The perils of reading old gaming material...





It's common knowledge that  my first love of gaming, is 1980s Warhammer stuff. However, today I have found that it can be emotionally dangerous for someone in their fifth decade.

Having cleaned out my studio, put ups some new pieces of artwork on the walls and dusted my Warhammer boxes (which, more than any other game save 'white box' D&D seem to leech dust and damp unless regularly cared for) I opted to take a cup of tea, 'The Observer' and 'The First Citadel Compendium'... 




...and have a good hot bath.

It was when I got stuck in to the Compendium, that disaster struck...

I was happily losing myself in 1982 (the original 1982 and not one of the later incarnations) when I suddenly, in the midst of a rather excellent article by Rick Priestly on the introduction of high tech weapons and gadgets to fantasy games I had a literal 'flashback' to more than 30 years ago. It was a real 'FUCKING HELL!' moment. 

It began with a warm sense of wellbeing (no, I'd been to the toilet before bathing) then a literal sensation of being sat at the family dining table on the day I bought the magazine. But then I had the worst case of chrono-panic to hit me for ages as I realised that over 3 decades had passed, that I was not actually there, but sitting in a warm bath, in my own home paid for by the efforts of myself and wonderful wife. And then the tears rolled down my cheeks...

It goes without saying that I was out of the tub like a an Italian tank driver who crest a dune to find a sea of panzers on the other side.

I was literally able to feel my surroundings, smell the ambience of my parent's house, and see the late afternoon light in the long garden beyond. But I could not interact with it.

And so, as I write, I am trying to expunge the memory, but at the same time it feels that by doing so, I am losing part of me.

And thus, I urge you, if you are like me, a lucid day dreamer, to think long and hard before you absorb yourself in your gaming past. It could get quite nasty...

TTFN

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