Jervis Johnson

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Out of the street corners they scream. You knew it
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was coming. You've been waiting for this for months. Rumour
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hardened into fear and now they scream at you. The sirens,
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the hysterical wail tearing through the white noise of the city.
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And you run. You run to pick up those things
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that can never be replaced. A picture of them in
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the days when they still loved you. Your mother's wedding ring.
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And then you turn to your shelf of games. You
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only have room for five. Five Games for Doomsday. Five
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Games for Doomsday is a show in which board game
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personalities are thrust into a cabin in the woods to
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outrun an oncoming disaster. but can only take five of
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their games with them. But which will they choose? My
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guest this week is a legend in the tabletop gaming industry.
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Son of actor Richard Johnson, he started working for Games
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Workshop in 1982. Since then, he's worked on Warhammer 40,000
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and Warhammer Fantasy Battles. He also created or co-created Blood Bowl,
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epic 40,000, Necromunda and Age of Sigmar. Since his retirement
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from Games Workshop, he's revamped to Dreadball and is currently
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designing Valor and Fortitude for Perry Miniatures. My guest this
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week is Jervis Johnson. Jervis, welcome to the cabin.
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Thank you.
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Thank you for such a wonderful introduction as well. I'll
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do my best to live up to it.
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I'm sure you'll be wonderful. So my first question is,
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how difficult was it for you to pick the five
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games to take to the cabin?
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Uh, It proved to be quite hard. Yes, yes.
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It's difficult. I love all sorts of different kinds of games.
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So I went round and round the houses on this
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for a bit. And in the end, I decided, well,
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I'll split it into five categories. So like a role-playing game,
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a hex and counter war game, or war game, and
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so on, a miniatures game.
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And that helped.
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And then the second thing I did was say, well,
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This will be something that I think should be saved
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for future generations and also something that will give me
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a lot of gameplay. I'm assuming that I'm in a
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bunker somewhere, hopefully with several other survivors of the apocalypse,
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so we can actually get to play the games.
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Well, it's a cabin in the woods that is under
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my dictatorship. So, you know, you've been saved by the zombies,
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but you have to deal with me, unfortunately.
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Okay, okay. Well, that should be fine anyway.
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I've picked things that will give us a lot of gameplay, hopefully,
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if there'll be any five games we've got.
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So let's go back to the beginning then. So you're
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the son of actor Richard Johnson. So firstly, a primer
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for the listeners. What did he do? What was he in?
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And what was it like growing up in the presence
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of showbiz?
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Okay, well, that is a big question.
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So, yeah, my dad started out as a theatre actor.
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He went to RADA and then on to the RSC,
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Royal Shakespeare Company, where he did very well and then
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got into films. He was very well respected, though not
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particularly a household name. I would say, back in the 60s.
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When I'm talking to geeky people, the film that they
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tend to have seen or know about is Zombie Flesh Eaters.
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He was in Zombie Flesh Eaters. He was the doctor
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on the island in Zombie Flesh Eaters. And they've also
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quite often seen a movie called Cartoons. where he got
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killed and had his hand cut off. So it comes
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to a violent end, generally, in these things. But he
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loved theatre. He was a theatre actor, primarily, and did
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lots of film and TV work as well over the years.
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He was in Magnum, I noticed just about.
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I don't know every single thing he's been in, because
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there are quite a few really. But yeah, generally there'll
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be something or another. He's in Tales of the Unexpected
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a couple of times, which is cool too. And his
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last movie, Radiator, if you get a chance to track
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it down, is one of the best things he ever did,
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if you ask me. So Radiator is a fantastic indie
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movie that kind of flew under the radar a bit,
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but is well worth a watch if you can track
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it down. So I did lots of stuff like that.
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My mum, when they married, my mum was more famous
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than my dad, actually. She was also an actor. She
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was called Sheila Sweet, Sheila Johnson. And she was in
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a TV series in the 50s called The Grove Family.
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And The Grove Family was like the precursor to Coronation Street.
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She was young Miss Grove. And so she had quite
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a lot of stories and she knew people like Tony
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Hancock and stuff like that. But then when she got
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married and got pregnant, she retired. But I can remember
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her telling me a story that she, because when she
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was doing television, it was live, it was live TV.
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And she said that she was chatting to Tony Hancock,
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who was a famous comedian at the time and had
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a show called Hancock's Half Hour. And he was saying,
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of doing live TV was like being hit by a
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bus twice a week, basically. Uh, and, uh, so I
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think that she agreed, you know, she found it very stressful.
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So I think she was quite pleased really to retire, uh,
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but they got divorced when I was very young. So
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for me growing up, you know, like the, yeah, dad
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was away being, uh, you know, like in movies and
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things like that, but wasn't really around terribly much when
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I was growing up. Um, So we were fairly sheltered
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from that showbiz side of things. We'd kind of get
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to go on a holiday to Saint-Tropez or something like that.
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And I was in a movie once. One of our holidays,
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they needed a young Richard Johnson. So I got recruited.
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I was 12, I think, at the time. And I
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remember I got paid five whole pounds, which, yes, I
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spent on model kits, So, yeah, like a kind of
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like geeky modeler type person, even back then. So it
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was a movie with Raquel Welsh called something ridiculous like
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Lust in the Dust or something like that.
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I can't quite remember.
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But if you ever see that, then the child dancing
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on the beach is me. And the girl I'm dancing
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with is Raquel Welsh's daughter.
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Yeah. So it was an interesting kind of life.
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And so when did gaming enter your life then?
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Well, it entered very early.
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Actually, I've got something I can show you. I don't
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know whether that will help terribly much for the listeners.
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Unfortunately, the listeners won't be able to see it, but
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I'm curious.
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Okay.
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So just recently in the Oxfam online store, I found
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a game called Exploration, which I'm just holding up to
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the camera so that Ben can see it.
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Exploration.
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Which is really quite difficult to get hold of, actually.
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I remember it very fondly. It came out in 1967,
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I think, so I'd been about eight when I had it.
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But I used to play Wildlife and Civilization and games
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with my sister. And I just wanted to get hold
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of that one because I remember it being quite good.
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I haven't had a chance to play it yet, so
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I'm going to be interested to see how well it
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stands up. So I played games like that.
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And then I collected.
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I made model kits, which is why I spent that
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£ 5 on model kits, and collected Airfix toy soldiers. And
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when I was about 11, I came across a book
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called Battle Practical Wargaming by Charles Grant, which was a
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World War II set of miniatures rules using Airfix toy soldiers.
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So I got I bought it and started to become
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a war gamer. And then the shop that I went
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to sold, it was my 14th birthday, and they had
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White Box D & D on sale. I can remember saying,
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is it any good? To the chap, I said, yeah,
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it's meant to be pretty good. So I bought White
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Box D & D, and that got me into role-playing games.
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And then another local shop had Hex Encounter War Games games.
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So SPI and games like that. And I picked up
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some of those, so I got into those too. So
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I love all sorts of games. I like miniatures games,
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board games, role-playing games, classic games. I really love them all,
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and I've played them all throughout my life, really.
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So let's go forward a little bit. You started working
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at a little company in the UK in 1982 called
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Games Workshop. How did that come about?
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Well, actually, I worked for another littler company before then.
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So my first job was at a place called Game Centre.
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Game Centre, as was, was a little chain of game
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shops in the UK.
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That I used to go to.
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It was in central London, a place called Hanway Street
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near Tottenham Court Road. And I used to cycle there
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on my bicycle. It was just a fantastic game shop.
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And they had an advert in Games and Puzzles magazine,
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which they published, saying that they wanted somebody to work there.
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So I was looking at it and I was just
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coming up to my A-levels and my mum said, well,
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you should apply for it. Just go for it.
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And I did.
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And they gave me an interview and said, well, wait
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till after you've done your A-levels and you can work here.
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So I worked in Game Centre. I got to know
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Ian and Steve Jackson, Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson. And
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also a chap called Peter Dove-Levins, who was, you know, there.
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And obviously, you know, Steve set up Games Workshop. I
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also knew Albie, who was the first editor on White
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Wolf magazine from my time at Game Centre. And I
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was at a Games Day in 1982, and Pete was there.
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He said, I'm looking for.
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An assistant.
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Would you be interested? So I said, yeah, sure, I'll
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do that. And went and joined Games Workshop and was
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there for 39 years, basically. So I just stayed.
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So your first game, then, is a game probably most
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of the people listening to this will have heard of,
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because it's quite famous, and this is Dungeons & Dragons.
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So my first question is, then, why is Dungeons &
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Dragons so influential, do you think?
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Oh, gosh.
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That's a question and a half, isn't it?
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I think that.
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At the time, it's interesting because, you know, D &
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D isn't the first role-playing game by a long stretch
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of the imagination. But I think what they.
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My experience with success in games is that it comes
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down to there are elements of skill, but there's also
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luck and zeitgeist, basically. There's doing the right kind of
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stuff and it being coming out at the right time.
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And I think that when D & D First Edition
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was launched, it captured a number of ideas that were
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in the zeitgeist at the time.
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And it allowed....
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People to escape into a different world at a time
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which was really quite frightening. I mean, when I was
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growing up, my mum had plans for what should happen
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if there was a nuclear apocalypse. She was one of
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the founder members of CND. I was on the Aldermaston
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marches on my tricycle and stuff. So it was a
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big part of life growing up then. And so the
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ability to kind of like escape somewhere else where you
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didn't have to worry about the ever looming threat of
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nuclear destruction was quite a nice thing, I think. So
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I think there was elements of that. And it just
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being an imaginative, you know, like clever piece of games
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design at a time when gaming was starting to become
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quite a popular thing. I think that, I mean, it
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had been in Germany for quite a while, but you'd
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got an explosion of different sorts of gaming going on
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at the time, miniatures gaming, board gaming. Games and Puzzles
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magazine was a good example of that, just the breadth
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of the hobby that was coming out. And then you
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got D & D fitting right into that.
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And so then we think of, when we think of
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Games Workshop, we primarily think of Warhammer. Well, we almost
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exclusively think of Warhammer now, I think. But how important
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was D & D to GW when you joined?
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Well, it was incredibly important. I mean, when I joined,
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Warhammer hadn't come out when I joined Games Workshop. So
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Games Workshop was set up as an importer and distributor
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of D & D, actually. Ian and Steve had heard
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about the game and had played it a little bit.
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met Gary Gygax at a convention in America and got
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permission to distribute the game. So they started out distributing
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the game around the UK, and they caught it just
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at the right time. So it was a very, very
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important part of Games Workshop's initial success. And then they
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printed stuff under license, so I've still got my copy
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of the Games Workshop DMG and a player's handbook and
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stuff like that. So they printed stuff up licensed. Games
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Workshop did a great set of things called dungeon floor plans.
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I remember were a big thing that sold really, really
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well back in the day, which were floor plans that
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you could play your games of D & D on
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because you didn't have computers back then in the way
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that you do nowadays. So laying things out was an
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important part of it. So Dungeons & Dragons created Games Workshop.
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And they went on really to create Citadel miniatures because
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Citadel miniatures started out primarily as making fantasy miniatures for
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use in games of Dungeons and Dragons. And that's why
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when Brian Ansell approached Ian and Steve and said, look,
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I can set up a place that makes really good
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toy soldiers for you up in Nottingham. they said yes,
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because they knew that the floor plans that they were
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doing and the use of miniatures was an aspect of
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the game that was fairly underutilized, really. It was definitely
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part of the hobby, but they could see that it
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could grow. Brian had different plans to do with things.
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Brian Ansell's first.
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Kind of stuff.
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I was writing Trollcrusher, which was a fanzine all about
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Dungeons and Dragons. So it was very important overall, both
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for Games Workshop and for Citadel Miniatures.
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And why is D & D important to you?
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Well, I just love it.
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I've been playing it since I was 14 years old
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in one form or another. I'm playing a game of
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D & D, actually fifth edition at the moment with
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three of my kids. My son Jack is the DM
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and my daughters India and Bella and me are going
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through this big long exhibition we've been playing for years
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now online. So a kind of modern version.
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Of the game.
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So it's been part of my life. And I love
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role-playing games. I love losing myself in them. There's nothing
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quite as immersive, I think, as a really good D
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& D session, but also it's such a social activity.
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Even when you're doing it online, you know, it's for me,
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it's it's that, you know, it's a little group of
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friends and you get an excuse to get together and
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you're spending as much time really chit chatting about stuff
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and doing things.
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As you are playing.
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You know, I love that. And back when I was young,
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I hadn't really had much of a chance to actually
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create dungeons. But when I first started out, I loved
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the aspect of it, you know, kind of like coming
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up with a world, filling out a dungeon. I've got
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my own kind of like points of view about what
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worked and what didn't.
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You know. And so....
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It has a lot of lonely fun associated with it,
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which I think is an important part of a lot
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of hobbies. I mean, obviously, getting together to play D
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& D is one aspect of it, but being able
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to sit around and kind of like create stuff is another.
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So there's a lot of fun that you can have
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with D & D in your own time. And that
301
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was when I was growing up and there weren't computer
302
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games and stuff around. That was an important aspect. I'd
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go up to my room and I'd be listening on
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my headphones to some prog rock of some kind or
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another and maybe reading like Dune or Lord of the Rings.
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But I could also be painting some soldiers up and
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kind of like creating my dungeon and the story. And
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those two things came together. I used to have a
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model that I painted or made and I'd incorporate it in.
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in some way or another it would be a monster
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that was going to be met or a character that
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you were going to bump into so it was very
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creative and immersive it filled me up if that makes sense.
314
00:17:40.380 --> 00:17:42.579
So I want to talk now about your work on
315
00:17:43.279 --> 00:17:47.740
those early GW games Warhammer Fantasy Battles and 40k so
316
00:17:47.759 --> 00:17:50.019
first of all how did you get on the design
317
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team at GW.
318
00:17:52.079 --> 00:17:56.660
Okay, well, I started out working for Pete. So what
319
00:17:56.779 --> 00:17:58.480
I used to do is phone up game shops and say,
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you really should be stocking our games and miniatures and stuff.
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I started out doing that. And after a while, Ian
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and Steve had had a lot of success with Viking Fantasy,
323
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and they wanted to step back a bit. So the
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operation moved up to Nottingham, and I came too. And
325
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I was kind of like quite senior in the board
326
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games bit of it. John Stallard, who runs Warlord Games nowadays,
327
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being kind of like my opposite number on the Citadel side.
328
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And I had a conversation with Brian saying, I think
329
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it would be really helpful if we had a little
330
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range of games that were quite small footprint is what
331
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I was thinking, not terribly expensive. And I came up
332
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with three or four ideas, one of which was sort
333
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of like a fantasy American football. I was obsessed with
334
00:18:44.210 --> 00:18:48.710
American football at the time, except it's orcs and goblins
335
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playing it. And Brian said, yeah, no, that sounds like
336
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a great idea. It was you go off and design it.
