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 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
He was extremely blasé about the Squattening.

I thought he gave a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why Squats did not get further development in 40k.

Doesn't make it ok. I invested a hell of a lot effort earning the $ to pay for my squats. It's kinda a bs reason, in whfb Dwarves we're fleshed out and Squats we're given plenty of effort in epic & such.

Forgive me if I'm a Lil perturbed towards him. Personal perspective and all that. I ditched 40k after they said just use them as guard auxilia and his "explanation" just peeved me further and delayed my return to the game. I really liked my Salamanders, but loved my Squats and invested a chunk of time into them for them to just be unceremoniously eaten by an unnamed hive fleet. So when they were just dropped m it felt all kinds of bad.

Man, this is a shame. Hope he has a baller retirement now he's got stacks of nuGW cash, but it's definitely a little sad to see him go, especially with how much he shaped the 40k universe, especially at its inception. Hope we still get chances to grab his artwork, his stuff for Chaos and Eldar is really classic.

"Even in Retirement, He still Serves...."

Warts and All, Johnson is one of ours. I didn't always agree with him, but he was there for the long march.

Welcome to the club, Old Man!

I thought he had retired from working on the games ages ago.

Just did the odd personal preference('spirit of the game') columns in white dwarf.

Racerguy180 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
He was extremely blasé about the Squattening.

I thought he gave a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why Squats did not get further development in 40k.

Doesn't make it ok. I invested a hell of a lot effort earning the $ to pay for my squats. It's kinda a bs reason, in whfb Dwarves we're fleshed out and Squats we're given plenty of effort in epic & such.

Forgive me if I'm a Lil perturbed towards him. Personal perspective and all that. I ditched 40k after they said just use them as guard auxilia and his "explanation" just peeved me further and delayed my return to the game. I really liked my Salamanders, but loved my Squats and invested a chunk of time into them for them to just be unceremoniously eaten by an unnamed hive fleet. So when they were just dropped m it felt all kinds of bad.

I doubt the decision was his alone, he's just the guy who explained why the decision was made.

It would be hard for me to name a nicer, more generous person I have ever met.

Before there was the Dakka bulletin Board, or Warseer, or any of the others, there was the 40k Mailing List, run by Edwin Voskamp and Chris Bickford. It was the mid 90's, when 2nd edition was just getting going, and my chosen faction did not yet have a Codex - it was too new of a concept. I used to post a lot on the List, and my signature was "Every day I pray for the Codex: Chaos". Always typed at the end of every email, never a file.It also happens that at the time, several of the GW studio members lurked on the List. They did not post often, but they were in fact listening.

In the summer of 1996, we had a big gathering of the List at the Baltimore Games Day. We reserved a bunch of rooms at a local hotel, rented out their hall in the evenings to play, and went as a big group (with t-shirts, and I still have mine) to Games Day. Jervis was one of the guests, and we all went to meet him as a group. He actually pulled me aside, and to my delight and wonder, gave me what I think was the very first copy of the 2nd Edition Chaos Codex anyone had outside of GW itself, signed by the entire studio.Later, he came by the hotel just to hang out for a bit with a group of hardcore fans from all across the country.

And that's just one instance of his kindness. When he later found out that I did not have a copy of either of the Realm of Chaos books, he actually mailed me one of each from the studio's stash. The Slaves to Darkness book actually has a sticker on the front that says "Rik's Copy" (yes, i know there's a c missing - but that's what it says). When I asked him if it was what I thought, he told me that yes, it was in fact Rick Priestley's desk copy, but not to worry because he'd got Rick a fresh set from their storeroom. It's a gift I treasure to this day.

When my brother and I did a two week tour of England and Scotland in 2002, we stopped by Nottingham just to say hi and take Jervis out to lunch. He actually took the time out of his busy day and offered to take us on a tour of the Studio and the Specialist Games section where he was stationed at the time.

Jervis Johnson, I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful time off, you deserve it.

Graham

Racerguy180 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
He was extremely blasé about the Squattening.

I thought he gave a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why Squats did not get further development in 40k.

Doesn't make it ok. I invested a hell of a lot effort earning the $ to pay for my squats. It's kinda a bs reason, in whfb Dwarves we're fleshed out and Squats we're given plenty of effort in epic & such.

Forgive me if I'm a Lil perturbed towards him. Personal perspective and all that. I ditched 40k after they said just use them as guard auxilia and his "explanation" just peeved me further and delayed my return to the game. I really liked my Salamanders, but loved my Squats and invested a chunk of time into them for them to just be unceremoniously eaten by an unnamed hive fleet. So when they were just dropped m it felt all kinds of bad.

Well, that's certainly holding a grudge like a Dwarf, seeing as it's been... 25 years?

@Bob Lorgar - great post.

That job posting for a new AoS Lead Designer was likely tied to Jervis' retirement decision. Given there are no real new faces on the AoS team with release of third, it was an internal promotion.

Was probably sitting on a nice nest egg depending on how much GW stock he's accrued over the years. Likely looked at all the lockdown and decided he wanted to get out and enjoy the world before he got too old too.

