An Interview With.....Gav Thorpe - Dysartes & Gav Thorpe

For those of you who might not be aware, Gav Thorpe is the Warhammer Loremaster. In effect, he is in charge of the development of Warhammer Fantasy Battles. Prior to this post, he has also developed supplements and systems for other parts of the Games Workshop rage, including Codex: Blood angels and Codex: Eldar for Warhammer 40,000, as well as Inquisitor, the 54mm roleplaying game. For those of you who can remember this far back, Gav also used to work for White Dwarf back in the day, though his run in battle reports can be said to be likened to Jervis'.

General GW

Do you know if there is any desire to bring back the citadel journal (or a publication with similar content) for Warhammer Fantasy/40k?

No, but you'll see that WD and the website has been increasing the amount of hobby-related articles and I think this fills the same sort of gap.

How often is GW planning on releasing a codex/army book? It seems like it's 2 per year, per system. Is this accurate?

There are many factors that go into a release schedule, and one factor is the amount of work required for a particular project. Given that every year our thinking evolves and the scope and style of different sorts of supplements is changing, it's hard to give a definitive answer. I think that we would want to cover a minimum of two armies per system per year, but may well produce more, or less if there were other work-intensive projects such as a new edition or starter set.

Could you explain how long it takes to produce a codex and a range of models and how that time breaks down. How many people work on each project?

That's a very long answer, and one that varies tremendously on the scale of the project (obviously!). On the whole, we begin work on a project roughly two years before release, and would have been thinking about what we might want to do before that. We're in a constant state of self-evaluation, both as individuals and a Studio as a whole. The longest time frame required is for the design and manufacture of plastics, which takes over 80 weeks from a sculptor starting on the 3-ups to delivery to a store in Australia. This doesn't take into account design time before then, with concept drawings, working out frame breakdowns (i.e. what goes into each set) and such like.

I don't really know too much about the detail of miniatures design or art, except for the fact that it takes a long time! We can decrease this a bit by using conversions like head swaps and weapon swaps, but even so a full army from scratch like the Ogres or Tau takes up design time for the best part of a year for a couple of sculptors.

With regard to the book itself, we take as much time as possible. Given such extended timescales on a project, a games developer doesn't spend all of this time working on that project exclusively. Whilst writing and developing one army list, they will be spending time in the early stages of a future project, or more likely providing support material in the form of WD and web articles. On the whole, an army gets about six months dedicated development and testing, plus whatever could be done before the project goes 'mainstream'.

Is there any chance of going back to 5-piece multi-part, instead of the trend toward 2 or 4 part cookie-cutter plastics? And why did GW start making those awful elbow joints. They really kill creative poses. Any chance new plastic boxes will ship with all unit options (unlike Bretonnian Men at Arms and the new Chaos Warriors, both of which shipped without all their weapon options but with bunches of extraneous bitz, on the sprues.)

One of the things that we had noticed about 'creative posing' was that many of the possible poses were simply gawky or lacked any kind of unit dynamic. In Warhammer, the basic visual element (like the game) is the unit. It is important that these units are striking yet coherent (except gobbos of course, who could be all over the place). This is why we've paid particular attention to the weapons and heads, giving variety where possible, because these are the parts that are most visible on the tabletop. Each regiment set fulfils different criteria, but the important ones are how long it take to assemble a unit of 16-20 models, and how those units can be made to look different from each other when on the tabletop. There's no perfect solution (not least because of the restrictions of plastic tooling) and we'll continue to try to make these kits functional and flexible.

As to the weapon combinations, the main limiting factor is the size of the frame, but also posing is also a factor. For example, the Chaos Warriors combinations break down into two natural categories - those with a thing in each hand (weapon and shield or two weapons) and those held in both hands (great weapons and halberds). To avoid having awkwardly posed models that would probably look unnatural with every combination, we decided to split the weapons and will eventually have two separate Regiment sets.

Since the largest costs of plastic minis are moulds and design, why have the # of sprues per box dropped from 5 to 4 in most of the new plastic sets? (i.e. Skellies get 5 sprues per box, for a total of 20 models, but Chaos only gets 4 sprues for 16 minis.)

Although there is no strict formula is this regard, there is a relationship between the number of models in a regiment set and the size of units people are likely to take, based vaguely on size and points value. On the whole, most regiments are sixteen-strong. Smaller, weedier troops such goblins, Skaven and such come in twenty-strong regiments, while harder units such as Chaos warriors come in smaller units, and cavalry comes in half-strength units (i.e. Eight silver helms compared to sixteen High Elf spearmen). These days the largest cost is in packing 100,000+ boxes, where the difference between putting five frames and two frames in a box can make a considerable difference to the profitability of a product. Our plastics strategy, like so many other aspects of the range management, is constantly being updated in light of new technologies, demand and planning, and so too are the numbers of models produced in plastic.

