Malcolm Craig
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malcolmcraig.bsky.social
Malcolm Craig
@malcolmcraig.bsky.social
2.7K followers 320 following 2.1K posts
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
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malcolmcraig.bsky.social
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.
A fake official document from the Cold City 2nd edition RPG. A fake official document from the Cold City 2nd edition RPG.
November 20, 2025 at 9:00 AM
malcolmcraig.bsky.social
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!
Image of the three miniatures that make up the Citadel Miniatures ADD14 female thief set.
November 19, 2025 at 4:26 PM
malcolmcraig.bsky.social
Surprising absolutely nobody with this.
Opening credit still from the 1985 TV series Edge of Darkness, with title in bold red letters against the backdrop of a train emerging from a tunnel.
November 19, 2025 at 11:25 AM
malcolmcraig.bsky.social
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.
TTRPGs that took contemporary/near-future war or invasion of the United States as their backgrounds - as well as those games that were specifically military in nature - permitted participants to engage in fantasies of war, without suffering the consequences of actual conflict. Players could revel in the minutiae of guns and their effects in games such as Phoenix Command without having to deal with the brutal nature of shattered bodies and mangled limbs. The male-dominated player base could thus immerse itself in the pleasure culture of war in a way more visceral and immediate than comic books and movies. The design and play of games like Twilight 2000, The Price of Freedom, and many other such games offer insights into every day, commonplace responses to the Cold War threat. These games were certainly fantasies, just as much as the overtly fantastical, Tolkien-inspired worlds of Dungeons & Dragons were. However, they were fantasies grounded in a concrete reality of geopolitical competition, nuclear missiles, and tank divisions. And like the fantasies conjured up by politicians, generals, and strategic thinkers, they are worthy of consideration and analysis. By envisaging and playing through the Cold War's worst possible outcomes, these games, their designers, and their players grappled with contemporary concerns, bringing them right into the home, around the table, where players would confront them to a soundtrack of clattering dice.
November 17, 2025 at 5:20 PM
malcolmcraig.bsky.social
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...
A list showing the most read articles in the Journal of American Studies over the last ninety days. In order, it shows: Malcolm Craig: When You Say, “Thermonuclear War,” I Think You Mean “the Call to Adventure”! The Twilight: 2000 Tabletop Role-Playing Game and the Postapocalyptic World’s Imaginary Spaces Joe Street: The Historiography of the Black Panther Party Caroline V. Hamilton: The Erotic Charisma of Alexander Hamilton Adam Fairclough: Historians and the Civil Rights Movement
November 17, 2025 at 11:55 AM
malcolmcraig.bsky.social
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?
An Oral History of the 1996-2000 NATO-Warsaw Pact War
November 15, 2025 at 7:35 PM
malcolmcraig.bsky.social
I honestly think this my favourite of all the footnotes to scholarly publications I've ever had to write.
Confusingly, there were two Steve Jacksons active in the games community at the time. One was the owner of Texas-based Steve Jackson Games, founded in 1980 and initially known for wargames such as OGRE and the Mad Max influenced Car Wars. The other, British, Steve Jackson was co-founder of Games Workshop and – with Ian Livingstone – co-creator of the Fighting Fantasy gamebook series, published by Penguin. To add to the confusion, the American Steve Jackson was hired to write three books in the original Fighting Fantasy series.
November 15, 2025 at 9:56 AM
malcolmcraig.bsky.social
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!
Hot War, 2nd edition Raw Text 1.1 Complete text for editing 04/11/25
November 4, 2025 at 6:21 PM
malcolmcraig.bsky.social
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.
Cover of the GURPS Autoduel RPG, showing a fairly hectic scene of flames, crashing vehicles, bikes chasing cars, and a bloke in armour with a huge gun who looks like he wouldn't fit in a car. And his hair has not one strand out of place.
November 3, 2025 at 4:57 PM
malcolmcraig.bsky.social
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).
The cover of Sidney J. Bounds 1956 SF novel The Robot Brains. The title is given in massive red letters, and in the foreground a man runs from some looming robotic something or other in the background.
October 29, 2025 at 11:36 AM
malcolmcraig.bsky.social
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.
The FiveEvil RPG, the cover of which shows a fly on a D20 against a copper green background.
October 17, 2025 at 11:59 AM
malcolmcraig.bsky.social
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?
The cover of the TTRPG Hot War, rendered in shades of red, against a grey background photo of an aerial view of London and the River Thames.
October 17, 2025 at 11:33 AM
malcolmcraig.bsky.social
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.
