Remember When Games Workshop Made Mad Max? | Dark Future History
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 2 май 2024
- In 1988 Games Workshop released a short lived game of highway warriors called Dark Future. Inspired by Mad Max and 2000AD the game saw players using Hot Wheels style matchbox cars on the dangerous freeways of a nightmarish alternate USA.
American history was rewritten to show how a country might descend into a dystopia of mega corporations, privatised police forces, climate change ravaged states, and bloody lawless car based combat. For a time the game stood alongside Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40,000 as a core system for Games Workshop, some even describing it as Warhammer 2k given its setting in the second millennium.
Drawing on 80s cinema like Mad Max: The Road Warrior, RoboCop, and Terminator, the world of Dark Future was initially developed as roleplaying game by Marc Gascoigne before being grafted onto Space Hulk creator Richard Halliwell’s vehicle combat rules from Judge Dredd. Supplemented by phenomenal new rules in White Dwarf and a range of incredible GW Books Dark Future didn’t last long, but it was an incredibly interesting experiment for Citadel.
_____________________________
Support My Work:
DOWNLOAD MY FANTASY BATTLE SCENARIO DEAD KING WENCESLAS:
jordansorcery.itch.io/dead-ki...
ELEMENT GAMES AFFILIATE LINK:
elementgames.co.uk/?d=11216
PATREON:
/ jordansorcery
KO-FI:
ko-fi.com/jordansorcery
INSTAGRAM:
/ jordansorcery
BLUESKY:
bsky.app/profile/jordansorcer...
WEBSITE:
jordansorcery.com/
DISCORD:
My Discord is now open to exclusively to Patreon supporters & by invitation only
#DarkFuture #GamesWorkshop #CitadelMiniatures #MadMax #Warhammer #40k #Warhammer40000 #tabletop #boardgames #RPG #wargames
_____________________________
References, Sources, and Links:
[Dark Future: Blood Red States]
www.aurochdigital.com/darkfut...
_____________________________
Art, Music, and Copyright:
Images used belong to their respective copyright owners
Jordan Sorcery Theme by Joylin Music
Jordan Sorcery Heraldry by Becka Moor
Jordan Sorcery Heraldry and Theme copyright @jordansorcery 
Развлечения
As someone whose teenage GW period went from 1988 to 1991, my gut reaction is always 'yeah, everyone knows about this'
This was my era too, first GW game I outright owned for myself rather than stealing my brothers stuff
Yes, we are old!🤣
@@dr.sommercamp3435Older mate,not old!😃
Same here. I loved the campaign system. I mostly remember playing this on my own. I picked up a secondhand copy a few years ago and keep eyeing it with the goal of creating a soloable version.
Was playing "Dark Future" with friend in apartment. Table not large enough so played on floor. Doorbell rings. Neighbour visits to talk about issue with shared gas. Neighbour is attractive slightly older lady. Attractive slightly older lady sees two university students playing with Dinky cars on floor. Awkward silence. Says "Err... I'll come back later". Damn you "Dark Future"!
"Hey, uhm, Miss, are you interested in some Dark Future- tabletop action?"
Dark Future lore with Gaslands gameplay is definitely the way to go with this!
I'd love to give Gaslands a go one day, it looks like a fun successor!
The forever map in Dark Future is better than gas lands but the tables are so 80s
My first memory of Games Workshop is walking into the Nottingham store where they had a big oval Dark Future track in the middle. You just joined in and played until your car was blown up.
Going from Car Wars to Dark Future was a journey. Car Wars had much more depth, but Dark Future's minis brought the game to life in a way that Car Wars' cardboard tokens never could.
There's a new edition of Car Wars that released recently.
And it uses plastic minis, either Matchbox or HO model RR scale. I can't remember which they settled on.
Car Wars took way too long , at least that was my experience.
@@Dragonette666 I played Car Wars a lot in the 80's & 90's. And you are entirely correct. 😺
My friends and I had an absolute blast playing Dark Future in campaign mode back in the day. So glad I kept all of my gear for it. Great to see you cover this gem.
There was a Chainsaw Warrior miniature in the Dark Future line too - so another link to Warhammer, 40K, Talisman etc
Wow, yeah I was a huge Mad Max fan back in the 80s, my dad bought this for my birthday in 88, I was obsessed with it for years, still have two full copies of it to this day.
That was a lovely wander down memory lane! Played this so much. I still have loads of the ‘pedestrians’, but no idea where the main game went. Knowing it’s history now makes sense of how dense the background was.
