If you haven't already heard, Robert Jordan (author of the wildly popular Wheel of Time books, as well as several Conan books) died yesterday after a prolonged illness. With his monolithic fantasy series gaining such incredible notoriety in recent years, Jordan brought scores of new readers to the genre, and undoubtedly into roleplaying as well—certainly many of us here at Paizo have been influenced by his work. In addition, while roleplaying games have frequently spawned successful fiction in the past, Jordan was one of the few authors to go the other direction, and whose private world went on to become a game in and of itself, with a full-on Wheel of Time d20 book (the first adventure for which can be found here). His work even made its way into Dragon, with articles in our d20 special issue detailing new hero templates and 26 new d20 monsters from the Wheel of Time series, as written by Owen K. C. Stephens and Robert Jordan himself.
Whether or not you're a fan, there's no denying that Robert Jordan has been one of the biggest players that the fantasy genre has ever seen, and his books will no doubt live on for generations to come. He will be missed.