How technical is the design of miniatures, in terms to usage of computers, especially in plastics? Are they used to works out the layout for plastic pieces on sprues, where air vents are required and such, or is that all done by other means?

It is very technical in some respects, particularly the constraints of the plastics tooling process. We're currently investigating the way technology can be used to improve the manufacturing process (such as rapid prototyping machines, 3-d scanners and the like), as well as investigating various design tools. Ultimately, we don't want to remove the skill and craft in miniatures design, because it is from that individuality and the manual process of sculpting putty that much of the character derives, but it is certainly and area GW is doing some R+D with at the moment.

There are always a lot of wacky rumours knocking around on the Internet these days, be it about release schedules, new armies or whatever. What is your view on this, as to whether its a good thing or a bad one, and would you like to do anything about it if you could?

I have no issues with rumours, and in fact some of the more outrageous speculation just has me giggling. What I object to is the way that some people treat rumour as fact, and then go on to moan about GW (or individual members of staff) based on something that is untrue. Wargaming is a social hobby, and it is to be expected with the style of product that we do, that our work creates speculation amongst the community. As long as this remains interested or light-hearted speculation, there should be no problem. At best, I can simply click the "next thread" button and move along, at worst I have to resist the urge to respond to such slanderous rumour-mongering, some of which is blatantly nonsense or deliberately antagonistic. I do resist the urge though, because what we'll get judged on is the final product we release, not what people thought it might be.

What are your thoughts on the impending "Adjustment" of the Specialist Games Studio? Do you see it as a positive or negative step for the games involved?

Having been a colleague of the Fanatic guys, it was difficult to separate my personal feelings on some of my mates moving on (although most are still with GW), and my professional opinion. Time will tell, is where my head is at for the moment. It will take some adjustment, but I can see some of the positive sides - a greater focus on the existing range and supporting that, as well as the hobby elements. It's too easy to get caught up in rules rather than gaming, and particularly with new releases. It remains to be seen what sort of resource we can dedicate to new miniatures beyond next summer, but I don't think it's as bleak as many people are imagining at the moment. It will also mean that we can focus on the quality of those releases and ensure they are top notch Citadel miniatures.

It's hard to comment further because the decision has been made by the ongoing support plans and other details are still being worked out, and these will ultimately be the basis of any judgement. The change has different implications for different games systems, because of the scope of the Specialist games range, and the issues concerning them vary widely.

As I said in response to a similar topic, the gamers themselves will continue to play the games they enjoy, and while they do this, we'll continue to support them.

Similarly, were you surprised at hearing that Fanatic Magazine would be cancelled after a mere 10 issues?

It's being published online (in some form), not cancelled, which will allow for greater flexibility and obviously the deadlines don't have to take into account any physical printing.

How seriously are player-suggestion changes to rules or army books taken? For instance, if a group were to work on and play test a set of changes to the Dark Eldar, then presented them to the Studio, would they be taken seriously or not?

They are taken seriously, but to be honest, they're not that useful. We already have plenty of ideas concerning what we would change or keep, based upon the constant discussion and feedback we get from players. Any one individual comment or suggestion is unlikely to be that radical, and when it comes to finding solutions, well that's what we pay Games Dev for! We also work on a very long timescale, so often we'll get suggestions after the book has gone to print, or it's into development and testing. Players should continue to send in their ideas and comments, and we'll answer them, but there are no quick fixes available and players need to be as patient as we do.

How many dwarfs does it take to drink a keg of ale in a single night?

Half a dwarf, unless it's a particularly big keg.

How many play test games is an army liable to be taken through, on average?

Between in-studio games and out external play test list, we would aim for around 20-30 games a month, so if we get a full run at something, anywhere between 150-200 games. There tends to be quite a lot of change and evolution in the early stages, so of these, perhaps the first month or two might not resemble the final army list, depending on how new it is and how radical we've been. This might not seem like a tremendous amount, but by this time we've usually reduced the arguments to points of view or small quibbles over particular pieces of wording.


In White Dwarf 301, you're described as having written the first faction book for Inquisitor. Can you give us some insight into the content, and what you're attempting to achieve with these books?

Well, to tie-in with the earlier question regarding Fanatic's future, this is a bit of a tricky question, because the means by which it might get published are now uncertain. Anyway, the basic idea is to flesh out the history and background of the six main factions from the Inquisitor book. Now that this is online, it might be that we can actually have a more scattered approach than a series of annual, monolithic tomes. I hope that as well as being interesting, this material is inspiring, and leads players to create new characters, warrior bands, scenarios and campaigns around the ideas presented. What I wanted to avoid was 'background for background's sake' - what I've written stays relevant to the tabletop skirmish game and is all applicable in some way or another.