The campaign rules from WD were fantastic, can’t remember any other game where one of the main objectives was to become famous/infamous, rather than capture territory.
I came to GW a little too late for Dark Future but I loved the MB boardgame "Thunder Road" which had a similar 'rolling' road layout. Restoration Games have made an updated version of TR recently. I always thought that designing Dark Future to use the same scale as Matchbox/Hot Wheels cars was a stroke of genius. But they missed a trick in not selling conversion kits of extra weapons / gubbins to add to the matchbox vehicles.
Still on my shelf! once white line fever came out, seasons of circuit racing became our favourite way to play;.
I had this game, no one else in my gaming group did. I wish this would get a re-release. I bought loads of the gang members and mini figures and had loads of fun making gangs.
Gutting that GW denied the bid for a Dark Future RPG and novels reprint. I never played the game as I only got into GW in my teens in the early 90s but I liked the idea of the background and world from old White Dwarves.
Shame we never got the finale to the Demon Download cycle too- it’s bad form of GW to leave the fans hanging during both publication periods.
Dark Future was my 2nd ever boxed game I brought, the First was Adeptus Titanicus, I still have them, and play them both.
Same here and I also still have mine. Nice to know this cool game isn't forgotten.
I really wish this had continued. The game sounds like a lot of fun and I know if that rpg had been made, I'd be playing that instead of Cyberpunk 2020.
It definitely feels like the DF world could have made for a great RPG setting
There just are not enough Dark Future videos on the infrawebs and I really enjoyed this one. Thank you :)
I still have my late 80s copy of Dark Future. Complete with a ringbinder with some of the extra rules from White Dwarf. I was actually just thinking about getting it out and painting everything (I only ever painted one Interceptor and nothing else back in the day)
I have fond memories of my dad buying Matchbox cars at boot sales to convert - great video, thank you!
White Dwarf issue 110 - Dark Future - ‘Tournament Rules’ extended my interest for the game, and the tournament rules was the only game I could get my non-Warhammer buddies into playing a GW game. We loved it!
Kudos.
I loved this game as a kid. It was my older Brother’s and I was too young to ever actually play it properly. But I loved poring over the pictures and the little bits of lore in the rule book, and loved setting up the track and vehicles.
I loved the good old days of GW when I was a teenager.
Adds so much to the punk and 80's action roots of the Warhammer universe of today. Thank you sir :)
I wanted this game so much when i was a kid, hanging around the local gamestore all day long. I had a whole bunch of converted matchbox cars ready but my parents always said it was too expensive :( and then the game went away. I got Blood Bowl instead, which i also loved. My online alias kidzero is based on the character of the Dark Future short story "Kidzero and Snake Eyes" since 1998.
Nice overview of one of my favorite games ever. I got it when it first came out in '88. I think i remember my mother saying because it was an expensive game (I think it was $80 AUD), it would be my only gift that year, for both my birthday and Christmas.
And it was certainly worth it. 😎
We used to play it when not everyone could make it to our D&D session occasionally, and one member of our gaming group liked it enough to suggest playing it with just the two of us if no one else was available.
I still have the original box set, along with another complete box set I got off eBay years ago. Have White Line Fever and the Battlecars box as well, along with a handful of the pedestrians/drivers and a couple of the metal bikes/trikes/sidecars.
Also have all the White Dwarf with the Dark Future rules supplements, even made up some of my own house rules and weapons/equipment.
Sadly, no one I know wants to play DF, and I'm reluctant to take it to my flgs, as having taken my copy of Fortress America to a game store only to have pieces broken/lost/stolen doesn't inspire trust in fellow gamers.
Still, I still hold DF close to my heart. Love the game play, and the setting is dripping with imagination. The only other boardgame that would beat it in fluff text is Battletech.
My dad’s best friend has Dark Future, that he bought when it was first released, when my dad bought Blood Bowl, my dad still has his converted cars
I have the Dark Future box in my loft along with the Battle Cars expansion. One day I'll paint them up. I love the whole Mad Max aesthetic
Gaslands picked up this baton and has finished several laps in excellent time now.
Great video. I eventually painted my cars in 2018. I had to laugh when the boards on the video looked like mine. I still have White Line Fever too. Great game. Interstate 76 was a total favourite of mine on whatever computer system I had at the time... I still love the dar combat stuff.
Hey nice! Been waiting for this. As I commented on one of your other videos it was so weird going into a GW store in...I think 1992...maybe 1993 and seeing the Comeback tour Novel sitting on the shelves...with no sign of the game it was linked to anywhere in the store.
