Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. Time to
Speaker 2: go into the vault for an older episode of the show.
Speaker 2: This one originally published on December twenty seventh, twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: And Robert, is an interview you did with Ian Livingstone.
Speaker 2: Livingstone Livingstone Livingstone.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, this was a fun one that I did
Speaker 1: last year. I think they're in like the holiday seasons
Speaker 1: when you know, some folks were out and trying to
Speaker 1: line up some chats and yeah, this is one of
Speaker 1: the creators of Games Workshop, and he has his hands
Speaker 1: and his mind and so many other games and just
Speaker 1: like game systems in general. So this was a really
Speaker 1: fun chat and I'm excited to share it with everyone again.
Speaker 3: Let's jump right in.
Speaker 4: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb, and today I'd like to present an
Speaker 1: interview I recorded earlier this month with Sir Ian Livingstone,
Speaker 1: co founder of Games Workshop and co author of the
Speaker 1: Fighting Fantasy game book series. Now, the creations to come
Speaker 1: out of Games Workshop, especially have meant so much to
Speaker 1: me over the years, and it was a real honor
Speaker 1: to chat with him about the early days of Games Workshop,
Speaker 1: about old school gaming in general, the meaning of games,
Speaker 1: and of course his new book, Dice Men, The Origin
Speaker 1: Story of Games Workshop, which he wrote with Steve Jackson.
Speaker 1: The book is out now digitally in the physical version
Speaker 1: is either out or available for pre order, depending on
Speaker 1: what region you're in. Either way you get it, pick
Speaker 1: it up. It's a great read. It has so many
Speaker 1: wonderful images in it. It will really transport you back in time.
Speaker 1: It tells a great tale. So, without further ado, let's
Speaker 1: jump right into the interview. Hi, Ian, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 3: It's great to speak to you today.
Speaker 1: So the book is Dice Mean The Origin Story of
Speaker 1: Games Workshop, written with Steve Jackson, and I think at
Speaker 1: this point a great number of our listeners out there
Speaker 1: are certainly well acquainted with the name Games Workshop. Even
Speaker 1: if you didn't grow up with the games and the
Speaker 1: miniatures like I did, and like many many others did,
Speaker 1: you're still going to probably be aware of all the novels,
Speaker 1: the video games, the animated series and so much more.
Speaker 1: It's big business. But I thought you might take us
Speaker 1: back and just in brief remind us what Games Workshop
Speaker 1: was back in the day when you and Steve Jackson
Speaker 1: co founded it.
Speaker 5: Well, Steve and I were old school friends and we
Speaker 5: met up in London in the seventies and our passion
Speaker 5: was playing board games, mainly those that came from the US,
Speaker 5: games like Diplomacy and Avalon Hill Games. And we thought,
Speaker 5: wouldn't it be great we could somehow turn our passion
Speaker 5: of playing games into some sort of fledgling business. So
Speaker 5: we decided to publish a small fan called Out and Weasel,
Speaker 5: and we sent one copy to everybody wenew in Games,
Speaker 5: and although we hadn't sent it to him directly, one
Speaker 5: found its way to the desk of Gary Gygax in
Speaker 5: Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and Gary wrote to us and said,
Speaker 5: love your little fanzine. His this game I've just published
Speaker 5: and designed. What do you think? And that game was
Speaker 5: Dungeons and Dragons, And whilst it didn't look much pretty
Speaker 5: playing box with a very ordinary illustration on the cover,
Speaker 5: it opened up your imagination like no game had ever
Speaker 5: done before, and I don't think any game ever will again,
Speaker 5: in that it allowed a new form of interactive entertainment.
Speaker 3: Role playing people playing.
Speaker 5: As heroes and wizards, exploring the labyrinth designed by games Master,
Speaker 5: and through theater on the fly, conversing in craziness. Incredible
Speaker 5: narrative story between the players as they forged their way
Speaker 5: through the dungeons, killing monsters and finding treasure. So we
Speaker 5: ordered six copies of D and D because that's all
Speaker 5: the money we actually had in our lives. And on
Speaker 5: the back of that order, Gary gave us a three
Speaker 5: year exclusive distribution agreement for the whole of Europe, so
Speaker 5: we were effectively all playing is role playing people about
Speaker 5: a role playing game. It was very amateursh but that's
Speaker 5: how things started in the seventies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was fascinating to read your take on the
Speaker 1: gaming world prior to the creation of games Workshop and
Speaker 1: prior to the introduction and creation of both Dungeons and Dragons,
Speaker 1: just how niche was gaming beyond family staples like Monopoly.
Speaker 1: During the nineteen sixties, for example.
Speaker 5: Well, in the UK there was one company Dominator that
Speaker 5: was Waddington's and they published Monopoly include which is Clue
Speaker 5: in the US, Buccaneer and Formula one. And these games
Speaker 5: were enjoyable enough, but they were never satisfied gamers like
Speaker 5: Steve and myself. We wanted something more where there's more
Speaker 5: strategy than luck, and where you could do a negotiation
Speaker 5: and have a kind of a metal level of enjoyment
Speaker 5: by all the bargaining and reneging on deals that could happen. Obviously,
Speaker 5: Diplomas is perfect for that kind of play where you
Speaker 5: can backstand people at will in order to dominate the world.
Speaker 3: So those are the games we looked out for.