337
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Which wasn't really what I'd expected. I expected it to
338
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be handed on to people like Rick Priestley or Richard
339
00:18:58.910 --> 00:19:03.569
Halliwell to do the design. But Brian obviously had seen
340
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something in me, so I went off and designed it
341
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in my own time. It was the first thing I'd
342
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ever done like that. I'd designed games for myself before then.
343
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I think everybody did at that period, one way or another,
344
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particularly miniatures gaming and stuff like that. You'd invent stuff
345
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and come up with things in role-playing. But it was
346
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the first time that I'd written some rules. So that's
347
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how it came about. It was an off-the-cuff remark and
348
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then a request to actually go off and design it.
349
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And that led me to, it worked out okay, fortunately,
350
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and led to me moving over to the design studio
351
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from sales, initially as a manager, primarily, Yeah, kind of
352
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like corralling people like Rick and Albert. I didn't particularly like.
353
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Being a manager.
354
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In the end, I said, can I just be a
355
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games designer, please? And they said, yeah, sure. So I
356
00:19:57.420 --> 00:20:00.579
concentrated on the games pretty much exclusively from that point
357
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on and didn't have to run teams of staff or
358
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anything like that.
359
00:20:05.180 --> 00:20:11.299
And so then, when Fantasy Battles and 40K... were being made.
360
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What was the original intention for them? Did they want
361
00:20:17.289 --> 00:20:20.109
them as just an accompaniment to miniatures, or did they
362
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want them as an accompaniment to D & D?
363
00:20:24.549 --> 00:20:29.549
So the idea initially, Warhammer came first, was that the
364
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Citadel miniatures for Dungeons & Dragons were selling reasonably well,
365
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but you didn't need to get loads of them. Brian
366
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was a wargamer, Rick and Hal the same. And me too,
367
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for that matter. We'd all grown up playing wargames, research group,
368
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ancient battles games. We'd made our own fantasy games. So
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the idea of playing battles with toy soldiers was something
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that we understood. And Brian thought, well, this sounds like
371
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a good idea to me. I mean, because obviously if
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you're collecting an army, you're collecting much more miniatures than
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if you're collecting just for a game. So that was
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00:21:03.059 --> 00:21:05.769
the initial kind of idea with Warhammer. Now, if you
375
00:21:05.789 --> 00:21:09.130
look at first edition Warhammer, the other thing that was
376
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going on there was that it was kind of like
377
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baby steps. It was presented very much as a role-playing
378
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game because role-playing games were the things that we knew sold.
379
00:21:19.299 --> 00:21:23.130
Miniature war games were... especially fantasy and science fiction ones
380
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really didn't at that time. There were, there, there weren't really,
381
00:21:26.089 --> 00:21:29.589
there was some around, but not really terribly popular ones.
382
00:21:30.109 --> 00:21:33.549
So to start off with Warhammer was this kind of like,
383
00:21:33.589 --> 00:21:38.269
almost like a role-playing game with a dungeon master and, uh, uh,
384
00:21:38.430 --> 00:21:40.630
wrote a scenario and, and it would be more like
385
00:21:40.650 --> 00:21:42.869
a skirmish game as we'd consider it now, more like
386
00:21:42.890 --> 00:21:46.150
something like Necromunda or Warcry, uh, really in what you
387
00:21:46.170 --> 00:21:52.250
were doing. Um, But slowly over time, it evolved into
388
00:21:52.490 --> 00:21:55.619
a tabletop battle game. So I think that by the
389
00:21:55.650 --> 00:21:58.579
time that you get to the third edition, first edition
390
00:21:58.619 --> 00:22:03.579
in the hardback book, you're really seeing that. 4TK, Rogue Trader,
391
00:22:03.599 --> 00:22:05.359
when it first came out, still had quite a lot
392
00:22:05.380 --> 00:22:07.480
of those trappings of a role-playing game. So it still
393
00:22:07.519 --> 00:22:11.799
had the idea that there'd be an umpire, somebody who
394
00:22:11.839 --> 00:22:14.980
wrote the scenario. And the games were quite small. But
395
00:22:15.019 --> 00:22:18.099
by the time the second edition in the box came out, again,
396
00:22:18.140 --> 00:22:22.809
that had been dropped completely. So really, from the early 90s,
397
00:22:22.880 --> 00:22:27.019
what you've got is Warhammer and 40k dropped. Any trappings
398
00:22:27.059 --> 00:22:30.339
have been presented as some form of role playing game.
399
00:22:30.880 --> 00:22:34.069
And they are tabletop battle games. You collect an army
400
00:22:34.509 --> 00:22:37.390
and you fight battles against your friends who have also
401
00:22:37.450 --> 00:22:42.509
collected armies. And that was always, I mean, that was
402
00:22:42.529 --> 00:22:45.549
Brian's goal, yeah, to get it up so you collected
403
00:22:45.650 --> 00:22:46.509
armies of miniatures.
404
00:22:47.690 --> 00:22:52.450
And so if you look at first edition Rogue Trader,
405
00:22:53.269 --> 00:22:57.819
this is when I sort of first interacted with Games Workshop.
406
00:22:59.400 --> 00:23:06.579
It is, firstly, it's funny. Secondly, it's intensely British.
407
00:23:07.529 --> 00:23:07.720
Mm-hmm.
408
00:23:08.490 --> 00:23:12.359
Was this just reflecting the design studio at the time,
409
00:23:12.380 --> 00:23:14.579
the people who were there? It was just like, we
410
00:23:14.619 --> 00:23:15.180
want to have.
411
00:23:16.619 --> 00:23:20.680
Because the British deflect everything with humour. Was it just
412
00:23:20.720 --> 00:23:23.440
this idea, we just want something that reflects the way
413
00:23:23.680 --> 00:23:26.269
we act in real life and our interests and all
414
00:23:26.289 --> 00:23:26.869
of that sort of stuff?
415
00:23:28.579 --> 00:23:28.799
Yes.
416
00:23:29.180 --> 00:23:30.519
Just before I answer, I'm just going to say one
417
00:23:30.539 --> 00:23:32.660
thing that I should have said earlier on. But obviously
418
00:23:32.680 --> 00:23:34.819
what I'm saying here is my point of view, my
419
00:23:34.880 --> 00:23:37.779
memories of what happened. Memory is a fallible thing, and
420
00:23:38.160 --> 00:23:41.900
people remember things differently. So if you speak to Rick
421
00:23:42.849 --> 00:23:46.170
or Ian Livingstone or people who were around at the time,
422
00:23:46.450 --> 00:23:49.009
they'll probably remember things slightly differently to me. So that
423
00:23:49.089 --> 00:23:50.190
caveat said.
424
00:23:51.789 --> 00:23:55.430
I think that with those early games, they were primarily
425
00:23:55.470 --> 00:23:58.839
written by Rick and Hal, both of whom had grown up,
426
00:23:58.839 --> 00:24:02.359
and they're both British, you know, like, grown up reading
427
00:24:02.359 --> 00:24:09.039
2000 AD, Board of the Rings, you know, all of
428
00:24:09.099 --> 00:24:12.549
these kinds of things, watching Monty Python on television.
429
00:24:12.569 --> 00:24:16.069
Yeah, so they... So they... And they... Those....
430
00:24:21.039 --> 00:24:25.390
Both Rick and Alan had a really strong sense of humour.
431
00:24:25.910 --> 00:24:30.690
They saw the ridiculousness in a lot of what we
432
00:24:30.730 --> 00:24:33.369
were doing. And that's kind of reflected in what they wrote.
433
00:24:33.890 --> 00:24:35.950
And again, it's a very British sense of humour. So
434
00:24:35.990 --> 00:24:38.920
it's quite, from an American point of view, quite dark,
435
00:24:40.079 --> 00:24:46.819
the humour, rather sardonic, I suppose. Not really sarcastic, sardonic.
436
00:24:47.039 --> 00:24:52.529
I'd say sardonic. sense of humour, that was something that,
437
00:24:53.829 --> 00:25:00.359
if you were a white teenage or early 20s gamer,
438
00:25:00.380 --> 00:25:03.359
then you understood all of that, if you were British.
439
00:25:04.420 --> 00:25:07.420
And it went down okay enough in America and around
440
00:25:07.440 --> 00:25:08.980
the rest of the world. I think it was a
441
00:25:08.980 --> 00:25:14.990
step away of from it enough to for that not
442
00:25:15.029 --> 00:25:18.049
to be a major issue but it is give it
443
00:25:18.069 --> 00:25:21.549
did give the particularly it's particularly noticeable in the earlier
444
00:25:21.650 --> 00:25:27.170
versions of things a particular style to it so yeah
445
00:25:27.230 --> 00:25:30.059
I think you look at the early campaign packs for
446
00:25:30.119 --> 00:25:37.339
Warhammer MacDeath you know and in particular MacDeath has got
447
00:25:37.920 --> 00:25:40.119
all kinds of stuff about growing up in an English
448
00:25:40.539 --> 00:25:48.380
school and being taught And there was less oversight at
449
00:25:48.420 --> 00:25:50.799
that time. So the writers would just generally, you didn't,
450
00:25:50.819 --> 00:25:53.690
you're working to very tight deadlines. And then you just
451
00:25:54.309 --> 00:25:56.700
went away and you just did stuff. It got edited
452
00:25:56.740 --> 00:26:00.900
and printed pretty quickly, basically. Um, uh, so you can
453
00:26:00.920 --> 00:26:03.380
see the same kind of thing in Blood Bowl as well,
454
00:26:03.529 --> 00:26:06.490
though it's more or less stayed in Blood Bowl all
455
00:26:06.529 --> 00:26:09.049
the way through the years. But again, it was, uh,
456
00:26:09.490 --> 00:26:13.009
when I did that very first edition on my own, um, uh,
457
00:26:13.150 --> 00:26:16.089
I wrote, I, I had, it had a sense of humor.
458
00:26:16.390 --> 00:26:18.269
I particularly drew on board of the rings. It's the
459
00:26:18.289 --> 00:26:20.809
kind of like, like the tone that I, I put
460
00:26:20.890 --> 00:26:24.650
into it, which, uh, uh, if any listeners haven't read
461
00:26:24.690 --> 00:26:28.259
board of the rings is very influential, interestingly on games workshop,
462
00:26:28.450 --> 00:26:30.940
you know, the early years it's worth tracking down. I
463
00:26:31.059 --> 00:26:33.539
still think it's quite funny in a very pure sort
464
00:26:33.579 --> 00:26:36.799
of way. Um, uh, and blood bowl was quite funny
465
00:26:36.839 --> 00:26:39.059
in a rather pure sort of way as well. I,
466
00:26:39.500 --> 00:26:44.119
I would say, um, uh, So, you know, because I
467
00:26:44.160 --> 00:26:47.349
was the same. I was a product of the same culture,
468
00:26:47.430 --> 00:26:49.670
and you can see that kind of embedded into Blood
469
00:26:49.710 --> 00:26:55.609
Bowl 2. So, you know, as time went along, that
470
00:26:55.789 --> 00:26:59.190
was going to change and evolve once the games had
471
00:26:59.210 --> 00:27:03.099
been successful, and the IP definitely isn't like nowadays, like
472
00:27:03.160 --> 00:27:04.420
it was when we first wrote it.
473
00:27:05.700 --> 00:27:09.660
But what does, I think, remain with 40K? The people...
474
00:27:11.640 --> 00:27:16.089
that people talk about, but it's not so to the fore,
475
00:27:16.119 --> 00:27:19.269
but nevertheless, it's the elements of satire in 40K. It
476
00:27:19.289 --> 00:27:21.630
seems to me to be satirising. Religion, it seems to
477
00:27:21.670 --> 00:27:26.789
be satirising. Conservatism, the Orcs seem to be satirising. Football
478
00:27:26.809 --> 00:27:29.269
hooligans of the time and all of that sort of stuff.
479
00:27:29.690 --> 00:27:33.839
Was that disgust that we want to do this, or
480
00:27:33.859 --> 00:27:35.940
was this just people would go off and they had
481
00:27:35.960 --> 00:27:39.440
their own particular peccadillos and hobby horses that they wanted
482
00:27:39.480 --> 00:27:40.140
to bring into the game?
483
00:27:40.750 --> 00:27:42.869
I can't remember it ever being discussed. It's just something
484
00:27:42.890 --> 00:27:44.210
that we did. I mean, we would have talked about
485
00:27:44.250 --> 00:27:45.710
stuff like that at the pub. And again, it was
486
00:27:45.730 --> 00:27:47.609
a product of the culture and the type of people
487
00:27:47.630 --> 00:27:49.890
that we were, you know, that kind of like slightly
488
00:27:49.910 --> 00:27:53.430
cynical view of all of these things was in there.
489
00:27:53.450 --> 00:27:55.019
So yes, absolutely.
490
00:27:55.059 --> 00:27:58.119
Satire was definitely an important part of those early games
491
00:27:58.799 --> 00:28:01.960
and Blood Bowl 2, you know, which satirizes kind of sports,
492
00:28:02.160 --> 00:28:05.180
basically sports presentation and the whole kind of like thing
493
00:28:05.240 --> 00:28:12.549
behind it. So yeah, But it wasn't deliberate. It was
494
00:28:12.630 --> 00:28:14.869
just the way our minds worked, as I can remember.
495
00:28:14.910 --> 00:28:18.319
It wasn't like we said, we're going to satirise these things.
496
00:28:18.359 --> 00:28:23.500
We like games and we like certain aspects of culture.
497
00:28:23.539 --> 00:28:26.779
We like reading certain things. So you kind of see
498
00:28:26.839 --> 00:28:32.230
those being our interests being captured in the games and
499
00:28:32.269 --> 00:28:34.589
things that we're doing and the society that we were
500
00:28:34.630 --> 00:28:38.200
living in. being captured in those games um i think
501
00:28:38.220 --> 00:28:40.660
you know if you've grown up through the 70s in
502
00:28:40.700 --> 00:28:44.319
particular you couldn't help but be sardonic and a little
503
00:28:44.339 --> 00:28:46.559
bit cynical about quite a lot of things really it
504
00:28:46.599 --> 00:28:49.920
wasn't it wasn't the best of decades uh and not
505
00:28:49.960 --> 00:28:52.769
just because of the awful clothes yeah it's like it
506
00:28:52.809 --> 00:28:53.930
was yeah it was.
507
00:28:54.049 --> 00:28:54.529
And so um.
508
00:28:56.009 --> 00:28:59.000
By the 80s, obviously, things were changing, but the games
509
00:28:59.039 --> 00:29:02.339
that Games Workshop were producing at the time were reflective
510
00:29:02.440 --> 00:29:06.000
very much of British society in the 1970s.
511
00:29:07.619 --> 00:29:11.789
And so are you happy that even though it seems
512
00:29:11.849 --> 00:29:16.609
to be under a shroud of serious gaming... Are you
513
00:29:16.630 --> 00:29:20.470
happy that those absurdities still remain in 40K?
