GAMES GAZETTE is a (paper) Amateur Games Review Magazine
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CHRIS BAYLIS:
I was born in Queen Charlotte's Hospital Middlesex at 11:30pm on Christmas Eve 1950. I lived in Palmer's Green in London, where the house my parents owned is now probably worth a small fortune but then was just an old, large house. The opportunity to move out of the smoke into the fresh air of a New Town with a new, albeit rented, 4-bedroom house, came about and so we took the road East and arrived in muddy Basildon. I say muddy because my earliest recollections (I was almost four when we moved) are of the muddy fields front and back of the house we now lived in.

I went to school - though many people believe this to be a myth - and then on to a Grammar & Technical Education before joining the Merchant Navy and seeing the world - well quite a lot of it. I studied catering and passed City & Guilds with credits but then just when I was set to become the first Jamie Oliver (well .. sort of ... ) I decided that I enjoyed having my evenings and weekends with friends more than I enjoyed working every Saturday and Sunday and so I gave up cooking. I can still make a mean Beans on Toast though (the secret is in the Marmite and the Cheese).

Life continued with some ups and a few downs until I met and married the lovely Frances (now the Lady Frances of Loch Borralan according to the Title and Land I bought her a couple of years ago) and we settled down to have 2.4 kids and a dog. Thirty-four years later we have three adult children (not sure where the odd 0.6 came from), two who live in Basildon still and one who moved to Brunei, 5 grand-children, a dog, 6 cats, 2 chinchillas, 4 ducks and an assortment of fish.

I am a keen games player, online games and boardgames mainly, enjoy designing games, going to the local theatre and listening to music (my taste in music is quite wide and varied, I like what I like no matter if it's a heavy metal band or a solo vocalist). I watch NFL and Soccer from my armchair (two car accidents make me less mobile than I would like) and, for my sins, I support the Miami Dolphins and Tottenham Hotspur.

So that's me.....

GAMES GAZETTE:
came about because in the mid-70's some guy invented a game called Dungeons & Dragons and my brother, living in Canada at the time, forced Fran and I (on a visit to see him) to play the stupid game. Needless to say I got hooked on the whole gaming genre, and still am, though nowadays more on boardgames than roleplaying.

We returned from Canada and immediately started a games club in a local hall - the Basildon Dungeoneers we were called. People came and went from all areas around Basildon, mostly finding each other at the club and then starting their own clubs nearer their homes and then we moved and changed the name of the club to South Essex Wargames And Roleplaying Society using the acronym SEWARS (which so many wargamers pronounced Sea-Wars) but we knew differently. October 1980 arrived and it brought the first issue of the SEWARS fanzine, a 10 page A4, printed one side, mainly D&D (AD&D) dungeon adventure - actually one half of the adventure; the other half appeared in the next issue. Duncan Steel who owned Esdevium Games ordered copies of the fanzine before I had printed issue one and now 27 years later Esdevium Games still stock it thanks to Duncan and his son Daniel who now runs the business.

SEWARS continued as a quarterly until demand caused it to become a bi-monthly. With this change the name became Games Gazette, the pages became double-side printed, and colour began to sneak in. Now thanks to Hobbygames Ltd (who are absolutely brilliant with their support) and more recently, Upper Deck (thank you all) it has full colour covers and centre pages and a nice spot of blue from the Leisure Games advert.

Over the years I have organised eight GamesCon (Basildon) one day games events, planned the gaming and trade hall at several UK GenCon events, run the Bring N Buy at GenCons in UK, Europe and at UKGames Expo, and had a number of my game designs published:-
Dark Blades - Standard Games
Dark Blades Expansion - Standard Games
EuroHit - FCB & Associates
Assassin - Avalon Hill (biggest cock-up there ever was)
Rockets - Klee Spiel (Kosmos)
Wie Hund und Katz - Goldsieber
Space Shuffle - Playroom Entertainment
Station Master - Mayfair Games

The Games Gazette Bring n Buy's have raised £1000's of pounds for Children's Charities over the years and we, Fran and I and all at Games Gazette, are very proud to have been able to help.

Games Gazette is mainly a paper magazine. It is available from several UK stores and on subscription. It is packed full each issue with short, sharp reviews on all manner of games from RPGs and CCGs to Boardgames, Family and Abstract games. It is cheap and cheerful and designed to give you pocket-reviews rather than in-depth discussions. Your support is valued and appreciated.

Thanks. Chris