Speaker 5: But D and D really changed our minds of the
Speaker 5: type of game we want to play. We suddenly immersed
Speaker 5: in this incredible fancy world and a kind of tolkienesque
Speaker 5: world of monster magic going on, these fantastic jos of
Speaker 5: mind through conversation, and it was that theater of the
Speaker 5: Fly that I just mentioned that became a place where
Speaker 5: we wanted to visit all the time.
Speaker 1: Are you saying that it also Dungeons and Dragons sort
Speaker 1: of opened up the space for fantasy itself to be
Speaker 1: part of gaming because you describe a lot of the
Speaker 1: gaming prior to that is very like historical military based, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: The miniatures companies in the UK in particular were all
Speaker 5: based on napoleonics, ancients and some World War two, but
Speaker 5: there was no fancy element as such, even though fancy
Speaker 5: was pretty well established in UK mythology from George and
Speaker 5: the Dragon or a Thurian Knights, and of course the
Speaker 5: books from Tolkien and others. So I guess there was
Speaker 5: no surprise that fancy gaming would ultimately come along as
Speaker 5: a viable genre to enjoy play.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you described that, even Dungeons and Dragons kind of
Speaker 1: arises out of Chainmail, this military battle game that Gary
Speaker 1: Gygax said co created.
Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, but he had this fancy supplement and when
Speaker 5: he played Dave Arnison's Blackmore, there was that fusion of
Speaker 5: the two coming together to create you know, this this
Speaker 5: male stone in gaming history that is Dungeons Dragons. But
Speaker 5: it was largely down I think to Gary's making it
Speaker 5: happen that it was as successful as it was. Clearly
Speaker 5: Dave answered kind of probably the original role playing concept
Speaker 5: in a fancy world as a result of its previous
Speaker 5: gaming experiences, But it's Gary who made it happen. He
Speaker 5: took what was largely in Dave Anson's head and turned
Speaker 5: into fifty page rule book and then began the commercialization
Speaker 5: of that. So he was the driving force behind it.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned earlier, you know, you had like the
Speaker 1: family games and then you mentioned like the Avalon Hill
Speaker 1: games that were coming down. Now was there was there
Speaker 1: just kind of like a big gap in complexity between say,
Speaker 1: the Avalon Hill games and the family games. Was there
Speaker 1: not much in between?
Speaker 3: There wasn't really.
Speaker 5: It was kind of full on hobby game as hex
Speaker 5: grid long and sometimes difficult to understand rules, which were
Speaker 5: the war games and particularly SPI war.
Speaker 3: Games and most of the Avalon Hill games.
Speaker 5: And then there was kind of on the other side
Speaker 5: of the fence that's almost too easy to play. So
Speaker 5: we we wanted some more thing in the middle. And
Speaker 5: whilst that was something that we sold through playing Dungeon Dragons,
Speaker 5: we also as Games Workshops, started publishing our own board
Speaker 5: games to fill out what we thought was a viable gap,
Speaker 5: what kind of mid mid core gaming experiences, games like Talisman, Judge, Dread,
Speaker 5: Battle Cars, Apocalypse and others that we published under Workshops brand,
Speaker 5: as well as publishing Dungeon Dragons.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember as a child before I became exposed
Speaker 1: to many of these other games, before being exposed to
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons and Games Workshop games, we had family
Speaker 1: games in the household. My father had some of those
Speaker 1: SPI games, and I remember wanting to understand them and
Speaker 1: play them, but as a child that was completely overwhelmed
Speaker 1: by everything I found in the box.
Speaker 5: Well, not only were the rule books completely lengthy and
Speaker 5: that you need to be kind of a Philadelphia lawyer
Speaker 5: to understand them, just setting up the counters would take
Speaker 5: hours as well, and I left any time for actually playing.
Speaker 5: I mean, some games like nineteen fourteen would last for
Speaker 5: days if you fee allowed it too, so it was
Speaker 5: almost like work rather than play sometimes.
Speaker 1: And now on the subject of miniatures and miniature war games,
Speaker 1: until very recently, I really didn't know how much how
Speaker 1: far back it went. I think I saw in this
Speaker 1: is tremendously ill, but I saw some wonderful footage of
Speaker 1: the late actor Peter Cushing painting miniature soldiers and plotting
Speaker 1: out battles with historical bas Napoleonic yeah figures, this is
Speaker 1: pretty much what it consisted of. Prior to your work.
Speaker 5: Well over one hundred years ago, there was lead miniatures
Speaker 5: put out there, a kind of fifty four millimeter scale
Speaker 5: or the twenty five millimeters that we did through typical
Speaker 5: wargaming and fantasy gaming miniatures of our time, but there
Speaker 5: were many historical figures that people collected and sometimes four battles.
Speaker 5: I mean, if you go back to Edwardian times, those
Speaker 5: there were many companies actually put producing lead figures which
Speaker 5: were painted, and so I think toy soldiers is nothing new.
Speaker 5: It's just that toy soldiers that we made at Citadel
Speaker 5: Miniatures were fantasy figures rather than historical wargame figures.
Speaker 1: Can you describe a little bit how Citadel Miniatures came
Speaker 1: together as part of or auxiliary to games workshop.
