THE WFRP STORY: INTRODUCTION

This is the first post in what I intend to be a lengthy series discussing the origins and evolution of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay’s first edition. The series will start with an account of the very beginning of Warhammer and take the story through to the closure of Flame Publications, when Games Workshop stopped publishing WFRP1. It will therefore cover a period that spans roughly from 1972 to 1992. That is not, of course, the whole story of WFRP, or even of WFRP’s first edition. It will omit the Hogshead years and subsequent editions of the game. However, it is a large enough project that I have decided not to expand its scope further.

The story will inevitably bring in the history of Warhammer Fantasy Battle, GW and Citadel, and a significant amount of material will be relevant to those subjects. However, my main purpose is to tell the tale of WFRP, so I intend only to touch on those subjects insofar as they shed light on WFRP. Similarly I shall not cover the history of D&D or role-playing and wargaming in general. Those subjects are somewhat tangential and have been covered well elsewhere.

Sadly the history will not be as complete and thorough as I would like. I have limited time to conduct primary research or to prepare the material to normal academic standards. So this will be an amateur effort. I hope it will be interesting nonetheless. Perhaps someone might in future address the subject in the greater detail it deserves.

Much of the material will come from interviews given previously by figures in the game’s history. I have decided to include as much of this material as reasonably possible. It would, no doubt, be possible to take a more selective approach and provide only the most relevant information. That would have the advantage of economy. However, I feel the speakers’ original words are among the most interesting parts of the story, so I am willing to accept the duplication and greater length a more expansive policy entails.

The account will blend a chronological narrative with thematic analyses. For this reason the time periods covered by individual posts may overlap. In order to clarify the chronology each post will include a chart indicating how it fits into the overall narrative.

Although I have already done a significant amount of research on the subject, there remains much to do. This is likely to mean that the series will at times be interrupted by hiatuses, while I conduct further research. I have decided therefore to divide the narrative into sections. Each section will contain a number of sequential posts and end at a natural break in the story. Between each section there will be a gap, when I will work on the next section and post material on other subjects. The first section, comprising parts I to VIII, tells the story up to the release of WFB1, and covers the period up to July 1983.

Sorry in advance for any errors.

The next post looks at Warhammer’s early origins.

An index of all posts to date can be found here.

Many of the posts in this series have been updated since they were first published.

Title art by John Blanche. Used without permission. No challenge intended to the rights holders.