by Peter Atkinson
The important things in life
The first time I took my daughter to Melbourne Zoo – and this is going back a ways – I asked her which animal she liked the best. And of course her answer was the pigeons in the carpark.
Fast forward a few years and we went again last weekend. We did a lap of the reptile house, where the snakes were coming right up to the glass and flicking their tongue at us, and the crocs were splashing around; and then we saw the platypus cutting laps of his little pond. At lunchtime there were free refills in the café and my daughter’s eyes were wild after two red Fantas, so we worked it off by seeing the seals, the penguins and the lions.
On the way home, I asked her again what was her favourite thing, and this time the answer was two words:
Free refills.
FFS. At least the pigeons were animals.
Tweet of the Month
Fighting Fantasy, and the Five-Fingered Bookmark
Any wargamer worth their salt knows that there are two Steve Jacksons in game design: the American who wrote Car Wars and Munchkin, and the Englishman who, with Ian Livingstone, founded Games Workshop and Fighting Fantasy. I really can’t overstate how big FF was to nerds of my generation: in the UK especially these things were as big as it gets. They sold over 20 millions books and around about the time I started high school in the UK, it’s no exaggeration to say they were orders of magnitude bigger than Warhammer in terms of cut-through into popular culture.
Fighting Fantasy combined the Choose Your Own Adventure-style “Turn to Paragraph 37” branching narrative with an RPG system (you rolled dice to resolve combats* and carried equipment with you), brought to life by exceptional art and a frankly sadistic difficulty curve. Honestly, these things were fucking brutal in every way: your character would repeatedly die horrible deaths and while it may have appeared to your parents the untrained eye that you were quietly reading a book, in your head you were scrambling to push your own innards back in after your stomach had just been sliced open. No wonder we all quickly developed the famous “Five-Fingered Bookmark”, where you would keep track of the last couple of sections in case you needed to discretely flick back after a fatal misstep. There was an unspoken consensus that as long as you were tracking it manually, it didn’t count as cheating.
As time went on, Steve and Ian were less hands-on with the series, and the quality of the books became pretty variable; simultaneously the SNES generation of video games kicked off, and FF went out of fashion. For a good moment there they were an absolute juggernaut of popular culture, and memories of the incredible art (including some vintage work from our recently-retired hero John Blanche) have stayed with me throughout my life; but I came in on the younger end of the phenomenon and to anyone born even a few years after me, it can seem like the books never existed.
The flame never quite went out though – there’s a highly active FB group with thousands of members and multiple posts per day, an active (high-quality) fanzine, annual conventions, blogs producing regular articles and even new books still being published.
Jonathon Green played a huge role in keeping the flame alive through the darkest night, both as an author of several entries in the series (including Howl of the Werewolf, considered a masterpiece of the genre) and as a stalwart of the community. A couple of years ago he wrote a history of the series titled You Are The Hero, which I missed out on at the time, as well as a sequel that I also missed. Oops.
Well the good news is that he’s putting out a third entry in the series, aimed very much at people like me who snoozed and loozed last time around. It’s really pulling together books 1 and 2 into a single volume, along with some new content, and I wasn’t going to miss out a third time.
As regular readers will know, I’m not some dickhead out grubbing for freebies (in fact I regularly decline them). I’ve pledged my own money to this one because FF holds a lot of really special memories for me, and it’s a commendable project that I’m happy to support. If you remember Fighting Fantasy, and want to get the inside story, Jon is still accepting late pledges. But don’t mess about because it’ll be going off to the printers soon.
https://jonathangreenauthor.blogspot.com/p/you-are-hero-40th-anniversary-edition.html
*Unless you didn’t, and after a while just decided you auto-won every combat, because you were a cheating bastard. Like me.
What’s coming up
Well we’ve had an absolute deluge of entries for the Listbuilding Challenge, themed around the Perfect One Drop, so that’s gonna be landing next week.
We’ve got a massive month coming up on Plastic Craic in July, and here’s a few highlights to look out for:
- Fixing Kruleboyz. I’ve been working hard on an
extended rantdetailed piece and it’s turned into a bit of a beast. - What’s the worst artefact in Age of Sigmar? Pat will tip toe delicately around this emotive subject. Or give ’em both barrels. You could probably guess which.
- We’ll be bringing you the results of our Hobby Champions of Gallet painting contest for Patrons, with unique Plastic Craic swag designed by Seanzor on offer for the winner. There’s gonna be some sexy minis on parade, so be sure check it out even if you weren’t able to enter.
- Also in the hobby space, Seanzor will cover The Mortal Blade painting contest that took place in Sydney this month.
- We’ll be running a feature on How To Be A Great Opponent, shooting the shit with the two best sports from Sydney Slaughter.
- And we’ll probably dump all of the above in a blind panic when the GHB reveals hit, to cover that instead.
An Orruk player, an Ogors player and a Lumineth player were stranded on a desert island.
A dusty green bottle washed up on the shore, and a genie popped out. They offered each of the islanders one wish.
“I miss my family and I want to go home” said the Orruks player. And poof, with a cloud of smoke, the genie sent him home safely to his family.
“Me too”, said the Ogors player. “I want to go home too”. And poof, the genie made it so.
“And how about you?”, they asked the Lumineth player.
“I’m lonely and I miss my two friends. I want you to bring them back here.”
Tales from the Discord
Massive thanks to the three legends who have joined the Patreon since last time around: Adam Colgan, Grant Walsh and Luke Doman. I’m rapt to have a couple more Aussies on board in Luke and Grant, and in case you don’t know Adam, he’s notorious for his zero-fucks-given listbuilding style. This is a man who’s ran Triple Troggoth Hags at an event, and sent a reinforced unit of Dankhold Troggs on a one-way trip with Lauchon. Don’t tell this man what he can’t do.
This month in the Discord we worked together on a Kruleboyz-heavy Big Waaagh list that I then took out for a spin, and wrote up that road test as a Patreon article. Over the last month our Patron articles have also covered Calvin’s takes on the new Warcry Warband warscrolls, as well as a piece I wrote on the hidden charms of the Murknob with Belcha-Banner.
Next up will be a write-up on a competitive Troggoth list that was crafted in the Dojo (mainly by Theo), that I used this weekend and absolutely smoked a 2x 36 Squig Herd army. So if you want to get involved, you know what to do.
If you’d like to help us continue our work, we’d love to have your support. All Patreon Tiers include Discord access, exclusive articles and regular contests. Our Tiers are priced to be within everyone’s reach, so please click here to join us today!
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