[Fanzine Focus XXVI] The Grognard Files – Annual 2019

On the tail of Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another Dungeon Master and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry.

The Grognard Files is a fanzine born of The Grognard Files, a North of England-based podcast dedicated to the games of the late seventies and early eighties, in particular, RuneQuest. It is available only to patrons of the podcast—or alternatively to attendees of Grogmeet a one-day convention in Manchester, again in the North of England. It is also put out just once a year. Published by The Armchair Adventurers, the first issue, The Grognard Files – Annual 2017, is available as a ‘Pay What You Want’ PDF available to download with the proceeds of the sale of the fanzine being donated to continue the running of Yog-sothoth.com, the best site dedicated to Lovecraft and Lovecraftian investigative horror. More recent issues, The Grognard Files – Annual 2018 and The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 have sadly not followed suit, but for members of the ‘Grog Squad’ and attendees of Grogmeet, both issues continue to serve up thick, syrupy wodges of nostalgia and gaming inspired by their youths in the nineteen eighties.

It would seem remiss to be reviewing The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 in the summer of 2021 rather than more recent issue, but in truth, circumstances mean that there was no Grog Meet in 2020 and no The Grognard Files – Annual 2020 either. So The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 it is then. Previous issues have taken their design cue from gaming magazines of the nineteen eighties, White Dwarf being the most obvious. With The Grognard Files – Annual 2019, the design cue is taken from DragonLords, the British role-playing game fanzine published between 1980 and 1983. It thus moves The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 to a digest format rather than the magazine size of White Dwarf or Imagine and it comes crammed full of the type of content that middle-aged men that will shut themselves away with a cup of tea and wallow in the gaming years of their yesteryear before being asked to put the bins out/do the washing up/take one of their offspring to football, music lessons, and the like.

Opening with an editorial which highlights the role of fanzines in providing a community for gamers—they were the Internet before the Internet—The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 gets down to gaming goodness. It opens Neil Benson’s ‘OSR this, OSR that, but what is it?’, which provides an explanation of what the Old School Renaissance is and what it sets out to do. It points to the source for the Old School Renaissance, that is, early Dungeons & Dragons, and explains the key points of creating and playing in the movement. So simple, quick Player Character generation; freedom of play in terms of hexcrawls and sandcrawls, and the like; emphasises player agency in solving problems rather than relying on skill rolls, and so on. There are eight of these points, but Benson does not simply list them, but sets them out as a quest undertaken by an adventuring party to learn what the OSR. This makes the piece much more entertaining than a simple explanation of what the Old School Renaissance would otherwise have been. It includes a short list of sample retroclones and is accompanied by a thumbnail review of Chris Gonnerman’s Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game, written by Shannon Ferguson.

A similar convention is used to explain what one of the oldest roleplaying games is. ‘A Bluffer’s Guide to Tékumel’ is actually written by me (and in truth, I had forgotten I had written the piece) and is presented as an in-game monologue delivered by a minor bureaucrat to a barbarian who knows nothing of the setting for Professor M.A.R. Barker’s Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne. It is all a bit knowing and po-faced, but provides a simple enough introduction.

The nostalgia in The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 begins in earnest with Cris Watkins’ ‘Games Master Immortality’. It is about bad, but funny memories of Player Character deaths brought about by the Game Master simply getting it wrong. Part-Game Master advice, part-hoary old war stories, such as over the course of a campaign driving the Player Characters so paranoid that when a new player turns up with a new character, their first reaction is to not trust the character and then turn on him when his player seems to confirm their suspicions. Yes, it is cruel, but at the same time funny, though ultimately best not necessarily implemented in a Game Master’s campaign as not every player may see the funny side.