514
00:29:20.789 --> 00:29:21.930
Oh, yeah, no, absolutely.
515
00:29:21.990 --> 00:29:23.630
No, no, if anything, I think if you speak to
516
00:29:23.690 --> 00:29:27.029
any of the old-timers, they would say that it's got
517
00:29:27.049 --> 00:29:32.930
a bit po-faced nowadays. We'd like it to be less serious.
518
00:29:34.569 --> 00:29:41.000
I think that, yeah, yeah it was there was a
519
00:29:41.019 --> 00:29:43.809
definite push towards making it more and more serious over
520
00:29:43.849 --> 00:29:48.779
time and And so a lot of the rough edges
521
00:29:48.960 --> 00:29:51.640
got cut off. And I guess I think that's partly
522
00:29:51.660 --> 00:29:53.299
the kind of thing I was talking about. As time
523
00:29:53.319 --> 00:29:55.519
went along, Games Workshop grew as a company. You got
524
00:29:55.559 --> 00:29:58.230
more and more oversight onto what was going on. You
525
00:29:58.250 --> 00:30:00.950
couldn't just put in silly jokes. So I'd never have
526
00:30:00.990 --> 00:30:03.369
got away with Sly Marbo, for example.
527
00:30:04.210 --> 00:30:11.589
Or Obi-Wan, what was it, Obi-Wan Sherlock Clouseau?
528
00:30:11.609 --> 00:30:15.640
That's right, exactly. Stuff like that you wouldn't really get
529
00:30:15.700 --> 00:30:19.140
away with nowadays. Somebody would spot it very, very quickly
530
00:30:19.160 --> 00:30:20.650
and tell you you weren't allowed to do it because
531
00:30:20.670 --> 00:30:27.450
you might get sued or something like that. So it's
532
00:30:27.490 --> 00:30:31.559
a different environment for a lot of reasons. I think
533
00:30:31.599 --> 00:30:33.539
that when I talk to people, I often say that
534
00:30:33.579 --> 00:30:38.150
when those early years were very creative, but without the oversight,
535
00:30:38.190 --> 00:30:42.109
what you tended to get was highs and lows, very extreme.
536
00:30:42.609 --> 00:30:44.450
you know, you'd either kind of like knock it out
537
00:30:44.490 --> 00:30:47.019
of the park or really kind of like shoot yourself
538
00:30:47.059 --> 00:30:50.259
in the foot. There wasn't a lot in between. And
539
00:30:50.660 --> 00:30:52.920
the more modern style of games, workshop stuff tends to
540
00:30:52.960 --> 00:30:56.180
cleave towards the middle more. So you don't necessarily get
541
00:30:56.240 --> 00:30:58.859
those kind of amazing kind of like, you know, like
542
00:30:59.099 --> 00:31:01.680
flights of fancy, but you also don't get the really
543
00:31:01.740 --> 00:31:04.880
bad things. You know, there are no pygmies anymore, for example,
544
00:31:04.940 --> 00:31:08.099
and stuff like that. You know, and the attitude towards
545
00:31:08.160 --> 00:31:14.950
lots of other cultures is much more, much more, inclusive
546
00:31:15.289 --> 00:31:19.269
in a good way. I really think that's, you know,
547
00:31:19.730 --> 00:31:22.650
because you look back at the product of those, you've
548
00:31:22.670 --> 00:31:28.579
got a bunch of white British lads, you know, in
549
00:31:28.599 --> 00:31:32.099
their early 20s writing stuff. In the 1980s, it's, you know,
550
00:31:32.119 --> 00:31:34.299
there are aspects of it which don't really stand up
551
00:31:34.319 --> 00:31:39.380
to very close scrutiny. nowadays so you look back at
552
00:31:39.460 --> 00:31:41.119
it with pride but also there's a certain sense of
553
00:31:41.180 --> 00:31:43.519
embarrassment about some of the stuff that did get through
554
00:31:43.579 --> 00:31:48.240
back then and so I tend to look at it
555
00:31:48.299 --> 00:31:51.279
as just being different rather than one being better than
556
00:31:51.319 --> 00:31:52.079
the other.
557
00:31:53.880 --> 00:31:55.700
So your next game then is a war game and
558
00:31:55.720 --> 00:32:00.380
this is Empires in Arms Why do you think, why
559
00:32:00.400 --> 00:32:04.400
do Napoleonics lend themselves so well to war gaming?
560
00:32:05.480 --> 00:32:07.660
Oh, I don't.
561
00:32:07.740 --> 00:32:11.670
It's got fantastic uniforms, amazing characters that lots of people
562
00:32:11.690 --> 00:32:18.549
have heard about. You know, miniature wargaming and board wargaming,
563
00:32:18.569 --> 00:32:21.029
which grew out of miniature wargaming generally, you know, like
564
00:32:21.049 --> 00:32:23.960
started out very much as a British kind of thing. So, yeah,
565
00:32:23.980 --> 00:32:26.539
we were quite proud of what we did in the
566
00:32:26.559 --> 00:32:30.039
Napoleonic Wars. So a lot of the early wargamers were.
567
00:32:32.390 --> 00:32:34.109
The First World War or the Second World War would
568
00:32:34.130 --> 00:32:35.670
have been a bit too close to comfort I think
569
00:32:35.710 --> 00:32:38.640
for many people in many ways at that time so
570
00:32:38.660 --> 00:32:41.339
the Napoleonic Wars was kind of safe in a way
571
00:32:41.460 --> 00:32:46.680
it's like it's not quite real and looks amazing so
572
00:32:46.720 --> 00:32:49.740
if you're collecting miniatures and things and that reflects through
573
00:32:49.809 --> 00:32:53.829
into the board gaming hobby too it's a really interesting
574
00:32:53.950 --> 00:32:57.450
period of history with larger than life characters and a
575
00:32:57.569 --> 00:33:02.059
wide variety of different armies to think about and that
576
00:33:02.079 --> 00:33:05.369
gets reflected in the games too it's just it's remains
577
00:33:05.460 --> 00:33:08.160
incredibly popular to this day and on the historical war
578
00:33:08.220 --> 00:33:12.549
gaming side yeah um uh i just had a i
579
00:33:12.589 --> 00:33:15.809
was just playing a very large napoleonic war game with
580
00:33:15.829 --> 00:33:18.769
the peris just on friday basically we were fighting battle
581
00:33:18.809 --> 00:33:22.390
of salamanca so it's still yeah like right up there
582
00:33:22.410 --> 00:33:24.910
the napoleonic period and i know that for peri miniatures
583
00:33:24.990 --> 00:33:28.849
you know they're They do other periods too, but Napoleonics
584
00:33:29.049 --> 00:33:32.880
is where they're... is much more popular than really any
585
00:33:32.910 --> 00:33:35.740
other period. So it's true to this day.
586
00:33:36.420 --> 00:33:39.480
And so then, you know, you've got the... there are
587
00:33:39.519 --> 00:33:43.019
a plethora of Napoleonics games having been published. Why is
588
00:33:43.059 --> 00:33:44.339
this one coming to the cabin?
589
00:33:45.099 --> 00:33:50.059
This one's got... is very special for me and my
590
00:33:50.099 --> 00:33:54.029
friend and colleague Alessio Cavattori as well. So back in
591
00:33:54.069 --> 00:33:54.369
the day.
592
00:33:57.660 --> 00:33:58.900
I'd got a house.
593
00:33:58.940 --> 00:34:02.880
So this would be back in, let's say 2000 or
594
00:34:02.900 --> 00:34:04.630
something like that, maybe a little bit earlier than that,
595
00:34:04.670 --> 00:34:06.890
maybe the late 90s. I got a house and I
596
00:34:06.930 --> 00:34:11.170
had a spare room upstairs. And when I was young,
597
00:34:11.250 --> 00:34:14.769
I played plenty of board games, including SPI and Avalon
598
00:34:14.809 --> 00:34:16.530
Hill games. And I picked up a copy of this
599
00:34:16.550 --> 00:34:19.670
game called Empires in Arms, which allowed you to refight
600
00:34:19.929 --> 00:34:23.570
the Napoleonic Wars from 1805. The problem with it was
601
00:34:23.590 --> 00:34:27.530
it was really long. And I mean really long. So
602
00:34:27.639 --> 00:34:30.789
I got together with Alessio and two or three other
603
00:34:30.829 --> 00:34:33.730
friends and I could set the game up in my
604
00:34:33.789 --> 00:34:36.780
top room and leave it set up. And we played
605
00:34:36.840 --> 00:34:40.199
that first session of Empires in Arms for something like
606
00:34:40.239 --> 00:34:45.400
a year and a half. roughly, it was like a
607
00:34:45.420 --> 00:34:47.780
role-playing session. It was like you would meet up. The
608
00:34:47.860 --> 00:34:51.389
idea was we'd meet up each Friday. That obviously didn't
609
00:34:51.429 --> 00:34:53.409
survive contact with the enemy terribly much, but it'd be
610
00:34:53.449 --> 00:34:54.949
at least a couple of times a month. So we
611
00:34:54.969 --> 00:34:57.570
were meeting up, you know, like two or three times
612
00:34:57.610 --> 00:35:00.130
a month for a year and a half playing this game.
613
00:35:00.510 --> 00:35:02.889
And it was just fantastic. I think I was written
614
00:35:06.570 --> 00:35:08.190
You know, so you each had a country that you
615
00:35:08.210 --> 00:35:11.739
were running, it's grand political, and it had this fantastic
616
00:35:11.800 --> 00:35:15.239
kind of rule in it where often in multiplayer games,
617
00:35:15.440 --> 00:35:18.039
you can get knocked out, basically, you get knocked out,
618
00:35:18.099 --> 00:35:20.199
like Prussia could get conquered, what would happen then to
619
00:35:20.219 --> 00:35:23.570
the Prussian player. And it had this fantastic rule where
620
00:35:23.849 --> 00:35:25.929
if you were being beaten, you could soothe the peace.
621
00:35:26.809 --> 00:35:28.690
with the person who was beating you up. And they
622
00:35:28.710 --> 00:35:31.699
basically had to agree. If you'd agree to unconditional surrender,
623
00:35:31.739 --> 00:35:33.619
and then it had a little system where you'd write
624
00:35:33.679 --> 00:35:36.460
a peace treaty, and it would say, well, I won't
625
00:35:36.500 --> 00:35:39.320
attack you for the next nine months, and you can
626
00:35:39.380 --> 00:35:43.570
borrow this army corps, and I will pay you 500
627
00:35:43.570 --> 00:35:47.070
gold a quarter, or something like that. You'd get to
628
00:35:47.190 --> 00:35:51.110
pick different bits. And so that gave it real longevity.
629
00:35:51.789 --> 00:35:55.139
and all kinds of stuff going on, backstabbing and ridiculous
630
00:35:55.409 --> 00:35:59.460
outcomes in battles. Napoleon managed to lose one battle against
631
00:35:59.480 --> 00:36:03.500
the Prussians, actually. And in our minds, he ended up,
632
00:36:03.519 --> 00:36:06.659
he got captured and paraded through the streets of Berlin
633
00:36:06.699 --> 00:36:09.869
in his underpants, placed that clay before, you know, and
634
00:36:09.909 --> 00:36:13.210
then handed back when the French had to sue the
635
00:36:13.230 --> 00:36:14.150
Prussians for peace.
636
00:36:14.250 --> 00:36:15.210
That was a real turn-up.
637
00:36:16.369 --> 00:36:18.809
And outrageously lucky on the part of the Prussian player.
638
00:36:19.389 --> 00:36:22.630
So it's got a very, uh, and it, that board
639
00:36:22.670 --> 00:36:26.869
game group, um, kind of like I still play in a,
640
00:36:26.989 --> 00:36:31.389
in a descendant of it to this day, it evolved
641
00:36:31.500 --> 00:36:34.679
into us playing like games that didn't take a year
642
00:36:34.699 --> 00:36:38.099
and a half to play. Uh, so we'd be, we'd
643
00:36:38.139 --> 00:36:44.280
meet up regularly, an evolving, changing group of people, uh, over, over,
644
00:36:44.570 --> 00:36:49.269
over the years. Um, playing lots of different board games,
645
00:36:49.329 --> 00:36:56.389
generally card games and board games. And that all came
646
00:36:56.429 --> 00:36:59.880
out of Empires in Arms. It's an amazing, extraordinary game.
647
00:36:59.889 --> 00:37:02.320
And if anybody gets the chance to play it, it's
648
00:37:02.579 --> 00:37:09.340
still to this day, it's worth playing. It's quite an
649
00:37:09.380 --> 00:37:10.480
amazing experience.
650
00:37:11.780 --> 00:37:13.460
So I want to dig a bit more in now
651
00:37:13.480 --> 00:37:16.329
to Blood Bowl. So Blood Bowl, You know, you have
652
00:37:16.349 --> 00:37:19.550
these ideas, you're into American football. Hopefully it was the
653
00:37:19.590 --> 00:37:20.969
Miami Dolphins at the time.
654
00:37:22.639 --> 00:37:23.840
New York Jets for my side.
655
00:37:23.900 --> 00:37:25.559
I was a big Dan Marino fan at the time.
656
00:37:28.619 --> 00:37:33.219
And so, you know, Brian Ansell says, yeah, that sounds
657
00:37:33.239 --> 00:37:35.409
like a great idea. Go and do it. How did
658
00:37:35.429 --> 00:37:36.050
you approach it?
659
00:37:37.460 --> 00:37:41.719
Well, so I think the quote that I've come to
660
00:37:41.780 --> 00:37:45.889
really appreciate is it goes along the lines of artists
661
00:37:45.909 --> 00:37:50.309
steal amateurs merely copy. And at that time, I was
662
00:37:50.369 --> 00:37:53.969
definitely an amateur games designer. So it was kind of like, well, okay,
663
00:37:54.130 --> 00:37:56.269
I played American football games. I really love it. There's
664
00:37:56.289 --> 00:38:01.289
a game I absolutely adore called Football Strategy, which I
665
00:38:01.309 --> 00:38:03.969
really liked, and such pro football and stuff. So I
666
00:38:03.989 --> 00:38:06.909
played American football games over the years, but that wasn't
667
00:38:06.949 --> 00:38:10.170
really what I was looking for here. So what I
668
00:38:10.210 --> 00:38:12.809
did was I took the Warhammer rules at that time,
669
00:38:13.909 --> 00:38:16.610
and transferred them onto a square grid. So I created
670
00:38:16.630 --> 00:38:21.750
a pitch and created a game where it was like
671
00:38:21.789 --> 00:38:24.909
a little Warhammer skirmish, basically. You'd have the two teams
672
00:38:24.969 --> 00:38:31.920
of players and they'd earn a football and they'd fight
673
00:38:31.960 --> 00:38:34.239
each other and punch and kick and hopefully take down
674
00:38:34.280 --> 00:38:36.440
enough of the opposing players and then create a gap
675
00:38:36.500 --> 00:38:39.840
and run through and score a touchdown. So that was
676
00:38:40.449 --> 00:38:44.320
the initial idea for the game. And it worked well enough.
