Mourning has been pouring in across the gaming industry following the death of game designer, artist, and transgender rights activist Jenelle Jaquays yesterday due to complications from Guillain-Barre Syndrome.

Even if you weren't familiar with Jacquays' name, she almost certainly had a hand in something you love over the course of her long career in TTRPG and video game design. Jaquays helped shape pen-and-paper role-playing from the 1970s onward, creating the adventures in Dungeons and Dragons and publishing them in Dungeoneer (a D&D fanzine she co-founded), and later licensed modules like The Dark Tower and The Caves of Thrace. She designed and illustrated.

Indeed, the phrase "Jaquaying the dungeon" is still used to describe the process of improving the design of TTRPG dungeons using the principles she laid out.

For PCG readers, however, Jaquays is probably better known for her work at Id Software, which she joined in the 1990s. Not content with shaping the destiny of tabletop role-playing practically from its inception, she also helped design such classic FPS classics of yesteryear as "Quake 3" and "Quake 2" as a designer and level designer After leaving Id, she continued to work on games like Age of Empires 3 and Halo Wars, and was once the lead level designer for CCP Games, the studio behind EVE Online.

One of the most prominent trans creators in the tabletop world, Jaquays was also a tireless advocate for transgender rights. She was the creative director of the Seattle-based Transgender Rights Institute, which campaigned against conversion therapy for transgender minors.

Tributes to Jaquays have been numerous since her death; Tom Hall, whose name appears in countless credits of classic games from the 1990s and early 2000s, tweeted that Jaquays was a "great person" and a "great game developer" and has set up a He urged people to donate to a GoFundMe to support her family. Countless developers have also tweeted their condolences, including Tim Willits and Randy Pitchford.

Jenelle Jaquays had a wife, Rebecca Heinemann, who announced his death with the tweet, "Until we meet again," along with Jaquays' birth and death dates. Jaquays was 67.