Interview: Rick Priestley (Part II)

Last month, I presented Part I of my interview of Rick Priestley, co-creator of Warhammer Fantasy Battle and originator of Warhammer 40,000. What follows is the second and final part of this interview, in which Mr Priestley once again provides lengthy and insightful answers that illuminate the early days of Games Workshop and the games he created and developed while he worked there. 

4. How long after all of this did Ansell go on to found Citadel Miniatures? How long after that did you join the company and what were your initial responsibilities there?

I wasn’t involved with the founding of Citadel so all I can tell you is what I believe to be common knowledge, namely that Citadel was founded in 1979 by Bryan in conjunction with Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone of Games Workshop. I was at university in Lancaster from 1978 to 1981 studying archaeology, and was otherwise occupied, so to speak.

I joined Citadel, then based at Victoria Street, Newark, in late 1982 and my initial role was to "do the mail order." There was just me dealing with all the mail order at that time. Previously

the mail order had been done by Richard Halliwell, Duncan MacFarlane or by Bryan himself, and I’d also helped out occasionally on a casual basis. I would go on to build the mail order team and pass the role on fairly quickly. After that Tony Ackland and I went on to found the first studio, which was at Mill Gate in Newark, and produce the first Warhammer, catalogues, journals and so on.

It was a very small team when I joined and we all did a bit of everything really. As well as booking in mail orders, sorting out the cheques and postal orders for banking, collating/dispatching the orders and dealing with mail shots, Tony and I would put together

all the catalogues, pamphlets, inserts and other advertising as well as any packaging that was required. I also learned how to cast - often necessary to complete orders – and had a go at making moulds. Often we’d all pitch in to fulfil big trade orders or to help out with deliveries (all by hand – you couldn’t get a palette truck through the narrow doorway – the arrival of the monthly metal order was always greeted with some trepidation). You have to remember it was a tiny operation really – nothing like what it would become.

5. When did the idea for the game that would become Warhammer first appear and who was responsible for it? I have a recollection that it was originally intended as a promotional product to help sell miniatures. Is that correct?

The idea for a set of rules to allow folks to play something like a battle was something that Bryan Ansell came up with when he was running Citadel. It was something we all talked about when I joined, so it was "in the air," so to speak. There had been fantasy games of this kind before, so the idea wasn’t new in itself, there were a number of rulesets already out there although they tended to be a little over-complex and most were crudely produced. However, it was definitely Bryan who called the shots on such things - he was the boss after all! There was talk of a "free" set of rules that would be given away with the mail order. At the time, we produced an A3 mail order flyer every month that was basically a catalogue supplement with deals and a bit of a write-up for the new models. The notion was that the "rules" would be something like an A3 sheet. Bryan was keen on selling figures in "regiments" rather than just the odd one or two that folks were ordering for playing Dungeons & Dragons and other role-playing games. In that sense, the game was initially conceived as a promotional venture – but Warhammer has always existed to "sell" the models, as it continues to do to this day. The story of Warhammer starting out as "free" rules is just one of those press anecdotes – yes it’s sort of true – but it never happened like that. We did later on publish rules and stats for new models on the mail order sheets, and even on the backs of the boxes of some models, but by that time the Warhammer game already existed. 

The idea of a "free giveaway" never reached fruition because as soon as we started to think about what was involved it was obvious we were talking about a book (three booklets in fact). Richard Halliwell and myself had written and published rules together before, and Bryan had published his own rules too. One of the reasons Bryan recruited me was to produce these kinds of publications. Bryan came up with a basic brief for what he wanted – stressing that it had to be a game youngsters could play using ordinary dice, that it had to have rules for everything we made, and it had to have a token "role-playing" element because at that time role-playing was extremely hot. Richard Halliwell was given a commission to develop and write it – Richard (Hal) wasn’t working for Citadel at the time but freelancing as a mould maker. That meant he had spare time to devote to developing the game.

