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By Steve Crompton
Loss of our friend: By now many of you may have heard the sad news that Rick Loomis, President of Flying Buffalo and a gaming industry legend, passed away on Aug 23rd, just a few hours before his 72nd birthday. Rick created and ran Flying Buffalo for almost 50 years, and was also President of GAMA (Gaming Manufacturers of America) on several occasions.Rick's loss leaves a huge hole in our hearts and Flying Buffalo. Rick was our mentor, our friend (a brother for his sisters) and the intermediary between the high-flying goals of the creative team and the real world. He helped us stay on track and reminded us of the limits of our budgets. Rick also made sure that whatever we created would be something that players would want. And many, many times he made suggestions that made a game more playable or an adventure more usable. We will miss Rick every single day, and we plan to honor his wishes and hopes for the future of Flying Buffalo going forward.
So What Happens now?: While Rick was fighting cancer and was unable to attend to his work on processing the Kickstarter orders, he did manage to teach me how to do that, and I have been doing so since early July. (Rick did everything before then.)
Rick's sisters and the entire Buffalo team are committed to continuing to process and ship out your Kickstarter orders. In fact just today I did another 25 orders and they are now in shipping, ready to be packaged up. And tomorrow we'll be taking 40 finished orders to the post office. As of now, we only have about MSPE 175 orders left to ship out of the original 675 we started with. And we will continue to ship out your orders until all of them have gone out. We have everything in from the printers and everything that Mike was supposed to sign has been signed, so its just a matter of continuing until we are done.
Down the road there will also be new products for T&T, MSPE, Nuclear War, and Catalyst books like new Traps and Citybooks. They may not come as quickly as we'd like right now, as there is a lot to do in regards to taking care of Rick's estate and Flying Buffalo. But rest assured, we are soldiering onward. That's what Rick wanted us to do - and we plan to do just that. So you don't need to worry - your items will be shipped out.
Please feel free to post you comments below and if you want to contribute to help with Rick's Medial bills, funeral arrangements and other outstanding bills that have accrued due to Rick's illness you can contribute to his Gofundme campaign.
Thank you all for your concern, your patience and your belief in Rick's dream - Flying Buffalo.
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In Memory of Rick Loomis
In January 2017 I sculpted a miniature for Rick Loomis. We never did get around to creating the whole Tunnels and Trolls miniatures box set but his gentle manner, advice and encouragement left a lasting impression on me. I would like to offer Buffalorick to all miniature pledge backers as a special gift in memory of Rick.
The horns were an unusual idea that hit me while I was running my dog. When I sculpted them, I almost chickened out. It seemed weird. I'd never seen buffalo horns on a wizard's hat before but it seemed too cool not to try. I am glad I kept them. Rick's response was, "I wondered why the horns. I didn't like them at first, but they seem to be growing on me. (Pun intended)."
There is also a Bundle of Holding that features a great collection of Buffalo's Catalyst supplements that work with any fantasy RPG. Please check it out also.
Blessings,
Darcy Perry
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