It’s hard to believe that it was over a decade ago that I decided to revisit Fantasy Wargaming. It all began with a search of a bibliographic database (WorldCat) to see if the authors had written anything else: Bruce Quarrie was a familiar name from his books on historical wargaming, but the rest of the authors were more mysterious. The name “Bruce Galloway” turned up on an intriguing array of titles: some histories, some political tracts, even some guidebooks for hikers. I decided to find out if any of the authors were the same as the FW author, and the journey began.
Since then I’ve learned a lot more about the authors and the larger circle of people who were involved with developing the book in various ways, most of whom were very generous with their time and memories, helping me put together a picture of how the book was written. The blog posts became quite numerous as new bits emerged, and I gave the rules a cover-to-cover read. I concatenated the posts into one page, which has seen a regular flow of visits and even been cited in an academic paper on gaming. Someone even asked if I could edit the posts into a short book, and during the COVID shutdown I took up the task in earnest.
I soon discovered that there was more interest in FW than I realized, with many blogs, YouTube channels, and podcasts posting their own revisits and reviews. I also began to find more reviews from the period when it was published, and several other people passed along their finds. The one coauthor of the book who is still with us even found a cache of documents that adds a lot more more information and fills in gaps I thought unrecoverable — letters to and from the main author, notes for a sequel, and more. The new information I’ve gathered since posting the page has revealed a lot of new information and confirmed or refuted many of the guesses and conjectures I made.
And now the book is here, with a lot of updates, corrections, and additions to what I originally wrote. It might be a book no one reads about a game no one played, but I can honestly and with pride say it will be a contribution to gaming history, covering what I still believe to be a fascinating and singular work in roleplaying game history.
Preparing the book has been a trip. Initially, I was pretty sure that a small academic press would be publishing it, but that press became a casualty of COVID. Nevertheless Heather Ford from that the press went ahead and did an amazing and flattering job of making my manuscript into a gorgeous illustrated book — providing many original illustrations no less. And we found a new home for the book at Carnegie-Mellon University’s ETC Press, a publisher of academic and trade books on entertainment technologies.
The price for the full color hardcover will be commensurate with the markup you see on academic books, partly due to the costs of distribution but also due to the higher quality paper needed for the images to come out clearly. ETC Press is an open access publisher, though, so you can also download the full PDF for free. I’m also looking at options for making another edition that will be more accessible for those using assistive technologies, or for those preferring a traditional e-book. Watch this space.
You’ve read my blog, so why should you buy or at least read the the book?
- I added a full and as-comprehensive-as-possible literature review with all the reviews, notices and discussions of FW I could find, annotated.
- I was given access to Bruce Galloway’s personal file of clippings and manuscripts, which answer some questions about the rules and outline the sequel to FW which would have covered the ancient/classical world. Some of that material is reproduced in appendices.
- Heather Ford’s cool art and graphic design made this into a gorgeous artifact for your RPG research collection. I mean it really looks amazing and could be a coffee table book.
- Lawrence Heath, who illustrated FW, has allowed me to include some of his artwork from the period, and it’s pretty dang awesome too.
Click here to download the *free* PDF of the book (or buy a hard copy) from ETC Press!
Click here to buy the full color, hardcover book from Lulu.com!
Click here to buy the full cover, hardcover book from Amazon.com
coming soonish(?): an ebook edition for purchase
Swords & Dorkery 
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