So we started playing – all out of house and in our own time – there was no way anyone was going to pay you to sit around designing games in those days! Hal worked out the basic mechanics and produced a type-script. I collaborated on the design, and there were a number of Hal’s friends and Citadel employees who pitched in with playing. Hal handed the type-script over to me at the newly founded studio (basically me and Tony Ackland) and between us Tony and I edited, expanded and to some degree completed the work that would become the first Warhammer. Bryan didn’t do any hands-on work at that point - he was busy running the place – but he contributed ideas to the rules and provided a much-needed steer and plenty of encouragement. Bryan was very keen that the rules should be accessible to younger players in a way that the Featherstone and Grant rules were when we were novice players ourselves. It was Bryan’s insistence that the rules use only ordinary dice that led to Hal adopting that "roll to hit," "roll to kill," and "roll to save" system that was a modification of the percentage "roll to hit/roll to kill" system we’d developed for our Reaper game. You needed a three stage roll to get the breadth of stats for a fantasy game with everything from Gnomes (yes really) to Dragons.

6. Your name is listed second in the credits for "game design and development" for 1986's Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. What specifically were your contributions to the game?

Well it was a long time ago for a start so exactly what I did I can’t rightly recall, but if I remember correctly the project was something we started with just me writing in-house and Richard Halliwell contributing out of house. At the time Tony Ackland was our sole in-house artist and he did all of the initial artwork. Tony and I would have bounced stuff between us as we always did on those early projects. I remember working out the world background – it was really when the Warhammer World gelled - and I researched medieval settlements, roads and such like in quite a bit of detail. I pretty much wrote the first draft - but the idea for careers was something Hal came up with – I remember that because he couldn’t get it to work and abandoned it. I thought it was worth persevering with, so I took the idea and expanded it massively, and I wrote up all the careers and worked out the career paths. We pretty much had a finished manuscript when the studio was still at Eastwood. By the time that Jim Bambra, Mike Brunton and Phil Gallagher joined us (all ex-TSR UK writers with a lot of experience with role-playing games) the game was essentially there – but I’m sure it benefited from their experience at in terms of further play-testing and editing. I remember in particular that when we played as a group the more experienced role-players thought the combat system was too dangerous, which is why we came up with the idea of "fate points" to add some "ballast" into player survivability.

The scenario was written by Hal – "The Oldenhaller Contract" – and I seem to recall he wrote that as a freelancer. During the writing and production of WFRPG the studio transitioned from being just me, Tony, John and Joanne, our sole-production assistant, to a big team that included the ex-TSR designers as well as Graeme Davis, Ken Rolston, Stephan Hand and a great many middle managers and even more production folks. White Dwarf moved up from London together with some of the staff, and so what had been a very tight team suddenly became something different. That TSR team and Graeme would go on to produce all the role-playing supplement for WFRP including the Death on the Reik series and everything that made the game such a success. So – although the book itself was almost all my own work, all the subsequent role-playing material was handled by others.

7. Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader was released in 1987 and you're credited as the sole designer. When did you first get the idea for a science fiction version of Warhammer and what were your primary inspirations in doing so?

Well I had a game called "Rogue Trader" that I brought to Citadel when I joined – but that game was basically a spaceship combat style game for which I’d designed the models. I joined Citadel on the understanding that I’d "get to do" Rogue Trader one day – and we got as far as advertising it in one of the early Citadel Journals if I remember correctly. Once Warhammer took off we started to put science-fiction elements in right away – you can see it in some of the Journal and Compendium articles, especially in the scenarios set in Lustria where the Amazons are often armed with alien weapons of mysterious kind.

So, the idea was always there, and I was always pushing to "do Rogue Trader" but didn’t get a chance until the TSR crew joined up. After that we were awash with designers, and at the time there was an assumption that the "big money" was in role-playing games and board games – so we started to produce those in some quantity. We also employed Nigel Stillman to take on some of the Warhammer work specifically, and Hal re-joined the studio at about the same time. So, whilst everyone else was distracted I finally got to "do Rogue Trader," although when I started no one expected it to amount to much. The word at the time was that "science-fiction doesn’t sell," this was so axiomatic that I was to understand we wouldn’t make many new models, but people would be encouraged to convert their fantasy models into science-fiction equivalents, to which end we would make conversion packs of weapons. That’s why the Rogue Trader/40K alien races are basically Orcs, Elves, Dwarves, etc "in space" – although to be fair that was also the premise of my original spaceship rules. Those spaceship rules were supposed to be printed in the back of the Rogue Trader book – but alas by the time I’d written everything else there wasn’t room!

