Fleeting Pleasures

My birthday has come and gone for another year and I seem to have been caught up in a wave, or maybe just a puddle of nostalgia.

With the Amazon Voucher generously provided by my sister I acquired this.

A history of the Fighting Fantasy game books. And, shortly after my birthday I went along to see Knightmare Live, a comedy stage show based on the old children's series Knightmare.

 It was more exciting on TV

For anyone unfamiliar with either of those, the Fighting Fantasy game books were created by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, the founders of Games Workshop. They were essentially a variant of the 'choose your own adventure' genre of books in which the book is divided into numbered sections. The reader reads the first section, they are then given a choice and continue reading from the numbered section corresponding to the choice. In that sense, they control the flow of the story.

The Fighting Fantasy books added a basic role-playing element. The reader or player first randomly generates a simple character using 6 sided dice and periodically, throughout the book, they encounter monsters they must fight using a simple combat system. This adds a game element to the books, hence the name game book. The books were originally published from 1982 to 1995 and the re-published from 2002.

Knightmare, was a TV series broadcast by ITV as part of it's Children's ITV strand between 1987 and 1994. It was essentially a hybrid game show in which a team of four, usually children or teenagers, would attempt to beat the 'dungeon'. One member of the team would don the 'Helmet of Justice' which would almost entirely obscure their vision (because Justice is blind, see what they did there?). They would then be pushed into a green screen environment, with the remaining three acting as advisers, watching on a monitor and telling them what to do.

Both of these had a big impact on my childhood and early teenage years and the audience for Knightmare Live was made up almost entirely of people my age.

Both arose at around the time that Roleplaying in the UK peaked, but their development also parallelled the rise of home computer games in the UK, with them dying out as the Playstation era began (Fighting Fantasy returned in 2002, but was never as successful and the audience for the 20th anniversary book 'Blood of the Zombie' was made up of nostalgic adults more than children).

Looking at the Fighting Fantasy books with their, often, multiple pages of background, illustrated maps and elaborate fantasy illustrations (one of the key draws of the series was it use of serious fantasy artwork) I'm reminded of the manuals for 8 bit Spectrum computer games. These often compensated for the limitations of the on-screen visuals with elaborate art work and full colour printed maps. Story information that would now be conveyed in a video sequence was then packed into near novel length text (or in some cases actual novels).

 The map from the Spectrum game Tir Na Nog could have come straight from a Fighting Fantasy book

...and looks a bit more impressive the screen shots

The point is that the computer game players of this era were used to doing some imaginative work. They were used to somewhat abstract visuals and that games wouldn't exactly represent reality. Translating these ideas to book form was not much of a stretch.

Knightmare, in contrast, revelled in the fact that, with a television budget, it could offer what computer games could only aspire to provide, an interactive fantasy world. It's early computer graphics and green-screen effects, though primitive by modern standards, were well beyond anything that computers could provide.

It's hardly surprising that as computer and video games developed the appeal of both declined. By the Playstation era, games could create interactive 3D environments, albeit ones that look crude compared to the capabilities of current consoles. The effect was still to create a game world far more immersive than anything that had gone before.

The window of opportunity for both Fighting Fantasy and Knightmare to be successful was really quite narrow. Both were raised up and brought low by video gaming technology. They were dependent on a world where video games expanded the idea of what a game could be, but became redundant as video games truly achieved their potential.

I was fortunate in that that window fell straight across my childhood, a little younger or a little older and I might have missed them entirely. And yet they were hugely important to me, and, I suspect to my generation of gamers, influencing my taste in wargaming and video gaming years later.

And so I feel enormously privileged to have been born at exactly the right time for both of them.

In the strangest places

I have recently been reading Mary Beard's rather brilliant book Pompeii and, in chapter 8, entitled 'Fun and Games' came cross the following:

"Roman board games, like our own, came in many different varieties, with different titles, 'Little Robbers' or, perhaps, 'Little Soldiers' (latrunculi) was one of the favourites, and was certainly played at Pompeii; for one election poster offers a candidate the support - unwanted maybe - of the 'latrunculi players'. Another which is often mentioned in Roman literature was called 'Twelve Writings' (duodecim scripta). No rulebook survives for any of these games, and there have been all kinds of scholarly attempts to reconstruct the play from casual references. Latrunculi, for example, may have involved trying to blockade or hem in your opponent's pieces in a way somewhat reminiscent of modern draughts. But most of them, as now, followed the same basic principle: a dice throw allowed the player to move his counter or counters on the board, or towards the winning goal; the sheer chance of the fall of the dice was the crucial element in success, but varying amounts of skill could no doubt be deployed in the movement of the pieces. There was certainly enough skill involved for the emperor Claudius to write a book (sadly lost) on the art of alea, a generic term for such dice games."