Speaker 5: Yes, well, we'd been running workshops since nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 5: We decided to up our game in terms of publishing,
Speaker 5: so we dropped al and weaseled our little fanzine and
Speaker 5: started publishing White Dwarf Magazine, and we started running conventions
Speaker 5: Games Day. It's one of those conventions that Brian Ansell,
Speaker 5: who was running a company called as Guard Minutes of
Speaker 5: the time, we met him briefly. There also ordering quite
Speaker 5: a lot of giant rats and other figures from him
Speaker 5: that could be used in d games, and he requested
Speaker 5: a meeting with us, and so we met him in
Speaker 5: seventy eight and he said that, you know, I can
Speaker 5: be the answer to your miniatures problem. Because at that
Speaker 5: time we were importing most of our games from the US,
Speaker 5: from Ralph Parth in particular and Archive miniatures, and they
Speaker 5: were obviously very expensive to import, with not just a
Speaker 5: shipping cost but the import duty costs, and then the
Speaker 5: delivery times were also sort of the logistics of the
Speaker 5: supply chain was a bit challenging. So we agreed that
Speaker 5: we set up a company with him, and we call
Speaker 5: that company citid Our Miniatures. But it was based where
Speaker 5: he lived in the Midlands, around around Nottingham, and that's
Speaker 5: how Ciciel came to be and it became just an
Speaker 5: amazing additive to the Games Workshop REMIT, which had historically
Speaker 5: just been publishing board games and opening retail shops.
Speaker 1: And if things keep moving with the miniatures, how does
Speaker 1: it how does it grow in terms of the miniature's
Speaker 1: role in the games, Because I mean nowadays with Games Workshop,
Speaker 1: at least for me, like I think about the games
Speaker 1: and the minis and it's like it's very hard to
Speaker 1: differentiate between the two. But it sounds like from what
Speaker 1: are read in the book, like at times that is
Speaker 1: kind of a struggle to decide even in the early
Speaker 1: days of Games Workshop, like what is what is the
Speaker 1: area that should be receiving the most attention, the miniatures
Speaker 1: or the games, Like what is the interaction between these
Speaker 1: two areas well?
Speaker 5: Steve and I were running the games division effectively, so
Speaker 5: we wanted to put more resource into publishing board games,
Speaker 5: publishing more role playing games, opening more shops, publishing more
Speaker 5: magazines as well as white dwarf. So it's all around
Speaker 5: the kind of print media and retal division. Whereas Brian
Speaker 5: Anser was running miniatures, wanted more resources allocated to more miniatures,
Speaker 5: and he had a great point because that the gross
Speaker 5: margin in miniatures was quite high, and he also argued
Speaker 5: that there should be a set of rules that enabled
Speaker 5: more minutes to be sold, because if you're making miniatures
Speaker 5: for role playing game, you tend to sell them in
Speaker 5: single units because you only need one beholder or one skeleton,
Speaker 5: or one cleric or one fighter. So really that's how
Speaker 5: the Warhammer concept came about, as a way to sell
Speaker 5: units of miniatures rather than single figures. At the same
Speaker 5: time in ninety at the end of nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 5: and we lost the exclusivity with Dungeon Dragons. Now, Gary
Speaker 5: gig As I said earlier, had given us a three
Speaker 5: year exclusive distribution agreement which ended the end of seventy
Speaker 5: eight in the beginning, then in seventy nine he came
Speaker 5: to business and said that he wanted to merge his
Speaker 5: company TSR with our company Games Workshop, and we would
Speaker 5: be given like kind a third of the by identity.
Speaker 5: But Steve and I were kind of independently minded young
Speaker 5: Brits at the time and we didn't want to have
Speaker 5: a split life between London and Wisconsin, so we said
Speaker 5: no to that merger opportunity. So whilst remind the biggest
Speaker 5: distributors of Dungeons and Dragons and TSR Hobbies Games, we're
Speaker 5: no longer the exclusive distributor, and it was only a
Speaker 5: matter of time before they had set up in the
Speaker 5: UK and have their own distribution points and we might
Speaker 5: obviously be.
Speaker 3: That would obviously impact on our celves.
Speaker 5: So we know, we knew we needed something that was
Speaker 5: going to be our own intellectual property. We determined our
Speaker 5: own destiny in our future. But it had to something
Speaker 5: that could resonate with a wide audience and be able
Speaker 5: to scale. So as we had some considerable success with
Speaker 5: some of the board games that we published, another role
Speaker 5: playing games that we published on the license, like Traveler
Speaker 5: and ruin Quest, and important games like Call of a Cuthulhu.
Speaker 5: It wasn't really until Warhammer came about that we were
Speaker 5: suddenly in in a much better place in terms of
Speaker 5: being able to be independent. And it was an original
Speaker 5: idea from Bright Ansel to publish a kind of free
Speaker 5: set of rules as a as a giveaway with the
Speaker 5: mail orders. But then he brought in Rick Priestley and
Speaker 5: Richard Halliwell to kind of beef up the rules, and
Speaker 5: when they were played, he decided, well, rather than just
Speaker 5: give them away, let's make this into a product itself.