As with the original Warhammer, Rogue Trader was an out-of-house commission, and I wrote the draft text in my own time rather than at work, although I subsequently did a lot of development work as my day job. I think by that time it was obvious the game was going to do well – despite the indisputable fact that science fiction doesn’t sell – and resources started to be put into it. That included the first plastics as well as lots of metal models and artwork. Of course it sold very well indeed and has continued to do so ever since in its various iterations right up to the present day.

I don’t know about inspirations. I’d been playing science-fiction wargames in various forms for years together with Richard Halliwell. A lot of our Reaper games were a mix of fantasy and science-fiction. I think it was that at the time I thought a lot of the science-fiction games that already existed were a bit old-fashioned – often based on or inspired by Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. Star Wars was still quite a big thing and that idea of squeaky clean heroes – of good guys and bad guys – was typical of how folks approached science-fiction at the time. Well as you know, 40K isn’t like that – it’s a universe sustained by its own madness, where ignorance really is strength, and where archaic institutions battle for power within a feudal universe that’s almost medieval in character. That’s what appealed to me about the project – a chance to describe a universe that really was grim and dark albeit in the context of a game of toy soldiers! The reason for that was obviously to set up a background for a game of warfare, and one that could be sustained practically forever too. It seems to have worked reasonably well.

8. Among the elements that have always made 40K compelling were its dark sense of humor, playful irony, and its nuanced, occasionally philosophical, approach to some of the questions raised by its setting. Do you agree and do you think that the game as it currently exists still retains those elements?

The original book certainly combined a dystopic and violent universe with humour – perhaps the irony was rather heavy handed and maybe the humour verges on the silly in places – but I was writing a book about wargames for wargamers and not aiming for literary credibility. And just as well, you might reasonably say! My approach has always tended to combine high and low styles together. Sometimes that was to evoke a deliberate clash intended to remind us that this is all pretend and we should not take it too seriously. I probably couldn’t resist the gag. I did cheerfully plunder some quite serious literary references. If I read or saw something that "would work well in 40K" I used to just jot it down and it would be re-worked into the text.

I think that approach did colour the way other authors at GW presented the universe; especially in the hands of Mike Brunton and Graeme Davis because we shared a sense of humour (and often the odd pint or two at the Salutation after work). It was fun coming up with all the imperial mantras and nonsense sayings, and I think we were quite competitive about it, trying to make each other laugh whilst riffing on different ideas. We were quite an educated bunch. At a time when most people didn’t go to college we were all graduates – Phil Gallagher studied Russian at Cambridge – and both me and Graeme (and Nigel Stillman for that matter) had studied archaeology so we brought a lot of broad cultural and historical references into our worlds.

As 40K evolved, and other writers took over the job, it did get increasingly po-faced, which I always thought missed the point a bit – but what can you do? I didn’t have much to do with the development of 40K in my last years at GW. I haven’t so much as looked at it since I left in 2010, so I can’t comment on what it’s like now as I’ve no idea. During my last few years the company was going very much in the direction of producing bigger models for everything – because those are far more profitable than regular "troops" – so the game (and this goes for all the games not just 40K) was being re-imagined around the big models rather than trying to reflect the background or any recognisable representation of warfare. Not my thing really but I’m sure it has its appeal on its own terms. Whatever the current game/back story is like, it certainly continues to be popular judging by the Games Workshop financial results (I write at the end of 2020), and good luck to them I say.

9. As you mentioned, you left Games Workshop in 2010. What have you been doing since then? Do you have any current projects you'd like to highlight or promote?

I’ve done a few things with some of my ex-Games Workshop comrades – people I worked with for years such as John Stallard, Alessio Cavatore and Paul Sawyer. I’m retired now and don’t intend to undertake any big projects, though there’s a few odds and ends that still need sorting out. I wrote a game together with the Lucid Eye team of Steve and Joe Salah – The Red Book of The Elf King – which was envisaged as three books of which we’ve completed the first two (the second is Troll Wars). We were going to do the third one (provisionally Hell Saga) this year but because of the Covid-19 epidemic things have been put on hold. We hope to get back to that next year (2021) assuming things calm down a bit.

I wrote a couple of sets of historical game rules for Warlord Games – Black Powder and Hail Caesar – and helped out with the World War Two game Bolt Action (Alessio Cavatore was lead designer for that one). Those have been successful in terms of historical wargames and Warlord Games has grown from a couple of guys in a dingy office to a proper grown up company operating out of a sizeable and very smart industrial unit just round the corner from Games Workshop HQ. It’s been fun working with so many of my friends from my days at GW – it’s amazing how many of those who own and work for the local wargames companies have passed through the doors of GW.

