Games Workshop and Me

Fighting Fantasy was my marajuana, my gateway drug. Island of the Lizard King to be precise.

I would have been either 8 or 9 and attending Richardson Dees first school in Wallsend. They had a book club magazine that they passed round and the aforementioned IotLK really caught my eye. The cover had a lizardman holding a leash containing a panther at the other end, it looked like one of the coolest things I'd ever seen. What I didn't know was that it was a gamebook, I didn't even know what a gamebook was.

I've always been an avid reader, I finished the school's reading programme a year early and in the year or so I was living in Wallsend barely a day would go by without me going to the library. I was able to pick up all the previous FF books, except for the sci-fi one, that would have to wait til I spent a summer in East Lothian and found a copy in the library there. I also discovered the Way of the Dragon series where you were a ninja, tres cool, the Thetan Chronicles series where you played the brother of Theseus, also tres cool, and best of all, the Lone Wolf series. They just blew me away.

I also got ahold of copies of Tunnels & Trolls and Dragon Warriors and discovered the world of roleplaying. Didn't have anyone to roleplay with though. A change of school and a year or so older and a group of us were playing AD&D which I had *ahem* borrowed from the library. Then came the motherload.

Games Workshop

Shelves and shelves of board games, roleplaying games and something new on me, wargames. It was like geek heaven. There are still some games which even now have an evocative hold on me just from seeing them on the shelves of GW 20+ years ago. The Green and Pleasant Land supplement for Call of Cthulhu, Chainsaw Warrior, the Cyberpunk box set, Blood Bowl.

And Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

A friend of mine bought the hardback book when it came out, I leant it off him and just devoured it. It was the first rpg that I loved to read as a book in its own right rather than just as a game. Rather than the vague high fantasy that typified AD&D, WFRP was grounded in a fantasy version of 16th century Europe. It had a much more cohesive religious and magic system, urban settings, the PC's started out life decidely unheroic and there was no clear division between good and evil. It spoke to me in a way AD&D never did and The Enemy Within is my all time favourite pre-published campaign.

Not long after there was Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader. Ostensibly a wargame, a sci-fi companion to Warhammer Fantasy Battle, it was written as if it were a roleplaying game. A gothic masterpiece owing a lot to Nemesis the Warlock (not that I realised at the time though I was reading 2000AD) looking back it probably killed my enjoyment of things like Star Wars which seemed hollow and sentimental in comparison.

GW at this time was for me a high watermark of creativity in the industry and I still own copies of WFRP, Rogue Trader, The Enemy Within, Realms of Chaos and I think somewhere I may even have a copy of 3rd ed WFB. One thing I didn't get to do anywhere near as much of as I'd have liked was wargame. I couldn't afford the figures, I couldn't paint the ones I had and I didn't anywhere to play.

When high school ended and our gaming group went its separate ways it put a temporary end all my gaming. A couple of years later with some disposable income and itch to start again I went back to GW. Things had changed in the interim. A management buyout had turned the shop into an outlet for in-house games only. White Dwarf had become a puff piece for the product and anything that wouldn't sell any miniatures was purged from the line. WFB and 40K were given makeovers to aim them at a younger audience, the systems were simplified (albeit far more playable) and the armies bland and cookie cutter.

I lasted about three years until, a little belatedly, girls and clubbing became my priority. Still, all my gaming to this day came from return to GW and to Warhammer and whilst it wasn't the same product I had loved as a child I did still enjoy playing it.

Recently, a comment from a friend that he probably still had some old GW product in his parents loft awakened a dull flame, a vague desire to return to some GW. Never the cheapest game to play the prices had begun to spiral as I stopped playing for a second time when GW had switched away from lead figures and lacking the time to commit to assembling and painting an army I didn't want to go back to their wargames. They still did Blood Bowl though. I loved Blood Bowl. Interest was solicited, a league assembled, a copy of the game purchased, teams acquired. On the verge of our first Blood Bowl games I'm very much looking forward to it.

But from the moment I bought the game there's been this voice, nagging away in the back of my conscious, telling me that it wouldn't end here. I did the mature thing and ignored it. I didn't have the time to devote to anything more and the game wasn't what I remembered as a child. But....

Spending some time on the GW site whilst reading the Blood Bowl PDF's it seems they've addressed most of the issues I had. The metal models are expensive but there's far more choice of cheap plastic models than there was. I found out one of my co-workers is a former GW manager and an expert painter and modeller who is happy to paint some stuff for a small fee. I don't even shudder at the thought of painting my own stuff anymore.

So, today I admitted defeat. I am going to give GW another go, most likely with WFB. I'll let you know how it goes.