Funny that Newman mentions how Blade Runner and Mad Max are 2 polar opposites that clash together with no cohesion, because RTalsorian's Cyberpunk 2013/2020 did exactly that when including the lore for the Nomad clans
I have seen the future and it's Dark... but then I turned up the brightness on my laptop.
We had a comic/game store open a new place and they said they'd give away 2 boxes of GW products. We were so pumped to get Blood Bowel. We camped out as teenagers lying to our parents that we were staying at each others houses. We got in first and got 2 boxes of Dark Future...what a let down! We did score 1 box of BB and from there a league formed and we all loved it each day after school.
Artwork at 13:30 is also on the Fighting Fantasy book Freeway Fighter I think
I was looking forward to when you'd get to Dark Future, and it didn't disappoint!
Hi, I saw some videos around the start of your channel. Have to say you greatly improved your storytelling over time. This was fun to listen to.
My high school games club had a copy and we played it loads. As a result, my old toy cars all got smothered in thick layers of Tin Bitz and Brazen Brass. My fave games were all with my cultist biker gang. Good times.
Freeway Fighter play-book was much fun
Another great review. Correct me if im wrong but the game didnt actually scale with match box/hotwheels. They were larger and meant to scale with slightly fancied more detailed diecast cars. I remembered being disappointed when i realised this. Defintely missed a trick....or maybe they didnt want it to be too easy to just play with toy cars!
The campaign rules absolutely capture the nature of 1980s rule writing- highly evocative, but also seemijg to be completely unplaytested. As an op, you could never earn enough money to repair your c, let alone improve it.
Would you say this is a forerunner to Speed Freaks?
Thanks for all the fantastic content Jordan
Great video, really well researched. This was a great game, a blend of Car Wars rolling road and the speed of Battlecars. It was a pity it never got more of an expansion other than White Line Fever. Could have had vans, lorries etc. as Car Wars did
Great video as always Jordan! Even though this video COST ME A LOT OF MONEY hahaha, trying to track down those Dark Future books is quite difficult lol.
I have to lock my bank cards in a vault before I start researching games like this!
I can’t understand how I missed this. I was in and out of GW stores around this time, and playing car wars - which I’m pretty sure I bought from them. I never even heard of it at the time.
We used to play Dark Future but with Formula De accelerator rules in the studio and office well after we stopped selling the game(1997/8) and converting Matchbox cars was the best thing
Steve Jackson games came out with a combined Car Wars rules book I think it had role play and other rules in there as well. I can't remember.
Anyway, that was just as Dark Future was released and as soon as I saw those Dark Future miniatures I bought some and then I said Hey wait a minute. Why not use Hot Wheels and matchbox cars and just scale everything up? I never saw anything from Games Workshop saying their intention was that people could do that, but I had to think that was in their minds considering the scale of the cars. So I made a big old giant version of the Car Wars measuring tool and I spray painted and then painted my Hot Wheels cars as if they were miniatures. Then I built a city scape out of matt board, spray painted the roads gray and gritty. Never got around to painting the buildings snd only played it with friends one time. I always wish I could have played more after everything I went through to create it. But I enjoyed the process. Still have some of the character, miniatures and the cars I painted I do believe. My mom threw out some of my miniatures I think including the cars when she cleaned out the storage facility.
"I've seen the future and it's dark...,but then I took my shades off". - Dark future.
No matchbox car was safe around this game.
Dark Future brought me to GW and remains my favourite title of theirs.
It's their only game I will consider hunting down old mini's.
Still have most of the game and the box and bits. Loved the game.
Nice one, Badger.
Quality, Sheer Quality Output.. I remember painting up an Articulated clip together truck in the Same scale. And playing it on a the Board my friend built in his independent Game shop back in the Days...
I ended up salvaging my old broken Scalextric track in order for a bigger 'map', loved that game, it helped that Mad Max was popular back then.
I bought into this game early as a lover of car wars seeing Dark Future looked amazing. Overall though we found the game didnt hold as well as we wanted. Mind you it was a heck of an improvement on battlecars
i should add the Esoteric Order of Gamers has a online copy of the rules for Battlecars as well
@@NikButler how very dare you! 😂🤣I still own Battle Cars (and Battle Bikes)!
@@davidwasilewski see NOW i wan to play Battlecars again
Still have the core game and add ons,converted about 15 or so cars and vans and lorrys and about 60 of the figures still a fun game.
I was really into 40K back then. Reading White Dwarf, I was aware of Dark Future, but living in the US it was much less available than the UK.