I also produced a science fiction game based on the Bolt Action game system – Beyond the Gates of Antares – and a fantasy warband game called Warlords of Erehwon (that’s nowhere backwards in case you missed it!). There’s a second edition of Antares already written but put on hold because of the epidemic – so I don’t know when that’ll be out. Whilst waiting for it I wrote a fantasy game that uses the same basic engine, and I’m having a lot of fun with that. It’s another slightly tongue-in-cheek take on fantasy, a bit like early Warhammer, although there’s no overall background and players are encouraged to "do their own thing." I’ve created a website which has all the updated army lists, including many new ones, as well as errata and various play aids – it’s called This Gaming Life and you can find it under thisgaminglife.uk or rickpriestley.com.

Interview: Rick Priestley (Part I)

For gamers of a certain age, especially in the UK, Rick Priestley needs no introduction. Designer of 1983's Warhammer Fantasy Battle (with Bryan Ansell and Richard Halliwell), he also had a hand in many of the many games that derived from it, such as Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Warhammer 40,000. Mr Priestley worked at Games Workshop until 2009, when he left to join Warlord Games, which has published several of his designs, perhaps most notably Bolt Action. He very kindly agreed to an interview, the first part of which I am pleased to present below. 

As you will see, Mr Priestley's answers are quite thorough and touch upon many aspects of not only his own experiences but the early days of UK gaming. Since the process of answering my questions in such a fashion takes time, there will be gaps of several weeks between installments of this interview. Nevertheless, I have no doubt readers will agree that what he has to say is worth the wait. I learned a great deal from his answers and am grateful he took the time to provide them.

1. How did you first become involved in the hobby of miniatures wargaming?

It’s the usual story for players of my generation and nothing out of the ordinary. Like every other boy in the 60’s, I was brought up with Airfix models and Britains/Timpo toy soldiers, all sold through Woolworths and commonly available across the nation. Boys’ comics were full of war stories and war themes made for popular TV and films. For many of us, our relatives had served in either the second or first world wars and our parents certainly lived through the second war. Our fathers had probably done national service after the war. Even as infants we routinely played 'war’ in the playgrounds using stick guns and imaginary hand grenades. Children’s magazines like Look and Learn and World of Wonder often had military themes and history was still respectably a tale of battles and kings, with proper dates and all.

At the same time, games were pretty much universal parts of growing up, especially board games, which we all treasured as Christmas and birthday presents. Even as kids we would congregate in each others' houses to play whatever new and exciting games were about. That continued as we turned into teenagers, and we would start to buy and play SPI and Avalon Hill games – the latter were very expensive through – quite an investment at the time! At the same time we’d be putting together more advanced plastic kits, so it wasn’t just wargaming: it was always a mix of military modelling, board gaming and miniatures-based wargames. Many of us would lean one way or the other – perhaps dabbling in miniatures wargaming whilst being primarily a modeller or board gamer, for example. 

I don’t think there was much of a leap from assembling and painting Airfix kits and collecting toy soldiers to devising games with them. I guess the moment when ‘playing’ turned to ‘gaming’ for me was with the discovery of ‘proper wargames’ in the form of the books written by Charles Grant, Donald Featherstone, and Brigadier Peter Young. There was also a series of little booklets in the ‘Discovering’ series (part of Shire publications – pocket-money books on a variety of subjects). Anyway, I came across a copy of Charles Grant’s Battle! Practical Wargaming in a local book store, and that was the loose end of a ball of string as far as I was concerned. That was the first time I encountered proper rules. Afterwards I made friends with other lads at my school who had started wargaming in a similar fashion. Military Modelling began publishing in January 1971 and quickly became the ‘go to’ resource for young wargamers, with adverts from all the leading manufacturers and publishers of the day. I suppose I would have been 12 years old when I came across that first book, towards the end of my first year at secondary school I think.

