Malcolm Craig
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malcolmcraig.bsky.social
Malcolm Craig
@malcolmcraig.bsky.social
Senior Lecturer in US History @ljmuofficial.bsky.social, historian of the nuclear age, researching #ColdWar era post-apocalypse roleplaying games. #TTRPG designer. You may remember me from such games as #astaterpg, #ColdCity, and #HotWar
I'm putting together a short presentation on how RPG designers use historical primary sources for @luciejones83.bsky.social, and I'm swithering about including the fake documents from #ColdCity 2nd ed. I mean, they do look great.
November 20, 2025 at 9:00 AM
From the tiny model shop tucked behind the steeple on Falkirk High Street. I bought them because they were cool. I never actually played D&D!
November 19, 2025 at 4:26 PM
Surprising absolutely nobody with this.
November 19, 2025 at 11:25 AM
So, here's how I concluded a short chapter for the edited collection War in Modern US History – A Transatlantic Perspective, which is coming out next year.
November 17, 2025 at 5:20 PM
Gee whizz! My article on Twilight 2000 in the Journal of American studies is now the most read piece over the last 3 months, despite it only being available for a couple of weeks. That's kind of terrifying! Thanks so much to everyone who's taken the time to engage with it!
doi.org/10.1017/S002...
November 17, 2025 at 11:55 AM
OK, so a title's a start, yes? That blank white space below will just fill itself up if I go away and do something like build tiny mechs out of Lego, yes?

Yes?
November 15, 2025 at 7:35 PM
I honestly think this my favourite of all the footnotes to scholarly publications I've ever had to write.
November 15, 2025 at 9:56 AM
Psssttttt...

...yes, you!

As of this evening I have completed the text for #HotWar 2nd edition. It's now off for editing, then layout, with the great team at @handiworkgames.bsky.social.

Just wait until your see it!
November 4, 2025 at 6:21 PM
Added another hardcopy to my ever expanding research library of post-apocalyptic RPGs from the Cold War era. It's GURPS Autoduel! Only very slightly Mad-Max-y.
November 3, 2025 at 4:57 PM
I'm counting this morning as a resounding success, having convinced @breakfastruins.bsky.social to buy a copy of Sidney J. Bounds meisterwerk The Robot Brains (1956).
October 29, 2025 at 11:36 AM
Look what arrived today! The amazing FiveEvil, by @fromthemorgue.bsky.social, published by @handiworkgames.bsky.social. It's a genuinely (not kidding in the slightest) innovative & radical take on the 5E ruleset, changing it to meet the needs of the horror genre. It's a brilliant piece of work.
October 17, 2025 at 11:59 AM
1) In redesigning #HotWar for its 2nd ed w/ @handiworkgames.bsky.social, a lot of work has gone into further embedding the game's themes into the play mechanics. A way this was done in #ColdCity was to introduce 'The Cold'. But in HW, this is replaced with 'Breakdown'. So what's that then?
October 17, 2025 at 11:33 AM
1) The latest addition to the hardcopy research collection:

Task Force Games' 'Delta Force' from 1986, a game where you play brave, manly special forces taking now cowardly, sneaky terrorists and foreign intelligence organisations.
October 8, 2025 at 12:39 PM
Au contraire, mon brave!
September 30, 2025 at 2:49 PM
Hilarity in the office as I show colleagues my copy of The Price of Freedom, a key part of my [checks notes] research collection.
September 30, 2025 at 12:48 PM
And here we are! The latest, greatest issue of @wyrdscience.bsky.social, incorporating an article on the Cold War and RPGs by...me!

@ljmuimpact.bsky.social
@ljmuhistory.bsky.social
September 29, 2025 at 3:35 PM
Another semester of teaching my favourite module: An International History of the Cold War Era. And one of my favourite exercise with students: what do we mean when we say 'the cold war'?
September 25, 2025 at 11:59 AM
All time, 100%, solid gold classic
September 12, 2025 at 6:30 PM
Within a 50 mile radius of my office, there are many, many institutions offering history degrees: LJMU, UoLiv, Hope, Manchester, ManMet, Lancaster, Huddersfield, Bradford, Keele, Bangor, and so on. How's that going to work, then?
September 12, 2025 at 10:08 AM
That kit wasn't one of the Revell 'Robotech Defenders' ones, based on anime like Dougram, was it? Because I bought some of those from the Menzies in Falkirk.
September 3, 2025 at 5:57 PM
Working away on annotating some period-correct maps for the @handiworkgames.bsky.social 2nd edition of Hot War. The graphic design wizardry of Paul and Jon will, of course, make this actually look good, rather than the scrawlings of a fool.
September 3, 2025 at 4:09 PM
Milo the cat, struck down in his prime. Gone, but not forgotten.
July 31, 2025 at 5:20 PM
My RPG-related research task today has focused on tracing the genealogy of the phrase "the price of freedom" from the 1980s back into the past (and boy, did Reagan use it a lot!). I'm currently in the 1870s! All of this for a short paragraph that will likely be edited out of the book!
July 24, 2025 at 2:24 PM
It's a strange place to be, my research life. The books on the left have come together with the games on the right in rather unexpected ways. I'm pretty certain that many of the authors of those books never imagined their work would be integrated with the historical study of TTRPGs!
June 30, 2025 at 2:11 PM
A good end to the week: finally have a draft of my edited collection chapter 'War to the Sound of Clattering Dice: Role-playing war in the Cold War', featuring
Aftermath!
Commando
Freedom Fighters
The Morrow Project
Phoenix Command
The Price of Freedom
RECON
Twilight: 2000
and many, many more!
June 27, 2025 at 2:11 PM