The History of Hexicon Fantasy Roleplay (I)....

In the beginning there were Sunday afternoon role-playing sessions. Kielan Yarrow, oh wise GM, did look at other RPG games and thought unto Himself - 'My players are laughing at me, there is no challenge when you have 90 gig-oolian hit points and the Sword of Thrag - I want them to suffer and writhe in hideous pits of realism. I can create a more satisfying and ultimately deadly game for myself in order to kill all the players more readily'.

And so it did come to pass that He came to set forth upon the path to create such a game, inscribing its rules and sacred texts in biro upon the lined, A5 pages of exercise books stolen from His A-level classrooms and other such scraps of parchment that He did cast His eye upon.

Slowly the entity took shape, many years was it in the making and many mortals did dare to explore its arcane rules and play within His dark creation. Across the long span of those most holy of Sunday afternoons, His creation developed and grew, each mortal plaything adding something to its final form until it stood before the heavens as the masterwork it clearly was.

He was most pleased. The mortal playthings also were satisfied that the Sword of Thrag would not protect them fully from the peril of 'falling off of things that were high' or the 'lucky smack on the head from behind'.

Still however the problem remained of the mighty Hexicon's vessel - the brown and green exercise books previously owned by the CNS School. As beloved as they were they were tatty in His sight and the word could not be spread to other dens of those who dress up pretending to be goblins.

So it was, in those times of great uncertainty that He was encouraged to embrace the wonders of the 'micro-chip' and impart the sacred words into Word (and in some cases Excel) in order to pass the gift to other mortals.

This was a great undertaking, with the passing of the word of the rules came the burden of passing on the gift of understanding the word of the rules - and so was born the 'rule-book'. This verbose and wondrous glue bound the arcane and opaque tables and charts together allowing others to understand their meaning.

A great day had come at last. With the light of comprehension shining upon them others did look upon His creation and did say - 'verily, it is pretty good, you should flog it'. And so, plans were drawn, artists were commissioned and proof-readers conjured to spread the word of Hexicon further still…