Between myself and Andy Hall, we've come up with some basic sections that we want to cover for each faction, including their history, notable characters, their relationships with other factions, as well as more games-related material such as sample characters, new talents and psychic abilities, types of henchmen and so on. There's also an Author's Choice section, although this may well not form part of the overall publication now because it's essentially as standalone section to broaden or deepen the background of the Inquisition in general. Mine, for instance, deals with the organisation of the Inquisition, in regards to recruitment, cells, conclaves and so on. We hope to cover topics such as the Ordos, methodology, symbolism and so on in the future.

About Gav

What's it like working at GW?

It's good. It's hard to think what else I might have done for the last eleven years, although I'm sure it would have been something in a creative field. Like most jobs, there's days when you get home and are glad of it, and others where you're buzzing with thoughts and ideas. The best part is being able to work with some very talented people, and the opportunity to exorcise the demons of a frustrated artist through the skills of others (I originally started to study as an illustrator in my youth, but concluded after a couple of years that I was, contrary to me desires, a bit rubbish).

I can honestly say that I've never had six months go past without some new kind of challenge, be it creative or to do with working with the other guys, particularly the Games Developers. There's always something going on somewhere, and as someone who likes putting a finger in as many pies as possible, I find plenty to divert myself (displacement activity? me?).

How many games do play a week? (All games systems)?

Probably only one or two a month, unless I cram in a play test or two (and not much of that lately, either). It's something that I've become increasingly aware of. It's important that you retain the perspective of what you do as a job, and so sometimes you want to forget it all, switch on the PS2 and blow up zombies or whatever. On the other hand, you can become divorced from the hobby, seeing it only as a set ob abstract ideas, and I find it very grounding to push toy soldiers around and roll dice. It reminds me what is at the heart of what we do - the love of toy soldiers. I want to get some more of that back and, as I mentioned earlier, am going to dedicate more of my time to getting another army or two painted and fitting in more games simply for fun.

In terms of non-toy soldiers games, I usually have a weekly appointment with a friend for board games (ranging from light hearted fun to brain-breaking Eastern Front insanity), and I also have a regular slot playing FIFA on the PS2 with my old boss Gordon Davidson.

What is your favourite game system and why?

Warhammer. It's just visually appealing, the gameplay is great and characterful, and nobody asks me, 'Are you sure that's how it works?'. I'm also a big fan of Epic, the scale of the battles is great, though I've yet to try out the new system properly.

What is your opinion in the ongoing debate of slippers vs loafers?

Slippers sound dangerous, while loafers appear to encourage laziness (something I'm definitely prone to bouts of). I own slippers (Christmas present, of course).

Could you describe a day in the life of Gav Thorpe?

Which day? The bulk of my time is working with the various teams on current projects, obviously most closely with Games Dev. This consists of attending project and design meetings, and also reading through manuscripts and laid out documents and providing feedback. It's mostly a consultancy role, because there's so much that you pick up here over time, you assume other people are aware of it, and that's what we have to avoid. The scope is actually quite wide, the bulk of it being the writing, but also I voice opinions on design, colour schemes, WD and all sorts of other stuff. People mistakenly think that I have some kind of say over these things, but only in an advice capacity - used to have staff when I ran the Warhammer team, but we decided it was better to have a proper manager to do that sort of stuff. Also, my experience with projects over the years, in conjunction with other old timers, helps us avoid pitfalls. The nature of the hobby and the business is always evolving, so it's a case of looking at what we've done in the past and trying to decide the best way to chart the future.

Occasionally I actually get some time to do some writing, as with Storm of Chaos, although I'm supposed to be stepping away from the 'front line' these days, acting in the role I've just talked about rather than simply trying to do it myself!

If you had the opportunity, would you like to go back and change any rule you have written?

As I said earlier, it's easier to end up regretting too much and second-guessing. As a games developer you make decisions and you have to live with those decisions. Were they all correct? Of course not! Would hindsight make me change some of them? Definitely! The one rule that I was least comfortable with at the time was the Blood Angels extra movement. Originally a failed roll forced the unit to move forward during the movement phase, but not as a bonus. Jervis convinced me to turn it into the semi-bonus it is now, pointing out that players are more likely to remember rules that are of some benefit to them, and to forget those that hinder them (thereby forcing the opponent to remind them each turn). It isn't that they're deliberately cheating, it's just the way people's heads work! Anyway, I think it would have been better to stick with the rule the way I had it originally, so it's not so much change a rule as not change a rule!

>best Elvis voice<

Thank you very much,

GAV

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