Also, I was a big fan of Car Wars ever since the first game was released. Eventually they bolted on a lot of RPG-lite elements to Car Wars (both Role Playing Game and Rocket Propelled Grenade 😺). I still have almost all of my Car Wars thingies
I actually won a copy of DF in a White Dwarf launch competition - more or less landed on my birthday in ’88, which was a great gift because it was something like £25 and I couldn't afford that 😂 Played it to death, despite the pretty hardcore complexity. I was already a big cyberpunk fan, so the world appealed as much as the game. I had no idea there was almost an RPG! Such a shame we didn't get to see that.
The Dark Future novels, despite being very much 'of their time' are still some of my favourite GW publications.
I've been playing a lot of Gaslands over the past couple years, as it is, to me, the spiritual successor to DF.
Same here, I was hoping for a long time that the last one (United States Cavalry) would be published someday.
I loved Battle Cars and Judge Dredd. Add Talisman and 2nd edition Warhammer……That was my board game childhood. Loved it. Thanks for this Jordan.
Absolutely remember plying this in our company wargames club on a monday night. It was one of those games like Talisman that came out when we weren't doing a demo game at an event or a campaign in d and d or Starfleet battles. 😊
THATS IT!!! THATS THE BLOODY GAME!! Thankyou
I've still got some of the cars and bikes somewhere.
Excellent video ! Loved it
Thank you!
10:10 ahh the classic GW laser weapons look. In fact the laser and the heavy laser look a lot like the lasgun and lascannon that came with the first Imperial Guard plastic boxed set. Dark Future is the precursor to 40k confirmed :D
Thank you for this, it always held mystery and wonder for me, seeing it on the box of my first Edition space hulk, and was always gutted I never got a chance to buy it. Then last year I started to try and track it down cheaply. A couple of Face book and eBay purchases late I have a complete copy with the supplement. Not had a chance to play yet, trying to restore the cars, but one day! Also trying to track down the rules for the street gangs but no luck yet, I got the WD with the rules in but it had been taken out.. I’ll keep trying… That time of GW just feels s more fun time… thank for the brilliant work you do.
Comeback Tour is still one of my favourite GW tie-in novels.
I started to get into GW about the time this came out. It was the first of the "big box" releases, followed by Blood Bowl 2nd ed, Adeptus Titanicus and Space Marine, and Space Hulk. All great games!
The Warhammer games were all books, until i think 40k second ed, when they all became big boxes as well.
I preferred playing the big box games - they were generally cheaper to collect and simpler to play (at least for this then ten year old) than the Warhammer games.
Thanks for the video!
Does anyone else remember a game called CarWars? This definitely gave me that vibe.
This game is great fun! A bit crunchy, but once you get a few games in, you'll be sailing! The universe it's set in is amazing. The novels are fantastic. Grab some matchbox cars and glue some bits on and paint em, good to go!!!!
Awesome video! Dark future was only ever pictures in a magazine to me but damn I'd love to try it now!
Great video Jordan. Thanks for sharing. Definitely before my time but very interesting nevertheless.
I forgot about this one, thank you!
Awesome video, Jordan, I love your histories. I don't know that I ever had any awareness of this game, I think I was distracted by Steve Jackson's Car Wars and Autoduel, and if I'd heard of Dark Future at all I'd probably in my ignorance confused it with Dark Conspiracy...shame the rpg never came out though, it sounds like it would have been a blast.
I’d have loved to see that RPG!
Loved this game so much ,just perfect, got gaslands now but yet to play it
he has a cat to keep clan eshin away
Another awesome video. I couldn’t agree more on your take, would much prefer an RPG or more fiction, or even a skirmish game. The world is amazing, and deserved more.
So much potential with the setting!
This was my first ever GW purchase at the age of 14 and i loved every minute i spent emerged in the dark and futuristic world.
My next purchse was the original Adeptus Titanicus which holds my most favourite gaming memories.
Please Jordan, and i cannot stress the word please enough, cover Battlefleet Gothic. Please 🙏 🙏 🙏
BFG is very much on the list for a video one day!
Extra points for all the contextual idioms in this retrospective. You're firing on all cylinders.
Got the box in the loft still
Watch out for those roads warping!
I remember when that was on shelves the box art was the best box art games workshop had at the time
Terrific cover
i forgotten all about this
‘Bring it back’ ‘bring it back’
19:27 that is 100% Elvis with an SMG.
Classic!
Martha likes Dark Future!
Great video! I remember the game and the novels with Elvis Presley as the protagonist.
Why did the game fail? You didn't answer the question in your video.