Am I the only one who thinks the emperor Claudius may have written a book about wargaming?

Presenting the Games Workshop official product name generator

I can exclusively reveal the current system that Games Workshop uses to generate names for it's products. In a nod to the classic games of yore, it's all done through a simple table. Roll a D100 and consult table A to generate the first part of name and then another D100 and consult table B to generate part 2.

	A		B
01 – 05	Dark	01 – 05	Blade
06 – 10	Death	06 – 07	Blaster
11 – 14	Fire	08 – 15	Brute
15 – 17	Forge	16 – 19	Claw
18 – 26	Hell	20 – 24	Crusher
27 – 30	Inferno	25 – 28	Engine
31 – 35	Iron	29 – 35	Fang
36 – 40	Mauler	36 – 40	Fiend
41 – 47	Murder	41 – 43	Flayer
48 – 53	Night	44 – 47	Forge
54 – 56	Raven	48 – 50	Furnace
57 – 61	Razor	51 – 55	Grinder
62 – 63	Rot	56 – 62	Guard
64 – 69	Skull	63 – 68	Mauler
70 – 75	Slaughter	69 – 73	Pod
76 – 80	Soul	74 – 76	Raven
81 – 83	Stone	77 – 82	Skull
84 – 89	Storm	83 – 88	Storm
90 – 95	Thunder	89 – 94	Talon
95 – 00	Venom	95 – 00	Wing

If you roll the same word twice, you can re-roll or just go with it. You can never have too much of a good word.

Depending on the success of the random table, the current plan is to restructure the design studio as a single man operation consisting of Jervis Johnson and a huge book of random name, rule and fluff generators.

Bushido - Battle in the Swamp, with pictures

Here are a few pictures from my latest game of Bushido the first since I finished my project to paint all my Bushido models and the first in which I got to use all painted models and scenery.

I don't have the notes or patience for a full battle report, but I'll provide a quick summary.

The battle was between the Temple of Ro-Kan (mostly monks plus a handful of primates) and the Savage Wave (an alliance of Oni, big red demons, and Bakemono, small green ones). The scenario objective was to rotate the stone idols to face their starting line. The faction with the mostly idols at the end of turns 2, 4 and 6 would get 1 victory point. To complicate matters, one of the idols belonging to the scoring side would disappear after scoring.

The temple advanced rapidly and took control of two idols, despite taking fire from Bakemono archers hiding in the woods and the snares of Bakemono scout, Tra-Peng.

The Savage Wave advance was slowed by the powers of Master Monk Ekusa (riding on a tortoise) who left the Oni contemplating existence and not moving very much.

Water manipulating Monk Rikku called up a wall of water to shield the Monks from the Bakemono archers, while diminutive Monk Koji's pack of macaques confront a Bakemono bushi on the bridge.

The macaques were killed or scattered, but their place was quickly taken by their Gorilla-sized cousin and the Bakemono Bushi defeated. With a bedazzled Oni still blocking the bridge, a Bakemono spearman made his way through the swamp.

Meanwhile, Bakemono drummers Okina and Oto moved the central Buddha statue back to a neutral position and Tra-Peng moved it to face the Savage Wave's side and snatched a victory point

Koji and his remaining macaque made short work of the of the Bakemono spearmen, but Wakka the Oni hurled his massive stone Buddha head at Master Ekusa. Yumi pushed the master out of the way and took the hit herself, but a combination of Master Ekusa's healing powers and her own (courtesy of an upgrade card) brought her back to full strength.

Having finally finished contemplating his existence, the Oni Ushiused his dominate power to take control of Yumi. Master Ekusa responded by calling an aura of tranquillity that stopped her from attacking her own side, so Ushi drove her away from the bridge at top speed. Meanwhile, Gori-san took care of the Bakemono archers.

With Yumi recovered, Ushi used his power on Master Ekusa, driving him away. But it was too late, with Koji distracting Ushi and Yumi taking care of Tra-Peng, Rikki and the tiny Aiko rotated the central statue back to the Temple's line taking a victory point and winning the game.

Restricted Visions

It occurred to me that I never did follow up on my Warhammer Visions experiment.

WHSmiths managed to shift one copy in that month and, since then, have been getting in six or seven copies a month, almost all of which are still there at the end.

This is not a very scientific survey, for all I know Warhammer Visions is wildly popular. That said, most of the newsagents near me that stock it always seem to have plenty of copies. Which suggests that it isn't selling well, but also that they keep stocking it in large numbers.

