An Affinity for Snow

I've a real affinity for snow.

It's been a few days since my hometown was blanketed in snow, that great leveller that makes everywhere look uniform, destroying any distinction between the well manicured and the more wild garden.  A blank canvas, if you will, on which your own story can be written.  And despite the fact that the many demands on my time, whether work, caring for my wife who has a chronic illness, the demands of family, or the extra time it takes to get anywhere, least of all because of the scraping of ice and snow off the car, the arrival of those magical flakes of snow transport me to magical places.

A single flake can take me back to my childhood, to the sheer unadulterated joy of being able to go into the garden, pick stuff up from the ground and throw it about with impunity. Or using a plastic bag as a sledge and racing down a hill without a moment's thought about the need for brakes, even as a treeline comes tearing into view. Even going for a walk, my sister in a buggy, as I imagine myself trudging through snow drifts that wouldn't look out of place in Narnia or on Sir Walter Scott's famous expedition. 

But the advancement of age gets int he way of such things, right?  

Well, yes.  And no. 

Because those flakes of snow also take me back to my teenage years, and one winter in particular.  Games Workshop had just released Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay the previous year.  By this time I had become an avid fan of RPGs.  And as a DM/GM (the latter being my preferred title at the time) I had already played D&D, AD&D was in full swing, MERP, Call of Cthulhu, Paranoia, Stormbringer, Judge Dredd, Runequest and Palladium were all games I had happily run.

But WFRP (or WaFRuP as we began calling it back then) was something completely different, and something unique.  So on this cold January morning, after more than a week of snowfall that had broken the school boiler and left us all with time on our hands, and with all buses cancelled because the roads were impassable, I accompanied my Mum on a long walk into town, powered by youthful expectation and a good pair of moon boots (remember them?) on the promise that we would pop into what was the most magical shop in Derby at the time, Amazing! so I could get the first instalment of the newly launched Enemy Within Campaign.  This was in the days before Games Workshop opened a shop of their own in Saddlergate. 

And every time the snow begins falling, my mind goes back to that time.  

Oh the joy of freedom.  The long continuous hours poring over the pages of what can only be described as the pamphlet, learning all about The Empire, and hearing how the adventure begins in 'Mistaken Identity.'  That campaign became something far, far bigger than anything that GW might have envisioned it, for back then, with up to a year between the publication of its five instalments, there was a lot of gaming sessions to fill.  Scenarios from White Dwarf helped out.  But I wrote a lot of stuff myself.  i drew on so many different sources, whether novels, films or my own ideas, building a world as much as Richard Halliwell, Carl Sergeant or Graeme Davis were. (They, admittedly were earning a living doing so.  I was merely finding an escape from a world I was growing up in, studying in, and growing to lose faith in.)

Things come wrapped up in time, of course, and the point came when I moved a good few hundred miles north to study in Aberdeen, Scotland.  This brought an end to my games of WaFRuP.  Life, and friendships went separate ways. Sure, I ran some MegaTraveller for a bit, I played some other stuff for a few sessions, but nothing hit the mark.  

But every snowfall (which, thankfully, happens quite a lot in the northeast of Scotland!) I was reminded of the magic of WaFRuP, of world building, of friendships long gone, heroic deeds done, and all in a place that felt grounded and real somehow.  Every time the snow fell, it would lead me back to those original campaign books and let myself slip away to another realm, one instantly familiar.  I'd remember the ways the scenarios went down, the things our characters said and did.  I would be drawn back into that magical world, somewhere that felt safe (yeah, I know, a grim world of perilous adventure, but still.)  Phrases from crit charts like 'by chance a bone splinter severs a major artery' (which happened at a rate that made it seem anything but by chance) flood my memory.  Sun dappled clearings in the Drakwald fill my senses.  I can smell the scent of beers and spirits and feel once more the comfort of The Templar's Arms in Middenheim that became home to our party. 

Of course, the gap of roleplaying allowed my wargaming, both all things GW and historical to come to the fore.  I still hanker after a snow board, for the Bulge as much as the Vampire models I want to paint and cover their bases in snow.  And then a very treasured friend happened to mention WaFRuP.  Soon I was getting the new release Director's Cut of The Enemy Within and the latest 4th edition rules by Cubicle 7.  And as the snow began falling at the start of 2023, I began to dream of GMing again.

That, sadly, didn't transpire.  Instead, along came a chance to play WaFRuP from the other side of the GM screen.  And, like magic, and in the company of some very precious and like-minded friends, I stepped back into a world I had left some thirty years before.  Yes, the mechanics are a bit different.  The world is a bit different, mainly due to all the lore and fluff that GW accumulated in Warhammer Fantasy Battle over the years.  But this was good.  It was familiar but fresh, new, but old enough to give me an anchor in an imaginary world I could call home once more.  I sill miss the world I created all those years ago far more than I could every put into words.  But now I have a new journey, one I can share with people who mean the world to me.  And this is  definitely a good thing.

As I type this, the snow is melting.  Leaden clouds are sending darts of icy rain slashing across my window.  The temperature has gone from seven below to two above in the space of a couple of hours.  Change is coming, hinted at with as much vehemence as the erratic dancing path of Morrsleib itself...

And as the pristine white turns a dubby grey and brown, and what once unified begins to fade from view, things start to get back to what they really are.  But I cant help but be reminded that there is a magic in snow.  A promise of escape.  A link to the past.  A link to the imagination.  

An affinity for snow...