The cover of Task Force Games' Delta Force TTRPG from 1986. It shows a number of manly men dressed in the ever-popular 'special forces commando' style gunning down individuals who are no doubt 'bad guys'.
October 8, 2025 at 12:39 PM
malcolmcraig.bsky.social
Au contraire, mon brave!
September 30, 2025 at 2:49 PM
malcolmcraig.bsky.social
Hilarity in the office as I show colleagues my copy of The Price of Freedom, a key part of my [checks notes] research collection.
A very untidy desk (an academic, with an untidy desk? Say it is not so!), with the picture focused on a line of 1980s Cold War themed TTRPGs, including Freedom Fighters, Paranoia, The Price of Freedom, Twilight 2000 (1st, 2nd, and 4th editions), and Year of the Phoenix.
September 30, 2025 at 12:48 PM
malcolmcraig.bsky.social
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
The cover of Wyrd Science magazine issue 7, with the magazine opened to show the first pages of my article titled 'Playing Games in the Bomb's Shadow'.
September 29, 2025 at 3:35 PM
malcolmcraig.bsky.social
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'?
“THE COLD WAR”: ONLY ONE, OR ARE THERE OTHERS?/HISTORICAL FORM OR TYPE (E.G.: 'HOLY WAR' OR 'CIVIL WAR')?/ARMS RACE/WAR WITHOUT WAR/ANTITHETICAL TO IDEAS OF WAR/IDEOLOGY/LACK OF MAJOR STATE VS MAJOR STATE CONFLICT/SINGULAR?/SYSTEMIC INTERPRETATION ('DEMOCRACY/TOTALITARIANISM, CAPITALISM/COMMUNISM)? WHY THIS PARTICULAR METAPHOR? “THE”: A BEGINNING/DEFINITE ARTICLE/SINGULAR/SCALE/ NARROW/TOTALISING/UNIQUENESS “COLD”: ARBITRARY/COLD IN THE PERSONAL SENSE/ APOCALYPTIC COLDNESS/COUNTERPRODUCTIVE/ QUALIFICATORY/OPPOSITIONAL TO TRADITIONAL IDEAS OF WAR/OPPOSITE OF WEAPONRY/COLD AS METAPHOR? “WAR”: CONFLICT BUT WITHOUT CONFLICT/FINALITY/ IDEOLOGICAL CONFLICT/WINNERS OR LOSERS/HISTORY/WAR AS METAPHOR?
September 25, 2025 at 11:59 AM
malcolmcraig.bsky.social
All time, 100%, solid gold classic
September 12, 2025 at 6:30 PM
malcolmcraig.bsky.social
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?
A map of northwest England. A circle in centred on Liverpool, indicating what lies within a 50 mile radius of the city.
September 12, 2025 at 10:08 AM
malcolmcraig.bsky.social
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
malcolmcraig.bsky.social
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.
A section of a 1962 Ordnance Survey map of South East England. The fragment show is the Thames estuary and eastern Kent. It is annotated to show nuclear weapons strikes and the location of government internment camps. This is for the role-playing game Hot War.
September 3, 2025 at 4:09 PM
malcolmcraig.bsky.social
Milo the cat, struck down in his prime. Gone, but not forgotten.
A black and white tom cat named Milo, relaxing on a lawn, in the sun.
July 31, 2025 at 5:20 PM
malcolmcraig.bsky.social
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!
1943 poster encouraging Americans to pay taxes and purchase war bonds. The text reads: In No Other Land is the Price of Freedom So Small - It Takes Both War Taxes and War Bonds At right is a request that people pay their taxes to ensure that the war is funded. At left is an image of a prosperous American family, surrounded by the horrors taking place around the world, in Hong Kong, Greece, Poland, Lidice, Singapore, Belgium, Jugo-slavia, France, Norway, and Rotterdam,
July 24, 2025 at 2:24 PM
malcolmcraig.bsky.social
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!
On the left is a pile of academic books on a wide range of topics - games history, the nuclear age, US politics and society, comics, religion, etc. On the right is a pile of 1980s role-playing games, including The Price of Freedom, Freedom Fighters, Year of the Phoenix, Twilight: 2000, Phoenix Command, and Paranoia.
June 30, 2025 at 2:11 PM
malcolmcraig.bsky.social
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!
'War to the Sound of Clattering Dice: Role-playing war in the Cold War' for War in Modern US History – A Transatlantic Perspective Malcolm Craig Liverpool john Moores University, Liverpool, UK June 2025 Word Count: 8014 Draft text. Not for further distribution without explicit permission.
June 27, 2025 at 2:11 PM