Trivia / Games Workshop

• Darker and Edgier: Games Workshop was started by hippie adjacent geeky young men and '70s GW was very much a reflection of this. With the '80s and bringing new staff plus needing to differentiate themselves from other rpg products at the time, GW moved increasingly in the direction of Dark Fantasy for their Warhammer game universe.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The first Games Workshop logo was a shifty looking mouse that was drawn by Ian Livingstone in the style of Robert Crumb who Ian was a fan of. Additionally, besides being a mail-order distributor of games, GW initially was mostly known for their fanzine Owl and Weasel which reviewed rpgs and discussed fantasy and sci-fi pop culture. Eventually Owl and Weasel became the glossy magazine White Dwarf.
• The Pete Best: Games Workshop was actually founded by Ian Livingstone, Steve Jackson and one other. This would be John Peake who quickly left the company he helped found because he had no interest in rpgs (his role in the company was making traditional game sets for sales) when GW was focusing increasingly on rpg sales and production.
• What Could Have Been: In Dice Men, Ian Livingstone mentioned that were a number "What If" situations that happened to GW. In Chapter 13 Independence Day, he mentioned that in 1979, Gary Gygax wanted to have a merger between TSR and Games Workshop. While GW was deeply flattered especially since they were such a small company at the time, they wanted to remain an indie business. Hindsight would prove Livingstone right as in 1985, Gary Gygax was replaced and soon TSR would collapse.