This page is devoted to stuff I am working on at the moment. I write games as well as run them.
There are two areas of interest, and a third of just new ideas for a Werewolf Chronicle.
Favourites
| Music | Movies |
| Helloween | Aliens |
| Enya | Platoon |
| In the Nursery | Robocop |
| Porcupine Tree | LOTR Trilogy |
| Numina | Star Wars IV A New Hope |
| Bill & Ted 1 & 2 |
How I got into role-playing in the first place!
Chapter 1: Hobbit Holes
I grew up in Ipswich, Suffolk, UK after being born in Debenham 28th February 1969. The year that Neil Armstrong first stepped on the moon, oh and before you ask 1969 wasn't a leap year. In Ipswich (I'm still a supporter) I lived with my parents in their house, a house that was large enough (16 rooms) to rent out some of the rooms to various long and short term tenants. I guess I grew up in an environment where everyone I knew was much older than myself, more mature, and my most formative and earliest memories are from that period. One of the people, a good friend of my father's who was also a teacher (of art, a subject slightly less noble than English Literature) rented the basement area of the house where he lived with his girlfriend. The house actually had two floors, as well as a converted attic and the aforementioned basement. He was a slightly eccentric man, as all artists are apt to being, and he had painted the outside toilet in various colours to ward off the spiders and slugs with who they shared the outside loo with. Flowers, stems, petals and leaves adorned the latrine white walls, but it was what he painted on the back door of our house (technically his front door) that first arroused my curiosity.
The doorway was built into the ground, meaning you had to go down 6 or 7 steps to arrive at the basement door. It had recently been given a brand new shiny coat of green. Dark, alluring and entrancing and enticing. Not bright and lurid, nor dark and mysterious, but oddly bright, inviting and friendly. Adorning the door were words which meant nothing to me then, but now bring back warm and happy memories.
"Hobbit Hole"
Thats all said, nothing more. What's a hobbit, I thought, and why do they live in holes? My questions were immediately answered by him one evening. "A hobbit is a hobbit, and a hole is where they lived", he said. This teacher of art, I found out, had been a lover of Tolkien's works, and had named his entire menagerie of cats after them. His most recent cat, Jermimah Boo-Baggins III was the most obvious. But at that time I didn't know the difference between a Baggins, a Boffin or a Bolger. I began to spend time in his company as he recounted Bilbo Baggins' dark adventures in Mirkwood and beyond. I dearly wished I had listen to his stories and understood them better. But in the end I was given, most likely to get rid of a 12 year old boy who most likely was interrupting an evening a expectant sex, a copy of an over large, perhaps A5 size, book, called rather boringly, The Hobbit. On the front it showed a dragon coiled around a large mountain of gold, while at his feet was a small man, a black silhouette, bowing gracefully before it, large hat in hand. The back of the book was pretty much the same as the front, but without the customary synopsis or quotations that would inspire a potential purchaser or reader's interest. I had no idea of what lay inside. Instead it seemed perhaps a book to read once I had finished others that I already hadn't yet read. Glancing throught the book, I discovered pictures, but only rarely, and intrigingly a map at the front. I had never read a book that had a map before, and I wondered why such a novel would need it. Later this teacher would briefly describe some of the Hobbit's charms and words and songs. They were mostly dark, and foreboding.
The book joined my collection on the shelf, unread, and unasked for. Even when he moved out (due to the local council deciding that the basement was no longer a fit place to raise a child, as he had since gotten his girlfriend pregnant) the book remained in my posession still untouched. I quickly forgot about the book and about the stories of dark adventure, and most importantly I forgot about the door, and the painted Hobbit Hole and Bilbo Baggins.
Later that year, having joined a new school for the 3rd year (Year 12), now having totally forgotten about my slightly enlarged book collection, my interest in fantasy and role-playing could have ended, until I was introduced to the world of Fighting Fantasy books.
Chapter 2: Fighting Fantasy
One quiet morning while in our form period (the 15 minutes spent between register in the morning and the start of the first lesson), I spied a group of boys in my class reading a book and talking about combat skill, stamina and luck. I was drawn to the fact that these discussion were in conjunction with a book which bore fantasy pictures and images on the front cover, as well as having images within. Not only was this a book, they said, but also a game in which you choose which chapter or page you could read from a selection. Here was a level of interaction that I has never heard of, but was interested in. Where could you buy these books? They were hard to find. No shop seemed to sell them, and I certainly did not have the spare funds to buy a book. So the best hope was to find someone who had read the book and would be willing to lend it to you. It wasn't just one person reading them, but nearly everyone, all playing the same fighting fantasy books, all hoping to discover the secrets so they too could join the lofty ranks of people who had finished the game. It was a mark of honour worn proudly.
And so finally it came my time to play one of these books. For by the time I was able to get my hands on one, there were three in total released. The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, The Forest of Doom and The Citadel of Chaos. Three games that each encapsulated the whole definition of fantasy role-playing, here in these books with four hundred odd sections was the start, the spark, and the impetus to chase a life long passion for the fantastic, and it nearly never happened.
The first book that came to me was The Forest of Doom.
Then at the end of a boring school day, I managed to borrow The Citadel of Chaos.
I then had the chance to play the first of the non-fantasy Fighting Fantasy books, the excellent and unique Starship Traveller, there may have been others, but they are not important. What was important was the fact that I had yet to play the nadir of the Fighting Fantasy range. But it was to happen. And finally I played and completed the game.
The furor of the game died down, and within a few months, the odd dregs of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks followed, to later be followed by a torrent of nameless games with no identity. Having completed Warlock, the triumph was enjoyed, and the fire and passion quenched for now and forgotten. And so it would have remained for good, had I not encountered Thomas Ransom.
Chapter 3: Tunnels & Trolls
Sitting in class was a new boy, a posh sounding, gap-toothed guy who I never spoke to. The form period was empty, and I spotted him reading a rather large yellow a5 book.
I asked him what it was, a game he replied, the rules for a game. I was stunned, shocked. How complex could this game be that it required a rule book this thick? The biggest set of rules I had seen was perhaps Monopoly.
Tunnels & Trolls was to be my first proper game.
Conan and Valeria
The reading of the Hobbit vs Lord of the Rings - Tom Ransom
Star Frontiers - Frank & Gaye.
Chapter 4: ADND vs Runequest
time to grow up and choose a path
Disappointing Experiments with ADND and What is a Parry?
Lunch time role-playing club at school
Chapter 5: The Toad & Raspberry Years
Call of Cthulhu
Dune the Movie
Trapped in Ice (Star Trek) with Charles Lamb
Chapter 6: The Merp and Rolemaster Days
Farewell to Tom Ransom
Ramzamy Harack
Chapter 7: Warhammer Days and The Campaign
Hello to Old Friends
Chapter 8: Alone in the Wilderness of Spain
2 Years of writing
Chapter 9: Return to Barren Lands
Dartford
Chapter 10: New Games, New People
Assembly
Chapter 11: Legends Arise, and a Legend is born
7th Sea
Chapter 12: A Brief Break, and a return to Glory
New Party