Oldhammer has dug up and remastered TV footage of author Ben Elton introduce the British public to Dungeons & Dragons in 1984. It was a year when 40,000 copies of the red box were expected to be sold.
Back then, you could buy the tabletop RPG from Games Workshop (and very few other places), and Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson, the company’s founders, introduce their characters and invite Elton to play a game.
Ah yes, cringe at the awkward frother interview but also admire the enthusiasm. Have things changed that much?
There’s a minute in the video in which we see Livingstone and Jackson’s DM illustrate a map by hand. As it happens, that process does not look very different from the photographs published just today by Cubicle 7.
Cubicle 7 are the publishers of Games Workshop’s Warhammer Fantasy RPG line and other Warhammer games, which Games Workshop brought out in response to D&D and to fortify their model business.
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