Rolling for Initiative is a weekly column by Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois and instructor in marketing at Southeast Missouri State University. This week, Thorne pays tribute to Jean Rabe.
I was saddened to learn of the recent death of Jean Rabe (see “RIP Jean Rabe“). She had been in poor health for the past couple of years (had an extended stay in the hospital last year), but recovered enough for the hospital to discharge her to return home to her husband Bruce and her beloved pugs last fall.
I knew Jean initially from her stint coordinating GlathriCon, a now defunct gaming convention in Evansville, Indiana (see “From RPGA to Award Winning Author“). She worked as a journalist there; her primary focus was covering crime in the city, while pursuing her avid interest in roleplaying games. When a position opened up in the RPGA (Role Playing Game Association, the precursor to today’s D&D Adventurer’s League), she applied for and got it, becoming RPGA coordinator and editor of the Polyhedron, the house magazine of the RPGA.
As part of her duties, she also took over coordination of Winter Fantasy, an annual convention focusing on RPGA events located in Milwaukee. Wanting to focus more on her own writing, she left the RPGA in 1994, pursuing a career as a freelance writer and editor, but editing the BattleTech magazine MechForce and writing some stories set in the Star Wars universe for West End Games’ Star Wars Adventure Journal. TSR also tapped her to write the first sequels to the original Dragonlance series, the Dragons of a New Age trilogy as well as another half-dozen novels set in the world of Krynn.
Rather surprising (at least to me), despite her involvement in the RPG industry I only know of five modules on which she worked: Child’s Play, Terrible Trouble at Tragidore, Spelljammer: Krynnspace, Vale of the Mage and Swamplight. Her preferences leaned more towards writing and editing genre fiction, with three Endless Quest books, a Shadowrun novel, three collaborations with Andre Norton and several other books tied into assorted fantasy roleplaying settings as well as spending a bit over a decade editing a number of anthologies for DAW.
Her peers thought enough of her to elect her Grandmaster of the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers in 2020 and editor of the SWFA Bulletin, the bimonthly magazine for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. In more recent years, her focus had turned to mysteries with the publication of The Love Haight Files, co-written with long-time friend Don Biggle and the Piper Blackwell mysteries, set in a rural Indiana that Rabe knew well from her time in Evansville.
The last few times I ran into Jean were at ChambanaCon, a SF relaxacon in Champaign-Urbana where she appeared as a panelist talking about her recent works and Quincon, a small gaming convention in Quincy, Illinois, which she and Bruce both attended, not as writers but as Pathfinder players. Both avidly played Pathfinder, online and in-person. Her most important job, as she saw it though, was pug mother to her two pugs, Hunny and Missy and her social media feed was filled with pictures of them.
Jean was one of the friendliest people I ever knew and the world is a little darker without her. Thanks for the stories and the friendship, Jean.
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