SOME SKILL AND A LOT OF LUCK

It was February 1975, when the three friends, Ian, Steve and John, conceived and created 'GAMES WORKSHOP', a company that would develop, make and sell new and innovative games. Of course, there wasn't exactly much money to put into the company, and it would have to be run from their cramped apartment, but it was a start. They had the name, they had the ideas, all they needed now was to make it work!

Initially, to get them started, they made traditional wooden games like Backgammon and Go for the handful of specialist games shops. Their flat was a fog of sawdust and wood shavings. This wasn't exactly what they wanted to do, but it got them known by the few hobby shops around London. In those days, most people regarded those that openly admitted to playing strategy games as a hobby as being particularly weird.

They decided that the best way to get themselves known was to publish a magazine and so they wrote and published the first issue of 'Owl and Weasel'. Why it was called 'Owl and Weasel' is still a mystery - even to this day. Ian shrugs and says 'It just was!' They printed 200 copies and sent a copy to absolutely everybody they knew or could have something to do with games in the hope that it would create some business.

One copy of this magazine somehow managed to fall into the hands of a guy in America, even though the friends had never sent it or indeed, had ever even heard of him. His name was Gary Gygax, and he had just invented a little game that was completely different to anything ever seen before. The game was called 'Dungeons & Dragons'.

AND THEN THERE WERE TWO

Ian, Steve and John immediately got down to playing the game Gary had sent over from the States for review, and as far as Ian and Steve were concerned, it was fantastic.

Fantasy had never really crossed their minds. In fact, other than 'Tolkien', there wasn't anything around that could really be considered adult fantasy. War was the main focus of their games in those days, and suddenly here was a game where you took on the persona of a character 'you' created and guided through a world of mythical creatures and wondrous treasure. It was the first commercially available role-playing game and was totally unique.

Full of enthusiasm, Ian and Steve declared that this was the way to go. They reasoned that must be thousandss of people out there who would love to get their hands on this game! They immediately contacted Gary and ordered six copies with the money they could scrape together.

John, on the other hand, was not enthusiastic. He just had no interest in D&D. So he decided to leave the company just months after it had started. Nevertheless Ian and Steve were sure that this revolutionary role-playing game would one day be very, very big. That first order for 6 copies landed them an exclusive 3-year European distribution agreement from TSR Hobbies, the publishers of D&D. What they didn't know was that Gygax's TSR Hobbies was also a fledgling company operating out of an apartment in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. The big games companies had turned it down and Gygax and his partners decided to publish it themselves. Ian and Steve advertised the game in issue 6 of Owl and Weasel which was dedicated to D&D, and the orders started to roll in. It was amazing. It was the chance they had been looking for, but it was also the start of an uphill struggle.