"Second To The Right, And Straight On Till Morning"

I have long dreamed of a fantastical, island-hopping roleplaying game "project", akin to the beloved Ray Harryhausen sword-and-sorcery movies of my youth filtered through something akin to old school Dungeons & Dragons.

The exact flavour remains undecided, but I already have a campaign format in mind.

I want to emulate the very first campaign that Gublin and I played back in the late '70s: a picaresque nautical yarn in the style of Sinbad The Sailor, The Odyssey, Jason & The Argonauts or even Clark Ashton Smith's The Voyage of King Euvoran, with the player-characters as the crew of an exploratory ship sailing from mysterious island to mysterious island.

I've long said my campaigning Holy Grail is to run an open-ended 'forever campaign' that captures the spirit of the first generation of roleplaying campaigns (e.g. Gary Gygax's Greyhawk, Dave Arneson's Blackmoor, and my personal favourite: Dave Hargrave's Arduin).

Maybe this is the adventure that will steer me in that direction.

Okay, So Chat GPT Definitely Helped Me Here

I'm currently on a bit of a Greek myth kick when it comes to roleplayng games - inspired way more by Stephen Fry's quadrilogy of classy rewrites (Mythos, Heroes, Troy, and Odyssey) than Christopher Nolan's forthcoming movie.

For years, I've had this little itch at the back of my brain about a game that Gublin and I played a few times waaaaaay back in the 1980's, geared specifically towards roleplaying in the Greek myths.

But, for the life of me, I just could never remember anything else important about it. It was definitely Gublin's book, which explains why it wasn't so rooted in my memory, but I was sure it used cards and had an orange cover.

I know I cast some shade in the direction of AI the other day, but, eventually, I bit the bullet and fed what little I could recall into Chat GPT.

After about a half-a-dozen additional questions and clarifications (no, not a board game, video game etc) and wading through a lot of wild inaccuracies from my AI "assistant|", it finally directed me to Odysseus: Role Play For The Homeric Age.

Light bulb moment!

Written by Marshall T Rose, the game was published as a 32-page book, with cardstock inserts, in 1980 by Fantasy Games Unlimited (who, of course, also originally published Villains & Vigilantes which I would go on to play much, much more).

As soon as I saw the cover (pictured above), I knew I had found another - very small - part of my childhood.

I was also then able to find pictures of combat cards and ship deck plans that came with the game.

I've set-up an eBay search alert for the game, despite reading reviews that generally range from scathing to lukewarm. From what I've seen and read now, Odysseus appears to be an uncomfortable hybrid of clunky wargames rules (that that period was known for) and roleplaying aspirations, without much in the way of support.

No doubt this contributed to our games back in the day never finding their sea legs and becoming any sort of long-running campaign. At that time very little could compete with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in our eyes.

I suspect that even if I can get my hands on a reasonably priced copy of Odysseus: Role Play For The Homeric Age it would be more for the nostalgia than as a potential game for the Tuesday Knights.

One of the deck plans - printed on cardstock - included in the game

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Gublin

Andrew 'Gublin' Patterson with Matt at Adrian's wedding about 35 years ago

As I reflect on the early days of my gaming life in the occasional Throwback Thursday piece, the name Gublin will pop up every so often.

I guess my old Pembury pal Andrew "Gublin" Patterson represents all the people I played RPGs in my youth that I no longer have any contact with.

When I was at Pembury Primary School I - and another kid - won a scholarship to the prestigious Tonbridge School (the local equivalent of Hogwarts), although first we would have to attend prep school.

It turned out that this 'other kid' was Andy and he lived five doors down the road from me and was born a week before me.

Although we both went to different prep schools, Andy (who acquired the nickname Gublin at Holmewood House School because of his alleged similarity to the puppet creatures of that name!) and I became fast friends and soon developed a mutual interest in Dungeons & Dragons.

We used to play epic games of D&D, almost all centring around his character, Egghead Aramioc, and mine, Staghind Starlight, and all pretty much of the "kick down door, kill monster, take treasure" school of hack'n'slash.

Deep characterisation was not our thing - although I do remember a particularly heated in-character argument about Staghind's plans to change her hairstyle! A misunderstanding had led Egghead to think she was going for the Princess Leia-style buns on the side of the head ... when she just wanted pigtails!

To be fair, we did take the games out of the dungeon, exploring (and conquering) whole worlds on massive sheets of paper that were like rolls of wallpaper spread across the floor of his parents' house.

But Egghead and Staghind eventually grew apart and began to adventure with other people...

After prep school, we both went to Skinners' in Tunbridge Wells - instead of Tonbridge School - and soon met Matt and Nick and became a 'gang of four'.

Eventually, especially when he went off to university, we drifted apart - as young friends do - because he was of the more "work hard, play hard" ethos and I was just plain lazy.

He also tried to shake the 'Gublin' nickname and return to the more 'mature' Andy... which, of course, we ignored.

Time moved on and the last we saw of Gublin was about 35 years ago. It was Matt and Nick's brother Adrian's wedding reception and Andy announced that he was going next door to check out the other reception going on in the hotel!

Over the years I heard tales from my parents - who met his mum in the village occasionally - that he got married, had a kid, worked for a big City bank, had given it all up, bought a yacht and sailed round the world.

I seem to remember, although it's all a bit of a blur these days, that he sent me a get well card when I was in hospital, but I haven't heard anything since dad passed away. Mum moved out of Pembury and so didn't see Andy's mum anymore.

We tried to track Andy down when Matt died in 2022, but to no avail.

Gublin is just one of many gamers who have come and gone out of my life; for instance, whatever happened to Tom Edwards, who introduced me to the Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy radio series and then ran a wild D&D game based on it? Or Guy Huckle and his coterie of gaming buddies that I befriended at Skinners?

More importantly, are they still gaming?