I don’t know for sure, but it does seem to coincide with GW rationalising their ranges before and after the management buy out.
The company became far more concentrated on Warhammers Fantasy & 40k as the engine for international growth, which is why the books and other less popular stuff got cut back.
@@jordansorcery Thank you!
Ya know, the Emperor was alive at the time. And no one ever saw him and Elvis together at the same time.
Never saw this in the USA during the mid late 80s in the USA even though I was aware of it from White Dwarf. Car Wars was very well known in USA though. I have most of those rules and expansions.
I was looking for a game like this years ago and bought Devil's Run : Route 666 (2016) which was fine and many of the expansions and extra plastic minis for it for the various different factions. I bought Gaslands and that was decent also. Steve Jackson's 'Car Wars' is decent also and still around actually. Also I have the Games Workshop board game 'Battle Cars' and expansion 'Battle Bikes' which is great also.
But am I missing out on any other car wars games out there that are excellent ? if so recommend one pls I have the 'Dark Future' base game but not any other of the miniatures that I didn't buy when they were out or cheap.
Also I have Thunder Road by MB Games (which is ok).
Nice that you mentioned Richard Haliwell (RIP) for the Judge Dredd game he helped develop.
Apocalypse Road by the highly regarded GMT Games is also a good modern board game which is battle cars themed (which I own).. That's all I got.
Loved this game the lore was amazing shame it got canned.
The world building really is fantastic
I see you're road tiles got a bit warped like mine. Any advice on how to re-flatten them?
I love DF but the idea that it was well supported isn't really true.. there was a special WD issue at the time of its release and a couple subsequent articles but then it seemed to be pretty quickly forgotten about. A couple of years later when it seemed certain that we would never hear about the game ever again they dumped two huge articles in WD which had clearly intended to be the second supplement follow up to White Line Fever. The campaign rules really add an awful lot to the game and make it much more complete and it's shame that they weren't published as a nice book, but was also a clear sign that the game had now been completely abandoned. Blood Bowl 2nd ed for example from the same time period had loads more miniature releases and features in the magazine.
I loved it.
Just remembered I actually had a load of those figures I picked up from a moderatelyflgs bargain bin. I'd kinda assumed they had some purpose, but nope. The cultists were cool at least.
Love the breakdown of the wider context and history, especially around the lore and different influences. Maybe Cavil will produce a show based on the novels, then cancel it before the last season 😂
12:15 Spot the John Blanche :)
I'd love to roleplay in this world ! I think Stellar adventure by Graham Botley was suppose to let player play in the freeway fighter world so technically it's cold be a Dark future rpg. I heard there's also freeway fighter comic books
It feels like a great world for role playing, I’m very tempted to graft it on to a different system and give it a go myself!
@@jordansorcery In France we have a great post-apocalyptic rpg called Bitume wich takes place in world quite like Dark future but in France. I recommend the 80s ans 90's editions more than the last one though
Sci-Punk Anthology by Runehammer Games and Cy_b0rg do a good job of some apocalyptic rpg rules frameworks. Highly recommend checking them out. Ran a year long Dark Future influenced campaign with them.
I never knew Hogshead had been interested in developing Dark Future as a RPG. It's such a great setting, especially with the classic Kim Newman novels. A real shame it never came to anything.
Maybe Cubicle 7 could do something with it? Get Marc Gascoigne involved for good measure 😀
That would be amazing!
I think I was sort of aware of Dark Future (and a couple of other GW games) before I enountered Warhammer because they were occasionally advertised in video game magazines and one such magazine, C&VG, reviewed them in its tabletop gaming column. I remember thinking the concept and the cars seemed pretty interesting but I think the review criticised the game for having a level of complexity that meant its gameplay didn't match up to the frenetic and kinetic feel of its inspirations. I think that the magazine's review of Blood Bowl was similar - cool concept but the gameplay was a bit too crunchy and slow to really embody that concept.
That review seems quite fair, and there’s definitely a bit of a disconnect between rules and world, but it’s still good fun nonetheless I think
We were already into Car Wars so never tried this
Still have my copy....
Still have a load of the minins from then.
Is there anywhere that has put these Marc Gascoigne setting notes up?
19:45 Everybody's gangsta... until a cultist opens his ropes to pull out a damn minigun, his beloved infidel-mower called Hope Painless.
"Y'ai 'ng'ngah, Yog-Sothoth h'ee - l'geb f'ai throdog uaaah."
I really did get this game oh a long time ago
But at 19:18... that's Elvis ! 😄
I read that one in the german translation as I was like 14. You know: He never died, he just was hunting mutants!