The nostalgia continues with both Nick Edwards and Alan Gairey taking a look back at Judges Guild. First with Nick Edwards’ ‘The Guilded Age – Thoughts on Judges Guild’ which examines the delights of City State of the Invincible Overlord which forced him to create his own content, in the main a thief and crime-based campaign much like the Lankhmar setting of Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and Gray Mouser novels. Although the author would make further purchases of Judges Guild titles, and praises those that he likes, he has since returned to the City State of the Invincible Overlord for other campaigns and City State of the Invincible Overlord would also influence his preference in gaming for cities rather than dungeons! Alan Gairey also focuses on the one title from Judges Guild with ‘An Ode to Inferno: Abandon hope all ye that enter…’, which is the 1980 module, Inferno. This presented the first four circles of Hell as a challenging dungeon and the author ran it several times, each time nearly ending in the death of the whole party. The article comes to rather droll end, but is accompanied by a list of some of the other better titles published by the prolific Judges Guild, all of which in their way, would be worthy of articles such as these two. 

The feature piece in The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 is ‘Steel Hearts & Straight Razors’. Written by Roger Coe, this is a scenario for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, but not the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay of the nineteen eighties. Rather it is for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Fourth Edition published by Cubicle 7 Entertainment. Almost thirty pages in length and thus almost half of the fanzine, ‘Steel Hearts & Straight Razors’ is a convoluted murder mystery and conspiracy thriller, involving guild rivalries, hair stylists, cultists, and ecumenical matters, all specifically designed to be set in the city or large town of the Game Master’s choice. It opens with a dangerous encounter chanced upon by the Player Characters between a blue glowing demon-man-thing and a poorly victim. The scene ends with both demon and victim dead, which leaves the Player Characters with a problem or two. The demon was once a man, so who was he? Who was the victim and what was the meaning of his dying words? Investigation will reveal more and more, perhaps initially with the Player Characters attempting to avoid the City Watch—especially if they happen to be carrying either of the corpses with them, then finding employment from a surprising quarter, and more. There is a fair bit going on in this scenario and the Player Characters will really need to dig deep to discover some the city’s secrets, but in true Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay fashion, their investigation will take them from lows of society to the heights and back again, revealing perfidious goings on. Although it does feel a bit crammed in, ‘Steel Hearts & Straight Razors’ is a gem of a scenario, offering lots of opportunity for combat, investigation, and roleplaying, adeptly hitting all of the signature notes you would want in a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay scenario, but without being location specific.

Sean Hillman gets systems specific with ‘A Short History of the Long Dice – The story of percentage based games’. It is more of an overview than anything else, too brief to provide any real insight. A better article might have explored more of the nuances between the various roleplaying games to have used percentile dice. Newt Newport details the history of his own company with ’10 Years of D101 Games’, the article sadly missing some text in true fanzine fashion, but nevertheless an enjoyable and informative piece. Perhaps it could have done with a bibliography, though that would have made it less personal.

The nostalgia continues with the memories of Niall Hunt and others of their gaming youth with ‘Gaming in the Shire’ and the founding and running of Evesham Roleplaying Association. There is a certain pleasure to be had here in reading reminiscences similar to your own—and of course those of The Grognard Files podcast files hosts—and of course, having them in print. Back in The Grognard Files – Annual 2018, ‘Keharr’ presented ‘Pendragon: City of Legions’, a fascinating exploration of his Pendragon PBEM set in the northwest of England. For this issue he provides not so much an update, but a sort of guide to running such a thing with ‘How to Fry your Fish-Fingers – Lessons learnt from running a Cheshire Pendragon Play By Email’. The advice is both applicable to Pendragon PBEM games and non- Pendragon PBEM games, such as taking disagreements offline, be clear about the rules, listen to your players, and much more. There are still some personal touches and it is clear from the article that the author and his players continue to enjoy running and playing the PBEM.

Lastly, ‘All That Glitters…’ by Jerry Nuckolls, compares and contrasts the two versions of the classic superhero roleplaying game, Golden Heroes, by Simon Burley and Peter Haines. One is their self-published version from 1982, the other the Games Workshop version from 1984. The review as such, does lack illustrations, barring a suitably fanzine-ish cartoon that has a sly dig at Games Workshop, but is a fascinating read because it is often forgotten that there even was a self-published version. What the article highlights is that the differences between the two are relatively minor. Which only goes to show how good the self-published version was that the authors and Games Workshop did not have to do a great deal to bring the version we know to print.