2. What about RPGs? When and under what circumstances did you first encounter roleplaying games?

Role-playing games didn’t really exist as a genre until quite late in my wargaming day. Before D&D came along in – I guess it must have been 1975 – there was a style of wargaming with miniatures that you might characterise as ‘skirmish’ wargaming. In skirmish wargames a figure was one man rather than representing a portion of a larger formation. Often our men would have names and they would take part in a series of adventures with a continuous narrative, and individuals would survive wounds, gain experiential bonuses and buy, steal or make new weapons and so on. These were ‘role-playing’ games after a fashion, even if we didn’t use that name, and often they would be based upon adventures in the American West or the high days of Empire in Africa. At that time it was reasonably common to have an ‘umpire’ running even ordinary tabletop wargames, so it was usual for someone to work out a game and others to play it out. In essential details this kind of wargaming was the ancestor of all role-playing games.

If you read about the history of D&D, you’ll see that it was a very similar route that led the TSR team from publishing wargames rules to role-playing games via their Chainmail system. Some of my friends and I were already playing similar fantasy games – skirmish fantasy wargames with named characters and a story arc worked out by an umpire. When the first copies of D&D appeared in the UK we did feel a bit as it we’d been beaten to the post! I did go on to play D&D though and created dungeons: this was with the imported rules – I think it was the second edition – three books in a brownish box. A friend of mine had the rule book and some of the early supplements, which was just as well because it was a damned expensive affair! That early version of D&D was extremely free-form, which was very appealing, and beyond that I would just make up stuff – great fun. I never got any further than that with D&D or any commercial RPGs that came afterwards. They all seemed over-regulated and rule-driven to me. Some of the background was nicely done though – RuneQuest especially – and the RuneQuest percentage driven mechanic was considered pace-setting at the time. Some skirmish wargames rules had also used a similar mechanic, as did the first published set of rules that I was involved with – Reaper. I think by the time D&D developed into a phenomenon my gaming had taken a back-seat to college life. Afterwards it was more a question of earning a living so my interest became more professional than hobby.

3. Would you mind talking more about Reaper? You designed this set of rules with Richard Halliwell. What was the origin of the game? Were you happy with the published version?

Reaper was born from two things: a fantasy campaign that Hal ran, and our mutual ambition to publish a set of wargames rules. I think that ambition  to write and publish our own rules – was something that we nurtured all through our teenage years. Hal had a set of science fiction space combat rules printed in a fan magazine called Dragon’s Lair – an irregular newsletter for fantasy wargamers, the first of its kind in the UK as far as I know. We worked on rules together and would invent games using the models we had. I remember coming up with a science-fiction boarding action game that used gridded floor plans to represent different parts of a space ship – something like what would become Space Hulk. Obviously, as teenagers, we were convinced we could do a better job than any of the published rules writers out there. Such is the arrogance of youth.

Not that there was much for fantasy wargames at that time. There was a set of fantasy amendments for the Wargames Research Group ancient rules, which we adapted and used for most of our early fantasy games. These would be games in Tolkien’s Middle-earth using the Minifigs ME (Mythical Earth) range of models. Later on we would prefer to write our own rules to go with whatever fantasy projects presented themselves. Both Minfigs and Garrison produced a range based on Robert E Howard’s Conan stories that included some nice monsters and unusual ‘fantasy’ types.

I don’t remember exactly when the first percentile dice arrived in the UK, although I recall they were sold by Skytrex and were quite expensive. These were actually 20-sided dice numbered 0-9 twice – one red and one black making a pair. There were a few games that featured these dice. I remember in particular a set of WW2 naval rules that used a series of complicated charts and graphs in conjunction with a percentage mechanic to determine the effect of gunfire. These dice suggested rules mechanisms different from those associated with usual six-sided dice. Percentage dice – D100s if you like – imply a mathematical profundity and precision that I believe we found appealing at the time. They give a feel of a serious and proper game – something more realistic than could be achieved with a D6. I still maintain that D100s give that feel to a game, though I would also suggest that it is a ‘feel’ only and in fact such mechanics are neither more realistic nor more accurate in terms of simulation. D100s can be remarkably unhelpful because of the even spread of probability, making fluky scores rather more common that you might wish. I would go on to use a D100 system for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, but we had to ameliorate the fluke element with ‘fate points’ to protect players from erratic dice swings.

