Hatchling Dragon: The mystery and the history of Faerie Wood
Regular readers of this blog – both of you – will know about Faerie Wood by now. (Irregular readers should go and read this and maybe this and come back when you’ve finished.) In the wake of my first post about the game, having re-established contact with its author and illustrator Garry Robson and having also made the online acquaintance of Faerie Wood’s editor and co-promoter Richard Farr, I thought about doing an interview with these two fine gentlemen. What especially interested me – and would, I thought, interest others – was (a) how Faerie Wood originated, and (b) how Garry and Richard went about financing, producing, distributing and marketing the game in the pre-Kickstarter, pre-Lulu, pre-PDF era of the early 1990s, when AD&D 2e was young, Jack Vance was completing the Cadwal Chronicles, The Orb were adventuring beyond the Ultraworld, Beavis and Butt-head were busy mocking the likes of Stakka Bo on MTV, and Quentin Tarantino was filming Michael Madsen dancing to Stealer’s Wheel in a warehouse in LA.
But I’m lazy and dilatory and didn’t get around to it, and now I don’t need to because Richard has started writing a blog in which he recalls the gestation, birth, and teething troubles of Faerie Wood. It’s fascinating stuff, frequently hilarious, and there are plenty of Garry’s splendid, irreverent illustrations to gawk at. The blog is called Hatchling Dragon, and you can find it right here.
