS GM!'
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When I found out he was in the hospital (again), I called or texted him every day, to see how he was doing, and talk shop. He had tons of ideas of what we could talk about, and kept smiling through our conversations, as we would go off on some weird GURPS tangent, or relate some funny story. Unfortunately, he was also very tired... and was having trouble breathing... so our phone calls occurred less and less, and so we just texted. And then he didn't. It took me a week to find contact information for his sister-in-law, and you know the rest of the story.
My eyes are tearing up now, as I relate this story... but I also remember the joy in his face as we told old GURPS stories, and that shall be the face I remember.