A to Z of UK RPG in the 80s - Q is for Qadim

Q is for Qadim, Al-Qadim

TSR brought out many different campaign settings during the 80s but the one that really caught my attention was Al-Qadim The Lands of Fate.  The premise is simple it's the world of exotic Arabian adventure. Think Aladdin, Sinbad and the 40 thieves or Prince of Persia.

Why Al-Qadim is Worth Your Time

If you are like me and have been running games for the best part of 35 years, I am sometimes weary of the standard quasi medieval fare.  Your players know the monster manual like the back of their hand and there is no mystery any more.

Al-Qadim is a rich and spicy setting which is both familiar and completely alien at the same time.  The protagonists are often humans hell bent on acquiring power through strange magics and the use of elemental forces.  The strange and unfamiliar monsters range from the plethora of Djinn (Genies) to the smelly mishapen Yakmen.  All of them will be unknown to your players and therefore genuinely mysterious, intimidating and scary.

Your players are going to have to use their roleplaying skills of guile, cunning and persuasion rather than putting everything to the sword.  Trust me they're going to love it.

Need More Inspiration?

There are a ton of classic movies out there which will whet your appetite for some sun, sand and sorcery.  

• The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1953) - A Ray Harryhausen classic with
  
• The Golden Voyages of Sinbad (1973) - Caroline Munro and Tom Baker star in this epic.
• Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977) - My favourite Sinbad movie starring Jane Seymour and Patrick Troughton 
  
• Arabian Adventure (1979) - Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Mickey Rooney and John Ratzenberger what more do you need.
  
• The Thief of Baghdad (1940) - The definitive and classic version
  
• Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010) - Jake Gylenhall, Gemma Arterton, Ben Kingsley
  

Unloved and Unwanted

TSR pumped out a huge number of settings during those heady days of 2nd Edition AD&D.  Like Birthright, Mystara and Spelljammer it didn't have much staying power and it got shelved like the rest. 

I was lucky enough to pick the majority of my collection up at the height of their unpopularity when my FLGS was clearing out.  Prices are significantly higher now but investing in Al-Qadim has a solid and fun payback.

My Collection Includes

The Land of Fate	Arabian Adventures	City of Delights
Corsairs of the Great Sea	Ruined Kingdoms	Assassin's Mountain
Secrets of the Lamp	Golden Voyages	Caravans

A to Z of UK RPG in the 80s: N is for Northern Militaire

N is for Northern Militaire

Wargaming was a part of my childhood in the 70s/80s.  I would willingly be dragged to conventions like Sheffield Triples, FIASCO in Leeds or my favourite Northern Militaire in Manchester.  

I have particularly fond memories of one participation game I must have played for hours called "Kamikaze" where you piloted 1/72nd scale WWII Japanese torpedo bombers attacking a US Navy Carrier.  It was a lot of fun and very simple.  

Each turn you chose the height your plane was flying at and the carrier would fire its guns at you.  If you survived long enough you got to launch your torpedos and if you got close enough you could attempt a "Kamikaze" attack and fly directly into the carrier. 

The planes had verticle holes cut through the fuselage so they could be threaded onto a metal rod (a scientific stand if I recall) and you adjusted the height of the plane using a small bulldog clip fixed to the rod.  Damage markers were white red and yellow coloured rings and of course if you caught fire you would get the obligatory cotton wool smoke trail attached to your plane.  

My memory of the carrier was that it was huge and fairly basic in design.  To an impressionable 7 year old, detail didn't matter, it was the mutts nuts.  I'm fairly sure that the PC brigade would have none of it today but it was accepteable in the 80s.

If anyone reading this has any photos of the Kamikaze game from back in the day please leave a comment in the box below.  I would love to talk to you.

My Family (circled) at Northern Militaire circa 1979
(courtesy of The Wargaming Megalomaniac)

Special thanks to the following blogs for sharing their photos and memories.

• The Wargaming Megalomaniac
• Dear Tony Blair

A to Z of UK RPG in the 80s - P is for Pondsmith, (Mike! where's my flying car?)