Speaker 5: And that's how Warhammer, the original Fancy Battle game came
Speaker 5: out in nineteen eighty three, and even though it was
Speaker 5: loaded with errors and mistakes and wasn't particularly complete, it
Speaker 5: sold out very quickly. Some three thousand copies went pretty
Speaker 5: much immediately. So that's how the second edition of Warhammer
Speaker 5: came about. And then they realized that, you know what,
Speaker 5: if this is our own ip, we should focus more
Speaker 5: on it rather than other people's products. And therefore Warhammer
Speaker 5: was really was They became front and central focus for
Speaker 5: the whole of the company.
Speaker 3: So all the rules enabled more minutes to be sold.
Speaker 3: White Dwarf then focused.
Speaker 5: On on on on Warhammer the retail stores. There something
Speaker 5: less of imported products and more of our own products,
Speaker 5: and that's that slow move over happened over quite a
Speaker 5: few months before it became a totally Warhammer focused company.
Speaker 1: Now in the book, you describe the first space marine
Speaker 1: minis that come about, and there are some lovely photographs
Speaker 1: as well. I have to stress for anyone out there
Speaker 1: who's interested in the book, there are so many wonderful
Speaker 1: photographs and scans as well of some of these uh uh,
Speaker 1: these early magazine publications and you know, early editions of
Speaker 1: White Dwarf. It's it's fact, it's like a scrapbook.
Speaker 5: Well, I like to think it as as a personal
Speaker 5: memoile where there as much historical, photographic and image reference
Speaker 5: as possible. And it's say it's more of a a biography,
Speaker 5: personal biography warts and all and full of anecdotes, or
Speaker 5: on a business, a book about business.
Speaker 3: And that's why there are over four.
Speaker 5: Hundred photographs in the book, some which of which I
Speaker 5: mean a lot of which had never been seen before, you.
Speaker 3: Know, rummaging around in the roof.
Speaker 5: In the in the left looking for a old thirty
Speaker 5: five millimeters transparencies slides that we had to have scan
Speaker 5: and getting really excited finding looking at slides you hadn't
Speaker 5: seen for some you know, forty five years. It's just
Speaker 5: as an amazing experience in itself. And then writing more
Speaker 5: and more, and then talking to more colleagues to validate
Speaker 5: what we've said, and remembering all this weird stuff that happened,
Speaker 5: like having to live in a van for three months
Speaker 5: because he couldn't get any bank finance. You're going to
Speaker 5: see the bank manager telling about dungeon and dragons. It
Speaker 5: looks like you're like, you're mad and nice you to leave.
Speaker 5: So we had to finance everything out of out of
Speaker 5: cash flow, and it'd only afford her into a very
Speaker 5: small office at the back of the state agent, and
Speaker 5: had to live in Steve's van throughout three months of
Speaker 5: an awful winter. But you know, I think I said
Speaker 5: it the books. You could call it living the gym,
Speaker 5: but clearly it wasn't. But when you're driven by passion
Speaker 5: around your own hobby, it doesn't seem like hardship.
Speaker 1: The van in question, is this is Van Morrison? Correct?
Speaker 5: That was the nickname, the one only Van Morrison. Yes,
Speaker 5: a big blue van that was our home for three months.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The personal stories are so such a wonderful aspect
Speaker 1: of the book. Again, all these photographs of the real
Speaker 1: people involved in these games and in games workshop, but
Speaker 1: it really beefs up the personal story. And then you
Speaker 1: have these little so many of these anecdotes and sort
Speaker 1: of little adventures that pop up along the way.
Speaker 5: Yeah, like going too the States to see let's see
Speaker 5: Carrie in nineteen seventy six to in theory a ten
Speaker 5: gen Con nine, but taking that two months to get there,
Speaker 5: and delivering cars from New York to LA, then another
Speaker 5: one from LA to San Francisco and then on from
Speaker 5: to Chicago, and all the adventures had along the route.
Speaker 5: It was a year of the It was the Olympics
Speaker 5: year and McDonald's are running this promotion where if the
Speaker 5: US want to a gold medal, you want to I
Speaker 5: think it was a big mac and then if they
Speaker 5: want to selve medal, you get a large fries and
Speaker 5: a bronze you get a coke.
Speaker 3: And so we were being kind of pretty.
Speaker 5: Chatted by wanting the US to win all these all
Speaker 5: these all these medals, because if you had a ticket
Speaker 5: that matched the winning winning sport, you'd win one of
Speaker 5: the items.
Speaker 3: So that kept us alive on the road.
Speaker 1: And this is was this off the trip where you
Speaker 1: went through Vegas?
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that part was very interesting as well, in
Speaker 1: part because you're describing like taking a jount through the
Speaker 1: casinos there and in a way kind of witnessing gaming
Speaker 1: or at its worst, you know, at it's kind of
Speaker 1: like crushing worst whilst you and your cohorts are kind
Speaker 1: of on this like mission of and you know, and
Speaker 1: you've been describing like just being so inspired by these
Speaker 1: new ideas and then these two game possibilities they're emerging.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was. It was.
Speaker 5: I mean, I think that Vegas and if you go
Speaker 5: there for a few days, but to see people isn't
Speaker 5: their money. One particular gentleman from Japan, it was a
Speaker 5: bit sad to see his one hundred dollar bills disappear
Speaker 5: so quickly that we didn't dare gamble a penny because
Speaker 5: we just couldn't afford it.