I don't have any axe to grind regarding Warhammer Visions. I haven't been a regular White Dwarf reader in years and the White Dwarf weekly/Warhammer Visions split took place over a year after I last bought a copy. There behaviour isn't irritating so much as baffling.

Warhammer Visions appears to be a very confused publication. It's supposed to be about pictures, but its pages are half the size of the old White Dwarf. It is the only publication they sell through mainstream newsagents, but it is an expensive premium product that is likely to be baffling to anyone not already familiar with Games Workshop and its products. And its sealed in plastic, so that you can't browse and have to spend £8 to find out what it contains. Not to mention that if you want nice pictures of painted miniatures, Google Images will supply enough to last a life time.

On the other hand, we have the weekly White Dwarf. It's more expensive the the old White Dwarf on a monthly basis, but each issue is comparatively cheap. It's published frequently and has plenty of news and up to date information. But if you want it you have to go to Games Workshop or a games shop. So it's only available to existing gamers and hobbyists.

What is the thinking here? The odd thing about Games Workshop is that, because it tries to control all aspects of its business itself, from development through to retail, it's not necessary for every part of the business to make money. White Dwarf or Warhammer Visions don't have to be independently profitable as long as they serve the purpose of marketing Games Workshop's core business. For that matter, even rule books don't have to make money if they help to shift more models. But Games Workshop acts like everything they do has to make money. Or that everything do is inherently worth paying for.

So we end up with the odd spectacle of Games Workshop trying to increase its output of printed publications at a time when more and more content is going online and expecting its existing customers to pay extra to cover the cost.

Now I have no idea of this is working or not. But either way it's astonishing that this is where Games Workshop has ended up.

An Epic Scale Development

Oddly, since Games Workshop finally killing off Epic Armageddon, activity surrounding the games has, if anything increased. Troublemaker games are on their third Indiegogo campaign for miniatures that comfortably fill the niche abandoned by GW and Onslaught Miniatures are hard at work producing 6mm versions of every 40K army GW never bothered to touch.

Stranger than this is the fact that rule development is still continuing apace, over at the Epic Armageddon section of Tactical Command with new versions of army lists still being released.

Part of the reason for this is the legacy of Epic Armageddon's development, in which alpha versions of army lists would be released to the community for play testing, with changes incorporated into the official versions released in the rule books. When Games Workshop largely gave up on the game after only two books, there were still dozens of 40K armies without an army list and so development continued, initially on the Specialist Games website before moving when the site was killed off.

But with no more rulebooks being released, there can never be an official version of any army list. So the development continues without end in sight. More than that, with Games Workshop having abandoned the game there is no longer any final authority on what constitutes an official rule. So, instead of these representing new versions of the same list progressing towards a final version, what we actually have is an endless stream of army list variants. After all, if you prefer, say, version 2.0 of the Knight World army list over version 2.1, who is to say that 2.1 is more valid?

For Games Workshop's core games, Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, the cycle of rules releases exists to justify new miniature releases and drive interest in the games. There is no requirement for each new version to be an improvement over the previous one, because that isn't the purpose of the new rules, or at least it hasn't been for a while. In contrast, the Epic army lists are being released because each new army list is supposed to represent an improvement over what went before.

The problem with this is it assumes that rules can continue to improve until they reach a definitive ideal form; the perfect army list, if you like. But this isn't achievable. While there are some rules that almost everyone can agree are just bad (imagine an army list with models immune to all attacks, that could move the length of the board had multiple auto-hit, auto-kill weapons and who cost 1 point each), as they get better it gets more subjective. Spend any time reading through rules discussions about any game on any forum and you will find that one players favourite rule is the one that ruins the whole army for everyone else.

When a company publishes an official army list, it halts the development process, at least for a while. It isn't saying that this army list is perfect, but it does say that this is as good as any and this is the version that will be used. Games Workshop abandoning Epic Armageddon has removed that part of the process and so development can continue, endlessly, with no end point and no final form.

So by finally abandoning Epic Armageddon, Games Workshop have actually extended the development process indefinitely.

Exponential Growth

The UK Games Expo was one of those events I always seemed to miss because I thought it was later in the year than in actually was. By the time I got round to looking at tickets it turned out to be the following weekend, or worse, the weekend just gone. But last year I finally got my act together and booked tickets for Saturday and Sunday.

The Expo is a very different event from Salute. While Salute is, essentially, a shopping experience focused on wargaming, the Expo is a multi-day event which is as much about roleplaying, board games and card games as wargames, if not more so. It also a broader event, taking in tournaments, roleplaying events, seminars, family rooms and even some weird new electronic games.