As some of you are aware I am based in the UK and I've blogged before about how the roleplaying scene differs in Blighty to that across the pond (and probably that over in the Eurozone to boot).  Here's an attempt to pick out some of the highlights of what it was like to be a roleplayer back in the dark days of Thatcher's Britain of the 1980s (cue the V for Vendetta trailer)...

In 1988 R Talsorian released Cyberpunk, set in the dystopian near future imagined by the likes of authors William Gibson (Neuromancer), Bruce Sterling (Mirror Shades) and Walter J Williams (Hardwired).

Designer Mike Pondsmith did a great job of amalgamating the disparate source material into one and with the release of CP2020 in 1990 the game really took off.  I was one of the early adopters of the original boxed set.  It could usually be found languishing at the back of the dark and dingy gamestore (trust me some were) among the RIFTS and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles books.  The black box set had minimal artwork just a cool looking negative line drawing of a punk with a big gun... I had to have it.

The three skinny books were:

• View From The Edge: The Cyberpunk Handbook (48 pages) - The "Players Handbook" if you will, detailing character generation, the net and netrunning and cyberwear.
  
  
• Friday Night Firefight: INTERLOCK Man to Man & Weapons Combat System (22 pages) - The combat manual containing all you needed to know about melee and missile combat, wounds damage and recovery and a whole heap of guns and armour.
  
  
• Welcome to Night City: A Sourcebook for 2013 (44 pages) - The dark future sourcebook containing all you needed to know about Night City (the primary urban setting) and the rest of the world including, corporations, fashion, weapons and transportation.

Now don't get me wrong I absolutely love Cyberpunk, but if it were released today no-one in their right mind would buy it, but not because there's no market or appetite for a dystopian near future subculture game.  Compared to todays slickly produced, source material heavy books, its just a skeleton of a game system really, there just wasn't enough source material in there for you to run a convincing game.  This is probably why only two years later it was completely revamped and flung another 7 years into the future with Cyberpunk 2020, and to be honest this is the game I play, even now.

No Source Material, I'll give you Source Material

It wasn't until you teamed up the boxset rules with one of the sourcebooks published the year after the original release, that the game came together.

• Hardwired - An alternate reality sourcebook set in the world of Walter Jon Williams 1986 novel of the same name.
  
  
• Near Orbit - Focusing on the corporate expansion into space and it's exploitation in the wake of nation state collapse and the failure of US and Russian space programmes.
  
  
• Rockerboy - Expanding upon the Rockerboy character role from the basic game.
  
  
• Solo of Fortune - Expanding upon the Solo character role from the basic game.

Hardwired	Near Orbit
Rockerboy	Solo of Fortune

Time for Predictions

Cyberpunk has taken quite a lot of flack in the post internet years for its lack of foresight, but I think that this is unfair criticism, infact William Gibson said "As soon as a work is complete, it will begin to acquire a patina of anachronism." in his recent interview with BoingBoing.  There are plenty of games and a whole genre of science fiction which has done the same whilst trying to imagine a vision of a dystopian near future.  You only have to look at Bladerunner's vision of 2006 or Mad Max's vision of an  Australia after a Third World War to see that others also got the future spectacularly wrong. 

Let's dig a little deeper into that source material and see whether or not any of the ideas and concepts from the game and genre actually came true.

Global Data Network - ARPANET had been around since 1972 and a lucky few may have been on BBS or USENET on a computer via a modem and the game acknowledges that history. But in 1988, when cyberpunk was released, Tim Bernes-Lee hadn't yet invented The Internet and no-one knew what a browser was, so instead we had this bizarre virtual reality construct which you interfaced with.  This came straight off the pages of the novels which inspired the game (and I noted with interest that Walter Jon Williams is credited with playtesting the game).  The global data network which we now call the internet did arrive and thank god it was not entirely dominated by the corporations although we did have the likes of AOL and GeoCities.  8/10 - "Not Far off" 