Speaker 1: So how long did this did this process of going
Speaker 1: back and sort of piecing together the story of the
Speaker 1: early games workshops days, you know, trying to find these
Speaker 1: various photographs, Like how long did it take to put
Speaker 1: all this together?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 5: I thought it was going to take about six months,
Speaker 5: and I think it took nearly four years. Because it
Speaker 5: wasn't just the process of doing it I was.
Speaker 3: It was also.
Speaker 5: It was doing it in times when I was free,
Speaker 5: because even though I'm nearly seventy three years old, I'm
Speaker 5: still very much looking full time on various projects, still
Speaker 5: writing firey fantasy game books and game books in which
Speaker 5: you are the hero of the branching narrative with the
Speaker 5: game system attached.
Speaker 3: It's the fortieth.
Speaker 5: Anniversary of this year and I wrote a new book
Speaker 5: to celebrate that, Shadows of the Giants, which was great
Speaker 5: to go back to my roots in that respect. And
Speaker 5: I'm also I also have my own school in Bournemouth
Speaker 5: which is all around digital creativity and good arts education
Speaker 5: using game based learning and very much influenced by Dungeon
Speaker 5: Dragons the power of players it were. And as I mentioned,
Speaker 5: I'm also a general partner Hero Capital, which is a
Speaker 5: venture capital fund investing in video games, studios and technologies.
Speaker 3: So it's a question of finding the time.
Speaker 5: And then the more I spent researching and writing, the
Speaker 5: more I wanted it to be as good it could
Speaker 5: possibly be, And so I went the extra mile, so
Speaker 5: to speak to to try and tell the full story
Speaker 5: and make sure what I said was validated by cross
Speaker 5: referencing in magazines and talking to the people were who
Speaker 5: were around at the time. Sadly some of those people
Speaker 5: have since passed away, but nevertheless, I think it's a
Speaker 5: it's a pretty accurate account of those origin years of
Speaker 5: origin story years of seventy five to eighty five.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I have to stress to everyone out there,
Speaker 1: you don't have to be like a game designer or
Speaker 1: just to be like a really hardcore gaming fan to
Speaker 1: find the story engaging. You know, it's it's ultimately the
Speaker 1: story of people and their passions.
Speaker 5: Yes, I says, I'd like to see almost like a
Speaker 5: coffee table book where you can just casually look at
Speaker 5: the images of the time, the fashions and the things
Speaker 5: we did in the seventies and early eighties, but also,
Speaker 5: if you're curious, you know, read some of the story
Speaker 5: behind what became an incredible company. Now were some three
Speaker 5: billion dollars on the London Stock Exchange and also perhaps
Speaker 5: be amused by some of the anecdotes told in the story.
Speaker 1: Now, you mentioned the Fighting Fantasy game books series, and
Speaker 1: I definitely wanted to ask you about about that. I
Speaker 1: actually I picked up I picked up The Warlock of
Speaker 1: Firetop Mountain prior to this interview, and I was playing
Speaker 1: through it with my son a bit and tremendous fun,
Speaker 1: encountering all you know, encounting crocodiles and buranas and goblins
Speaker 1: and so forth, and very very captivating for both of us,
Speaker 1: and I think he was getting he was almost getting
Speaker 1: a little too into it, concerned about the danger we
Speaker 1: were encountering.
Speaker 3: He's ten.
Speaker 1: But this this idea of the game book, Like how
Speaker 1: does it?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: What is that? What is the world of game books?
Speaker 1: Prior to your work with game books? And then like,
Speaker 1: how like what is the process like of laying these
Speaker 1: out and and and creating one that works? Because I
Speaker 1: definitely remember as a younger person picking up a game
Speaker 1: book by someone else. It was another company, a competitor
Speaker 1: I met, and it was heartbreaking when it broke, like
Speaker 1: it reached a point where I could not go any
Speaker 1: further because there was some sort of number error in
Speaker 1: the publication right well.
Speaker 5: I believe Fighting Fancy was the very first game book
Speaker 5: series which had a branch and narrative and the game
Speaker 5: system attached to it around about the same time, although
Speaker 5: we hadn't seen them.
Speaker 3: On this side of the Atlantic.
Speaker 5: The Chooser and Adventure books were out, but they were
Speaker 5: more choose your own paragraph. There was no game element
Speaker 5: to making. So what we tried to do with Fighting
Speaker 5: Fancy was distill a role playing experience into a single
Speaker 5: player solo adventure whereby the book replace the games master
Speaker 5: and you, the reader, moved from a passive reading experience
Speaker 5: into an interactive experience by baking choices. So it's that
Speaker 5: empowerment because you are the hero at the end. There
Speaker 5: were four hundred paragraph At the end of each one,
Speaker 5: you have to make a choice. Simplistically, you turn left
Speaker 5: or right, and then there are puzzles to solve. There
Speaker 5: are monsters to fight. That's when you use the dice.
Speaker 5: There are three basic characteristics skipdamina, and luck, which are
Speaker 5: modified through your progress through the adventure. Your skill might
Speaker 5: go up if you find a magic potion, or your
Speaker 5: stamina might go down if you lose a fight in
Speaker 5: combat with a monster and then you test your luck
Speaker 5: to escape or try and get extra extra benefits by
Speaker 5: rolling dice against your luck roll. So we wanted to
Speaker 5: have a very thrilling experience with people that given the
Speaker 5: agency through choices empowering and they were hugely successful. They
Speaker 5: went on to sell over twenty million copies globally and
Speaker 5: they got a whole generation of children reading in the
Speaker 5: eighties because of the agency. That empowerment was very compelling.
