“Are you Dirk the Dice, can I claim a pint?” These were the first words that Andrew Jones, Dimbyd on social media, said to me back in 2015.
It was at DragonMeet shortly after the podcast had been released. He went on to say that he was a fan of the show due to the RuneQuest content and more importantly, it had mentioned F.C.Parker, the games shop in Cardiff where he went when he was young.
The tragic news of his death on Sunday (13th April) has brought back the memories of good times that we spent together, playing games and talking bobbins.
That meeting was the first for a real-life listener to the GROGNARD files. Social media posts had been exchanged and comments made on this blog, but the only evidence that someone was really listening was Andrew saying hello. His broad smile through his beard and twinkling eyes were very reassuring. People were listening to us.
We went on to meet others who have since become friends like Andrew, and he was part of the organisational effort for us all to have a gaming day together in Manchester. At the first GROGMEET we met in a pub the night before. The plan was to sit around and chat. Andrew pulled out Feng Shui2 RPG from his bag and said, “let’s play!”
At the old FanBoy Three we had a wonderfully chaotic game involving kung fu action and finger cymbals. His original humbrol painted Citadel miniatures as markers. It was brilliantly fun and inclusive and his first step set the tone for all the GROGMEETs that have followed.
His desire to play created the first GROGMEET eve. He was and always will be, the first GROGMEET GamesMaster.
EXPO-EXPOSURE
At UK Games Expo the following year, he acted as a chaperone, introducing me to other gamers, “this is Dirk the Dice, he does a podcast.”
“Don’t listen to ‘em,” responded one bluntly.
Andrew was great company over that weekend. He’d brought along an ashcan version of the new RuneQuest in Glorantha rules for us to play-test. The character sheet hadn’t been devised yet, so he had characters on reams and reams of paper. Pookie (or Pookie Wookie, as Andrew insisted on naming him) was part of the team too, putting new fangled ‘augment’ rules through the paces. There was a duck, a zombie duck, there were always ducks with Dimbyd.
At one GROGMEET he took the Ducks to the Red Moon. “They were part of the zeitgeist in the 70s,” he would explain, “Howard and Scrooge McDuck, all the hippies loved them. Like the fashion for zombies today, ducks are in Glorantha because they were trendy.”
He was one of the Runemaster bunch of RuneQuest GMs and he was always very creative with his Glorantha sessions. They were respectful to the lore, but never a slave to it and he injected a sense of adventure and wit into his scenarios. And Ducks, I did mention the ducks. One time, when I was GMing RuneQuest to a bunch of unwitting players at a convention, he loomed up behind me and said, “Kill them, kill them all!”
When we weren’t gaming he was a gentle, insightful, funny conversationalist. We talked about local and national politics, comics, music and his family, who were very important to him. His mum, dad and sister. Every time I saw him, he’d talk about plans to learn to drive so he could get to them more and do more errands. “Have you started learning yet?” I’d say, “not yet, but I’m getting there.” We also shared a passion for The Goodies, so it was good to give him “The Goodies Files” and “The Goodies’ Book of (Criminal) Records” as a gift for looking after me at Expo.
He withdrew from social media and extracted himself from the scene for a while, for health reasons. It was delightful to get a positive response to an invitation to a Moorcock/ Tolkien Weekender a couple of years ago. He was a chief antagonist of the debate between the two factions: who is better, Tolkien or Moorcock? Spending the weekend was a great chance to see him back on form and what we had missed: his cheeky sense of humour and expansive knowledge of … everything.
Recently, he was giving me advice about The Borellus Connection, the new Fall of Delta Green campaign released by Pelgrane Press. Before my campaign started, he warned me that it seemed high-risk, and to have some back-up characters ready to go, just in case. He was keen to know how it was going to progress. It’s sad to think that I won’t have chance to tell him.
I’m pretty sure that I honoured the ‘pint’ (probably a pepsi), I did say terms and conditions applied, nevertheless I will be raising a glass to him tonight: Gorffwys mewn heddwch … Dimbyd.