677
00:38:44.380 --> 00:38:46.820
I mean, I'd love to say that it was extensively playtested,
678
00:38:46.900 --> 00:38:53.130
but back then it really wasn't. And then I struck lucky.
679
00:38:53.170 --> 00:38:55.630
I'd got enough of a basic idea for the game
680
00:38:55.670 --> 00:38:57.429
and I'd written the different sorts of teams. I can
681
00:38:57.449 --> 00:38:59.829
remember that the Champions of Death were one of the
682
00:38:59.869 --> 00:39:03.750
teams which were very much all hammer horror movie kind
683
00:39:03.809 --> 00:39:09.840
of like cliches and stuff and different sorts of teams.
684
00:39:10.159 --> 00:39:12.179
And they'd already got this kind of like slight sense
685
00:39:12.219 --> 00:39:17.059
of humor. But then to move the game on, I
686
00:39:17.880 --> 00:39:24.820
was joined by Mark Gascoigne, who is a fantastic editor
687
00:39:27.389 --> 00:39:30.659
and has gone on to set up Black Live the
688
00:39:30.699 --> 00:39:36.130
Games Workshop, numbers of other publications and publishing houses and
689
00:39:36.150 --> 00:39:40.110
stuff over the years. And by Ali Morrison, who's better
690
00:39:40.130 --> 00:39:42.090
known as a miniature designer, but is also a very
691
00:39:42.130 --> 00:39:48.349
talented artist. And basically what Mark did was he took
692
00:39:48.530 --> 00:39:51.769
my very rough and ready text and kind of evolved it,
693
00:39:52.059 --> 00:39:54.599
but then helped me expand the background. So he came
694
00:39:54.659 --> 00:39:57.079
up with the did you knows that you get in
695
00:39:57.679 --> 00:39:58.119
Blood Bowl.
696
00:39:58.280 --> 00:39:59.380
That was Mark's creation.
697
00:40:00.199 --> 00:40:02.670
And the idea of there being two commentators to do
698
00:40:02.710 --> 00:40:05.909
the examples at play. That was Mark's idea. I can
699
00:40:05.929 --> 00:40:08.690
remember we used to go down to Smith's and get
700
00:40:08.949 --> 00:40:11.550
American football magazines and we'd scour them and look for
701
00:40:11.909 --> 00:40:13.880
the kind of the tone and kind of thing.
702
00:40:13.920 --> 00:40:15.400
So ideas came from there.
703
00:40:16.079 --> 00:40:20.219
And then Ali came on board and he started to
704
00:40:20.280 --> 00:40:24.630
kind of like draw concept sketches, basically, for what the
705
00:40:24.670 --> 00:40:27.510
players and the different teams could look like. First edition
706
00:40:27.530 --> 00:40:30.849
Blood Bowl didn't have plastic miniatures, it had little cardboard standees.
707
00:40:31.449 --> 00:40:33.710
So he did all of the artwork for all of those.
708
00:40:33.789 --> 00:40:38.510
So basically, I came up with the initial concepts and
709
00:40:38.730 --> 00:40:41.710
then was kind of like the lead rules writer, I suppose.
710
00:40:42.659 --> 00:40:47.519
But Ali and Mark really helped me build the background up.
711
00:40:47.559 --> 00:40:49.909
So it was a team effort. And it's one of
712
00:40:49.929 --> 00:40:52.110
the things I say about games design to this day.
713
00:40:52.650 --> 00:40:57.030
It's not like writing a novel. you're working with a
714
00:40:57.050 --> 00:40:59.980
group of people it's a collaborative process and good stuff
715
00:41:00.059 --> 00:41:02.659
comes out of you being lucky enough to get teamed
716
00:41:02.760 --> 00:41:04.659
up with a group of people who are on the
717
00:41:04.679 --> 00:41:08.820
same wavelength as you and you each then get encouraged
718
00:41:08.840 --> 00:41:11.969
to kind of like like hit above your weight so
719
00:41:11.989 --> 00:41:15.409
when that was certainly true with me um yeah so
720
00:41:15.510 --> 00:41:18.909
i've uh you know i uh I owe a huge
721
00:41:18.949 --> 00:41:23.090
amount to what Ali and Mark put into the game there.
722
00:41:23.389 --> 00:41:25.150
And between the three of us, we were able to
723
00:41:25.190 --> 00:41:27.989
get that first edition of the game together with a
724
00:41:28.050 --> 00:41:31.909
playable enough game in there that it landed really well.
725
00:41:33.190 --> 00:41:38.480
And it surprised everybody how popular it was, because I
726
00:41:38.500 --> 00:41:41.530
don't think that anybody other than us three really thought
727
00:41:41.570 --> 00:41:43.789
it was going to be, you know, weren't really interested
728
00:41:43.869 --> 00:41:46.550
in it. It certainly wasn't, you know, like Rick doesn't
729
00:41:46.570 --> 00:41:49.289
really like American football, you know, Hal wasn't into it.
730
00:41:49.699 --> 00:41:55.719
Brian was like, I don't really get it. But they
731
00:41:55.760 --> 00:41:57.800
could all see that it was successful. So we very
732
00:41:57.840 --> 00:42:00.460
quickly did an expansion for it. And then fairly quickly
733
00:42:00.519 --> 00:42:02.920
after that, the second edition with the polystyrene pitch.
734
00:42:04.179 --> 00:42:07.690
And so then, Easy, do you think its success is
735
00:42:07.730 --> 00:42:12.519
something to do with the fact that It's sport kind
736
00:42:12.539 --> 00:42:17.199
of only in name. Firstly, it's a skirmish game rather
737
00:42:17.239 --> 00:42:21.150
than a sort of realistic evocation of sport. And then secondly,
738
00:42:21.170 --> 00:42:26.570
it has that dark humour shot through it that you're
739
00:42:26.590 --> 00:42:29.329
not really trying to score goals, especially if you're playing
740
00:42:29.369 --> 00:42:31.429
the team I play, which is Orcs. You're trying to
741
00:42:31.650 --> 00:42:34.380
murder as many people on the pitch. Is that the
742
00:42:34.420 --> 00:42:35.179
attraction to it?
743
00:42:36.119 --> 00:42:39.179
Uh, yeah, well, I think that, uh, you know, it's, it, it, it's,
744
00:42:39.340 --> 00:42:41.880
it's quite a successful satire of sports stuff. So if you,
745
00:42:41.940 --> 00:42:44.500
if you're into sports of almost any kind, like rugby
746
00:42:44.539 --> 00:42:47.090
or American football in particular, then you, then it will
747
00:42:47.110 --> 00:42:50.610
make you chuckle. Uh, and, uh, the game's close enough
748
00:42:50.630 --> 00:42:52.849
to those things that a lot of the tactics that
749
00:42:52.869 --> 00:42:54.610
you kind of like, you'll have seen kind of, you
750
00:42:54.650 --> 00:42:57.150
can kind of see being emulated with the exception that
751
00:42:57.190 --> 00:43:00.150
you can kill people in blood bowl and you're not
752
00:43:00.170 --> 00:43:04.489
really allowed to do that, uh, in rugby or American football. Um, Uh,
753
00:43:04.670 --> 00:43:08.130
so it's kind of reflective, uh, of those things. So
754
00:43:08.170 --> 00:43:11.260
I think that, uh, you know, it, you know, it,
755
00:43:11.590 --> 00:43:14.119
it was lucky when it landed, you know, American football
756
00:43:14.199 --> 00:43:16.360
in the UK was, was having a bit of a
757
00:43:16.400 --> 00:43:18.280
moment because of channel four.
758
00:43:18.780 --> 00:43:19.420
Yeah. Yeah.
759
00:43:19.820 --> 00:43:22.889
So, so we were lucky in that way. Um, uh,
760
00:43:23.050 --> 00:43:25.550
and obviously it worked well with the American market who
761
00:43:25.570 --> 00:43:27.730
could under, you know, it was much more kind of
762
00:43:27.769 --> 00:43:31.650
like accessible and obvious for them. Um, uh, So we
763
00:43:31.690 --> 00:43:33.769
were lucky in that way. But I think that the
764
00:43:33.829 --> 00:43:36.989
other thing that Blood Bowl did right from the start
765
00:43:37.909 --> 00:43:43.039
and has carried on doing, and surprisingly few other board
766
00:43:43.099 --> 00:43:48.239
games do, is that it mixes a board game with
767
00:43:48.880 --> 00:43:55.590
the hobby of collecting miniatures. And In particular, your team
768
00:43:55.730 --> 00:43:58.449
in Blood Bowl is a bit like Warhammer or 40K
769
00:43:58.530 --> 00:44:00.590
Army in that it's unique. You choose it from a
770
00:44:00.610 --> 00:44:02.769
set of lists and then you paint it yourself. And
771
00:44:02.809 --> 00:44:08.079
so nobody else's team is quite like your one. So
772
00:44:08.159 --> 00:44:12.139
it captures that bit of the hobby. And then when
773
00:44:12.159 --> 00:44:14.719
you're working with a board, the rules could be much tighter.
774
00:44:14.760 --> 00:44:18.750
The focus on that one scenario allows the game to,
775
00:44:18.829 --> 00:44:22.179
it works better as purely as a game. So it
776
00:44:22.239 --> 00:44:26.300
spreads out the net of people who might be interested
777
00:44:26.360 --> 00:44:28.219
in joining in with that hobby a bit wider. You
778
00:44:28.260 --> 00:44:31.500
get people who are really interested in it because it's
779
00:44:31.539 --> 00:44:35.360
a pretty good game. But you also get people who
780
00:44:35.380 --> 00:44:37.579
are interested in it because they can collect little teams
781
00:44:37.619 --> 00:44:39.469
of Bloodbog players and keep them in their cabinet and
782
00:44:39.530 --> 00:44:43.230
paint them and have fun doing that and then play
783
00:44:43.269 --> 00:44:46.610
games with them. But actually, that's probably quite secondary to
784
00:44:46.670 --> 00:44:51.090
them compared to the hobby of the player. of collecting
785
00:44:51.110 --> 00:44:55.769
the miniatures and creating their teams. So I think that
786
00:44:57.369 --> 00:45:04.409
it had quite a broad appeal and also had an
787
00:45:04.449 --> 00:45:08.039
appeal to a market that Games Workshop weren't particularly appealing
788
00:45:08.079 --> 00:45:09.940
to at all, which is the board games market. So
789
00:45:09.960 --> 00:45:11.659
I think that there were a number of reasons that
790
00:45:11.719 --> 00:45:14.659
it was successful. all of those kind of mixed together
791
00:45:14.699 --> 00:45:16.619
really the team i tend to play the most is
792
00:45:16.659 --> 00:45:19.440
the dark elves uh and i've still got my dark
793
00:45:19.500 --> 00:45:23.280
elf team but the um uh the uh as a
794
00:45:23.300 --> 00:45:26.000
games designer you can't really afford to do that the
795
00:45:26.019 --> 00:45:28.630
reason i i i took on the dark elves was
796
00:45:28.650 --> 00:45:32.110
because nobody when we uh so for me blood bowl
797
00:45:32.409 --> 00:45:35.570
first and second edition blood bowl perfectly workmanlike kind of
798
00:45:35.610 --> 00:45:38.670
like things but the game really becomes a good game
799
00:45:38.750 --> 00:45:40.670
I would say a third edition and that's really where
800
00:45:40.690 --> 00:45:43.059
I learned to become a games designer so it was
801
00:45:43.079 --> 00:45:45.880
a very important piece of games design for me in
802
00:45:45.920 --> 00:45:49.280
terms of learning my craft as it were that's where
803
00:45:49.480 --> 00:45:51.210
I would say I stopped being an amateur and became
804
00:45:51.250 --> 00:45:55.719
a professional games designer But one of the reasons it
805
00:45:55.739 --> 00:45:58.050
worked so well was that we did get a lot
806
00:45:58.070 --> 00:46:01.130
of playtesting. The studio was quite big by then, and
807
00:46:01.650 --> 00:46:03.230
Blood Bowl turned out to be a great thing to
808
00:46:03.269 --> 00:46:05.510
playtest because we could play at lunchtime and then after work.
809
00:46:05.780 --> 00:46:08.659
You could generally get a game at lunchtime and a
810
00:46:08.699 --> 00:46:11.039
half after work. So there were lots and lots of
811
00:46:11.099 --> 00:46:13.139
games going on. But the one team that didn't get
812
00:46:13.159 --> 00:46:15.630
taken were the Dark Elves, so I took those. to
813
00:46:15.650 --> 00:46:17.909
playtest them, and I've just stuck with them over the years.
814
00:46:18.409 --> 00:46:20.369
So I play with them a lot, but I don't
815
00:46:20.409 --> 00:46:22.090
really have a favourite. It's like I don't really have
816
00:46:22.130 --> 00:46:26.449
a favourite Army 40K or Warhammer, because you have to
817
00:46:26.510 --> 00:46:29.750
fall in love with the thing that you're working on
818
00:46:29.789 --> 00:46:32.090
at the present time, if you're going to do this professionally,
819
00:46:32.469 --> 00:46:34.880
to give it the commitment and the passion that it needs.
820
00:46:36.000 --> 00:46:38.239
So generally, when people ask me at Games Days, when
821
00:46:38.280 --> 00:46:39.940
I was still at workshop, well, I say, well, generally,
822
00:46:39.960 --> 00:46:42.360
it's the last thing I worked on. because I had
823
00:46:42.380 --> 00:46:44.559
it had to be the last thing that I worked
824
00:46:44.619 --> 00:46:46.739
on because otherwise I wasn't doing my job right.
825
00:46:48.130 --> 00:46:50.829
So your next game then is Warhammer and in the
826
00:46:50.889 --> 00:46:54.030
email you sent me you said Warhammer 5th edition and
827
00:46:54.070 --> 00:46:58.199
so my first question on this reflects this firstly which
828
00:46:58.239 --> 00:46:59.099
Warhammer and.
829
00:46:59.039 --> 00:47:03.019
Why Okay, so this is the fifth edition of Warhammer.
830
00:47:03.460 --> 00:47:05.349
Warhammer Fantasy or Warhammer 40k?
831
00:47:05.510 --> 00:47:07.030
Warhammer Fantasy. Okay.
832
00:47:07.090 --> 00:47:13.340
Yeah, so not the role-playing game. Warhammer would be called
833
00:47:13.360 --> 00:47:18.570
the old world nowadays. The reason that I picked it
834
00:47:18.699 --> 00:47:21.969
is that I had a brilliant time playing Warhammer 5th.
