Dragons in the Dark

A lot can change in forty years. Attitudes and opinions especially. I was reminded of that when I came across the March 1986 issue of a fanzine called Dragons in the Dark, edited by Henk Langeveld, and flipped it open to discover a letter from my very much younger self. So what games were grabbing the attention of the Dave Morris of four decades ago? Let's find out...

"I agree with what Mike Williams said about getting the rules out of the way of role--playing. I have enjoyed several games where there was no dice-rolling at all -- not because the players didn't get into combats, but because the game was flowing along so smoothly that I decided not to break it all apart by insisting they get out the figurines and the dice. Games can't always work out like that (my sessions have their share of dungeoneering too), but at their best they are pure role-playing, an improvised story created jointly by the players and the GM. Some letters in White Dwarf objected that this type of gaming is just chaotic – no rules. There are rules, I have found, but rules of a very subtle sort that arise out of the nature of storytelling. A player may spontaneously invent some power, item or general get-out if he thinks the others will accept it. As GM, I cannot just take the item away from him without forcing a re-take in the adventure, so I have to be inventive and twist things against him again. I really think that for a group of experienced gamers who are used to one another’s foibles, this gives an opportunity for imaginative gaming and shared fantasy that the old rule systems (that mostly developed out of wargames and table-topping) do not allow. This is one of the reasons that I'm against things like fatigue points – who can be fagged to calculate all those numbers and things during a game that should represent the triumph of imagination?"

Here in 2026 I'm still in favour of improvisation, but not in the authored sense described there. I value roleplaying precisely because it is a work without an author, so I would rather not have players seeing their characters as pieces to move around a story. I want them to improvise in character. You know, the way we do in real life.

Anyway, back to 1986:

"I didn't invest in RuneQuest 3 (though I have looked through it) because I didn't see that much wrong with RQ2. The RuneQuest Compendium could have handled any necessary adjustments and expansions, but instead wasted itself with useless padding on how to cook a walktapus and suchlike. Since the world of Glorantha is defined by the game, it means that the old Glorantha has gone – the world must now be a very different place. If the POW gain for priests has been changed there will be fewer priests of great power, for example.

"For me, the main role-playing event of 1985 was the publication of Swords and Glory, M.A.R. Barker's complete reworking of his Tekumel game. Greg Stafford was right to call Barker a genius – he developed Tekumel as a real place and his rules merely interpret that into a game. 'Game' Tekumel is asymptotic to 'real' Tekumel, but there is no sense that with a new set of rules the whole world has changed."

I guess I'll stand by most of that, except that Barker has nowadays been cancelled for his assumed views so we're not to mention him, and anyway if I were still playing Tekumel-based games I'd use the Tirikelu rules rather than S&G. 

Moving on, we get to a kind of cultural appropriation that still makes me seethe:

"I cannot say that I'm waiting for Chaosium's feudal Japanese supplement to RQ3 with much enthusiasm. Bushido seems to handle this setting very competently and evocatively anyway. The attitude towards Japanese culture and folklore that shows through published Chaosium material is not particularly auspicious in this regard. I found the dragonewts write-up in – was it Different Worlds or Wyrm's Footnotes? Can't remember – pretty offensive. Dragonewts, these utterly unhuman creatures, apparently fight with katanas, perform seppuku, compose haiku... all things that maybe seem utterly unhuman to the Californian mind, but personally I think don't measure up. Probably these Japanese elements are grafted onto dragonewt culture in a spirit of amused incomprehension rather than outright chauvinism, but I am not impressed. Returning to the example of Tekumel, Barker manages to make his nonhumans (the ssu, the hlüss, the pe choi, etc) look and feel alien without recourse to traditional Western myth or swiping from non-European cultures."

And the letter rounds off with a last little bit that's of historical interest because it pins down my and Jamie's inspiration for creating open-world gamebooks:

"Tales of the Arabian Nights by West End is well worth a look, though pricey. It is an original concept, attractively presented and great fun. I bought it a month ago and have been playing three or four times a week since then."

That would have been in the autumn of 1985, two years before we pitched a gamebook series we were calling Hero Quest. It's interesting to look back now and see the glint in my then-youthful and sparkling clear eyes.

Oh, you're wondering about that cover? The image above is ChatGPT's retconned version, but for the sake of historical interest here's what RPG fanzines actually looked like in the days of typewriters, Letraset and Cow Gum: