In memory of Noel Scruggs

My friend Noel Scruggs.

On March 18th, 2024 I lost a dear friend of mine. To my knowledge, Noel was the first person I knew who made a game. He called it “the game,” but it was basically a simplified TTRPG that our friends would play during our lunch break at our elementary school. It inspired me to open up game manuals from my favorite video games like Doom and adapt them to the tabletop with simple rules and charted-out dungeons on graph paper. These are foundational moments in my life that inspired me to build games.

I remember walking around the playground discussing “crits,” critical effects when a dice roll was high, and laughing at all the silly stuff you could do with that. We were nine, and he was already thinking that way.

In junior high, we played a lot of Magic: the Gathering, Heroes of Might and Magic III, and Dark Omen. In high school, we battled it out endlessly on Warcraft 3 on LAN and we could never beat him. There are instances where he took us on 1v5, and he still beat us soundly… we found out later he was the second-best player on Lorderon West Coast, the server for the entire Western Half of the United States.

We grew up in a weird place and built lasting friendships around games and spent countless hours laughing, strategizing, and dreaming… and also cursing your name as you ruthlessly destroyed us in Warcraft.

Noel was one of the bravest and sharply intelligent people I’ve ever met and we’re all going to miss him. Cling to your friends and play games together, because you never know if it will be the last one.