Speaker 5: And this read by word of mouth. Clearly there was
Speaker 5: no Internet at the time, but it was the word
Speaker 5: of mouth, which is the best kind of variety you
Speaker 5: could possibly hope for in the playgrounds of the schools,
Speaker 5: initially in the UK and then it spread into Europe
Speaker 5: and ultimately globally, and so Walkfi Top Mountain as you
Speaker 5: read was the first one. And we wanted to use
Speaker 5: our own artists that we'd use at Games Workshop because
Speaker 5: we found those really stimulated children's imagination because they were
Speaker 5: realistically detailed where it's puffing. Were a bit nervous about
Speaker 5: it that the imprint because as they were children's books,
Speaker 5: they wanted to write nice safe covers with a little toadstool,
Speaker 5: little gnomes sitting on the toe, all of them, butterflies
Speaker 5: in the air whilse. We really wanted the kids to
Speaker 5: be kind of go, oh, my goodness, what is that
Speaker 5: horrendous creature coming at me.
Speaker 3: It's going to buy my head off. So we wanted that.
Speaker 5: Kind of thrill of excitement and then the joy of them,
Speaker 5: you know, succeeding by getting.
Speaker 3: Through the through the through the books.
Speaker 5: So finally a key in one room allow used to
Speaker 5: open a chest or door further on in the adventure,
Speaker 5: but right to them, as you say, was an absolute nightmare.
Speaker 5: It was like writing multiple storylines at once and having
Speaker 5: to bring the readers back to certain common points, no
Speaker 5: points where they had to have essential information to allow
Speaker 5: them to progress. You had to balance the economy so
Speaker 5: there wasn't too much gold or too little gold. You
Speaker 5: had to make sure it wasn't too difficult or too easy,
Speaker 5: so it was a fun experience but with enough enough
Speaker 5: of challenge but not impossible. Make sure there were no
Speaker 5: culder sacks and all the choice you make. So he
Speaker 5: designed them on a flow chart really is like a
Speaker 5: computer computer flow chart, making sure every every split in
Speaker 5: the in the in the adventure was notated and what
Speaker 5: could be found or not found at each decision point.
Speaker 5: But the important thing is that every decision had to
Speaker 5: have a consequence, otherwise why have bit branching anyway, So
Speaker 5: it was really good fun, and of course my joy
Speaker 5: was to lure people to their doom, promise them wealth
Speaker 5: and glory with nice rose petals along the pathway, only
Speaker 5: for them to fall on poison spikes down a pit,
Speaker 5: which was always good fun for me, but of course
Speaker 5: most people cheated. It had their multiple pages in the
Speaker 5: in the book, and you could see them on public
Speaker 5: transport on buses and trains where their fingers about five
Speaker 5: places in the books. It always used to make me
Speaker 5: laugh when I see that. I used to see that
Speaker 5: in those days.
Speaker 1: I love the innovation of it. You mentioned the dice
Speaker 1: that are used a couple of d six, but I
Speaker 1: love the innovation of the dice at various dice combinations
Speaker 1: at the bottom of each page that you can flip through.
Speaker 1: You don't have physical dice and do a dice roll.
Speaker 5: That was a more recent adaptation innovation in the original books,
Speaker 5: which were a much more highly detailed in their illustrations
Speaker 5: and perhaps more threatening, it didn't have the distroll.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I guess that's.
Speaker 1: It would have made it easier for playing it on
Speaker 1: the train. I guess now you mentioned computer games. The
Speaker 1: games like The Warlock of Firetop Mountain and these other
Speaker 1: game books you worked on, these have eventually find their
Speaker 1: way into the world of computer gaming, right they did.
Speaker 5: I mean, Iceman doesn't really cover too much about video
Speaker 5: games except for what we did at the time in
Speaker 5: the early eighties selling Activision games and very early PCs
Speaker 5: and console gaming, just when there was an early crash
Speaker 5: in the early eighties which had quite a negative impact
Speaker 5: on Games Workshop for the amount of stock we had
Speaker 5: a retail. But more recently the five Defense of Game
Speaker 5: books have been available digitally from from from tim Man
Speaker 5: Games in Australia designed them as apps and Nomad Games
Speaker 5: have created on games on Switch and also on PC.
Speaker 3: It's more of a top down.
Speaker 5: Kind of not a collectible car game, but being rewarded
Speaker 5: with cards when you progress through the adventure and ultimately
Speaker 5: get through so depth. Chup Dungeon, City of Thieves, the
Speaker 5: Forest of Doing of all be important to digital formats,
Speaker 5: so there's something for everyone these days.
Speaker 3: Books or video games.
Speaker 1: One thing I was wondering about as well is that.
Speaker 1: You know, obviously we have this, you know, the rich
Speaker 1: world of miniature based games and dungeons and ng dragons,
Speaker 1: various role playing games, and these these game books as well,
Speaker 1: and in the background or in the forefront, depinding you
Speaker 1: look at it, I guess we have the emergence of
Speaker 1: of even more video game opportunities. And today we have
Speaker 1: some pretty amazing video games out there. The graphics are
Speaker 1: better than ever before, the game systems involved are so complicated.
