Friday 7 September 2007

When role-playing ruled the World

A nice little selection of role-playing ads from the shortlived but much missed 2000AD spinoff Diceman


T&T? What a ripoff. I'm only surprised we never got Catacombs & Corpses or Sewers & Shit.

In the 80's people were willing to travel 2 miles from junction 11 on the M1 just to buy d20s and lead orcs.

Aside from making games sound like D&D (see the aforementioned T&T) another surefire way to grab the youth of Britain's pocket money was to stick Arnie's face on your product. I sent off for a trial of this PBM (That's Play By Mail to you son) purely because it had Conan on the front. I didn't understand the rules when they arrived and never played it.

Gary fucking Gygax teaming up with the associate producer (Flint Dille, no less) of Transformers! Woah, this one had to be a monster hit right? Mwahahahahaha. Sagard? Sawho more like.

1 comment:

mr wheatley said...

christ i remember that midgard thing.. 5 sides of computer paper that had odd multiple choice questions on it. Then £1.50 a go or something.. incredibly expensive at the time. all with the sneaking suspicion that you would either spend £100's of pounds riding around trying to find the one other player or that you would ride out of the village to be slaughtered by the first player you met.
computers didnt really sort it out properly till syndicate.. or maybe lords of midnight..