Wish him a long and enjoyable retirement, but not sad to see him go. Didn't agree with his thoughts on gaming and game design. While he could make very fun games, he never made balanced games.

 gorgon wrote:

Well, that's certainly holding a grudge like a Dwarf, seeing as it's been... 25 years?

Well, he has not been always everybody’s darling.
Remember the word Jervisification? It has had a bad taste.

 wuestenfux wrote:
Remember the word Jervisification? It has had a bad taste.

I'm pretty sure I coined that phrase.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:
Remember the word Jervisification? It has had a bad taste.

I'm pretty sure I coined that phrase.

Great!

Great story Bob!

This thread got me thinking about some of the other old guard... where are they now?

Andy Chambers is still designing games and has a facebook page, but what about your man Tuomas or Gav Thorpe? I'd start a thread but with this being dakka someone has probably done one already...

stratigo wrote:

Cronch wrote:
At only 62? I thought it's 65 or so in the UK?

I suspect JJ is invested in the company and has made quite the tidy profit these last few years.

Ah so he's not retiring yet just going to live off his capital investments till the retirement age, thanks for clearing it up. I was confused and forgot rich people exist for a second.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
Good bye and good riddance.

Can you show us on the doll where one of the architects of everything GW hurt you?

I'd rather roll a dice to see how many dice I roll on the table of random Jerviswellox

Like him or hate him, he has definitely put his mark on GW's games.

38 years in miniature games...that's still quite the career. And yeah...still makes something in the heart when someone you always knew was around when you started playing finally leaves.

Retired from his job at GW doesn't mean he'll stop playing or making games, though.

 bullyboy wrote:
Pretty much makes this WD a must buy. So much nostalgia....especially the old BRs. Oh, how many WDs have i thrown away in my years.....

I know, I may have to mail order it!

@Bob Lorgar - awesome story!

Fare the Well Jervis, and good luck!

I've fond memories of being part of the epic 4th edition/Armageddon community and being on that forum and attending events at WHW.


And Gav Thorpe - old guard? I've still got him down as 'Trainee Game Designer'.

Everyone is of course entitled to form their own considered opinion of somebody so influential on the hobby, but I would like to share another story of Jervis being great.

In 1995/6 (deep in 2nd edition territory) I was in senior school, deeply invested in Epic Space Marine and the forerunner of Battlefleet Gothic, Space Fleet. I worked for a pittance in a newsagents to fund getting hold of every metal Imperial and Eldar ship but this wasn’t enough, and my friends and I built an expanded paper system featuring Orks, Marines and Genestealer hulks. I dreamed of a ‘big box’ Space Fleet with rules like Epic, and chose to create a mock up of that hoped-for game box as my GCSE graphic design piece.

This was before Photoshop was widely taught, so it was sketchbooks, airbrushes and markers all the way.

I wrote a long and likely fanboyish letter to Jervis at ‘Lenton Towers’ and he responded with a 2 page design brief, good quality logos and a heap of encouragement. It was surely above and beyond to even answer teenage fan mail, but that brief made the project.

I met him several years later at a studio open day and he asked if I was working in graphic design - no, by then I was a junior doctor - and he leafed through a couple of Jes Goodwin’s sketch books with me. It was clear he loved all the “what if..?” questions each detail raised.

I hope he enjoys retirement tremendously. I don’t know if he has children of his own, but think how many of us he has directly or indirectly inspired, or given months of entertainment too, exploring the worlds of Warhammer?

Racerguy180 wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
Good bye and good riddance.

Can you show us on the doll where one of the architects of everything GW hurt you?

He was extremely blasé about the Squattening.

Good nuff reason for me.

This is incorrect, actually the opposite is true.

The blasé treatment you are referring to did happen, but it was the White Dwarf editorial replying to a letter from a fan asking what happened to the Squats. You can find the letter online if you search for it, I think it was probably meant to just be a throwaway comment but it ended up misreading the room and went down like a lead balloon with the community.
I think perhaps because of Jervis being aware of the Squat fans feeling a bit hard done by, he actually wrote quite a long letter and explanation for what happened to the Squats and why they were discontinued. It was entirely reasonable and laid out what had happened, and was written from the perspective of someone who knew it was a sore subject - i.e. it was done to appease. I forget where it was originally published, but again it is referenceable online fairly easily.

As another example of where Jervis was the good guy at one point GW were going to completely shelve Specialist Games; Jervis reportedly took on the maintenance of the rules, website etc. entirely on his own back and on top of his other responsibilities just so those games could persist and because he knew how popular they were with the veteran fan community. He didn't have to do that, but he did because he cared.
I know some years later they did get taken down anyway (in retrospect it might have been because relaunches were starting to get planned) but they did persist for many years more than they would have otherwise.

GW-corporate have at times been extremely insensitive towards the fan community, but Jervis was the absolute opposite of that and took action to engage whenever he had the opportunity.

Here is a link to the letter Pacific was referring to:
https://www.40konline.com/index.php?topic=70533.0

Shame to see him go - I remember interacting him him online a bit after EpicA was released, as I did an amateur proofread of the book after it was published, and send in a long list of inconsistencies - which did get cleared up in an FAQ, and I think I was thanked in it.