Virtual Reality - The interface of the dark future was direct injection, without the 2D visual interface of a monitor to hold them back, the aspiring netrunner went all 3D virtual reality on us.  This vision of the future is still some years away, and it is now the movie and games industries which are driving the development of 3D technology and it is only a matter of time until the web and 3D merge.  The advances in mobile computing and telecoms have spawned another potentially far more interesting technology which Cyberpunk did predict in the shape of Times Square Marquee, a form of Augmented Reality (AR) where a virtual layer is superimposed on the realworld.    5/10 - "Still waiting for my neural plugs"

Aerodyne Vehicles - The transport of choice in Night City was always an AV of some sort or another and thanks to the relentless self publicity of Dr Moller and his Sky Car this has always seemed so tantalisingly close.  Cyberpunk is in good company when it comes to flying cars alongside many futurists, tech journalists and sci-fi authors but sadly this is still just a dream - 3/10 - "Dude Where's my flying car??"

Cybernetic Enhancements - Putting the cyber into cyberpunk were the mechanical and neural enhancements you added to your characters just to let them get through a tough day in Night City.  Everyone had them, from rockerboys to cops, and street vendors to corporate execs, so where are they?  A little ways off it seems, the plastic surgery and body sculpting fetishes are most definitely with us but those spearheading the field of limb and organ replacement are still the same war veterans and disabled of 50 years ago.  Although advances in material science have given us the likes of athlete Oscar "Bladerunner" Pistorius and in cybernetics, Prof. Kevin " Captain Cyborg" Warwick the world has yet to turn to the elective surgery seen in the game.   2/10 - "Still just plain punks"

Rise of the Mega-Corporation - Another dark them in the game was that of the collapse of nation states and their replacement by Mega-Corporations.  There are undoubtedly dark times ahead still for the world as it blunders its way through this latest global recession and todays corporations seem to be lacking in their resolve to take over everything just yet.  5/10 - "There's still time for this one"

Mobile Computers - No self respecting Netrunner would have been seen dead without his portable deck and trodes ready to jack in from a public data term, a household line or a dead suit's deskphone in Arasaka Towers.  However, the rise of the internet and the desire for mobile data all the time has led to the invention of the smartphone instead.  The mini wifi terminal most of us now carry in a shirt pocket or handbag, capable of handling data, voice and video was not on cyberpunk's or any other tech radar.  Need proof? just check out Harrison Ford in 1980s "Bladerunner" making a video call to Sean Young from a public phone booth.  2/10 - "The future's now, the future's iPhone"

Addendum

Most of this post was written many years ago and was languishing as a draft utnil very recently.  We are all on tenderhooks waiting for the full edition of Cyberpunk Red to be released and I for one am glad that Cyberpunk is gettting the love now that it deserves.

A to Z of UK RPG in the 80s - T is for Tunnels and Trolls

T is for Tunnels and Trolls and Flying Buffalo

My first exposure to Roleplaying was actually Tunnels & Trolls. My Dad came back from one of his working trips with a photocopy of the Weirdworld solo module and I voraciously lapped it up. This was back in the day when Flying Buffalo (the company formed in 1970 by Rick Loomis) released their T&T solo modules as spiral bound A4 booklets making game piracy a fairly simple task.  Perhaps that was the point, what's good enough for Microsoft is good enough for Flying Buffalo.

The pages were full of great images like the entrance to the dungeon itself and new and strange words words like myriad.  As you can imagine it made quite an impression on my tiny growning brain.

The entrance to the Madhouse which was solo adventure #6 Weirdworld

I had no rules and I had no idea how to play it, I just treated it as choose your own adventure book before I even knew what one of those was.  Later on I would experience my first group session of the game at a games club in my home town of Bradford.  The DM using the a very early boxed set version of the rules with the little yellow booklet.

Our relocation down to London in the mid 80s coincided with the release of the Corgi edition paperbacks and I picked one up in a local Virgin Games store (remember them).

Core Rulebook	The Amulet of the Salkti Arena of Khazan	Catif D'Yvoire Beyond the Silvered Pane
The City of Terrors	Gamesmen of Kasar Misty Wood	Naked Doom Deathtrap Equalizer
Sword for Hire Blue Frog Tavern

The Corgi editions are really memorable.  They had amazing cover art by Josh Kirby and were published in a standard paperback formfactor at pocket money prices.  The main competition at the time were the Puffin Fighting Fantasy books written by the Ian Livingston and Steve Jackson of Games Workshop.  I preferred T&T because there was a bit more meat on the bones and I remembered the fun I had playing in that group game back in Bradford.