Anyway, we started to use a percentage system as the basis for our own fantasy wargames. I think the game that inspired us to do so more than any other was The Old West Gunfight rules by Mike Blake, Steve Curtis and Ian Colwill. This was an inspiring set of rules with snippets of history and lovely sketches to accompany the text. For the time this was rather unusual. We are in the age of rulebooks that were solid text and roneo’d sheets stapled together rather than printed and bound. As for photographs and even diagrams… dream on! Our games evolved as a mixture of rules that we’d transposed from other games together with our own percentage driven combat system. In essence they were skirmish wargames with heroes and followers, and usually fixed upon a scenario where our gallant warriors had to travel across a blighted wilderness enduring the onslaught of mutant monsters, rescuing allies from the clutches of ne’er-do-wells, capturing ancient or mystical towers to uncover mysterious artefacts, and so on. Although ostensibly a ‘fantasy’ campaign, events were to reveal a world that was in reality a post-apocalyptic earth where magic had developed in the clutches of psychic mutants following some catastrophic nuclear war. The action eventually took us to a semi-terraformed Mars via a matter transporter. So, I say fantasy… but there was a lot of science-fiction. To some extent this setting was inspired by Michael Moorcock’s stories, notably the Count Brass books which are part of the History of the Runestaff series.

I can’t remember exactly at which point our collection of rules and notes became Reaper but the name was taken from the Blue Oyster Cult song "Don’t Fear the Reaper," a jukebox favourite following its release in 1976. Asgard Miniatures was also founded in 1976, and we’d started to incorporate some of the first Asgard releases into our games. Asgard were based in Nottingham – which is not all that far from Lincoln where Hal and I lived – and I think we had this notion that maybe Asgard would publish our rules. Of course, we had little idea of what publishing amounted to at that time, let alone how to sell something you’d published, but – as I said before – we were ambitious! Hal phoned the number on the Asgard advert and spoke to Bryan Ansell, who every generously invited us over to Nottingham to demonstrate our game. Bryan showed us round the Asgard workshop, which was a small unit round the corner from where he lived, little more than a double garage really. That was the first time we’d seen casting machines and mould presses and all the paraphernalia of manufacturing wargamers figures. I seemed to remember I bought some figures ‘hot’ out of the mould! Bryan was very encouraging, not just with the rules but also with painting and modelling. I’d painted a lot of the models we took over for our demo and I’d also made conversions of some of them. I think in those days Bryan was keen to see if anyone half-promising could design figures. I did subsequently paint a few models up for the Asgard display and even made a few bits and pieces that found their way into the range. It was Bryan who hooked us up with the owners of the Nottingham Model Soldier Shop – who eventually published Reaper.

I got the job of putting the book together having been introduced to the concept of ‘camera ready copy’ by Bryan. Basically, I typed the rules up onto A3 sheets which would then be reduced down to A4. We had a typewriter at home and it happened to have a ‘legal’ carriage, i.e. an extra wide carriage that could take bigger sheets of paper. I left spaces for illustrations which would be added by Hal and Bryan using stock artwork from the Asgard adverts. I think by this time – probably late '77 and early '78 – Hal was at Nottingham University, so he was travelling a lot between Nottingham and Lincoln, acting as go between. I was out of school but wouldn’t go off to college until late '78, so I guess I had some time on my hands. Anyway, I did the basic production work, finalising the text and drawing up the few diagrams, adding the headers using rub-down Letraset transfers. Hal sorted out the cover and a friend drew the cover illustration. Bryan added a nice sketch of Hal onto the credit page – not a bad likeness either!

Hal handled the final stage over in Nottingham. It was printed by the Nottingham Model Soldier Shop – although often described as ‘Asgard’ at the time – and was supposedly the longest set of British wargames rules published to date! Much of that was down to a rather lengthy set of magic rules, which I’d developed as a kind of ‘build your own spell’ system. The rules were quite expensive and I don’t think they exactly set the world on fire, but it’s amazing how many people say they played and enjoyed them back in the day. Later on a second edition was published by Tabletop Games – essentially a tidied up version of the game – and these are fairly easy to find. The second edition is easy to spot because it’s only A5 size compared to the original A4, and it’s saddle-stitched rather than slide bound as was the original.

Mechanically, Reaper suffered from being a little too predictable in terms of combat resolution, basically because of the accumulated percentages. For example, ten men fighting with a 17% of scoring a hit would calculate out at 170% or 1 hit and a 70% chance of a second. In essence, you would inflict 1 or 2 hits every time and that was that. Hits were moderated by a ‘toughness’ role – a sort of saving throw – but even so things were a bit too predictable really. Later on I tried splitting the results out into 50% chances and taking rolls for each, but with D100’s that’s a bit cumbersome so I reduced the percentages to a D10 system with some loss of detail. At the end of the day you lose a lot of the advantages of a D100 system doing that and if you’re going to go for 50% rolls you might as well be throwing a D6.