835
00:47:22.380 --> 00:47:27.949
It was me and Andy and Nigel and Bill King
836
00:47:28.030 --> 00:47:30.389
actually back then as well. We did lots of battle reports.
837
00:47:30.409 --> 00:47:32.750
We had lots of fun just playing the game to
838
00:47:32.869 --> 00:47:37.530
put stuff into White Dwarf magazine. A lot of people
839
00:47:37.570 --> 00:47:40.530
remember it as the Hero Hammer Edition, because heroes were very,
840
00:47:40.570 --> 00:47:44.710
very powerful. But I didn't mind that, and I really,
841
00:47:44.789 --> 00:47:47.030
really like the magic system with the cards. I still
842
00:47:47.070 --> 00:47:50.579
think it's the best version of the magic system that
843
00:47:50.599 --> 00:47:54.179
Warhammer's ever had, really. um so i've just got very
844
00:47:54.239 --> 00:47:56.449
very fond memories of it i just had a blast
845
00:47:56.510 --> 00:47:59.010
playing that game and it it was the version of
846
00:47:59.050 --> 00:48:01.829
the game that i based warhammer ancient battles on so
847
00:48:01.849 --> 00:48:05.050
i did uh me and uh the perrys and rick
848
00:48:05.090 --> 00:48:07.750
did a historical version of warhammer and that was pretty
849
00:48:07.809 --> 00:48:11.130
much warhammer fourth or fifth edition yeah round about that
850
00:48:11.309 --> 00:48:13.769
fourth is very close to fifth to be honest there's
851
00:48:13.789 --> 00:48:17.719
hardly any difference between Now, that's not to disparage the
852
00:48:17.920 --> 00:48:20.349
editions that came along later. I know that lots of
853
00:48:20.369 --> 00:48:23.949
people absolutely adore 6th edition, which was done by Thomas Piranin,
854
00:48:25.590 --> 00:48:28.010
or 8th edition, which was the last one, and now
855
00:48:28.050 --> 00:48:32.239
The Old World. So I think they're all great. And
856
00:48:32.280 --> 00:48:34.840
for me, they're all basically variations on the theme, really.
857
00:48:34.900 --> 00:48:38.050
If you said, no, you've got to have The Old World,
858
00:48:38.139 --> 00:48:43.050
I would cry. I'm taking 5th edition just because of
859
00:48:43.110 --> 00:48:46.170
nostalgia as much as anything else and because I like
860
00:48:46.190 --> 00:48:48.769
the magic system more than the other magic systems that
861
00:48:48.789 --> 00:48:51.250
have come along later but it's dancing on the head
862
00:48:51.289 --> 00:48:55.000
of the pin territory really I think the other thing
863
00:48:55.019 --> 00:48:57.860
that I'll say with Warhammer is that the other thing
864
00:48:57.900 --> 00:49:00.440
I requested was that it came with marmies and terrain
865
00:49:00.519 --> 00:49:06.179
because just having the Warhammer rules wouldn't be terribly useful really.
866
00:49:06.260 --> 00:49:08.170
Well we can use zombies fingers or.
867
00:49:08.119 --> 00:49:12.360
Something that's true you can carve stuff out of old
868
00:49:12.420 --> 00:49:13.679
bones and things.
869
00:49:14.619 --> 00:49:19.219
And so when you look at the kind of way
870
00:49:19.280 --> 00:49:22.639
people interact with, whether it be old world Age of Sigmar,
871
00:49:22.800 --> 00:49:28.030
Warhammer Fantasy that was 40k, that are you surprised and
872
00:49:28.110 --> 00:49:33.400
gratified that you can have people who... never play the games,
873
00:49:33.940 --> 00:49:36.420
they just read the books. You can have people who
874
00:49:36.679 --> 00:49:39.519
buy the models, never play the games, and just paint
875
00:49:39.599 --> 00:49:42.619
and model, and people who are obsessed with playing the games.
876
00:49:43.159 --> 00:49:48.150
Is it weird and also gratifying that there are so
877
00:49:48.190 --> 00:49:50.670
many approaches to these games?
878
00:49:52.989 --> 00:49:53.849
It is gratifying.
879
00:49:53.889 --> 00:49:57.010
I've never thought of it as being weird, but I
880
00:49:57.030 --> 00:49:59.610
think that's partly probably because I just grew up in
881
00:49:59.650 --> 00:50:04.570
the same kind of hobby. uh uh so and it
882
00:50:04.630 --> 00:50:11.849
never seemed particularly with niche maybe um um no i
883
00:50:11.889 --> 00:50:13.559
don't i don't i don't think so because i think
884
00:50:13.619 --> 00:50:16.320
that the uh yeah that that we're all different we're
885
00:50:16.340 --> 00:50:20.280
all looking for for different things so um i think
886
00:50:20.340 --> 00:50:26.320
that so warhammer and 40k for that matter um have
887
00:50:26.360 --> 00:50:28.980
their roots in historical war gaming. So as I said,
888
00:50:29.039 --> 00:50:32.260
you know, Rick and Alan, we all started out really
889
00:50:32.300 --> 00:50:34.320
playing World War II games with Air Fixed Toy Soldiers.
890
00:50:34.739 --> 00:50:38.230
The first fantasy games that I played, I converted Air
891
00:50:38.670 --> 00:50:41.570
Fixed Toy Soldiers into orcs and stuff and made up
892
00:50:41.610 --> 00:50:45.659
my own rules to be able to play them. So
893
00:50:46.059 --> 00:50:48.219
that was what our grounding was. And a lot of
894
00:50:48.260 --> 00:50:51.219
the stuff that you're talking about is reflective of people
895
00:50:51.260 --> 00:50:54.219
who are interested in history, too. People who are interested
896
00:50:54.280 --> 00:50:57.570
in history, they might like historical novels. They might like
897
00:50:57.630 --> 00:51:01.769
reading the history books, the actual history books. They might
898
00:51:01.789 --> 00:51:04.969
like playing war games, historical war games, or seeing movies,
899
00:51:05.170 --> 00:51:08.460
or watching Band of Brothers, or whatever it might be.
900
00:51:08.480 --> 00:51:09.239
And so.
901
00:51:10.960 --> 00:51:13.840
It doesn't seem strange to me that Warhammer, which in
902
00:51:13.980 --> 00:51:16.500
many ways, what we chose to do, we took things
903
00:51:16.519 --> 00:51:19.500
that we knew worked for historical wargaming and then emulated them.
904
00:51:19.559 --> 00:51:21.679
So you look at the army books and the codexes,
905
00:51:21.980 --> 00:51:25.139
a lot of those are taking aspects of Osprey books
906
00:51:25.300 --> 00:51:29.789
or history books and kind of like applying those to
907
00:51:29.809 --> 00:51:32.329
Warhammer 40k. And the reason that we did that is
908
00:51:32.369 --> 00:51:34.960
that it starts to make it feel real. And once
909
00:51:34.980 --> 00:51:37.860
you've started to get that feeling of reality about it,
910
00:51:37.960 --> 00:51:41.019
you can immerse yourself in it. Uh, and then the
911
00:51:41.059 --> 00:51:44.019
stories naturally followed on from that, you know, and the
912
00:51:44.039 --> 00:51:48.380
computer games that you get now, these things, um, uh,
913
00:51:48.519 --> 00:51:52.969
they're designed to be immersive. Uh, and, uh, so you
914
00:51:53.010 --> 00:51:55.699
can suspend your disbelief sometimes when you're playing and kind
915
00:51:55.739 --> 00:51:56.389
of imagine it.
916
00:51:56.510 --> 00:51:58.610
As a story or a piece of history that you've
917
00:51:58.630 --> 00:51:59.150
been reading.
918
00:51:59.170 --> 00:52:02.659
Um, So, no, it doesn't seem strange to me that
919
00:52:02.679 --> 00:52:04.960
you get all those different approaches to it because what
920
00:52:04.980 --> 00:52:09.980
we were drawing on was a similarly diverse kind of hobby, basically.
921
00:52:11.119 --> 00:52:14.000
So I want to talk now about Epic 40K and AOS.
922
00:52:14.739 --> 00:52:17.260
And Epic 40K isn't a thing, though there is, and
923
00:52:17.280 --> 00:52:19.000
you're going to have to remind me of the name,
924
00:52:19.039 --> 00:52:23.440
there is an Epic game that's set in 30K, right?
925
00:52:24.179 --> 00:52:27.159
Yes, yeah, the Specialist Design Studio. I always think of
926
00:52:27.199 --> 00:52:31.000
them still as Forgeworld, basically, because I'm old. Uh, so
927
00:52:31.039 --> 00:52:33.090
new names take a little while to knock the old
928
00:52:33.150 --> 00:52:36.230
names out of my head, basically. But yeah, uh, yes,
929
00:52:36.250 --> 00:52:40.039
they've got, um, a Titan game. I think, um, they're
930
00:52:40.079 --> 00:52:43.880
a real combat game. Um, So there are games around
931
00:52:43.920 --> 00:52:46.199
at the moment, and I'm in the old Epic Games,
932
00:52:46.239 --> 00:52:48.610
so it's funny, I was just chatting just recently with somebody,
933
00:52:49.119 --> 00:52:51.530
one of, I work on a game called Strange Crusade
934
00:52:51.570 --> 00:52:54.489
as well, which has been great fun, and this is
935
00:52:54.530 --> 00:52:57.889
one of, you know, it's been, I got to work
936
00:52:57.909 --> 00:53:00.570
with Andy Chambers and Thomas Piran in there as well,
937
00:53:00.610 --> 00:53:06.199
and various other cronies of mine. but I was sent
938
00:53:06.219 --> 00:53:09.760
a link to some people playing Epic 40,000, which is
939
00:53:09.889 --> 00:53:11.780
the third version of Epic.
940
00:53:12.639 --> 00:53:15.150
So for the listeners who don't know, when you think
941
00:53:15.190 --> 00:53:18.809
of 40K, you think of the 28mm miniatures. Epic is very,
942
00:53:19.130 --> 00:53:21.309
the men are very, very tiny and they come in
943
00:53:21.349 --> 00:53:22.510
big battalions.
944
00:53:22.869 --> 00:53:23.710
Yeah, that's right.
945
00:53:23.730 --> 00:53:27.750
So a man is round about sort of like, sort
946
00:53:27.769 --> 00:53:31.170
of about five or six millimetres tall originally. I think
947
00:53:31.230 --> 00:53:35.429
more recent ones, they're more like 10mm. And that means
948
00:53:35.469 --> 00:53:38.630
that you can have tanks and you can have giant robots.
949
00:53:38.789 --> 00:53:43.039
So the starting point for Epic was Adeptus Titanicus because
950
00:53:43.059 --> 00:53:44.940
we wanted to have a giant robot game, a bit
951
00:53:44.960 --> 00:53:50.260
like Battletech. So obviously we couldn't do that in 28mm scale.
952
00:53:50.760 --> 00:53:54.619
So the very first Epic game just had giant robots in.
953
00:53:54.679 --> 00:54:00.050
We very quickly started doing some rhinos and little space marines.
954
00:54:00.469 --> 00:54:02.690
Partly because what they did was, once you made them,
955
00:54:02.730 --> 00:54:04.949
they scaled the robots. When you just look at the
956
00:54:04.969 --> 00:54:07.369
robots on Epic Titans on their own, they look like
957
00:54:07.409 --> 00:54:10.070
Dregnawts for all intents and purposes. Unless you've got something
958
00:54:10.110 --> 00:54:12.050
little beside them, so you go, oh my God, a
959
00:54:12.070 --> 00:54:13.630
rhino's only the size of his foot.
960
00:54:14.570 --> 00:54:16.139
Then, I mean, that's big.
961
00:54:17.219 --> 00:54:19.679
So you needed these other things to scale it. And
962
00:54:19.699 --> 00:54:23.699
then the game evolved from there over the years. There
963
00:54:23.739 --> 00:54:26.420
was a second edition, which was very much concentrated on
964
00:54:26.500 --> 00:54:32.090
all of the armies. A third edition, which was Epic 40,000,
965
00:54:32.090 --> 00:54:36.489
which landed very badly. And then a fourth edition called
966
00:54:36.530 --> 00:54:39.210
Epic Armageddon, which I did through the Specialist Game Studio,
967
00:54:40.090 --> 00:54:42.050
which is still probably one of the best rule.
968
00:54:41.860 --> 00:54:45.320
Books that I've written, I'd say. And was.
969
00:54:46.480 --> 00:54:49.300
popular within its own kind of light lights. And now
970
00:54:49.340 --> 00:54:51.420
there's a more recent version, which I must admit I
971
00:54:51.420 --> 00:54:55.800
haven't played, a slightly different scale to the earlier version.
972
00:54:55.820 --> 00:54:57.400
So there have been quite a few over the years.
973
00:54:59.139 --> 00:55:01.639
And so moving on to Age of Sigmar then. So
974
00:55:01.760 --> 00:55:06.880
Warhammer Fantasy Battle was ended. Firstly, what was the reason
975
00:55:07.059 --> 00:55:10.500
behind that? And secondly, were you surprised? Because there's the
976
00:55:10.579 --> 00:55:14.489
famous video of of the guy who burns all of
977
00:55:14.550 --> 00:55:18.570
his war hammer armies because he's so outraged. Were you
978
00:55:18.590 --> 00:55:21.820
surprised at the uproar when Fantasy Battles.
979
00:55:21.570 --> 00:55:23.099
Was going on? I can't say that I was.
980
00:55:23.539 --> 00:55:26.000
Again, this is one where lots of people have different
981
00:55:26.039 --> 00:55:27.860
points of view about it, so I can only really
982
00:55:27.920 --> 00:55:33.559
talk of my own experience with Age of Sigmar. So,
983
00:55:35.260 --> 00:55:39.420
Age of Sigmar, I was brought in as the rules writer.
984
00:55:41.320 --> 00:55:43.869
And the brief was that the rules should fit onto
985
00:55:43.929 --> 00:55:53.300
four sides of A4. And the law, the blowing up
986
00:55:53.389 --> 00:55:59.159
of the old world, was decided by other people, basically.
987
00:55:59.460 --> 00:56:00.219
But we.
988
00:56:01.360 --> 00:56:03.989
we could tell that people were going to be happy
989
00:56:04.030 --> 00:56:08.090
about it. You just knew, really. The other bit for
990
00:56:08.130 --> 00:56:12.010
me was that they won't get any points values. The
991
00:56:12.050 --> 00:56:15.690
reason for this, as I understand it, is that at
992
00:56:15.730 --> 00:56:23.389
that time, there was kind of like a kind of
993
00:56:23.449 --> 00:56:28.550
like an ideology within Games Workshop, about Workshop being first
994
00:56:28.610 --> 00:56:31.809
and foremost and above everything else a manufacturing company that
995
00:56:31.849 --> 00:56:35.469
made plastic miniatures and sold them, and then sold.
996
00:56:35.349 --> 00:56:35.889
Them to people.
