Dice Men: The Origin Story of Games Workshop

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In 1995 he led the merger of computer games company Domark with Eidos, the name behind the Tomb Raider computer games, where he is now Creative Director.

There was a certain magic, a feeling of adventure, that overcame me when I walked those aisles and gazed at the fantastic miniatures. Probably so too would its founders, Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson (and the oft-forgotten John Peake, though he plays a fifth-Beatle role in this story, departing the stage very early). Initially, it was a distributor for the role-playing games from the US, principally Dungeons and Dragons and Runequest. Based on the reviews and thoughts of some other individuals involved in the early days of GW it may well be that the smooth narrative sidesteps some of the thorny moments in the story, and this is definitely a story rather than a forensic history, but it is terribly well told and totally captivating. More likely it speaks to a culture for which the Nottingham operations were always slightly out of view; what was happening in London was the focus, because that’s where Livingstone and Jackson were.The focus is clearly what he has always wanted it to be – Citadel manufactures miniatures in ever-increasing ranges and volumes, and the rest of the company exists to sell those miniatures, whether by making up games for them to be used in or by marketing them or by literally handing over boxes of them to punters for cash.

I also think that they overplay the poverty / extreme poverty of their situation for a lot of the time. Beautifully illustrated and with plenty of voices in addition to the author's, this is a must for any fan of role-playing games and the FF books. Naturally, the unremarked-upon Naismith quote is followed by a lengthy discussion of the Fighting Fantasy plastic range, a set of 54mm miniatures which was a complete flop and merits attention only as a point of historical curiosity as Citadel’s first plastic range – their contribution seems to have consisted of Citadel learning what not to do. I gave it 4 stars just because of the lack of more information about W40k, and the ending was way too abrupt.They’re not of the right social class for it, but the phrase that keeps coming back to me to describe the two remaining Dice Men is “gentleman amateurs.