It is not an exaggeration to say that without Dungeons & Dragons there would be no Fighting Fantasy gamebooks either.
Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone were sharing a flat in Shepherd’s Bush with another friend, John Peake, when the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons was published in 1974, and their lives changed for ever.
They had heard about D&D through fanzines, although they did not actually get hold of a copy of their own until 1975. Jackson once described the arrival of D&D as “manna from heaven”. It was the game they had been waiting for.
Overwhelmed by the possibilities such role-playing games offered imaginative individuals, Jackson, Livingstone and Peake decided to start their own business. In February 1975 Games Workshop was established. Later that year they secured the exclusive European distribution rights for Dungeons & Dragons. Games Workshop started slowly but became a huge success over time, expanding from a bedroom mail order company to become a major retailer and publisher of wargames and RPGs.
You can read about those early years of the company in Dice Men: The Origin Story of Games Workshop, by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson.
Meanwhile, Geraldine Cooke has taken over Penguin Books' ailing science fiction, fantasy and horror list. Cooke’s best friend Geoff John, an avid Dungeons & Dragons player of several years' standing, told her all about Games Workshop. He told her to ring Jackson and Livingstone and see if they could turn the game, or something like it, into a book.
Fired by a combination of entrepreneurial bravado and youthful enthusiasm, Jackson and Livingstone agreed to work up a proposal and outline for a book about the growing fantasy role-playing hobby. The book was intended to be a 'How to' manual of role-playing, but the synopsis they submitted was for a simple solo RPG, presented within the pages of a book. A gamebook. The rest, as they say, is history...
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