Early games As teenagers living in
Lincoln, England in the 1970s, Richard Halliwell and his school friend
Rick Priestley liked to play tabletop miniature wargames. In 1979, while still in school, they decided to create a set of rules for a fantasy miniatures wargame they called
Reaper. With one rulebook for sale, Halliwell and Priestley collaborated on a second effort, a science fiction miniatures wargame titled
Combat 3000, also published by Tabletop, that used 15mm/25mm "space marine" miniatures from Asgard. About this time, Bryan Ansell, with financial backing from Games Workshop, left Asgard Miniatures to form
Citadel Miniatures in
Newark. Halliwell got a job there, but found that he also liked to travel abroad frequently, and soon stepped back from fulltime employment, preferring to do odd jobs and freelance work for Citadel, usually as a mould maker.
Imperial Commander During this time (in 1981), he and Ansell collaborated on the rules for a science fiction wargame called
Imperial Commander that featured a titanic struggle between two vast forces. It was again published by Tabletop Games. It is a 15mm
science fiction war game, based on the range of metal
Laserburn miniatures available from Tabletop Games. The game still has a small but enthusiastic following. Battles take place between an oppressive, galaxy spanning "Imperium" and the religious, fanatic "Red Redemption". Players take in turns to move, fight and command armies of between twenty and fifty miniature figures each, and following the rules, tabletop games lasting a few hours are played. This type of war game is played on a tabletop with miniature figures, vehicles and scenery. Two or more players are required. An updated version of this game, called
Imperial Commander 2 was in development; however, it was never published because of copyright issues. The background of
Imperial Commander and the rule system of
Laserburn are an influence on
Games Workshop's
Warhammer 40,000 tabletop game which was developed when Ansell and Halliwell were at Games Workshop and
Citadel Miniatures. In addition it has been a major influence on the development of the
Beamstrike rule set.
Warhammer By 1982, Bryan Ansell wanted to create a set of rules for miniatures wargames that would drive sales of Citadel's miniatures. He came up with the idea of an overarching fantasy campaign set on a continent called
Lustria. Like his previous game,
Imperial Commander, this would feature a never-ending war between titanic forces. Once Halliwell was finished with the rules, Rick Priestley and Tony Ackland developed the product, and it was released by sister company Games Workshop in 1983 as
Warhammer The Mass Combat Fantasy Role-Playing Game. On the development process, Priestley said, "It was actually my colleague Richard Halliwell who was originally commissioned to write it. I developed it with him, because we often worked on things together". Halliwell was on the development team of the second edition of
Warhammer Fantasy Battle in 1984, as well as
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay in 1986, and the third edition of
Warhammer in 1987. Halliwell and Ansell, with Priestley as editor, wrote
Ravening Hordes: The Official Warhammer Battle Army Lists in 1987.
Other GW games In 1987, Halliwell stepped away from the
Warhammer universe to develop several other projects. GW had produced
Judge Dredd: The Role-Playing Game in 1985, a dystopian
post-apocalyptic role-playing game based on the
Judge Dredd comics. In 1987, Halliwell designed a tongue-in-cheek combat game called
Block Mania that was set in the
Judge Dredd universe, in which residents of two city blocks must cause as much harm as possible to each other before the Judges arrive to restore order. He followed this with
Mega-Mania, a four-player expansion, and
Slaughter Margin, a
Judge Dredd adventure scenario. He also helped design
Citi-Block, a
Judge Dredd supplement. After the 2020 rerelease of
Block Mania and
Mega-Mania, the UK print magazine
Tabletop Gaming highlighted that "Richard Halliwell knew his source material well, ensuring it's all thematically bang-on, and satisfying to die-hard
Dredd fans. But it feels more like a curious relic, a collector's piece, than something which seriously deserves to take tabletop time away from newer, player-friendlier games". In 1988, Halliwell worked with
Marc Gascoigne to design
Dark Future, a
Mad Max-like combat board game featuring a violent car race across North America. In 1989–1990, Halliwell reached the height of his game design career, winning two
Origins Awards in two years. In 1989, he was the "sole designer credited" on the first edition of
Space Hulk, a tense and suspenseful tactical science fiction miniatures game in which the dangerous alien lifeforms known as Genestealers have infested a derelict ship drifting in space, and the heroic Space Marines must board the ship to accomplish a given goal. At the 1990
Origins Awards,
Space Hulk was named
Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Boardgame of 1989. The following year, Halliwell collaborated with
Matt Forbeck and
Jervis Johnson to produce two
Space Hulk expansions,
Deathwing, and
Genestealer. At the 1991 Origins Awards,
Genestealer won
Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Boardgame of 1990. The following year, Halliwell helped design
Space Hulk Campaigns, a set of new scenarios for his
Space Hulk game. ==Life after Game Workshop==