The Reaper rules were actually more of a battle game than the games we were actually playing, mostly because our role-playing elements were pretty much done free-form by the umpire without any rules as such. There was a lot of ‘it’s up to you’ in the game system and that’s something I think both of us felt was key to the game. I think we were rebelling against the ‘rules are rules and must be obeyed as holy writ’ style of game that was more usual at the time (and since!).

Reaper was the gateway that introduced Hal and myself to the world of miniature manufacture and rules publishing, and most importantly to Bryan Ansell who would later go on to recruit both of us into Citadel and hence Games Workshop. Two other players who took part in our Reaper games (members of what we called LOON – the Lincoln Order of Necromancers) also joined Citadel – before me – Paul Elsey, who became a mould maker, and Anthony Epworth, who became the shop floor manager and subsequently a mould maker. So really, we have a lot to thank Bryan Ansell for, and none of it would have happened without Reaper.

Retrospective: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

I've always been a D&D man; I make no bones about it. Despite having played and written for numerous other fantasy RPGs, some of which I like very much, my heart will always belong to Gygax and Arneson's creation. Consequently, when Games Workshop released Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay back in 1986, I didn't pay it much mind. I was already familiar with Warhammer Fantasy Battle, both from having seen it on sale in various hobby shops and from articles about it in White Dwarf (not to mention advertisements in Dragon), but I didn't play the game nor was I particularly interested in doing so. I greeted the arrival of WFRP in much the same way.

In retrospect, this was probably a mistake on my part, something that, while I can't say I regret, I do feel as if I allowed my tendency toward D&D-centric prejudices to get the better of me. In my defense, I can only say that I knew a number of gamers who were very enthusiastic about WFRP -- too enthusiastic for my taste. Again, I recognize this as a fault in myself; I get turned off by fans mooning over the latest and greatest and tend to assume the worst about it, sight unseen. Likewise, many of these Warhammer fans were filled with that middle class American self-loathing that inevitably leads to the elevation of anything European as inherently better simply by virtue of its not being American and that doesn't do much to win me over either. So, for many years after the fact I didn't think much of WFRP and what little I thought of it was negative and wholly ignorant of the game itself.

It wasn't until sometime in the 90s that I actually bothered to, you know, actually read WFRP that I realized I'd been foolishly denying myself the appreciation of a very good game and indeed a very old school game, though, at the time, I doubt I'd have described it in those terms. I call WFRP "old school" for a lot of reasons, but, chief among them, I think, is that it doesn't take itself too seriously. A lot of its fans clearly take it too seriously, especially here in Naggaroth, but, if you read the original rulebook, you can see that its authors have a good, if dry and often dark, sense of humor about the game and the world in which it takes place. That's to its credit and it's one of the things that I appreciated back in the 90s, when too many gamers treated their games as serious business.

There's more to the "old school-ness" of WFRP, though, than its penchant for puns and hiding jokes in bad translations into foreign languages, particularly German. Its character creation system is a thing of beauty, at once a terrific evocation of "a grim world of perilous adventure" and a subtle commentary on social role -- and life expectancy -- of adventurers. It's second only to Traveller in my affections as being an amusing game-within-a-game and, let's face it, any RPG where being a rat catcher is actually useful wins big points in my book. WFRP is a definitely a game where character death is to be expected, similar in many ways to Call of Cthulhu. It makes no bones about this and experience has taught me that a good -- or at least amusing -- death for one's character in WFRP is something to be savored, if not outright hoped for.

There's a lot more I could say, such as highlighting the game's willingness to mix and match fantasy and science fiction, its setting's ability (again, much like Call of Cthulhu) to evoke genuine heroism in characters, or the charm of "high end amateur" production values, but, ultimately, these aren't why I mention Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay today. I mention it because it's a great game that I overlooked for too long for reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with the game itself. It's a sin to which I am particularly prone, as I said, and I can at least take some pride in the fact that I did eventually come around to read and appreciate WFRP. Of course, it's now long out of print and its current edition, like the current edition of my own favorite fantasy RPG, doesn't seem to have most of the things I so liked in the original.

Someone needs to retro-clone this thing ...