 You can tell this isn't a wargames convention because the Forge World stand isn't buried under the bodies of the dead and dying.

It also takes place in a hotel, which lends it a very different atmosphere to Salute, which is to say it has one. That isn't entirely fair to Salute, which does have atmosphere, but one that is entirely imported, the location itself being essentially a huge sterile box. The Expo has spent the last two years in the NEC Metropole hotel in Birmingham, which gives it more the feel of a convention or conference.

 Raising funds for world conquest through begging in a hotel lobby. How the mighty have fallen.

I had a great time last year, playing and buying a bunch of different games. Having a room in the hotel meant you could retire from the bustle for a rest, or drop off your purchases so you didn't have to drag them around and there was plenty of space set aside to simply sit down and game. The organisers even offered a game library, which was a nice touch.

Given how much I enjoyed last year, I made sure to get myself organised this year, booking time off work so I could take in the whole event from Friday to Sunday and booking in for a tournament and a roleplaying session as well as making a point of attending some of the seminars, as I had ignored them last year.

 Some strange new game that runs on electricity. I doubt it will have much appeal.

This years Expo was even better attended than last you could see it was a big success. Though not everyone seems to think so - take a look at this blog post and then come back.

To be fair, Saturday was by far the busiest day and things did ease off considerably by Sunday. The bring and buy sale was accessible and the trade halls much easier to navigate. That said, I wouldn't have wanted to try negotiating the Games Lore stand mid-morning on a Saturday with a child in tow.

 Annoyingly, I forgot to take any photos until Sunday, so these make the event look positively sedate.

The organisers had taken into account the increased numbers and booked more space in the hotel. This meant there was a third trader hall, many of the tournaments were moved into a separate area and the amount of space for roleplaying events increased. But some parts of the convention couldn't be or simply weren't expanded. The seminars were still held in the same room as last year. This space had little ventilation and the air-conditioning struggled to cope with the mass of bodies. The trader hall increased in size, but so did the number of traders so there wasn't any more room to move. And, weirdly, the breakfast buffet, which had been a relaxed affair last year, was left with queues to get in and then again to get food. Again, to their credit, the hotel had recognised the problem by Sunday morning and opened up a second area.

All of this illustrates the paradox of these kind of events. The more successful and popular an event, the more attendees it attracts, but the more this increases crowding and reduces the enjoyment for those same attendees. Eventually, the event has to move to a bigger venue, which costs more and so demands even more attendees. And so the cycle continues.

The organisers of the Expo seem quite relaxed about this at the moment. In an interview in the show guide they talked casually about attracting as many as 10,000 attendees. However, the organisers of other shows have adopted a very different attitude.

The Salute guide included a half page advert from Newbury and Reading Wargames society announcing that their annual show, Colours, would not be taking place in  2014. Apart from the weirdness of advertising the non-existence of a show, the advert neatly illustrates the paradox of success. The advert is quite blunt, the event had simply gotten too big for the society to run comfortably and they would rather take a year off to plan than face a potential disaster.

 Colours 2014

Nor is this a problem unique to wargaming. Hyper-Japan is a Japanese cultural festival taking in elements of fashion, food, manga, anime and any other bit of Japanese culture it can find, including Yakult. It has always taken place from Friday to Sunday, but this year the Saturday event will be further divided into two seperate events divided by a one hour gap between 14:15 and 15:15. This was, apparently, to avoid the huge queueing problems created because the show had more attendees than insurance would allow into the venue at any one time. I've booked a ticket for Friday and it will be interesting to see how many others make the same decision.

Similarly, I have skipped the MCM London Comic Con (Formally the London Expo) for the past two years, because what was once a reasonably relaxed event had grown to the extent that you could expect to queue for over an hour for entry, even with pre-booked tickets, and could expect the same level of gridlock experience at the UK Games Expo Games Lore stand on Saturday, at the whole event.

Is there a solution to this? I think there is, of a sort, though it's a fairly brutal one. Either a show reaches the point Colours has, where its organisers decide its all gone too far and decide to kill it or rest if for a while or it grows so big that the experience stops being fun and the show dies on its own. I'm not sure that has happened to any show I know of yet, but it remains a possibility.

 Well-attended or over-crowded?

But doesn't that mean the show is dead? Well, yes, after a fashion. But if the demand is there someone, somewhere will step in and set up a new show, starting from scratch and the business of watching it slowly grow begins again. And so we retain a kind of equilibrium in which shows come and go, but the experience of them remains constant. Where is the Expo in this cycle of growth and decay? Who knows, ask me again next year.