My Gaming Memoirs Part 14 - 1996

So. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay it was, then.

I knew that Andy enjoyed his Warhammer. His skill at the tabletop wargame was testament to that. But we'd never really talked about roleplaying in the Old World. I'd not really seriously played the game for ages, just odd adventures here and there, so we both sat down and went through the book with a fine tooth comb. After some deliberation, he decided to play a gnome.

Bear with me, it's not as bad as it sounds.

We decided that he'd roll up a halfling character and that the place he came from referred to them as gnomes. That was fine. Then I introduced a magical bow, a flute that cast random spells and a small town called La Mortineux, a slice of Bretonnia in the lands of the Empire. These small details would result in our first great RPG epic.

Years ago, Paul had sucked me into a fantasy world and gotten me creatively and emotionally involved to such a level that I couldn't imagine going back to the old dungeon bashing games. Now, after all the years of experience I had accrued with different games, players and GMs I stumbled into the same role. Now it was my turn to create a world that a player would fall into.

I can honestly say that it was the most satisfying thing I have ever done, even now. We ended up gaming twice a week, starting early and gaming into the small hours. It went from small adventure to epic journey, complete with memorable NPCs, locations and events. The town took on a life of it's own, to such a point that whole gaming sessions were taken up with Andy doing odd simple quests around the place to help out before buying the local inn outright, and I even had to change the Old World history and a lot of the setting to suit the huge game it had become. Together we created a world and a story I still think about even now.

It was my chance to really get under the skin of the characters, really create some shocking and adventurous scenarios and stage fights and battles that were, to be blunt, batshit insane. It was the grim Old World in all it's bloody and frightful glory and we loved every minute of it. There was no way we were going to improve on this.

Not this year, anyway.