They are very collectible and hold their prices but they are very available when you search for Tunnels Trolls on eBay.

Flying Buffalo have of course continued to publish games and still exist today.  Their products were always on the fringe of the hobby never taking themselves too seriously but they were always popular.


My Collection Includes:

Corgi Edition Core Rules	5th Edition Core Rules	Grimtooths Traps Too
The Hole Delver's Catalogue	Maps Cities Book 1	Sword for Hire Blue Frog Tavern
The Amulet of the Salkti Catalogue

Availability of Flying Buffalo is good and they tend to be on the cheaper side of RPG collectables. I aim to reacquire all the Corgi adventure books in the very near future. Search for Flying Buffalo Products on eBay.

---

The AtoZ of UK RPG in the 80s

1. is for Adventurer Magazine
2. is for Beast Enterprises
3. is for Citadel
4. is for Dungeon Floors
5. is for Elric of Melnibone
6. is for Fighting Fantasy
7. is for Games Designers Workshop
8. is for Heavy Metal
9. is for Indiana Jones
10. is for Judge Dredd
11. is for Knightmare
12. is for Large Box Games
13. is for Mayfair Games
14. is for Northern Militaire
15. is for O
16. is for Pondsmith (where's my flying car Mike?)
17. is for Qadim
18. is for Robots
19. is for Steve Jackson
20. is for Tunnels & Trolls
21. is for UK Series of AD&D Modules
22. is for V
23. is for White Dwarf
24. is for X
25. is for Y
26. is for Z

Why Who Plays Who? Doesn't Matter

So Peter Capaldi has thrown in the towel, been fired, resigned (delete as applicable) and will regenerate at the end of series.  The search for the 11th doctor will inevitably consume the nation (if you listen to the pundits), but not this little corner of geekdom. 

To be honest, I don't care.

I have every faith that whichever actor gets the job, be they young, old, black, white, male or female, dog or cat, they will do a bang up job.  IMHO it is not the actor which makes a great Doctor, rather it tends to be the other way around.  The role maketh the actor.

What concerns me more is that the BBC gives whoever takes on the mantle the proper tools for the job.

Falling Ratings?

Some of the gutterpress have accused the BBC of ditching Capaldi, claiming he is unpopular and that ratings have suffered.  I disagree. 

Nu Who By The Numbers

Looking at the ratings of each Doctor across their time in office, their relative popularity doesn't hint at anything terribly wrong with Capaldi's stewardship of the TARDIS.

In fact he has racked up a creditable episode count over his 855 days and still has season 10 yet to air.

 
However, the big fat elephant in the room is the increase in "Days Without Who".

Put simply there has been too much time between seasons/episodes.

In a Newsweek interview back in March 2016, Capaldi himself criticised the BBC's "erratic scheduling".  Helmsman Stephen Moffat also moves on at the end of the year which signals a sea change at the BBC.  Perhaps they are scaling back on expensive shows such as Who and replacing them with cheap as chips reality TV which they can regurgitate out at pennies on the dollar.  Who knows?

What I know is that I'm fed up with mid season breaks and long hiatuses.

No More Love interests... Please

Whilst I enjoyed the Rose, Amy and Clara characters I found their on/off relationships with the Doctor nauseating.

Can we not go back to the condescending alien superiority of old Who?.  It's not a feminist backlash, I don't care if the companion is male or female.  Let's face it everyone is a complete idiot compared to the Doctor's supragenius mind.  One of my favourite male companions was Harry Sullivan who on many levels was a complete berk, but he knew his place, acting as both a plot device or a plot explainer whenever the story needed it.

My favourite female Doctor / Companion relationship was that of the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) and Leela (Louise Jameson).  The Doctor's frequent frustration and anger at her savage common sense, naivete and independent nature were a joy to behold.  She held her own on many occasions and even reversed the damsel in distress trope a few times saving the Doctor from his own curiosity.

