Part of the reason for my passionate support for Darcy Perry's wonderful DuckQuest roleplaying game - and why I backed several of his anthropomorphic duck-related miniatures Kickstarters - stretches right back to my earliest days of gaming.
In the late '70s and early '80s the bulk of my long-form (rather than random one-shot) gaming was with Gublin, a friend who lived five doors down the road from me.
Although created for a specific Dungeons & Dragons adventure at our local gaming club, my enduring character from those days was a female half-elf fighter/cleric/magic-user called Staghind, who enjoyed a storied adventuring career, before becoming a queen of her own nation and retiring.
At some stage in her life she adopted an anthropomorphic duck called Quincy as one of her many children and he taught her Quack Fu. Or she was taught Quack-Fu by a master and then she adopted Quincy. My memory from those days is like Swiss Cheese!
My ideas about humanoid ducks were entirely shaped by reading Steve Gerber's bonkers Howard The Duck comics, rather than RuneQuest (which officially introduced ducks into the roleplaying consciousness).
This is also why I have a copy of this issue framed and hanging on the wall in our lounge with other key comics from my years of collecting and reading.
Not just because of the incredible impact it had on me as a nascent comic book reader, exposing me to the gonzo possibilities of the medium, but also for the influence it had on me as a fledgling gamer.
Whilst my anthropomorphic duck gaming ended rather abruptly with Staghind's retirement, the concept endured with the help of one of my mum's delightfully random fandoms.
Once I was of working age (and writing nonsense for the local paper), my mum somehow became a massive fan of the late '80s kids cartoon Count Duckula, so I used my salary to ensure she had an extensive collection of VHS tapes and annuals (as that was the only merch available at the time).
These days duck characters can be found roleplayng games such as Dragonbane (from Free League Publishing), where they are called "mallards", and Twilight Sword (yes, this was a deciding factor in me backing this game).
In the latter game the duck kin are also known as "mallards" and were available, in print form (as a set of cards), as an early bird sweetener to entice backers to get the ball rolling on the crowdfunding campaign.
I hesitated and missed out on this bonus "kin", but understand it will still be available to all backers as a PDF. I can't NOT have ducks as a playable race in my version of Twilight Sword!