Speaker 1: But we as gamers, gamers of all ages, we keep
Speaker 1: coming back to to that, like we're coming back to
Speaker 1: these game books. We're coming back to physical tabletop games
Speaker 1: and to games that take place predominant in our imagination.
Speaker 1: What does that mean you think?
Speaker 5: I think one is at the expense of the other.
Speaker 5: I think it's nice to have. Do you know I
Speaker 5: play both board games. I'm sitting in a room here
Speaker 5: you might see with over fifteen hundred board games in
Speaker 5: the room, but I also have, you know, hundreds of
Speaker 5: video games. I think it's it depends how you feel
Speaker 5: on the day. And you can also see that it's that,
Speaker 5: you know, Vinyl's made a revival as people don't just
Speaker 5: want to stream music to whatever digital advice they have,
Speaker 5: they like to have the physicality. Physical books have made
Speaker 5: a revival because people like to surround themselves with things
Speaker 5: that give them pleasure. The physical as well as the digital.
Speaker 5: I think helps satisfy all parts of the human mind,
Speaker 5: rather than one at the expense of the other. House
Speaker 5: so I enjoy both. It depends on who I'm going
Speaker 5: to play with or what I'm going to read, and
Speaker 5: in what form I happened to be using at the time.
Speaker 5: If I'm traveling, obviously it's going to be digital. If
Speaker 5: I'm at home, probably physical.
Speaker 1: Now I'm going to Coneck to something I was going
Speaker 1: to ask earlier and we end up going in a
Speaker 1: different direction. But you describe the first space Marine minis
Speaker 1: in the book, and there's some lovely photographs of the
Speaker 1: little minis as well. The space Marines of warm Er
Speaker 1: forty thousand have certainly become very iconic. They're very recognizable,
Speaker 1: part of the of the of the brand in clearly
Speaker 1: big business as well. How did this concept originally come together?
Speaker 5: Well, they've changed an awful lot of time, the Space
Speaker 5: Marines of the eighties to the Space Marines of today.
Speaker 3: They've just got bigger.
Speaker 5: Bolder and stronger and have got an incredible esthetic around
Speaker 5: them now of course, and everyone everyone loves them.
Speaker 3: They came from very hubble beginnings.
Speaker 5: I think Bob Nasmith came up with the original space
Speaker 5: bringing look and feel in his iconic first miniature. So
Speaker 5: I call things small like acorns. They become oaks over time,
Speaker 5: have given the rights environment for growth through their popularity.
Speaker 5: So it's great to see them so amazing successful today.
Speaker 5: And there's the power of Warhammer Porty k is extraordinary.
Speaker 5: I think there's some talking to about video games. I
Speaker 5: think there's some fifty licenses now and some extraordinary games
Speaker 5: being put out there. So the world of Warhammer is
Speaker 5: rich and famous and widespread now.
Speaker 1: Obviously there's a there's a lot to say about about
Speaker 1: game design and approaches to game design and in the
Speaker 1: business of game design and the business of gaming. Do
Speaker 1: you have any quick advice to throw out there to
Speaker 1: anyone who is a budding game designer or thinks they
Speaker 1: want to get into the industry of game design.
Speaker 5: Well, I guess it depends on what part of the
Speaker 5: industry you want to get into. Is it tabletop war gaming,
Speaker 5: is it board games, is it video games?
Speaker 3: The thing that unites them more.
Speaker 5: When people ask me what's the most the three most
Speaker 5: important things about a game, I will say gameplay, gameplay, gameplay.
Speaker 5: In video games, whilst technology and graphics are essential, they
Speaker 5: play a supporting role. It always comes down to how
Speaker 5: you're enjoying the game to play, rather than what things
Speaker 5: look like. But in a board game, of course, great
Speaker 5: production values has really enhanced that experience now with all
Speaker 5: the bits, and the graphics are amazing now, but the
Speaker 5: gameplay is what makes us want to start playing in
Speaker 5: the first place. So games should be quick to learn
Speaker 5: but difficult to master, so you can get various degrees
Speaker 5: of expert abilities in these games. The better play you are,
Speaker 5: you should be more successful in winning. And of course
Speaker 5: you need an exciting theme that resonates with everybody. I mean,
Speaker 5: in board games, it's no surprise that Ticket to Ride
Speaker 5: has been successful. You could learn it very quickly, but
Speaker 5: it takes a long time to become a master of it. Really,
Speaker 5: all the strategies, it looks great, The trains resonate with everybody.
Speaker 5: The pieces are lovely because you pick up these little
Speaker 5: train carriers and plot them around the board. So it's
Speaker 5: kind of got all the component parts of a classically
Speaker 5: successful game, and similarly with video games, there the appeal
Speaker 5: has to be in the gameplay and then the meta
Speaker 5: level of course that's common denominate about all these is
Speaker 5: the enjoyment caused by people playing together. So it's that
Speaker 5: joy by anything that is a shared experience is always enhanced,
Speaker 5: and there's always an enhanced experience, whether it's looking at
Speaker 5: a sunset or having dinner or going to the cinema
Speaker 5: with somebody, and obviously with games, you're playing.
Speaker 3: With somebody that that's that's.