How Do You Fix Who?

I don't want to sound like an old fogey, but the golden years of Who had a plot template and it's one which I have used in my own storytelling.  It goes like this:

1.  Episode begins with a short segment to show the episodes location and shows two factions violently trying to co-exist with each other.  The two antagonistic factions have been in impasse for many years / decades / centuries / millenia.

2.  The TARDIS crashlands in a new location and is somehow trapped or disabled (removing its use as a powerful Deus Ex Machina from the plot solution).  The Doctor and companion narrowly escape with their lives and must now use their wits and ingenuity to survive.

3.  The Doctor and Companion are soon seperated, one each to each faction.  The story of each faction emerges (as told from their perspective) through their interactions with the Doctor and the companion respectively.

4.  An Attack is launched by one faction against the other.  There is much running around and confusion during which the Doctor and companion are reunited and seperated again.  They swap sides and, armed with the facts about the other faction, a true picture emerges of which faction is Good and which is Evil.

5.  The Doctor and companion are finally reunited and the Doctor saves the day by either resolving their differences, helping one side defeat the other or fails to save the Evil faction from their own demise.  

Simples.

Let's hope that the BBC take the opportunity to go back to basics and give us some good old fashioned scarey thought provoking tense sci-fi like they used to be able to make.

Oh and if Toby Jones or Rory Kinnear get the job I will be a happy man. 

 

A to Z of UK RPG in the 80s: M is for Mayfair Games

M is for Mayfair Games founded by Lawyer Darwin Bromley in 1980.  This small games publisher branched out into RPGs with the help of veteran Bill Fawcet and began publishing their "Unofficial" AD&D / D&D / T&T compatible adventure modules like 1982s Question of Gravity under the Role Aids banner.  Their attempt to steer through the copyright minefield by using the coverline "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons is a trademark of TSR Hobbies, Inc. Use of the trademark NOT sanctioned by the holder." they eventually fell foul of the changing attitudes to product licensing at TSR.

Role Aids - A Question of Gravity

Looking at these modules through OSR spectacles they are refreshingly light, yet ambitious and Question of Gravity in particular has a quite unique take on the traditional dungeon.

The cover art (by Fantasy author Janny Wurtz) does not allude in any way to this singularly impressive locale which is the focii for this scenario... 

... a dungeon on the inside of a 1000ft wide cube.

The interior maps are an impressive feat considering the lack of digital artistry back then.  I saw something similar nearly 20 years later in Issue #86 of Dungeon Magazine which was a Tracey Hickman Dragonlance scenario called "The Anvil of Time" but this was only one room not a whole dungeon.

Grids are notable absent from the maps, this was the 80s after all, where play was freer and not concerned with tactical movement, flanking or god forbid Attacks of Opportunity!!  The room (or should I say platform) descriptions oddly don't have the tried and tested "read aloud to the players" boxed text that we have all come to know and love in our pre-written dungeon crawl modules, but in this case I can understand.  Enemies can come from any direction and the mind boggles at trying to replicate this on a tabletop grid.  The descriptions are brief and designed to give a flavour of what you may encounter, the salient points rather than detailing the minutia.

original hand illustrated map (click to embiggen)

Sketchup Render (click to embiggen)

Whilst these modules are rare, they are still available in all the usual places, and they may well prove to be an unexpected and inspirational distraction for your players.  I know that I've got plans for using the cube in my own campaign world.

My Collection Includes:

705 Question of Gravity	706 Tower of Magicks	710 FezII The Contract
715 Swordthrust	716 Deadly Power	719 Fantastic Treasures
720 FezIII Angry Wizard	725 FezIV Wizard's Revenge	728 Clockwork Mage
732 Elven Banner	741 Crystal Barrier	742 Beneath Two Suns

These books are not terribly rare and many listings come up when I search for Role Aids on eBay.

Dragonmeet 2014 - A Very British Con

This Saturday (6th December) is Dragonmeet 2014, it's certainly London's biggest RPG convention and one of the highlights of my year.

