Jennell Jaquays, one of the great designers and artists of tabletop role-playing games, died yesterday, January 10, 2024.

The early days of Original Dungeons & Dragons is the era of the hobby I find most fascinating. Many of the most important game designers in both tabletop role-playing games and video games got their start in this period.

Jaquays was part of this first wave of gamers who started in tabletop role-playing games and later worked in video games.

A lot of old schoolers gush about the The Caverns of Thracia and Dark Tower. Those are good adventures but some of Jennell’s other works have been far more important to me.

2nd Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide

I didn’t sit behind the Dungeon Master’s screen very often in the first ten years after I started playing Dungeons & Dragons. It wasn’t until I was in my early 20’s that I started running games. At the start, I wasn’t very good at it. Also, I was desperate to create a big top down epic campaign setting but didn’t have much of a clue about how to do that. One of the most important books for me at that time was the Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide.

The Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide was foundational for me. It not only covers how to create a campaign but gaming etiquette, different styles of Dungeon Mastering, how to deal with troublesome players, and creating dungeons. I followed the suggested methods and it gave me a good foundation to build on. My first homemade campaign setting wasn’t all that great but I learned alot from making it and Jennell’s guidance inspired me.

In the 90’s I didn’t care who wrote the game books I was reading. All I cared about was that they said Dungeons & Dragons on the cover and that they were useful. It wasn’t until I had reacquired a copy a few years back that I realized who had written it.

It was an important realization. The individual game designers and writers who do the work are far more important than the brand or the label on the game.

Quake II

Jennell worked on level design for Quake II which was one of my favorite video games of the 90’s. The summer of 1998, I was working on the night sort at UPS, my girlfriend was working at a camp in another state, and college was out for the summer. Some guys I was running a 2E game for introduced me to Quake II. I was immediately addicted.

Every morning after I got back from unloading trucks at UPS, I fired up Quake II and played Death Match games over my crappy dial up connection until I couldn’t keep my eyes open. That was pretty much what I did that whole summer.

Jennell contributed some of the level design to the game and I spent many hours enjoying her work.

Night of the Walking Wet

A lot of people say that Caverns of Thracia and Dark Tower are their favorite classic adventures but mine is Night of the Walking Wet. It was an adventure that appeared in issues 5 and 6 of The Dungeoneer. It was a fanzine written and published by Jacquays and her college D&D gaming group in 1976.

Let’s take a moment to appreciate how amazing that was. A full time college student wrote, edited, designed, illustrated, laid out, and assembled one of the first D&D fanzines at the age of 19 before there was such a thing as desktop publishing, print on demand, or the internet. Remarkable.

I was unaware of the adventure until I played it At Gary Con IV. I didn’t know much about early D&D then. The experience of playing this adventure made me curious about that period in the hobby and my curiosity hasn’t let up.

I played Night of the Walking Wet ran by Alexander Macris with his brand new (at the time) Adventurer Conqueror King System. I had a lot of fun and like my earlier encounters with Jennell’s work, I was completely unaware of who she was. It was after this convention that I started digging in and seeking out other things she had created.

The adventure features strange and unique monsters including an unexpected source for the “wet” zombies. Probably my favorite characteristic of the dungeon is that it melds low budget horror, sci-fi, and fantasy genres in a very clever way. It’s a good time to play and run.

Night of the Walking Wet has features that others have noted in Jennell’s later and more polished dungeons such as multiple entry points and looping pathways that offer a variety of routes and different possibilities.

It’s a fun adventure. A little wacky in places but one I recommend if you can get your hands on it.

Jennell loved games

Game designers get into the business because they like playing games.

Some designers stop having fun playing games and become completely focussed on designing games. It’s easy to do. A designer spends their days working on games. For many, the last thing they want to do is to is spend their off time playing games. Jennell wasn’t like that. She loved games.

At North Texas in 2023, Jennell brought her copy of HeroQuest. She had all the expansions from the crowd funding campaign. She liked playing it with friends when they wanted to play something fun without a lot of heavy mechanics getting in the way. She brought it to NTRPG Con to share the experience with other gamers. 

I am grateful that I was able to get a spot in one of those HeroQuest games. There was no conversation about her career or work. We just chatted and enjoyed the game together.

I’m grateful I got to spend that time gaming with her. She will be missed by her friends, family, and fans.