James Hoare's 'Secret Passages' Brings Back the Time When RPGs Were as Awkward as You Were

James Hoare, a pedigree journalist whose scribing skills were honed in the annals of specialist titles (oo-er) from extreme art to historical analyses, is now realising his first mid-life crisis deep passion for tabletop gaming - Secret Passages, a love letter to the gritty, unpredictable RPG scene of the 80s and 90s. This quarterly, sixty-four-page magazine reflects a time when fantasy gaming was in its rebellious youth, flicking Vs at ‘video games’ and riding its knockoff BMX roughshod over linear fiction on the way to Firetop Mountain.

Secret Passages is an unapologetic bearhug of nostalgia. Packed with stories from the designers who wrote the rules, the artists who coloured your worlds and the players who took their first heroic (and often doomed) steps into the theatre of other peoples minds. Picking away at sugar-coated scabs, skipping the sanitised, hand-me-down, corporatised,  namby-pamby, tight-wearing, ‘Chapter Approved’ nostalgia to expose the blood-stained tales from those who were actually there.

Secret Passages follows tracks in the sand to a time when games were pioneering - never before had an Ogre flung a Goblin for a touchdown, nor had any of your friends ever seen an actual ‘D20’. From the high strangeness of early D&D supplements to the bold experiments of the indie scene, Secret Passages captures the quirky brilliance and DIY spirit of the era. Just not the odour; Rick Priestley encouraged teenagers to build GravTanks from deodorant casing for a reason. Probably.

Imagine you're ready to begin the journey to discover the gritty charm of gaming past - you come to a fork in the road - a double-headed cyclopean nostalgia monster blocks your passage (fnarr!). Do you choose to:

1. Back it now on Kickstarter?

2. Use two willow arrows to shoot it in the eyes?

3. Run away like a sad, flabby shadow of your former self, desperately looking for meaning in this uncaring world?

James Hoares Secret Passages will be available in no good newsagents from early 2025. Check back here for details and sign up to the Kickstarter today.