Physically, The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 has a rough quality to it, by design as much as by accident. It needs an edit here and there and feels alternatively cramped and overly spacious in places. It is lightly illustrated, but they are generally well handled, and the cartography for the scenario, ‘Steel Hearts & Straight Razors’, is excellent. Similarly, the wraparound cover from Russ Nicholson is superb.

As with previous issues, The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 delivers a good mix of nostalgia, opinion, and a little bit of gaming content. Indeed, pride of place goes to that gaming content, the scenario, ‘Steel Hearts & Straight Razors’, which is worth the price of the fanzine alone. It is a formula which The Armchair Adventurers have followed before—and it works. It would be fantastic to see this issue made available to the wider gaming hobby, perhaps for a decent cause much like The Grognard Files – Annual 2017, but in the meantime, The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 and further issues are bonus for supporting The Grognard Files podcast.

Fanzine Focus XIII: The Grognard Files – Annual 2018

On the tail of Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another Dungeon Master and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry.

The Grognard Files is a fanzine born of a podcast,  The Grognard Files, a North of England podcast dedicated to the games of the late seventies and early eighties, in particular, RuneQuest. It is available only to patrons of the podcast—or alternatively to attendees of Grogmeet a one-day convention in Manchester, again in the North of England. It is also put out just once a year. Published by The Armchair Warriors, the The first issue, The Grognard Files – Annual 2017, is available as a ‘Pay What You Want’ PDF available to download with the proceeds of the sale of the fanzine will donated to continue the running of Yog-sothoth.com, the best site dedicated to Lovecraft and Lovecraftian investigative horror. Hopefully, The Armchair Warriors will do the same with The Grognard Files – Annual 2018, because it is a cracker of an issue—and not just because I have a review in its pages—with some good articles and a really fun scenario or two.

As with The Grognard Files – Annual 2017, British gamers of a certain age will very much recognise the style and layout of White Dwarf from the mid-eighties which is used The Grognard Files – Annual 2018. It is applied to the adverts too, with those from Otherworld Miniatures, All Rolled Up, and The Shop on the Borderlands all echoing the adverts of the 1980s. All this is behind a great cover by Russ Nicholson, whose art graced the pages of many a Fighting Fantasy title and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay supplement. So just from the look—as with The Grognard Files – Annual 2017—we are all ready for a heavy dose or two of nostalgia with The Grognard Files – Annual 2018.

Like White Dwarf, the fanzine is divided into features and departments. The first of the departments is Open Box—named for the reviews department in White Dwarf—which presents four lengthy reviews, but opens them up from straight reviews to remembrances too. The four games are West End Games’ Paranoia, SkyRealms Publishing’s SkyRealms of Jorune (by guess who?), Yaquinto’s Man, Myth, & Magic, and The World of Darkness. So the reviewers recall their experiences playing these games as much as they review them. Of the four, that of The World of Darkness feels slightly too broad and slightly out of kilter with the nostalgia with the rest of the fanzine. Overall, these are some nice look backs to both well remembered and little remembered roleplaying games.

The nostalgia continues with the ‘Dissecting Worlds’ department. Here ‘Keharr’ presents ‘Pendragon: City of Legions’, which describes how he ran a Pendragon campaign not in its default setting of Salisbury and Logres, but in his home region—the Wirral. Little more than half a page long, this is a fascinating piece, shifting the game not just geographically away from the south of England, but also politically away from the support of Arthur. The result is a grimmer and more desperate campaign, played as a PBEM, and it would certainly be fascinating to read more about it. Perhaps some campaign notes will appear in a future issue of The Grognard Files.