997
00:56:37.030 --> 00:56:43.449
And people were starting to get worried that potentially the
998
00:56:43.510 --> 00:56:47.010
games were restricting people's ability to buy models because army
999
00:56:47.070 --> 00:56:51.170
lists will imply restrictions on what you can buy. So
1000
00:56:51.389 --> 00:56:53.110
the desire was to have a game where you didn't
1001
00:56:53.769 --> 00:56:56.489
have those restrictions, so you could just buy any models
1002
00:56:56.530 --> 00:56:58.949
that you liked and then play games with them. And
1003
00:56:58.989 --> 00:57:01.650
that's really what you see with the first edition of
1004
00:57:01.710 --> 00:57:04.769
Age of Sigmar. Now, the problem that we ran into
1005
00:57:04.849 --> 00:57:06.690
really quite quickly when we were trying to write the
1006
00:57:06.730 --> 00:57:09.210
four-page rules sheet, the actual process of trying to get
1007
00:57:09.230 --> 00:57:11.179
the rules down to four pages was a rather interesting
1008
00:57:11.260 --> 00:57:13.900
one as a games designer, because you basically just have
1009
00:57:13.940 --> 00:57:15.480
to kind of cut a lot of stuff out and
1010
00:57:15.500 --> 00:57:18.119
really get down to the nitty-gritty of what you're about.
1011
00:57:19.000 --> 00:57:21.280
But you also have to tell people how to organize
1012
00:57:21.300 --> 00:57:24.940
a game. And without points values, that was very difficult.
1013
00:57:25.199 --> 00:57:31.639
And the people who asked us to do that weren't
1014
00:57:31.679 --> 00:57:35.139
terribly helpful in then giving us any kind of way
1015
00:57:35.199 --> 00:57:37.860
on a four-page rule sheet telling people how to organize
1016
00:57:37.880 --> 00:57:40.760
a game. And I think that came through when the
1017
00:57:40.780 --> 00:57:43.760
product came out. People were left a bit confused, basically. Well,
1018
00:57:43.780 --> 00:57:47.989
what do I do? Yeah. And the good thing about
1019
00:57:48.070 --> 00:57:51.820
all of that was it very quickly proved that the
1020
00:57:51.880 --> 00:57:56.659
Games Workshop isn't just a manufacturing company that makes plastic miniatures.
1021
00:57:57.260 --> 00:58:00.940
And that's where the success lies. It's a company that
1022
00:58:01.000 --> 00:58:04.500
creates big hobbies. And all of these things are interrelated
1023
00:58:04.579 --> 00:58:06.639
and kind of like bring each other. It's a bit
1024
00:58:06.659 --> 00:58:08.780
like I was saying earlier about games design being a
1025
00:58:08.800 --> 00:58:13.500
collaborative process. Everybody brings everybody else up. The rules, the
1026
00:58:13.599 --> 00:58:17.099
army lists, the background, the games that you play, the
1027
00:58:17.139 --> 00:58:20.789
miniatures all come together to create the hobby. And people
1028
00:58:20.829 --> 00:58:23.090
have lots of little bits of it that they go into.
1029
00:58:24.480 --> 00:58:29.230
So Modern Games Workshop is more reflective of that truth.
1030
00:58:29.809 --> 00:58:31.730
And you saw it happening with Age of Sigmar very,
1031
00:58:31.789 --> 00:58:37.170
very quickly. We quickly had to pivot and do a
1032
00:58:37.389 --> 00:58:41.309
set of army lists and give people points, values and
1033
00:58:41.369 --> 00:58:47.840
instructions on how to play the game. And so, you know,
1034
00:58:47.900 --> 00:58:51.380
first edition Age of Sigmar was a tough project to
1035
00:58:51.400 --> 00:58:55.980
work on. It really was, you know, one of the
1036
00:58:56.019 --> 00:58:58.719
least enjoyable projects I've worked on at Workshop. The second
1037
00:58:58.760 --> 00:59:02.969
and third edition, particularly third edition, you know, were fantastic fun.
1038
00:59:03.190 --> 00:59:06.670
I think partly because Age of Sigmar had launched so
1039
00:59:06.710 --> 00:59:09.590
badly and 40k was doing so well that the Age
1040
00:59:09.630 --> 00:59:11.280
of Sigmar team, which I was on, we kind of
1041
00:59:11.340 --> 00:59:13.659
flew under the radar a bit. It was kind of
1042
00:59:13.679 --> 00:59:16.699
like we got to just go away and do stuff.
1043
00:59:18.719 --> 00:59:21.380
And it was just a fantastic team of people to
1044
00:59:21.420 --> 00:59:26.960
work with. So we had an absolute blast once the
1045
00:59:27.039 --> 00:59:29.800
oversight was kind of taken away to a very large extent.
1046
00:59:31.019 --> 00:59:33.360
And so where it evolved to in the end, I
1047
00:59:33.400 --> 00:59:36.349
was very, very pleased with, but the initial bit was tough.
1048
00:59:37.489 --> 00:59:42.050
And it didn't surprise us. It didn't surprise me when
1049
00:59:42.090 --> 00:59:46.590
it landed like a lead balloon, basically. I think a
1050
00:59:46.639 --> 00:59:51.909
lot of lessons were learned from that experience. It's still
1051
00:59:51.989 --> 00:59:54.710
slightly scarred Games Workshop to this day. I think the
1052
00:59:54.750 --> 00:59:57.699
downside of it is that it means that doing something
1053
00:59:57.780 --> 01:00:01.820
really radical and innovative is very, very scary for Games Workshop.
1054
01:00:03.480 --> 01:00:06.440
So one of the experiences on being on the games
1055
01:00:06.480 --> 01:00:10.889
design team after Age of Sigmar was that whenever a
1056
01:00:10.909 --> 01:00:13.110
new edition was coming, it would always go through this
1057
01:00:13.150 --> 01:00:16.349
process where you'd start off and management would say, okay,
1058
01:00:16.849 --> 01:00:19.210
it's up to you, Gamestead, so you can do anything
1059
01:00:19.250 --> 01:00:24.530
you like. Anything's on the table. Maybe we'll have alternating activations,
1060
01:00:24.610 --> 01:00:27.230
all of these kind of things. We'd go away and
1061
01:00:27.250 --> 01:00:29.989
design some new stuff and say, this is brilliant. And slowly,
1062
01:00:30.409 --> 01:00:34.460
over that year of development, everything would get chipped away
1063
01:00:34.500 --> 01:00:36.380
and what you would get would be the last version
1064
01:00:36.420 --> 01:00:39.500
of the game with something new added onto it basically
1065
01:00:40.400 --> 01:00:42.500
just to break it in a slightly new different way
1066
01:00:43.840 --> 01:00:48.530
and that's because that shadow of the failure of Age
1067
01:00:48.570 --> 01:00:52.269
of Sigmar's launch when we really did do something very
1068
01:00:52.349 --> 01:00:58.030
radical to try and save Warhammer I guess that's the
1069
01:00:58.070 --> 01:01:00.019
other thing that's worth saying here is that this wasn't
1070
01:01:00.039 --> 01:01:03.829
done just out of spite what was happening was that
1071
01:01:03.969 --> 01:01:06.230
in the run-up to Age of Sigmar, what you could
1072
01:01:06.289 --> 01:01:09.909
see was that 40k was becoming more popular and Warhammer
1073
01:01:09.929 --> 01:01:14.789
was getting less popular. Now, that's not good from Games
1074
01:01:14.809 --> 01:01:17.300
Workshop's point of view. What they really want are two
1075
01:01:17.380 --> 01:01:21.940
equally popular game systems because then when you're launching new additions,
1076
01:01:21.960 --> 01:01:23.780
you get like-for-like growth, if you see what I mean.
1077
01:01:23.800 --> 01:01:25.460
What you don't want is one game that's much more
1078
01:01:25.500 --> 01:01:27.940
popular because when a new addition of 40k comes out,
1079
01:01:28.440 --> 01:01:31.679
you get an artificially high spike in sales. And that
1080
01:01:31.719 --> 01:01:34.599
means that next year looks bad. And then the year
1081
01:01:34.619 --> 01:01:36.300
after that, when the new Age of Sigmar comes out,
1082
01:01:36.320 --> 01:01:39.099
looks bad too in comparison. So really what you want
1083
01:01:39.179 --> 01:01:41.719
is for Warhammer or Age of Sigmar and 40K to
1084
01:01:41.739 --> 01:01:44.960
be equally popular game systems. So the aim with Age
1085
01:01:44.980 --> 01:01:46.639
of Sigmar was to say, well, we've got to do
1086
01:01:46.679 --> 01:01:48.579
something here. We're going to have to really shake things
1087
01:01:48.699 --> 01:01:50.590
up if we're going to get Warhammer to be as
1088
01:01:50.659 --> 01:01:55.610
popular as 40K. And that's what was trying to be
1089
01:01:55.670 --> 01:01:58.070
achieved there. It just didn't work.
1090
01:02:01.619 --> 01:02:05.699
And so why did you end up leaving GW.
1091
01:02:05.179 --> 01:02:05.559
In the end?
1092
01:02:06.340 --> 01:02:11.110
Well, I've been there for 39 years. So just being
1093
01:02:11.130 --> 01:02:13.090
there for a very long time was part of it.
1094
01:02:13.610 --> 01:02:17.570
I was running into retirement age and I've been speaking
1095
01:02:17.670 --> 01:02:23.570
to my financial consultant who said, basically, you can retire
1096
01:02:23.590 --> 01:02:25.960
soon if you want to. Because I was saying, I'm starting,
1097
01:02:26.139 --> 01:02:29.980
it's started to get, As I was saying earlier, what
1098
01:02:30.000 --> 01:02:31.340
you have to do is you've got to find the
1099
01:02:31.380 --> 01:02:33.579
passion in the project that you're working on. And when
1100
01:02:33.599 --> 01:02:35.559
the project that you're working on is the army book
1101
01:02:35.579 --> 01:02:38.579
that you've done five times before, that can get harder.
1102
01:02:39.719 --> 01:02:43.570
I was finding it hard to be as passionate as
1103
01:02:43.650 --> 01:02:46.869
I knew I needed to be to create things. It
1104
01:02:46.929 --> 01:02:52.829
was tiring. And as you get older, working at Caves
1105
01:02:52.849 --> 01:02:53.530
Workshop can get.
1106
01:02:53.530 --> 01:02:54.789
Easier as I got older.
1107
01:02:54.849 --> 01:02:58.989
The cycle is much more intense nowadays than it was
1108
01:02:59.030 --> 01:03:01.690
when I started. It's just the nature of modern kind
1109
01:03:01.730 --> 01:03:04.730
of businesses, basically. The aim is to get the same
1110
01:03:04.789 --> 01:03:08.809
stuff out in less time for less money. And so
1111
01:03:09.570 --> 01:03:12.900
the work just got harder and harder. And I was
1112
01:03:12.940 --> 01:03:15.460
starting to burn out a bit, basically. So I thought, well,
1113
01:03:15.539 --> 01:03:20.619
I can take early retirement. and my financial advisor says
1114
01:03:20.719 --> 01:03:21.480
that we'll be fine.
1115
01:03:22.179 --> 01:03:24.199
So I did. I retired. And then.
1116
01:03:26.880 --> 01:03:28.780
Once I've done that, you know, I started, you know,
1117
01:03:28.800 --> 01:03:30.909
I met up with old people who haven't seen for
1118
01:03:30.949 --> 01:03:33.429
quite a while. So the Perry's, the very first thing
1119
01:03:33.469 --> 01:03:35.710
I did was the Valorant Fortitude rules, which have been
1120
01:03:35.750 --> 01:03:36.230
going for.
1121
01:03:36.150 --> 01:03:36.929
A little while now.
1122
01:03:36.949 --> 01:03:39.289
Uh, and that was just, you know, like me, me
1123
01:03:39.329 --> 01:03:41.670
to get back to the, together with the Perry's talking
1124
01:03:41.710 --> 01:03:46.050
about games. Uh, we, we played a game of a
1125
01:03:46.309 --> 01:03:50.480
game called Black Powder, which Rick and I designed, um, um, uh,
1126
01:03:50.519 --> 01:03:54.039
is available now. Um, But we were playing that, but
1127
01:03:54.079 --> 01:03:56.239
it was difficult. The rules are spread all over the place.
1128
01:03:56.300 --> 01:03:57.800
And I said, well, when I did Age of Sigmar,
1129
01:03:57.840 --> 01:03:59.829
I got the rules onto four pages. I bet I
1130
01:03:59.849 --> 01:04:02.369
can do the same for a game like Black Powder.
1131
01:04:02.809 --> 01:04:04.429
And maybe we can get it so the army sheets
1132
01:04:04.469 --> 01:04:06.050
just fit onto a page. So we've got all of
1133
01:04:06.070 --> 01:04:10.650
the rules right there, just a couple of pieces of paper, basically,
1134
01:04:11.030 --> 01:04:13.590
was the design concept for that. And that's proved to
1135
01:04:13.610 --> 01:04:17.300
be a quite interesting project. And I've just got version four,
1136
01:04:17.380 --> 01:04:19.719
it's called. out which is the final version so it's
1137
01:04:19.739 --> 01:04:22.449
been kind of like effectively kind of it's available for
1138
01:04:22.489 --> 01:04:24.750
free go to the peri miniatures website you just download
1139
01:04:24.849 --> 01:04:27.780
it you just it's all there and there's been a
1140
01:04:27.820 --> 01:04:30.699
great community and it's kind of evolved and over time
1141
01:04:30.739 --> 01:04:35.010
but now that's finished And then in between then, that
1142
01:04:35.070 --> 01:04:36.949
kind of led to me getting some other little bits
1143
01:04:36.989 --> 01:04:39.030
of freelance work. Then I got carried away and said
1144
01:04:39.050 --> 01:04:41.369
yes to too many projects. And so I ended up
1145
01:04:41.409 --> 01:04:43.989
working almost full time again. And remember, that wasn't really
1146
01:04:44.010 --> 01:04:46.610
the plan. So now I'm trying to ease back on things.
1147
01:04:46.630 --> 01:04:49.030
So I'm doing some work with my friends over at
1148
01:04:49.090 --> 01:04:53.909
Factory Fortress. And I'm still doing stuff with the Perrys
1149
01:04:53.929 --> 01:05:01.719
because that's really my hobby rather than work. But Which
1150
01:05:01.780 --> 01:05:03.780
is a long answer to say that, yeah, Workshop, I
1151
01:05:03.840 --> 01:05:06.960
was just starting to burn out on it for too long,
1152
01:05:07.099 --> 01:05:09.739
doing the same things, and I needed to take a
1153
01:05:09.800 --> 01:05:13.320
break from it and recharge my batteries.
