A little bit about myself and why I’m doing what I’m doing…
As a 40something year old I wouldn’t be surprised if my hobby ‘origin’ story was familiar with many other people of my age, and for me it all started in the late 80s in the school library. I must have been about 8/9 years old and I can remember reading some of the classics for that age group, ‘The Sheep-pig’, ‘The Iron Man’ etc, but it was at this time that I was about to discover my love for high fantasy and adventure as every other Friday the school library would have a book sale, now I’m not sure if a friend told me or I just stumbled across them by myself but and this is where I was introduced to a range of books called ‘Fighting Fantasy’. I was likely drawn in by the cover art (which was amazing) but what really got me hooked was the adventure and danger element, rolling dice, fighting monsters and exploring dangerous places.
If you’re not aware, Fighting Fantasy was a series of adventure books where “Two dice, a pencil and an eraser are all you need to make your journey. YOU decide which route to follow, which dangers to risk and which monsters to fight.” These were a lot of fun… creating characters, rolling for initial stats, setting off on your journey… and you had to make a lot of characters because these books were hard!! I couldn’t tell you how many times I died from traps, cursed treasure, monsters or just being too damn curious (Just recently I read Deathtrap Dungeon to my 8 year old daughter, and she died 3 pages in, brutal.) As hard as they were, I was hooked and I couldn’t wait for the next book sale to start on another adventure.
Now if you loved Fighting Fantasy at that time as a child, it was almost a cert that you got into Heroquest made by a little known company called Games Workshop, and with a TV commercial narrated by the late great Sir Christopher Lee it was top of my Christmas list in 1989 and I was buzzing to play it. If Fighting Fantasy was my introduction to dice rolling adventure, Heroquest was my introduction to gaming with miniatures. The game came with about 50 pieces of detailed plastic furniture and playing models, and involved you essentially dungeon crawling through various missions with the adventurers (Barbarian, Elf, Dwarf & Wizard) controlled by players and the monsters and game mechanics controlled by a ‘games master’. This game was seriously good and still to this day is probably my favourite board game. A year later a new game was released and I got my first glimpse of the 40k universe, the game ‘Space Crusade’ was similar to Heroquest but instead of a single adventurer you controlled a squad of space marines from either the Blood Angels, Imperial Fists or the Ultramarines.
Both of these games were a lot of fun but a really cool feature was these slightly larger scale images on the side of the box that showed what the plastic models could look if they were painted. Looking back these were obviously a marketing nudge to encourage you to buy some Citadel paint, and encourage me it did! I was soon trying my hand at painting zombies and skeletons, my mum even bought some Warhammer Fantasy Snotlings on a trip for me to paint for her as a Christmas present (these are still unfinished ‘sigh’). The miniatures on the boxes were painted by Mike McVey from the Games Workshop ‘Eavy Metal team and looked fantastic, the boardgames where great but the thought of playing them with painted models like these just lit up my eyes and fueled my imagination.
After Space Crusade they were a few of us at school who shared the same interests, we had a go at ‘Dungeoneer’ during lunchtimes which was like an entry level D&D set in the Fighting Fantasy universe, and we played Space Hulk & Advanced Space Crusade round each others houses. I was also given ‘Advanced Heroquest’ as a present but unfortunately I actually never got round to actually playing it so it’s fair to say I was leaning towards the futuristic setting at this point.
During my first year of secondary school a friend brought in Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader and I can remember sifting through the 250+ pages with both fascination and intimidation. As much as I would have loved to play and recreate some of the dioramas featured in the book I think I knew back then it just wasn’t going to happen, there were just too many pages & rules to get my head around and it felt just a little too advanced for me…. But all that was about to change as it was 1993 and my first real love affair with 40k was about to begin. Warhammer 40,000 2nd edition, the game that is considered the birth of 40k as we know it was released.
2nd edition came in a box with pretty much everything you needed to play a game of 40k. It was accessible, bright, and the simplified rules were aimed at a younger audience, in fact looking back now I was the exact demographic the game was designed for… From rolling dice, painting miniatures, Fighting Fantasy to Heroquest/Space Crusade I had pretty much been groomed for this moment and it wasn’t long before I had a fuzzy green battle mat and me and my younger brother were fighting it out across the dining room table, lobbing vortex grenades trying to instakill each others best characters.
Playing 40k out of the box was a lot of fun, but a really cool part of 2nd edition was the addition of faction codexes. These books weren’t just a collection of specific rules for your army, they contained detailed artwork and lore for your faction including history and character backgrounds and it was this that allowed you to connect with your army on a much deeper level. Battles also became a lot more personal as there was more at stake, a part of you was on that battlefield and you felt every loss, but relished each victory. For me these definitely weren’t just books, I absorbed every page and it became a declaration of loyalty, a commitment to the cause and they really introduced narrative based fighting as each fight was part of a story that lived within this rich universe… the artwork was pretty awesome too :).
Beyond playing 40k and reading the codexes, if you wanted to delve further into the hobby you could also purchase Games Workshop’s monthly publication ‘White Dwarf’ which I did throughout the 90s. What really had me hooked were the segments that showcased what 40k could look and play like, the staged battle scenes and dioramas, the in-depth battle reports with turn-by-turn graphics… we’re talking professionally painted models set amongst awesome scenery and studio backdrops, then there was the tactics & discussion as well as some fictional story telling which followed the battle as it unfolded.
Back then I was young and playing 40k like this would be nothing but a pipe dream, but forward 30 years and here I am still with the same desire but with one big difference… the dream isn’t so unreachable anymore. There are still a few hurdles, my partner for one isn’t in to this world of fantasy at all and will likely tell me (and has done already) that I should be doing something a little more useful with my time, but deep down this has always been my passion and I feel I owe it to my younger self to give it a real shot. I will still have my family and work which will take up the majority of my time but I’m hoping that creating this website to document my journey will give me the motivation to persevere and achieve this goal as well as provide a platform to showcase the dream. Time isn’t on my side so wish me luck, and if you’re reading this… thank you for joining me.
A little thank you…
I wanted to include a little mention here as I made a discovery just a few years ago that was quite startling considering all of my influences growing up. Now I’m not sure how common this knowledge is, or if I’ve just been living under a rock (I guess I’ve been a bit of a closet 40k fan for many years), but it wasn’t until recently I discovered that the authors/creators of the Fighting Fantasy series, Ian Livingstone & Steve Jackson were also two of the three founders of Games Workshop who as we all know went on to create Heroquest, Space Crusade and Warhammer 40k. This revelation kinda blew my mind as at one point I would have been reading FF books to my daughter, playing Heroquest and planning this big dive back into 40k and all these separate influences in my life would have been pretty much sitting in the same room with me oblivious to their direct connection.
So I just wanted to take this moment and pay homage to these two guys and say thank you. Thank you for giving me such fond childhood memories and starting me on a journey into worlds of fantasy and imagination. There is obviously quite a long list of people who I could thank in regards to everything I’ve mentioned above, but Steve & Ian were there at the beginning and got the dice rolling, literally.
It turns out that they have recently released an autobiographic book about the creation of Games Workshop called ‘Dice Men’, Fittingly I think I’ll put it on my Christmas list for this year like just like the good ole days… Thanks for the memories guys.