Speaker 5: That's that fun that's created by just the conversation, whether
Speaker 5: it's the shared experience of enjoyment or doing a deal
Speaker 5: and renegey on it. That's as that extra level of enjoyment.
Speaker 5: So there's a there are many things to consider when
Speaker 5: designing a game, but there's kind of there's there's four
Speaker 5: basic principles.
Speaker 3: I think he's absolutely vital to include.
Speaker 1: Now you mentioned earlier all the all the activities that
Speaker 1: you're involved in. You and of course you're a legend
Speaker 1: in the game design industry. Do you do you still
Speaker 1: gather with friends and just play games purely recreationally.
Speaker 5: We play once a week with the same group of
Speaker 5: people since the eighties, so still Steve Jackson plus Peter
Speaker 5: Molnu from the video games industry, one of the UK's
Speaker 5: premiere designers. I mean he created Populos originally, and Fable
Speaker 5: and Black and White and other amazing video games titles.
Speaker 5: And it's kind of a tongue in cheek Gentleman's club
Speaker 5: in that we play games and keep a record all
Speaker 5: the games played every every week and score points, and
Speaker 5: I send out a newsletter the games. That newsletter largely
Speaker 5: just to criticize the other people playing. It allows me
Speaker 5: as secretary to treat it as my own kind of
Speaker 5: give them verbal abuse the whole time. At the end
Speaker 5: of the year, we have a cup, the cup that's
Speaker 5: presented to the champion. So we don't take ourselves seriously
Speaker 5: about doing it, but it adds another dimension to play
Speaker 5: in the games that we do. So you've been doing
Speaker 5: it for say, since the eighties. I've published six hundred
Speaker 5: and twenty seven issues of the Game that Newsletter to
Speaker 5: a circulation to six people.
Speaker 1: So coming back to the book for a second again.
Speaker 1: The book is Dice Men, The Origin Story of Games Workshop.
Speaker 1: We talked a little bit about how it came together.
Speaker 1: But why did it come together? Why now?
Speaker 3: Two?
Speaker 5: Well, I started writing it about four years ago, largely
Speaker 5: because Games Workshop was doing so well as a company.
Speaker 5: Everyone was saying, what is this games company on the
Speaker 5: London Stock Exchange that's now worth three or four billion dollars?
Speaker 3: That's ridiculous.
Speaker 5: How can it be worth more than some of the
Speaker 5: major corporations I've known all my life? Where did it
Speaker 5: come from? And when I meet people, I said, you know,
Speaker 5: what was your first how do you get into into games?
Speaker 5: And so I started coming calls Games Workshop and they said,
Speaker 5: well how did that come about? So I thought, you
Speaker 5: know what it really is about time this was put
Speaker 5: down in writing as a kind of a personal memoir
Speaker 5: and something that could be there for posterity long after
Speaker 5: I've gone and Steve's gone. It would be there for
Speaker 5: people who might be remotely interested in what has been
Speaker 5: an incredible journey, the kind of birth of the game
Speaker 5: industry in the UK and globally. Really it was such
Speaker 5: an amateur thing in the in the in the seventies.
Speaker 5: But to see that down on paper and won't be
Speaker 5: lost forever, I thought it was important thing to do.
Speaker 5: So here we are life is a game for us.
Speaker 1: Well, it's a it's a it's a great read. I
Speaker 1: highly recommend it to our listeners. And I want to
Speaker 1: thank you for coming on the show. And I also
Speaker 1: want to just thank you for you know, helping to
Speaker 1: bring about all these great creations that mean so much
Speaker 1: to us. I mean the Warhammer, Warhammer forty thousand, uh like,
Speaker 1: these are these are things that still bring me a
Speaker 1: lot of joy today as an adult, and certainly gave
Speaker 1: me a lot of joy when I first discovered them
Speaker 1: as a kid.
Speaker 3: Thank you. That's very kind of you said that.
Speaker 5: I mean, for me as a games player, to being
Speaker 5: able to working games for forty seven years being absolute
Speaker 5: privilege and a joy.
Speaker 3: So thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 1: Thanks once more to sir Ian for taking time out
Speaker 1: of his day to chat with me here. It was
Speaker 1: a real pleasure.
Speaker 3: Again.
Speaker 1: The book is Dice Men, the Origin Story of Games Workshop,
Speaker 1: written with Steve Jackson. You can find that wherever you
Speaker 1: get your books. I highly recommend checking it out and
Speaker 1: picking it up. Just a reminder that core episodes of
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind published on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
Speaker 1: with a listener mail episode on Mondays. A short form
Speaker 1: Monster Factor Artifact episode on Wednesdays and on Fridays, we
Speaker 1: set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a
Speaker 1: weird film on Weird House Cinema. If you have any
Speaker 1: questions that you would like to ask, any information you'd
Speaker 1: like to share. Do you have particular memories of any
Speaker 1: of these games workshop creations that you would like to
Speaker 1: bring up, or if you have experience with the Fighting
Speaker 1: Fantasy game books series. I know these were near and
Speaker 1: dear to a lot of folks growing up, write in.
Speaker 1: We would love to hear from you and potentially read
Speaker 1: those messages on a future episode of Listener Mail. Thanks
Speaker 1: as always to Max and JJ for producing, editing, and
Speaker 1: splicing everything together here on Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 1: and Yeah, if you want to reach out to us,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact and Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com.
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