1154
01:05:15.280 --> 01:05:17.570
So your next game, then, is a cheat, and this
1155
01:05:17.630 --> 01:05:22.869
is a games compendium. And so this is one that
1156
01:05:22.909 --> 01:05:25.389
has all of the sort of classic games. Of those
1157
01:05:25.469 --> 01:05:27.409
classic games, which is your favourite?
1158
01:05:28.340 --> 01:05:29.900
It's hard for me to pick my favourite, which is
1159
01:05:29.920 --> 01:05:31.840
why I asked for a games compendium in the first place.
1160
01:05:32.710 --> 01:05:35.570
I've got two that vie for top place, and that's
1161
01:05:36.329 --> 01:05:39.949
Bridge and Backgammon, which is why I was thinking a
1162
01:05:39.949 --> 01:05:42.090
pack of cards and a Backgammon set would do me,
1163
01:05:42.190 --> 01:05:43.969
but actually, I mean, it would be nice to have
1164
01:05:44.010 --> 01:05:46.489
a chess set, because I'd like to get better at chess.
1165
01:05:47.250 --> 01:05:51.639
And it's got drafts in there as well. But I
1166
01:05:52.280 --> 01:05:56.320
love classic games. I've probably played more Bridge and more
1167
01:05:56.380 --> 01:05:58.599
Backgammon than any other game I've ever played. I played
1168
01:05:58.679 --> 01:06:03.739
Backgammon almost every day with my wife. We usually play
1169
01:06:03.780 --> 01:06:08.690
five games a day, basically. And I still enjoy it.
1170
01:06:08.690 --> 01:06:11.840
It's still fascinating. I still curse my horrible bad luck
1171
01:06:11.909 --> 01:06:14.500
when she wins and say, no, no, it's pure skill
1172
01:06:14.860 --> 01:06:16.179
when I win.
1173
01:06:16.199 --> 01:06:16.760
Of course.
1174
01:06:17.139 --> 01:06:18.139
Of course, of course.
1175
01:06:18.360 --> 01:06:20.860
I just refuse to play with my girlfriend. If she
1176
01:06:20.880 --> 01:06:25.039
beats me, that's it. That game's out of rotation now.
1177
01:06:25.079 --> 01:06:29.199
It's funny because we were watching something or another and
1178
01:06:29.219 --> 01:06:30.480
they had a bit which was a little bit like
1179
01:06:30.500 --> 01:06:32.989
me because if I have a really bad run, then
1180
01:06:33.030 --> 01:06:35.809
I'll just say, that's it. I'm not playing anymore today.
1181
01:06:35.929 --> 01:06:40.050
Maybe not tomorrow, because I just can't stand it. But yeah,
1182
01:06:40.110 --> 01:06:42.329
I love backgammon. And there's lots to be learned there
1183
01:06:42.369 --> 01:06:45.199
about how very simple game mechanics can generate stuff. The
1184
01:06:45.219 --> 01:06:49.199
importance of chaos in terms of longevity for a game.
1185
01:06:49.539 --> 01:06:53.360
Being able, I mean, Go and chess are the games
1186
01:06:53.460 --> 01:06:56.989
that aren't luck-based. But trying to create a game that
1187
01:06:57.030 --> 01:07:05.340
can't be solved when without having some dice rolling in
1188
01:07:05.650 --> 01:07:09.230
is very difficult. And so there's lots of interesting stuff
1189
01:07:09.250 --> 01:07:11.269
to do with statistics and the way that you use
1190
01:07:11.349 --> 01:07:17.840
maths and luck and how gamers react to luck and
1191
01:07:17.880 --> 01:07:21.199
that kind of stuff I find fascinating with Backgammon. And
1192
01:07:21.239 --> 01:07:22.659
Bridge is very similar. I haven't had a chance to
1193
01:07:22.699 --> 01:07:25.519
play Bridge again for a few years, but I'd love
1194
01:07:25.679 --> 01:07:29.900
to be able to get together a four and properly
1195
01:07:29.940 --> 01:07:36.510
play Bridge like I used to. It's a remarkably deep game,
1196
01:07:37.469 --> 01:07:40.980
quite complicated, so it's very gaming. in a modern style,
1197
01:07:41.059 --> 01:07:43.320
it's the closest thing to a Euro game that you'll
1198
01:07:43.340 --> 01:07:47.019
get in a, in a, in, in amongst the classic games.
1199
01:07:48.159 --> 01:07:51.610
But there's also, I find fascinating that, that, that it's
1200
01:07:51.650 --> 01:07:55.230
got a lot of miniatures and role-playing kind of aspects
1201
01:07:55.269 --> 01:07:57.829
to it in that it relies on a social contract
1202
01:07:57.869 --> 01:08:00.769
for it to work. If you want to cheat a bridge,
1203
01:08:01.369 --> 01:08:03.889
then you can cheat a bridge. I mean, they've tried
1204
01:08:03.969 --> 01:08:06.929
to make it so that you can't, but you, the
1205
01:08:06.969 --> 01:08:12.260
players need to, to, work together to make the game work.
1206
01:08:13.039 --> 01:08:15.889
You can't use secret signals. You've got to play within
1207
01:08:15.909 --> 01:08:18.289
the rules of the game. And that reminds me a lot,
1208
01:08:18.310 --> 01:08:20.750
particularly of tabletop wargaming, because I think a lot of
1209
01:08:20.869 --> 01:08:25.310
what's interesting about tabletop wargaming is that really, as a game,
1210
01:08:25.380 --> 01:08:27.579
it's kind of broken. There are too many things which
1211
01:08:27.640 --> 01:08:31.199
are inexact, in particular the way the terrain and movement work.
1212
01:08:32.470 --> 01:08:35.270
is why Blood Bowl works much better purely as a
1213
01:08:35.350 --> 01:08:39.470
game than Warhammer or 40k will because it's got a
1214
01:08:39.470 --> 01:08:42.590
square grid that resolves a lot of those little issues
1215
01:08:42.649 --> 01:08:45.850
so you've got a pure game there but it lacks
1216
01:08:45.949 --> 01:08:48.550
the immersiveness that you then get or the hobby that
1217
01:08:48.569 --> 01:08:50.630
you then get from a tabletop game so I think
1218
01:08:50.649 --> 01:08:54.850
that I find that very interesting and just the fact
1219
01:08:54.869 --> 01:08:56.770
that these games have stood the test of time you
1220
01:08:56.789 --> 01:08:59.109
know they've been playing for hundreds of years I love
1221
01:08:59.130 --> 01:09:02.840
cribbage too for a similar reason cribbage again that's interesting
1222
01:09:02.880 --> 01:09:05.220
because they know who invented it so you get your
1223
01:09:05.359 --> 01:09:08.579
first kind of games designer you know like who's invented
1224
01:09:08.619 --> 01:09:11.569
it I mean Yeah, exactly. I mean, can you imagine
1225
01:09:11.590 --> 01:09:14.520
if people would still be playing Warhammer or Blood Bowl
1226
01:09:14.579 --> 01:09:17.659
in the year, what would be like 2500 or something
1227
01:09:17.720 --> 01:09:21.779
like that? It's just an amazing achievement. This guy and
1228
01:09:21.819 --> 01:09:24.239
it's a great game. It stands up to this day.
1229
01:09:25.310 --> 01:09:25.600
A bit.
1230
01:09:25.810 --> 01:09:28.329
I mean, all of those are they're a bit random
1231
01:09:28.470 --> 01:09:32.670
for very modern kind of like like games designers tastes.
1232
01:09:33.229 --> 01:09:38.770
But that doesn't really bother me. I think they're fabulous games.
1233
01:09:38.869 --> 01:09:40.369
And like I said, I've played them more than I've
1234
01:09:40.409 --> 01:09:45.489
played anything else. So I'd really like to be able
1235
01:09:45.529 --> 01:09:49.029
to have them with me. And hopefully there are two
1236
01:09:49.069 --> 01:09:53.109
other people with us in the wooden shack or a
1237
01:09:53.130 --> 01:09:56.689
couple of zombies that we can train to be the
1238
01:09:56.710 --> 01:09:57.210
other pair.
1239
01:09:57.800 --> 01:10:02.119
Well, I've already had Ian Livingston and Rick Priestley in,
1240
01:10:02.260 --> 01:10:04.579
so they're already here. So you can play with them.
1241
01:10:05.170 --> 01:10:08.390
Okay, excellent, excellent. So we've got our four for playing bridge.
1242
01:10:09.149 --> 01:10:09.789
That's good news.
1243
01:10:11.010 --> 01:10:12.670
So I want to talk about the future now. So
1244
01:10:12.689 --> 01:10:15.409
you said, you know, you retired, but you didn't really retire.
1245
01:10:16.350 --> 01:10:19.359
So what can we see from you coming up in
1246
01:10:19.380 --> 01:10:19.859
the future?
1247
01:10:20.979 --> 01:10:23.479
Well, I think that what I've learned, so it was
1248
01:10:23.520 --> 01:10:26.199
an interesting experience for me retiring. I mean, just retiring
1249
01:10:26.260 --> 01:10:28.239
is a weird experience anyway. Everybody will take this again.
1250
01:10:28.279 --> 01:10:30.659
So all the cliched things kind of like happened to
1251
01:10:30.699 --> 01:10:32.140
the people who retire kind.
1252
01:10:32.039 --> 01:10:32.319
Of like that.
1253
01:10:32.359 --> 01:10:33.380
Did you get a carriage clock?
1254
01:10:35.829 --> 01:10:38.390
No, no, I got much better stuff, actually. I got
1255
01:10:38.710 --> 01:10:41.319
a Yarrick painted up by the.
1256
01:10:42.279 --> 01:10:45.619
And I got this fabulous... Okay, I'll.
1257
01:10:45.340 --> 01:10:48.140
Show it to you. It's the most amazing thing. I
1258
01:10:48.180 --> 01:10:53.609
was gobsmacked. So I'm holding it up there. So this is.
1259
01:10:55.250 --> 01:10:56.029
Age of Jervis.
1260
01:10:57.210 --> 01:11:01.380
And it's a book that the studio put together. which
1261
01:11:01.439 --> 01:11:06.720
is basically a going-away card, like a very elaborate going-away card,
1262
01:11:07.060 --> 01:11:10.579
with stuff about the things that I've done, and then
1263
01:11:10.619 --> 01:11:13.340
lots of people saying nice things in it, basically. So
1264
01:11:13.399 --> 01:11:16.060
it's just an amazing thing to have got. So I
1265
01:11:16.079 --> 01:11:18.500
got that, and this is a piece of John Blanche artwork.
1266
01:11:18.619 --> 01:11:20.319
I got the piece of John Blanche artwork as well,
1267
01:11:20.359 --> 01:11:22.840
which hangs in our living room. So better than a
1268
01:11:22.859 --> 01:11:25.800
carriage clock, really. But no, what I meant was that you.
1269
01:11:28.750 --> 01:11:30.310
Working at a workshop was a large part of my
1270
01:11:30.350 --> 01:11:34.250
life and very defining. So when you leave, you start
1271
01:11:34.270 --> 01:11:37.770
to think, well, who am I? So I went through
1272
01:11:37.800 --> 01:11:41.699
all of that kind of stuff. But what I learned
1273
01:11:41.739 --> 01:11:46.060
was that actually, yeah, no, I'm still the same person. Yeah,
1274
01:11:46.100 --> 01:11:48.979
that games designing is part of me and a vocation.
1275
01:11:50.380 --> 01:11:52.310
And then with the freelance work that I've been doing,
1276
01:11:53.350 --> 01:11:56.760
I've learned that actually, yes, people will You know, they
1277
01:11:56.800 --> 01:11:58.170
want me to do work for them.
1278
01:12:00.359 --> 01:12:01.420
I think that.
1279
01:12:02.920 --> 01:12:05.939
Going forward, what I'm more likely to do, I'm very
1280
01:12:05.979 --> 01:12:11.270
happy working with the Factory Fortress team pretty much as
1281
01:12:11.409 --> 01:12:13.250
a consultant, having been at Workshop for.
1282
01:12:13.189 --> 01:12:15.289
A long time, basically.
1283
01:12:15.729 --> 01:12:19.789
But I've got a few ideas for games of my own.
1284
01:12:20.109 --> 01:12:21.750
And what I know now is that I can work
1285
01:12:21.789 --> 01:12:24.710
those up and then go to somebody and say, would
1286
01:12:24.729 --> 01:12:26.560
you be interested in doing this game? And they'll probably
1287
01:12:26.600 --> 01:12:30.239
say yes. uh you know i've learned that uh yes
1288
01:12:31.180 --> 01:12:33.560
i've got enough of a reputation to kind of like
1289
01:12:33.579 --> 01:12:34.979
be able to do that kind of stuff so that's
1290
01:12:35.000 --> 01:12:38.159
my plan really is to ease back on things a
1291
01:12:38.180 --> 01:12:40.500
little bit i've got a couple of ideas for stuff
1292
01:12:40.520 --> 01:12:42.699
to do with the peris so we've got a couple
1293
01:12:42.770 --> 01:12:45.090
of uh of games which we've started to do a
1294
01:12:45.090 --> 01:12:48.010
bit of play testing with um and i've also got
1295
01:12:48.029 --> 01:12:52.390
a couple of other games that are very niche just
1296
01:12:52.449 --> 01:12:54.850
obsessions of mine, things that I want to get out
1297
01:12:54.869 --> 01:12:58.449
of my head and actually finally get down onto a
1298
01:12:58.489 --> 01:13:01.750
paper and get the time to develop. And then I'll
1299
01:13:01.989 --> 01:13:04.569
either keep them for myself or hopefully I can convince
1300
01:13:04.609 --> 01:13:06.649
somebody to publish them and then other people will get
1301
01:13:06.670 --> 01:13:07.750
a chance to look at them too.
1302
01:13:09.409 --> 01:13:13.489
So, you know, you said you worked at GW for
1303
01:13:13.489 --> 01:13:17.420
39 years. You're still making games. It's fair to say
1304
01:13:17.460 --> 01:13:21.800
that you made your home in gaming. When you look
1305
01:13:21.859 --> 01:13:25.529
back over the years you've lived within gaming, is it
1306
01:13:25.590 --> 01:13:28.149
a nice place to live? Yes.
1307
01:13:29.510 --> 01:13:34.420
Without a doubt. No, I am incredibly lucky. I know that.
1308
01:13:34.640 --> 01:13:40.119
I've managed to make my hobby my job and work
1309
01:13:40.140 --> 01:13:44.130
with loads of fabulous people. And uh you know with
1310
01:13:44.149 --> 01:13:46.029
some of the games that i've got you know like
1311
01:13:46.380 --> 01:13:49.539
become so i've got a little story a little story
1312
01:13:49.560 --> 01:13:51.199
when i was growing up i also used to play
1313
01:13:51.640 --> 01:13:54.819
wrg war games research group ancient battle ancient rules it's
1314
01:13:54.840 --> 01:13:56.579
one of the games i played it was written by
1315
01:13:56.600 --> 01:14:01.659
a fantastic games designer called phil barker um uh and
1316
01:14:01.979 --> 01:14:06.340
uh when i did warhammer ancient battles um Phil Barker
1317
01:14:06.659 --> 01:14:09.649
wrote me a letter about it because I'd written an article.
