My Gaming History

It was the early 1970s when I first came across a copy of Games & Puzzles magazine. There were two copies in a second hand bookshop in Morley, a suburb of Perth. I’d been out there shopping with my mother and always checked out such shops for SF and comix.

I’ve always been somewhat shy, and an interest in games was one way to avoid the shyness and meet people. Because of this, the Games & Puzzles seemed just the thing, so I bought both copies. Inside was a treasure trove of articles, about: traditional games; new commercial releases; puzzles; game design; and Diplomacy. Rod Walker had an article in each about the game, about ethics and “etiquette”, and optimum tactics of play. The game seemed fascinating but back then was unavailable (or so I thought) in Australia.

They did not have it in any of the shops I looked in, anyway. This was well before games like Dungeons & Dragons and Avalon Hill / S.P.I. type games became popular. The department stores carried a range of propriety games, but these were Risk, Mousetrap, and such like (or variations on traditional like cards and backgammon). If you were lucky you might find copies of 3M games like Aquire, but these were few and far between. There were also the hobby shops that catered for modellers and craft but these dealt mostly with miniatures.

I did two things: I subscribed to Games & Puzzles; and I sent away for a copy of Diplomacy. In the meantime I was still at High School, and found other outlets. I used to visit my friend Steven Gunnell (Steveg) and we were involved in a local group that played Subbuteo(1).

We also got involved (with a few other high school chums from Governor Stirling Snr High) with a wargames club based around a shop called “The Loco Shed”. They mostly played miniatures and. After a few months they were kicked out of that location but then moved to another shop. Later still there were several groups: the Bayswater Wargames Club; the WA Historical Wargames Association (known as “Waaa-Waaas”) and others.

In the meantime my copy of Diplomacy arrived and the subscription started. It was the Philmar version, with the large colourful board (with cartoons) and plastic pieces (artillery shells for armies, pillboxes for fleets). I still had problems finding opponents. Most of the guys down at the wargames club were more interested in determining effective ranges of panzerfaust fire than in an abstract multi-player game.

If I remember rightly, Steveg had a friend who had a contact in New South Wales who knew of someone running postal games of Diplomacy. This turned out to be Dennis Brackman who ran a zine called “Eureka Stockade”. So far as I know, this was the first dipzine in Australia. Eureka Stockade was a 1-3 double-sided page zine, stapled in the corner and posted roughly monthly. At last I was able to play the game!

I also left High School and found a job. I started to have more spare cash to spend on games and other things. Strategy & Tactics magazine became available locally, as did Dungeons & Dragons. I had misspent youth. Apart from games, films and arcade games, I didn’t spend my time doing much else. The last two are basically solitary pursuits, whereas the gaming involves at least two people, sometimes. I also got involved in playing Flying Buffalo (FB) PBM games (Starlord, Nuclear Destruction, Moonbase, Time Trap, et al).

Now playing Diplomacy postally is one thing, playing a Flying Buffalo game another. Whereas in Diplomacy, negotiations with other players is the crux of the game, in many of the old FB games it was incidental. Even in games like Nuclear Destruction and Starlord, where such is much more important, one can still bluff one’s way through a game based on tactics and tricks. Try to do that in Diplomacy and see how far you get!

After a year of playing postal Dip in Eureka Stockade, I decided to start my own zine Tau Ceti.

SWANCON

Early in 1975 I had a note from one of my players in the Eastern States, mentioning that science fiction convention was going to be held in Perth. I contacted Steveg, who still lived just up the road from me and we found out where it was going to be held. This was Swancon I, the first SF convention held in Western Australia. Not a very large affair, it was held at a house in Maylands. There were about 20-30 of us and it lasted just two days. I took some copies of Tau Ceti along just in case. There’s a fair overlap between SF fans and gamers, at least in certain age range. That was the start of my involvement in WA fandom, but that’s another story(2).

I’m not much of a role-playing gamer. By this I mean that I hated Dungeons & Dragons and the like. I preferred to play (and run) En Garde! and Killer games. En Garde! is a formal role-playing game in which players take the part of adventurers circa The Three Musketeers. Essentially it sets up a situation where players attempt social climbing through partying, carousing, bawdying, campaigning and duelling. In short it was perfect for adolescent males to vent their fantasies in.

It was very rigid, in that players had a distinct set of actions that they could order for each month of play. These get written down and resolved simultaneously (or “weekly” as there were four weeks per “month” of game play). Sound familiar? Because of its structure En Garde! Makes a good postal game. I started a postal game of it in TC, and the game grew so large in numbers of players that I started a second zine, “The Paris Gazette”, just to run it.

In 1979 I went to Syncon ’79, that year’s SF con. It was held at King’s Cross in Sydney. By that time Steveg was living and working in Canberra and we caught up again at the event. Later we visited Bill Starke Jr., one of the players from Eureka Stockade. This was my first trip to Sydney and a memorable one at that.