A few things have changed with the shift in organiser to Modiphius and this year promises to be a much bigger event at a new venue.

Saturday 6th December - 10am to Midnight

IBIS HOTEL EARLS COURT &
ILEC CONVENTION CENTRE
LONDON SW6 1UD

This year I'm aiming to play as many games as I can, in particular I'll be

• Finding out what all the fuss is about with D&D 5e.
• Seeing if I can find a game of DREAD to play
• Playing some boardgames especially Pandemic Contagion
• Trying not to add to the budget deficit...

I'll also be snapping pictures / doing very short interviews for the blog.  In particular I'll be trying to capture the changing face of tabletop gamers for a blog article.  If anyone is attending and would like to take part please feel free to contact me via the comments below or by sending me a google+ message to +Roleplay-Geek

I'll show you mine if you show me yours

So last week I asked readers to help me out by completing a little survey (a big thank you to all those who responded) and although I'm not yet ready to reveal what the results were, I can tease you with this emerging trend:

UK roleplayers like to do it in a club
US roleplayers like to do it in their own home (or at a friends house)

It's still very early days at the moment, so I've put a permalink to the survey on the right hand side of the site for those who haven't left a response.  As they say in Paranoia, it's just a bit of fun really.... mandatory fun!!

And for all those of you who game in a club anywhere in the world, I'd like to share this with you in the hope that you will also share in return.  Perhaps we can get an internet thing going, share an image of your own club on your blog and put a link in the comments section below.

The Roleplayers Creed

This is my roleplay club. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

My club is my best friend. It is my life.
I must games master in it as I must games master my life.

My club, without me, is useless.  Without my club, I am useless. 

I must roll my dice true.
I must roll them better than the Games Master who is trying to kill me. 
I must kill him before he kills me.

Anyone in the South East London area interested in joining my club, please visit our website: hobbitshole.com

Do you blog blog about the OSR from the UK

On the blogosphere the other day I spotted a list of Canadian OSR blogs (If it was your site thanks for the inspiration).  I thought this was a great idea and that us UK based Old Schoolers should have something similar.

Join the UK OSR BLOGROLL

Do you blog about the OSR? - Your blog doesn't have to be "OSR, all OSR, all the time" but you should lean towards the OSR side of the force.

Fanboys: "Rule number one, In my van, it's Rush. All Rush, all the time."

Are you UK based? - Do you know what Tizer, Irn-bru, Jaffa Cakes, Kinghtmare and The Adventure Game are? This is a chance for us UK based gamers to band together and fight the good fight using our unique sense of humour, quaint accents and stif upper lips.   

Walmington on Sea - "A great holiday hotspot" (Timeout 1943)

If you can answer YES! to both these questions and want to celebrate your unique UK centric take on the OSR, then add your blog to the list then post your URL in the comments below.

Thanks

A to Z of UK RPG in the 80s: L is for Large Box Games

The 80s was synonymous with excess, in business, there was large hair, large shoulder pads and large mobile phones and in the games industry there were large box games. 

One of the biggest exponents of this were Games Workshop who suddenly went from publishing bookshelf sized boardgames to making huge boxes full of tons of plastic miniatures.  As you can see in the photo below these things were larger in every dimension and made sure that GW games dominated over their rivals for valuable gamestore shelf space.

Large Box game vs Bookshelf sized game - a storage nightmare

Adeptus Titanicus (1988)

Released in 1988, Adeptus Titanicus, introduced the EPIC 6mm scale to the Warhammer 40K world.  It allowed you to create massive micro-armour legions of Space Marines, Eldar, Orks and Chaos and have them fight it out in traditional miniature wargaming style. 

Adeptus Titanicus - buy it on eBay

The big selling point to the game were the ridiculously huge multi-part plastic Titans which dwarfed all the other units on the battlefield.  Each came with a compliment of plastic weapons which you attached to various hardpoints on the miniature allowing a degree of customisation and damage was tracked with a innovation rotating base dial, precursing Heroclix by some years.

