About the same time I bought a copy of “Chainmail” from Hobbycraft and experimented with miniatures. Chainamail was written by Jeff Perren and Gary Gygax (who was the founding guru of Dungeons and Dragons). It was a set of rules for medieval combat, complete with a fantasy supplement in the appendices. I had no knowledge that you could buy miniature armies of the scale and type listed in the book. Miniatures were in their infancy in Australia, although Napoleon’s may have been operating in the late 70s and could have been stocking figures at that time.
My solution to sourcing miniatures was to use Crusader and Saracen figures you could buy from a number of hobby stores in the 70s. I think the brand was a UK company called Timpo. The ‘miniatures’ were about 9-10mm tall and to adjust for the scale difference I used the entire floor of our living room as the battlefield. I had a great summer of fun playing battles against my younger brother much to the grumbling of our parents who were trying to watch TV as the Knights Templar charged across the fluro orange shag pile rug (remember this was the 70s).
A few months later I was over at the Gap with a copy of “Kingmaker” to play a few games with the McMahons. For the uninformed, “Kingmaker: is a board game about the War of the Roses (the English Civil War, not the Kathleen Turner movie). It’s not a wargame in the sense of a simulation but a more an abstract strategy game from Avalon Hill. At that session, Anthony informed me that he had worked out Empire of the Petal Throne and we spent the day getting our heads round the GM concept and having to actually design scenarios. The contents of those strange little DnD books I had seen in Hobbycraft began to make sense.
I volunteered to make up a game set in Tekumel and Anthony rolled up a character. The other guys didn’t want to play. They were fine with board games but just couldn’t get the concept of a role playing game after our tenth attempt to explain it to them. Now if you have looked over the original “Empire of the Petal Throne” boxed set, I’m sure you will agree its rich on background but short on rules. Its rules are a rip-off of the very basic DnD combat rules. There are only three character classes – fighter, priest or wizard.
Anthony created a fighter and we proceeded to play a one on one campaign for about a year. We couldn’t get enough of this stuff and it filled most of our spare time. I learned most of the ropes of running a role-playing game during those memorable sessions, from creating rich adventures to running NPCs. After a year, Anthony finally died (in game that is!) and we decided to start a new game. While preparing the new adventure I dropped in to Hobbycraft and there were a number of new glossy hard back books in store. They went under the banner of ‘”Advanced Dungeons and Dragons” and consisted of “The Player’s Handbook”, “The Monster Manual” and the Dungeon Master’s Guide”. I bought them, along with a swag of peculiar shaped dice that the store owner said I must have and returned to the Gap to pour over them with Anthony. The first big thing we loved were the extra characters – Rangers, Paladins, Thieves and Druids. Woo-hoo! Anthony created a Paladin and we started our second marathon campaign as the 70’s came to a close.
As we were living in a world without the internet, we thought we were probably the only people in Brisbane playing role-playing games at this time. We were wrong of course – there were other scattered groups of nerds out there slaying dragons on a regular basis. However, for another few months we honestly thought we were the only ones. Then one fateful day I was wandering around town and came across a hand written A4 piece of paper posted in the window of Hobbycraft bearing the words:
Formation of Dungeon and Dragons Club
Meeting to be held at the Police Boy’s Club, Caxton Street
Date: Sunday 10am 15th March
We were not alone!
Next Time: The 1980’s where I discover that girls play rpgs (shock-horror!) and I visit
Cancon.
PS: In part 2.1 of this article I mention “Empire of the Petal Throne” an rpg that was written by Professor M.A.R Barker. I owe a debt of gratitude to Professor Barker, in that it was his work that inspired me to go on and develop my own fantasy role-playing world of “Eldoria”. I have always been impressed with the rich background or the world he created and, in particular, the details he put into his religious pantheon. In homage to his work I paid attention to the religions in “Eldoria” as well as developing many other peculiarities to make my own world unique. Prof Barker’s world of Tekumel never really became mainstream and I highly recommend it to anyone thinking of writing a fantasy background for their campaign.
