The GROGNARD Files

“We need to have a visual identity for the podcast,” I suggested, shortly after the realisation that people were actually listening to the podcast.

Like most of my bright ideas, this was met by Judge Blythy with a shrug.

“If it makes you feel better, then go ahead.”

Back then, The GROGNARD Files was beginning to develop into something more than two middle-aged men reminiscing about old roleplaying games. A small group was forming around the podcast and our Twitter account. People weren’t just talking about RuneQuest, Traveller and AD&D—they wanted to meet one another and actually play games.

There had already been a handful of RPG “tweet-ups” around the country, often taking place in game shops in Nottingham and elsewhere, proving that internet friendships could survive contact with reality. Encouraged by this, a few of us wondered whether Manchester might be the ideal place for something similar.

That small gathering became GROGMEET.

The first event took place at MadLab, Manchester’s wonderfully eccentric makerspace in the Northern Quarter, back when the area still felt like artists and geeks had a fighting chance of affording the rent. We had no idea we were starting something that would still be going a decade later.

The podcast artwork had been created by my friend Paddy McGrath—better known as Super Logo Boy—who had recently launched his own graphic design business. I gave him a fairly vague brief about a Games Master disappearing into different personalities while running a game.

The image became “the GROG head”, representing the Games Master’s ability to become a dragon, goblin, innkeeper and evil sorcerer, often within the same five minutes. Better still, the illustration looked exactly like something you would have painstakingly doodled on your school pencil case during double maths in 1983.

Around the artwork, Paddy lovingly recreated the look of homemade RPG fanzines, complete with Letraset typography.

The GROG face has since taken on a life of its own. Various artists have reinterpreted it over the years, each putting their own spin on the character. That’s probably a story for another blog post.

The first couple of GROGMEETs were really conceived as launch parties for GROGZINE. Looking back, organising the convention was actually the easy bit.

Producing the magazine nearly finished me off.

As anyone who has ever self-published anything will know, every page creates three more pages of work. I imposed an utterly unrealistic deadline upon myself, fuelled by enthusiasm, tea and increasingly poor decision making, “you look like you’ve been ship-wrecked,” Blyhy said to me after a zine all-nighter.

One unexpected joy, however, was commissioning artwork.

Through the zine I had the opportunity to approach some genuine legends of the hobby, including Liz Danforth. Liz illustrated Ken St. Andre’s article on Monsters! Monsters! and, wonderfully, allowed us to use her illustration to promote GROGMEET 2017. Having artwork from someone whose illustrations I’d admired since my teens was surreal.

In 2018, MadLab disappeared beneath the unstoppable tide of Manchester redevelopment. It’s now an artisan beard-oil emporium selling reclaimed coffee or something like that.

We moved to another makerspace which, while perfectly functional, appeared to consist mainly of concrete, corrugated steel and temperatures usually associated with Arctic exploration.

It quickly became known as the Year of the Shed.

GROGSQUAD member Wayne Peters produced the logo, giving us the first real callback to the podcast itself. Alongside the familiar GROG iconography sat a packet of Hobnobs and, an empty space where the dice bag ought to have been.

The following year everything came together beautifully.

Fan Boy Three generously handed over virtually the entire shop for the weekend, and Wayne surpassed himself with what remains one of the most recognisable GROGMEET designs.

Uncle Joe’s Mint Ball possibly the finest thing ever to come out of Wigan than the A58 to Bolton.

Wayne confessed he’d never actually heard of Uncle Joe’s before I suggested the idea, but that didn’t stop him producing an instant classic. I may have become slightly obsessed.

The artwork appeared on badges.

T-shirts.

Dice trays.

Stickers.

I had enormous plans for what would come next year …

Then came 2020.

The Great Unpleasantness.

With Greater Manchester apparently locked down permanently by Boris Johnson, while he partied in London, a physical GROGMEET simply wasn’t possible. Fortunately we’d already been running Virtual GROGMEET every April for several years, so we expanded the idea into the full online convention experience.

Thus GROGMEETish was born.

Simon Perrins was the GROGMEET artist who produced a brilliant illustration based around a Zoom gallery view. His collection of fantasy characters created our very own Celebrity Squares.

By 2021 we were cautiously emerging into the world again.

Following the science—and several hundred pages of government guidance—we held a socially distanced convention alongside another online GROGMEETish.

The physical event quickly became affectionately known as GROGMEAT, featuring Simon’s affectionate homage to the classic Games Workshop carrier bags illustrated by Iain McCaig. Two masked gamers playing three metres apart, perfectly capturing that strange period when rolling initiative also involved remembering hand sanitiser.

2022 became PROGMEET, for reasons long forgotten, playing some games inspired by progressive rock.

Simon somehow managed to combine roleplaying games and Genesis into a glorious homage to A Trick of the Tail. The artwork was absolutely packed with references—some obvious, others deeply obscure—and we even ran a competition inviting people to identify every hidden detail.

Appropriately enough, Dr Rock himself, Jules Hayley, emerged victorious.

Manchester, meanwhile, continued trying to grow, with more and more skyscrapers touching the sky – Manchattan.

As the city grew, finding a single venue capable of holding GROGMEET became increasingly difficult. So, in 2023, the convention spread across multiple locations.

Simon responded by creating individual characters representing each venue: Northern Monk, Whitworth Locke, Fan Boy Three and The Lass O’ Gowrie. It transformed a logistical headache into one of the most distinctive GROGMEET identities we’d ever had.

The city continued conspiring against us in 2024, when Manchester became temporarily overrun by music royalty and the MTV awards, forcing yet another shuffle to January 2025.

Possibly my favourite illustration Simon has ever produced. Inspired by White Dwarf 38, the image centred on Judge Blythy as a weary necromancer surrounded by decades of podcast references. Some were obvious.

Others were deep-lore.

Anyone remember the dragon who sounded like Cliff Richard?

I could have spent hours looking at it. Blythy’s review was, naturally, more concise.

“Who wants my stupid face on a T-shirt? You haven’t thought this through.”

We stayed with the January slot in 2026 for the slightly hastily organised No Shacket Required GROGMEET.

This time there wasn’t an opportunity for a brand-new commission, but Phil Collins paid tribute to Paddy McGrath’s original GROG faces, in a DIY image.

Here we go. And so we arrive at GROGMEET Preston 2026.

A new town.

A new venue.

Another adventure.

To mark the tenth anniversary, Simon Perrins has created a celebratory illustration that somehow captures both where we’ve come from and where we’re heading. As we leave Manchester behind, we’re hoping to recreate a little of that wonderful uncertainty that surrounded the very first gathering back in 2016.

Nobody quite knew whether anyone would turn up.

Nobody knew whether it would work.

After years of gently indulging my obsession with logos, artwork and merchandise, Judge Blythy finally admitted what I’d suspected all along.

“Yes… you’re right. It does help having something visual.”

Next time: GROGFRINGE and beyond…