1984 - Bugger Orwell, I Mean The REAL 1984

 Well, I have been crazily busy having worked 9 straight days so far, but I need to ease back a little.

Over the weekend, I was hit by that pain in the ass depression, I've been prone to for 21 years which hit's its high water point after my dispute with Sheffield Wargames Society in 2015.

Working like I have been is not the best way to deal with it, but thankfully I'm pretty much over it now and starting to look at gaming stuff again. I'm fortunate because I can see my mental state slipping when it crops up and I have mechanisms to cope with and learn from it.

I know I'm lucky to be able to do that, but it does leave me somewhat surly and unwilling to engage with people. 

But it does not stop me doing my job, because then it would have won. My days may be longer as I have to deal with my internal dialogue running a systems check, but better that than hide behind and because of depression.

But, I digress.

I'm mulling over whether I should add Russians to my Great Northern War project. It has positive and negative aspects, and to be honest, I think the 80 units I have already commited to and commissioned are quite sufficient.

The nights are lengthening and as the shadows and ice begin to make their presences felt, I find myself drawn to some sci-fi gaming. I really don't want to go with anything too modern. Even if I don't go 100% old school, I will certainly decide on an old school set of figures or rules. 

I'm also looking for a sturdy, starship corridor system that can cover a 6x4 area (at least) for £300-£500. Reach out to me if you have one or know who makes one. It has to be 3D because that's how I roll.

Yet, as always, I digress...

I promised I'd tell more of my earlier years in the hobby, and I was reflecting as I showered this morning that 2024 is the 40th anniversary of what I think was the greatest period of my own gaming experience and moreover, probably the true high water mark of the gaming hobby. 

It was fucking brilliant...

Let me start to lay out this year.

I was in my last year of school, a year which would see me stand up to an aggressive bully older and larger than me and end up being arrested for assault - something the officer responsible for later issuing me with a police caution, said was a complete joke - and during which, stoned out of my brains on anxiety medication resulting from the whole series of events, I would go through my final exams without a care in the world, writing a single paragraph for my history paper, because I was finding a rather militant side to my previously mouse-like demeanour and because I knew I'd racked up enough credits on coursework alone, to pass - more of this anon.

By 1984 I was gaming 6 days per week at the very least - sometimes 7 - and was all over the city.

On Mondays, I was gaming at the Sheffield Runelords, by far the best and oldest gaming club for RPGs in the city. It was here that I really spread through the hobby like an STD, because I met people who were both roleplayers and wargamers, a veritable shadow government of gaming. These same faces I found both here and at several wargames groups in the city. I was becoming part of a larger picture, which only a couple of my gaming circle - as vast as it was - also played a part in. 

This group of kids became some of my longest standing friends and if not friends, associates who knew their TSR and WRG and travelled back and forth smoothly betwixt the two. It was here I met Andy Ritson, arguably one of the most influential painters I have ever known and someone who explained the mysteries of a drink combining bitter and barley wine - to my detriment - and the Two Johns who, regaled me with stories of going to the Treasure Trap live action roleplaying centre in Cheshire whilst under the effects of 'Speed' and.

I got to know some of the other kids in the Runelords, whose faces I'd seen in GW, Shaun Exelby, Shaun Hovers, Paul Green - later to become a famous comic book artist, Paul Stevens - later to sleep with my first long term girlfriend and those of many other supposed friends, Darren Ashmore, now a respected international academic, Pete White who to this day is one of the most down to earth and grounded people I know and a good friend. Of course, for a while there was my schoolmate Alan Staniforth, written about in my 2011 book as 'Stan' who was there at the start and with whom I did a LOT of gaming.

 And many more...

Then there were the older gamers from the 'First Generation', Pete Armstrong the other forgotten legend who would shape me as a painter and who I emulated and wanted as a big brother but who, gave me a hard time until in the early 2000s he accepted me as an equel. There is somewhere a scenario written by Pete which was going to be run at Games Day when Warhammer was a new thing, involving the Lustrian Jungles and a temple containing an ancient Mecha. It never made it, but I really must see if it's out there somewhere. Pete was into Japanese anime before it was a known quantity in the UK and is the reason Darren Ashmore is a professor in Japan.

Together with Chris Gilbride, he would teach me through victimisation, how to stand up for myself with a sharp one-liner. There was the other Chris and his stunningly good looking sister Anna who broke the hearts of several other Runelords. 

At the top of the pile were Kev Fisher, Graham Northing and Bob Cooper, wargaming veterans who were no longer gaming at SWS at the time, but who were there at the start, Bob wrote one of the best sets of ACW rules of the era, and Kev and Graham were involved in ECW reenactment, leading to me doing a few seasons in the same regiment, together with some of my other gaming mates, forming a tight and pretty fucking fearless bunch when given a pike and a helmet. It could have been worse - we could have been mugging the hated 'Townies' on the streets of Sheffield.

And this was just Monday nights!

As an adjunct, I would like to point out that I'd been going to a club run at Limpsfield School for a couple of years before Runelords, run by the late Steve Roberts, who was the chairman of Sheffield Wargames Society and one of the unsung heroes of this great hobby.

He was a no-bullshit steelworker by trade, a hard but far from uneducated man, passionate about his hobby and history. 

Steve ran a club on Mondays for kids too young to attend SWS. He had some ruffians in there, and kept them in line and channeling their energies creatively, using his own figures and his own brand of confident, firm control. As kids got into the hobby and hit 14, he might introduce them to SWS and the world of real wargaming, where they - as was I - would be reforged and shaped into wargaming death machines, capable of playing any period and to be able to spread the word.  

When I hit 14, Steve took me to the club on Wednesday nights and became in terms of gaming a surrogate father to me for several years. It is without hyperbole or irony that I say, without Steve Roberts I'd not be typing this blog and still gaming after 4 and a half decades.

I think that I phased out of Steve's Monday club and into Runelords, as I phased into Wednesday nights at SWS. It was a sort of natural gearshift.

But, work calls, so I must sign off for the present.

TBCTTFN