10. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (1986)
The two guys who created Fighting Fantasy, Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson, were also two of the driving forces behind Games Workshop, the primary importer and producer of RPG materials in the UK in the 80s. Fighting Fantasy’s artists mostly came from the Games Workshop pool and adhered to a grim and gritty and strange aesthetic that came to define British fantasy for a long time – the likes of Ian Miller, Russ Nicholson, John Blanche and dozens more. The intention, I wager, was to provide a sort of visual hook or gateway from the gamebooks to Games Workshop’s products, particularly the various Warhammer miniature games. It happened to me! It just took a couple of decades.
When I first became aware of Warhammer, it was the late 90s and the whole thing seemed crass – a paper thin satire of fascism used to sell scads of overpriced plastic miniatures. Plus, Warhammer players I ran into were all surly. So, I avoided the game. But a few years back, I was encouraged to check out the early days of the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay line (beginning at launch in 1986 and ending, firmly, with the second Realm Of Chaos book in 1990) and the result was magical. It was everything promised by Fighting Fantasy – the art, the grime, the humor, the mutations – but with the volume turned up to eleven. It’s all far smarter than the later, more watered-down iterations would have you believe, more punk too. The first few volumes of the Enemy Within campaign definitely earn their reputation for being one of the best RPG campaigns ever created (and the recent revamp by Cubicle 7 finally wraps the story up in a satisfactory manor). It was a wonderfully creative moment in time for the company, gone forever now, but fondly remembered.