1318
01:14:10.430 --> 01:14:12.869
If you play ancient war games, there's a fantastic society
1319
01:14:12.909 --> 01:14:16.090
you can join called Society of Ancients, which isn't a
1320
01:14:16.109 --> 01:14:18.010
comment on the age of the people who are members
1321
01:14:18.069 --> 01:14:20.529
of it, but that you're playing ancient war games. And
1322
01:14:21.409 --> 01:14:23.829
I'd written an article for their magazine. So he wrote
1323
01:14:23.850 --> 01:14:26.909
to me about that. And I was like, Phil Barker
1324
01:14:27.189 --> 01:14:31.550
knows my name and he's written me a letter. And
1325
01:14:32.710 --> 01:14:35.520
I know from interactions and experiences that I have with
1326
01:14:35.560 --> 01:14:39.819
people that I've become like that, which is weirdly humbling.
1327
01:14:40.439 --> 01:14:46.159
And I take great pleasure in, basically. I just feel
1328
01:14:46.199 --> 01:14:50.029
blessed and lucky. Not all of it has been great.
1329
01:14:50.289 --> 01:14:54.020
You know, I still stress. I'm an anxious person anyway,
1330
01:14:54.060 --> 01:14:56.899
and there's nothing quite like bringing a game out to
1331
01:14:57.340 --> 01:14:59.779
trigger your anxiety because there will be mistakes in it
1332
01:15:00.260 --> 01:15:03.640
and you feel like a total failure. And I think
1333
01:15:03.659 --> 01:15:07.430
that I was lucky in the way in my character.
1334
01:15:07.569 --> 01:15:10.810
It allowed me to work well with people over the
1335
01:15:10.850 --> 01:15:13.210
years while still being quite passionate about what I do.
1336
01:15:15.300 --> 01:15:17.439
there are dangers in making your hobby your job. You
1337
01:15:17.460 --> 01:15:20.039
can lose your hobby. I managed to be schizophrenic enough
1338
01:15:20.060 --> 01:15:22.020
to be able to keep my hobby to one side
1339
01:15:22.079 --> 01:15:24.039
and use it to inform what I did as a job.
1340
01:15:25.960 --> 01:15:29.520
And it can be very frustrating if you're sure that
1341
01:15:29.539 --> 01:15:34.300
you're right about something and you can't convince the people
1342
01:15:34.340 --> 01:15:37.319
that you're working with that you're right, they're wrong. And
1343
01:15:37.350 --> 01:15:39.479
that's the nature of being a professional games designer. You're
1344
01:15:39.510 --> 01:15:42.649
working for a client. Basically, you're giving them what they want,
1345
01:15:42.729 --> 01:15:46.199
not what you want. which is why I'm looking forward to,
1346
01:15:46.720 --> 01:15:49.180
you know, like such a pleasure working with the Perrys.
1347
01:15:50.340 --> 01:15:52.460
And I'm looking forward to kind of like doing some
1348
01:15:52.500 --> 01:15:53.720
more of my own stuff in that I can just
1349
01:15:53.760 --> 01:15:57.170
do stuff for me. The only client is myself. And
1350
01:15:57.210 --> 01:16:01.270
that's not the nature of professional games design. So it's
1351
01:16:01.350 --> 01:16:04.229
definitely not for everybody. So there are downsides to it,
1352
01:16:04.350 --> 01:16:07.250
but I would never have done anything else. I just,
1353
01:16:07.430 --> 01:16:11.800
I'm so, so lucky. And again, another little story I
1354
01:16:11.840 --> 01:16:19.159
mentioned that, that my first job was at Game Centre
1355
01:16:20.100 --> 01:16:22.199
and that there was an advert in Games and Puzzles magazine.
1356
01:16:22.470 --> 01:16:25.890
I've still got the issue of Games and Puzzles magazine. Now,
1357
01:16:26.949 --> 01:16:28.689
I think that there are strange things that happen in
1358
01:16:28.729 --> 01:16:30.409
your life where you get kind of like a fork
1359
01:16:30.449 --> 01:16:32.789
in the road. And that was definitely one of those
1360
01:16:32.850 --> 01:16:34.529
moments for me. I was looking at that and my
1361
01:16:34.569 --> 01:16:38.390
mum hadn't said, you should, why don't you just apply
1362
01:16:38.430 --> 01:16:40.329
for the job? The worst they can say is say no.
1363
01:16:41.310 --> 01:16:43.430
Then I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you now.
1364
01:16:45.060 --> 01:16:48.079
You know, it comes down, and that's a roll of
1365
01:16:48.100 --> 01:16:51.859
the dice. You know, I rolled a six, and I
1366
01:16:51.890 --> 01:16:56.250
kept on rolling sixes. You know, I was lucky in
1367
01:16:56.289 --> 01:16:57.989
getting the job at which I was lucky coming up
1368
01:16:58.010 --> 01:16:59.890
with the idea for Blood Bowl. I have a skill
1369
01:16:59.930 --> 01:17:03.810
involved too, but being in the right place at the
1370
01:17:03.850 --> 01:17:06.189
right time and having the right kind of character to
1371
01:17:06.229 --> 01:17:08.899
get along with people and things like that were all
1372
01:17:08.939 --> 01:17:11.840
just like random kind of like bits and pieces.
1373
01:17:12.880 --> 01:17:13.920
So, yeah, I feel very lucky.
1374
01:17:15.579 --> 01:17:19.850
So your last game, then, is Imperium Horizons. So how
1375
01:17:19.949 --> 01:17:22.189
impactful as a mechanism was deck building?
1376
01:17:23.770 --> 01:17:26.970
I think it was huge. It was probably.
1377
01:17:30.380 --> 01:17:34.060
One of the most important innovations in games design over
1378
01:17:34.079 --> 01:17:39.789
the last 20-odd years, I would say. So I was
1379
01:17:39.850 --> 01:17:42.069
stuck a little bit as to whether I'd take Dominion
1380
01:17:42.640 --> 01:17:48.140
or Imperium Horizons. I haven't played a lot of Imperium Horizons.
1381
01:17:48.180 --> 01:17:53.880
It's quite complex for me. But I was thinking that it's,
1382
01:17:54.840 --> 01:17:56.460
you know, so when I was thinking about the games,
1383
01:17:56.479 --> 01:17:59.039
I was thinking also about the kind of legacy aspects
1384
01:17:59.100 --> 01:18:00.699
of them, if you know what I mean. It's something
1385
01:18:00.859 --> 01:18:06.640
good to bring along. And Empyrean Horizons definitely fulfills that.
1386
01:18:06.760 --> 01:18:16.550
It's state-of-the-art, kind of like a buildable card deck design,
1387
01:18:16.649 --> 01:18:22.020
I would say. And very, very deep. And so it's
1388
01:18:22.500 --> 01:18:27.649
got a good solo mode. sort of like Foraging or
1389
01:18:27.689 --> 01:18:29.949
something like that, then I can play Imperium Horizons quite
1390
01:18:29.979 --> 01:18:33.619
cheerfully and try and delve into it. So I think
1391
01:18:33.659 --> 01:18:41.220
it's a great example of that kind of stuff. But Dominion, yeah,
1392
01:18:41.359 --> 01:18:46.510
I love Dominion. But it's, yeah, it doesn't have quite
1393
01:18:46.590 --> 01:18:49.350
as many things there to kind of tick those boxes.
1394
01:18:49.750 --> 01:18:53.170
But it was the most difficult one, picking out a
1395
01:18:53.170 --> 01:18:57.529
Euro game or something like that, because I tend to
1396
01:18:57.600 --> 01:19:01.399
play the games once or twice in my games club
1397
01:19:01.420 --> 01:19:03.460
where we play card games and board games.
1398
01:19:03.899 --> 01:19:04.739
It's very rare.
1399
01:19:05.739 --> 01:19:07.359
That i'll play a game more than three or four
1400
01:19:07.399 --> 01:19:11.819
times so getting that kind of attachment and it's the
1401
01:19:11.880 --> 01:19:15.850
hobby of playing you know like gamers games you know
1402
01:19:15.869 --> 01:19:18.689
board game geek style games as it were is it
1403
01:19:19.010 --> 01:19:20.850
that's the hobby for me i collect them and i
1404
01:19:20.869 --> 01:19:23.149
buy new ones and like you know and my friends
1405
01:19:23.189 --> 01:19:25.229
do the same and we bring them along on our
1406
01:19:25.289 --> 01:19:27.590
when we meet up and we'll play the latest one
1407
01:19:28.550 --> 01:19:31.729
uh and maybe get out a popular one from back
1408
01:19:31.770 --> 01:19:35.789
in the day and stuff but um So it was
1409
01:19:35.829 --> 01:19:39.630
the most difficult one for me to pick. But I
1410
01:19:39.670 --> 01:19:41.939
think that Empyrean Horizons is a good choice. It is
1411
01:19:41.949 --> 01:19:44.140
a fantastic piece of games design. It'd be something nice
1412
01:19:44.159 --> 01:19:46.479
to drill into and try to understand a bit better.
1413
01:19:46.840 --> 01:19:49.119
And I think it would stand up to repeated plays
1414
01:19:49.180 --> 01:19:51.600
and trying to keep on kind of like.
1415
01:19:51.819 --> 01:19:52.569
Working at it.
1416
01:19:52.579 --> 01:19:56.050
We wouldn't just put it on the shelf and saying, yeah,
1417
01:19:57.350 --> 01:19:59.369
let's forget about that and move on to something different.
1418
01:20:00.569 --> 01:20:03.289
So I've got one more question for you. So you're
1419
01:20:03.310 --> 01:20:06.569
heading out to the cabin, and you go around a
1420
01:20:06.609 --> 01:20:08.390
corner and the back door of the car flies open.
1421
01:20:08.890 --> 01:20:10.729
Four of the games fly out down a ravine into
1422
01:20:10.770 --> 01:20:13.579
a river and are swept away to posterity. Which game
1423
01:20:13.600 --> 01:20:14.960
do you hope is sitting on the back seat of
1424
01:20:14.979 --> 01:20:15.460
the car?
1425
01:20:15.880 --> 01:20:19.720
Gosh, I knew you were going to ask that. It's
1426
01:20:19.760 --> 01:20:22.500
a very difficult question. I think, to be honest, it
1427
01:20:22.520 --> 01:20:26.390
would have to be the games compendium. Yeah, it's got
1428
01:20:26.409 --> 01:20:28.260
a variety of little games in there for a start,
1429
01:20:28.300 --> 01:20:31.199
so it's cheating. I'm cheating on my answer to the
1430
01:20:31.239 --> 01:20:35.600
final question, too. But, you know, as I say, I
1431
01:20:35.640 --> 01:20:39.979
never grow tired of backgammon. I've never grown tired of bridge.
1432
01:20:43.060 --> 01:20:46.109
You know, I'd love to get better at chess and
1433
01:20:46.130 --> 01:20:48.449
learn how to play it better. So I think it
1434
01:20:48.470 --> 01:20:51.369
would probably be my venerable games compendium, really.
1435
01:20:52.640 --> 01:20:54.579
So if people want to see what you're up to
1436
01:20:54.680 --> 01:20:56.680
and what, when you've got games coming out, how can
1437
01:20:56.699 --> 01:20:57.460
they go about doing that?
1438
01:20:58.100 --> 01:21:00.680
Uh, I, I, I'm not very good with social media.
1439
01:21:00.760 --> 01:21:03.840
So the, uh, what I'd say is that, uh, you
1440
01:21:03.859 --> 01:21:05.840
can see what I'm doing with the Perry's on the
1441
01:21:05.880 --> 01:21:11.600
Perry miniatures website, which is, uh, uh, Perry miniatures.com. I think,
1442
01:21:11.619 --> 01:21:15.270
but if you just search Perry miniatures, then you'll find it. Um, uh,
1443
01:21:16.130 --> 01:21:21.000
And you can see what I'm doing at Factory Fortress
1444
01:21:21.020 --> 01:21:25.090
by going to the Trench Crusade website. There's loads of
1445
01:21:25.109 --> 01:21:26.989
cool stuff going on there if you're into miniatures games.
1446
01:21:27.420 --> 01:21:29.180
I would highly recommend you check it out. They've just
1447
01:21:29.220 --> 01:21:31.699
got a new supplement coming out. So it's a good
1448
01:21:31.739 --> 01:21:33.939
time to go. And again, the rules are available for free.
1449
01:21:34.149 --> 01:21:36.609
So both of those places have got rules that I've
1450
01:21:36.649 --> 01:21:39.689
worked on that are available for free. And the other
1451
01:21:39.710 --> 01:21:42.430
things are, I mean, I don't have a publisher or
1452
01:21:42.489 --> 01:21:44.649
anything like that yet. So I guess the word will
1453
01:21:44.670 --> 01:21:47.689
get out. I have a Facebook page, but I'm very
1454
01:21:47.729 --> 01:21:49.350
bad at using it. I really only use it to
1455
01:21:49.409 --> 01:21:52.850
answer questions about power and fortitude. So I'm afraid I'm
1456
01:21:52.869 --> 01:21:54.689
going to be a bit useless in that kind of way.
1457
01:21:54.729 --> 01:21:56.760
And so you just have to keep your eye on
1458
01:21:56.779 --> 01:22:00.239
the internet and watch out for announcements and stuff.
1459
01:22:01.460 --> 01:22:04.079
Excellent. Well, Jervis Johnson, thank you very much.
1460
01:22:04.100 --> 01:22:05.600
Okay, thank you.
1461
01:22:05.619 --> 01:22:06.930
It's been a pleasure to be here.
1462
01:22:08.270 --> 01:22:09.949
You can support the show in many ways. You can
1463
01:22:09.970 --> 01:22:11.930
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1464
01:22:12.270 --> 01:22:14.229
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1465
01:22:14.289 --> 01:22:16.970
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1466
01:22:17.010 --> 01:22:19.640
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1467
01:22:19.689 --> 01:22:21.760
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1468
01:22:21.779 --> 01:22:25.819
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1469
01:22:26.199 --> 01:22:28.380
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1470
01:22:28.399 --> 01:22:32.130
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1471
01:22:32.149 --> 01:22:33.489
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1472
01:22:33.510 --> 01:22:35.329
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1473
01:22:35.350 --> 01:22:40.470
contact me at 5gamesfordoomsday at gmail.com. And if I've managed
1474
01:22:40.510 --> 01:22:43.409
to leg it from the Indian summers and the walking
1475
01:22:43.569 --> 01:22:46.899
dead heads, I'll see you in two weeks for another
1476
01:22:48.739 --> 01:22:50.619
Five Games for Doomsday.