Michael Cule laments why as an aging gamer he cannot get excited about gaming any more in his column, ‘Cule’s Corner’. He also gets to reminisce how it has happened to him before, and just as before, appears to be mostly our fault given that we are not producing enough exciting games. The awful truth though, is that we might just end up like Mister Cule, so we need to get producing those games fast. ‘Fanscence’ gives Rob Knott room to reminisce about the gaming scene of the 1980s and his own fanzine, The Lankhmar Star Daily. As yet, there is no history of the gaming fanzine, but this adds a little towards such a history as well as a personal story that many readers of The Grognard Files – Annual 2018 will find familiar.

The issue’s features begin with Justin Hill’s ‘At the Sign of the Dragon’s Tail’, a short story about aging adventurers coming to realise that discretion being the better part of valor. The issue’s biggest feature is undoubtedly ‘Better Living Through Chemistry’, a scenario written by Alan Gairey for the Judge Dredd: The Role-Playing Game published by Games Workshop in 1985. Set in the wake of the Apocalypse War, it sends the Judges—six pre-generated Judges are included—out on patrol before throwing them into a mystery involving illegal eating contests, the mob, chemistry, and more. As befits a scenario for Judge Dredd: The Role-Playing Game, it is thick with puns and jokes, plus of course, a good criminal mystery and lots of action. This is huge fun and hopefully the author will get to write more.

The other scenario in The Grognard Files – Annual 2018 is Roger Coe’s ‘Diversion’. This is written for use versions of Call of Cthulhu written prior to Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition and explores what might happen if the investigators have to use a Gate or Gatebox and something goes wrong. In this instance, they find themselves all but naked and trapped in a strange alien technological complex. It is a nicely detailed ‘get out of that’ scenario, something very different for Call of Cthulhu, which presents an interesting situation that offers a change from the usual investigative fare.

The Grognard Files – Annual 2018 takes on an international flavour with a contribution from Ken St. Andre, the designer of Tunnels & Trolls. In ‘On The Monster Races in RPGs’ he gives a history of the concept of playing monsters and the original roleplaying game to allow the playing of monsters, Monsters! Monsters! It is another slice of history, one that the author makes very clear predates the publication of Vampire: the Masquerade by some eleven years. It gets a bit silly with ‘The Grognard: a character class’ by Phil the Dice Mechanic. Designed for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, characters of this Class are permanently middle-aged, use Rules Mastery to give others the Advantage, get Rules Mastery back with a nice cup of tea and a hobnob, and with Drone of Protection help others withstand the effects of fear or charm. This is a daft satire which the readers of The Grognard Files – Annual 2018 will probably recognise of themselves in.

Lastly, The Grognard Files – Annual 2018 makes an odd switch from White Dwarf to Imagine, the magazine published by TSR, UK in the same period as the fanzine draws from, for a new and updated installment of Nic Novice. This cartoon strip ran in the pages of Imagine and from issue to issue it introduced the character of Nic to  roleplaying and various different roleplaying games. In ‘Whatever Happened to Nic Novice’, Paul Cockburn and Wayne Peters relates how Nic has got old and stopped gaming when his granddaughter discovers his roleplaying books under the bed. It is as much a commentary on the differences between old gamer and young gamers, but it does highlight how there are young players coming into the hobby and that they are a diverse lot.

Physically, The Grognard Files – Annual 2018 is well presented, well written, and comes with some excellent illustrations. Some of the other illustrations could have been better handled as they are somewhat fuzzy. Another issue is that a lot of the text is quite small and in places difficult to read. Especially that printed on darker backgrounds. This is probably an issue that affects a lot of the fanzine’s intended readership.

Lots of nostalgia, a bit of silliness here and there, and a couple of good scenarios make for an entertaining and memory-provoking read. Hopefully, The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 will be just good, but in the meantime, one can only hope that The Armchair Warriors make The Grognard Files – Annual 2018 available to purchase because it is worth it for ‘Better Living Through Chemistry’ alone and everything else is icing on the cake.