After 50+ issues Tau Ceti died a natural death. The Paris Gazette continued for roughly the same number of issues, and even spawned imitations, like The London Gazette, run by Lance Bremen (where the action was set in England, not France). I wrote to Games Design Workshop, the publishers of En Garde!, and gained permission to print a set of optional rules (40+ pages) for the game.

Killer is a live-action real-time role-playing game, and is loosely based on Robert Scheckley's The Tenth Victim. You don't take the part of a character by using paper and pencil -- you do it in real life. The object in most scenarios is to kill the other players! Of course if you did this for real you'd be in trouble with the law (not to mention moral problems) so you do it in mock fashion only (eg. shooting water pistols at each other).

I ran several scenarios of Killer back in Perth. The most notable ones were the "Organised Crime" and “Strontium Dog” ones. The organised crime scenario had players scattered all over Perth, attempting to run “protection rackets” and assassinate each other. The Strontium Dog scenario was a gladiatorial game based on a character that appeared in the comic 2000AD, who was a “mutie” and a bounty hunter.

THE 1980S

After a few years I started another zine, called Tau Ceti Phoenix / Apocrypha. This was a “double-header” in that the Tau Ceti Phoenix side was about games, and the Apocrypha side was about SF fandom. The Tau Ceti Phoenix side ran until 1991, whereas the Apocrypha side ran in various forms until 1995 (more about that in the zines section). I now had a public service job and could afford to have them photocopied.

It was now the early 1980s and I was playing board games in various private groups, mostly based at people’s own houses. I was still living at my parents (and continued to do so until 1987) at the time and spent most of my free time in Gaming and SF fandoms. It was easy to do and provided me with most of my social activity.

SF fandom was in many ways a frustrating experience for me. Gaming though was fairly constant. I’d turn up with a game or two, and if anyone was interested it’d get played, otherwise I’d play something else. Gaming was also becoming commercially visible as well. Doug Thorpe started a dedicated war/board games shop called Simulations, which continued in various incarnations for many years(3). I remember several games cons that were run by Doug, both at the shop (in its second location, on the 2nd floor of dingy arcade) and elsewhere.

My involvement in face-to-face gaming was tapering off however, towards the end of the 80s. In 1987 I got a job in Albany, 400km south of Perth, and moved out from home. There were a few gamers down in Albany, but not enough for regular gaming sessions. When I returned to Perth a few years later things had changed.

I was now in a relationship and involved in various degrees in the WA Folk Scene. I was on the committee of the Western Australian Folk Federation for a couple of years and also produced their newsletter Towncrier for an equal amount of time. None of this left much time for gaming, and many of the friends that I’d gamed with in 80s had moved on to other things, such as careers and families. Not that such things prevent gaming, but raising children is time consuming to say the least.

The circles in which I was mixing differed from the old crowd. Few were into Avalon Hill / S.P.I. type games that involved twenty pages of rules and numerous charts. The old crowd might have delighted in playing games like War in Europe (which had 9 map sheets, 2000+ counters and a set of rules equal to a small novel); the new crowd could barely manage a game of Monopoly.

MOVING ON

Times changed. I was in a different public service job, in a different relationship and heading in a radically different direction in my life. In 1994 I broke up with my partner, came out as being transsexual, and began a gender transition. Yet another story, and another website(4) as well. Anyway, I had a number of things happening, all of which had priority over gaming.

I kept most of my game collection – over 300 games -- until I left Perth. Most were sold to Doug Thorpe. I still have a small core collection of about 30 games (including Diplomacy) but seldom play them. Once again, the social set I move in just isn’t interested in gaming.

Since then I’ve: left the public service; moved to New South Wales (in the Hunter Valley); bought a house; completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts; and completed my gender reassignment (surgery was back in late 2000). A very busy seven years!

I still have an interest in games and gaming, but face-to-face involvement is problematic. Recently I found some games that I was seriously developing in the early 1990s: Tempus Fugit and World Expansion. The first is a time-travel game, and the second an historical empire building game. Both of these were being designed to be played by post.

Maybe, when I get time (this year I’m doing artwork for a Tarot Deck) I might revise and continue the designs. I can imagine that now with the Internet, they’d be a lot easier to play. No guarantees, but who knows.

Footnotes

(1) This is a tabletop version of Soccer. Players flick weighted figurines about so as to hit a small ball into the opponent’s goal. It’s better than it sounds.

(2) See Laura Looks Back for details.

(3) Doug now runs Valhalla, much the same sort of shop, in Wellington Street in Perth.

(4) If you want further details, check out  Laura Seabrook's Queer Stuff, and also my journal of the trip to Phuket. This is why, folks, all my gaming stuff from the past had L.A. Dunning on it, and not Seabrook.