Some neat expanded polystyrene apartment block structures were included in attempt to create some line of sight blocking terrain but these were largely redundant.  Also included were infantry and mobile armour which were later supported in the "Epic" range of 6mm miniatures.  This should have been a slam dunk success as you could build huge forces for not a lot of outlay.  Sadly like a lot of the games you are going to see in this list they ulitmately fell out of favour and GW moved on.

Like many of the big box games it came badged with the "3D Roleplay" logo, but there were no roleplay elements in it, nor did it have the finessed boardgame play of the vastly superior Battletech.

Dark Future (1988)

I'd always been a fan of the Mad Max movies and Steve Jackson Car Wars game, so when GW announced that their future release Dark Future was an attempt to upscale the action to 1/72nd "matchbox" scale, I snapped it up.

Games Workshop Dark Future - Buy Dark Future on eBay

The theory was that in the post apocalyptic "Dark Future", vehicular highway battles between the corporate good guys driving sleek "Interceptors" and the highway outlaws driving makeshift "Renegade" buggies would be a daily occurrence.  The game included 2 cars of each variety which you could customise by adding an array of plastic weapons to the models built in hardpoints, in a similar style to Adeptus Titanicus.  The rest of the game game was essentially a series of cardboard curves, straights, tokens and some bikes.

My recollections of the game was that it was a bit of a drag, mostly due to the phase system which although shorter than Car Wars, was still ponderous.  This is something I will be reacquainting myself with in the very near future, thanks to eBay, as I try to find the perfect blend of rules for my post apocalyptic road-racing game project.

Bloodbowl 2nd Edition (1988)

A large box was always going to be necessary to contain the huge three part expanded polystyrene "Astrogranite" playfield and clutch of plastic ork and human player miniatures.  This was a vast improvement on the jigsaw style board and cardboard standees of the original bookshelf game published two years earlier.

Blood Bowl 2nd Edition - Buy it on eBay

This for me was the definitive version of Blood Bowl and the enhanced rules, artwork and backstory turned an interresting game into an exciting game.  Simple things like the transparent plastic throwing ruler and the cardboard endzone inserts displaying your team name lifted the game into the stratosphere.  The icing on the cake however is the expanded polystyrene foam pitch with the Blood Bowl skulls in the center.

The low cost of putting together a team of maybe a dozen or so starplayers in addition to your plastic blockers compared to that of most other miniature games was a pretty attractive selling point for cash strapped gamers like myself.  Just blogging about it makes me want to play it.  I'm sure I have a Dwarven Deathroller miniature around here somewhere...

Advanced Heroquest (1989)

In 1989 Milton Bradley (in collaboration with Games Workshop) released the dungeon crawl boardgame Heroquest.  It was very successful and Games Workshop almost simultaneously released an advanced version. 

Advanced Heroquest (cos basic just isn't enough) - Buy it on eBay

This version eschewed the traditional folded board for a modular jigsaw style collection of rooms and corridors which you could connect together in different layouts as you progressed through the various scenarios.  A serviceable set of plastic hero and monster miniatures were included with all the stats necessary to play out your own little dungeon adventure game.

As can be seen from the box art the now familiar "3D Roleplay" is present and for the first time, GW actually delivered a game with a strong roleplay element to it.  Also featured is the "Solo Play" logo which meant that lone gamers could enjoy the Warhammer Fantasy universe as well.  The rules were also a significant step up from the original and allowed simple character progression and monsters were backwards compatible with the MB Boardgame.

Space Hulk (1989)

Set in the Wharhammer 40K universe, Space Hulk pits space marines in "Terminator" armour against a new enemy, the Genestealers, as they explored massive derelict spaceships.

Space Hulk - Buy it on eBay

Essentially a sci-fi version of Heroquest with very well executed and very repurposeable jigsaw floortiles.  The miniatures were made of the same brittle type of plastic used in Adeptus Titanicus and Dark Future rather than the slightly more flexible stuff used for minis in Advanced Heroquest and were adequate sculpts.  The game however was slick, fun and immensely challenging.

I like many of my age, I'm sure, totally raided my copy for sci-fi floorplans and the minis which ended up in other boxes never to be seen again.  Ebay, to the rescue perhaps...