When I went down to Warhammer World a little after that, he took the time to do an interview with me for my website at the time - pretty sure he'd had to bring his kids in at the same time, so full credit to the guy. He even signed my copy of E:A for me, too.

You might not always like some of the stuff he designed, or agree with his principles when it comes to game design, but he genuinely always struck me as a top bloke.

 Pacific wrote:


This is incorrect, actually the opposite is true.

The blasé treatment you are referring to did happen, but it was the White Dwarf editorial replying to a letter from a fan asking what happened to the Squats. You can find the letter online if you search for it, I think it was probably meant to just be a throwaway comment but it ended up misreading the room and went down like a lead balloon with the community.
I think perhaps because of Jervis being aware of the Squat fans feeling a bit hard done by, he actually wrote quite a long letter and explanation for what happened to the Squats and why they were discontinued. It was entirely reasonable and laid out what had happened, and was written from the perspective of someone who knew it was a sore subject - i.e. it was done to appease. I forget where it was originally published, but again it is referenceable online fairly easily.

I remember that letter, Citadel Journal early 2000s IIRC.

He explained the behind the scenes reasoning (going out of his way to point out it was not sales alone that drove the decision but more lack of enthusiasm) and suggested alternatives. Granted the alternatives were 'count as IG or count as Orks') but it was a lot better than the snarky tone and Stalinist rewriting of GW central (they actually edited an old story to take out a squat character).

I'm a squat fan, and I have no malice towards Jervis.

 PaddyMick wrote:
but what about your man Tuomas or Gav Thorpe?

Tuomas is doing video games and Gav is an author with some games consulting on the side.

Jervis ended up in a position as the sort of interface between corporate GW and the fanbase. But a lot of what he did with the specialist games and how he communicated leads me to believe that he was very pro-fan.

And like I said, when I met him he was lovely to everyone at the convention, really patient and polite and genuinely nice to everyone.

Jervis "forge a narrative" Johnson.
Hope he has a great retirement.

I mean the main thrust of the well wishing seems to be that jervis was a genuinely good dude, friendly and engaging with fans, which isn’t the case with all the GW people

And being a genuinely friendly person is ultimately more important then if he did the rules good or not.

beast_gts wrote:

 PaddyMick wrote:
but what about your man Tuomas or Gav Thorpe?

Tuomas is doing video games and Gav is an author with some games consulting on the side.

Tuomas is knocking around on Facebook as Brutal Deluxe Game Design, and Gav's pretty active on twitter, so they've far from dropped entirely off the radar.

 Da Boss wrote:
Jervis ended up in a position as the sort of interface between corporate GW and the fanbase. But a lot of what he did with the specialist games and how he communicated leads me to believe that he was very pro-fan.

And like I said, when I met him he was lovely to everyone at the convention, really patient and polite and genuinely nice to everyone.

Sure. But he also ended up essentially in the same job for 30 years, doing game design with an every rotating cast of mid-20s to mid-30s guys on the cramped open-plan office desks next to him and no "career" or "promotion" since the days of Tony Blair.

Maybe he had some nice GW stock and/or a favourable contract from the early, early, early days and didn't need/want it, but he certainly never got to anywhere "important" in GW from a business perspective.

I know the guy got some stick for some of their army codecies or army books not moving in the direction they wanted, but you have to think of the amount of games which he was credited as a developer. These are simply some of the best games GW has ever made. As much as I enjoy some of the later stuff like Warcry, it pales in comparison to those games: Space Hulk, Blood Bowl, Epic, Necromunda etc. I think he was involved in a few of the earlier WHFB versions too.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 Pacific wrote:


This is incorrect, actually the opposite is true.

The blasé treatment you are referring to did happen, but it was the White Dwarf editorial replying to a letter from a fan asking what happened to the Squats. You can find the letter online if you search for it, I think it was probably meant to just be a throwaway comment but it ended up misreading the room and went down like a lead balloon with the community.
I think perhaps because of Jervis being aware of the Squat fans feeling a bit hard done by, he actually wrote quite a long letter and explanation for what happened to the Squats and why they were discontinued. It was entirely reasonable and laid out what had happened, and was written from the perspective of someone who knew it was a sore subject - i.e. it was done to appease. I forget where it was originally published, but again it is referenceable online fairly easily.

I remember that letter, Citadel Journal early 2000s IIRC.

He explained the behind the scenes reasoning (going out of his way to point out it was not sales alone that drove the decision but more lack of enthusiasm) and suggested alternatives. Granted the alternatives were 'count as IG or count as Orks') but it was a lot better than the snarky tone and Stalinist rewriting of GW central (they actually edited an old story to take out a squat character).

I'm a squat fan, and I have no malice towards Jervis.

Nor me, and I had an actual Squat army in 2nd ed (yes, I was one of those..)

Vovin wrote:Here is a link to the letter Pacific was referring to:
https://www.40konline.com/index.php?topic=70533.0

Thanks man