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Slaughter Margin (1987)

The Slaughter Margin box set (1987) is the Judge Dredd RPG adventure with components on par with the Enemy Within adventures for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Inside the box, handsomely fronted by some Brian Bolland art, is a 40-something page module, character standees, chits, handouts and a seemingly endless pile of new floor plans and terrain tiles.

This one lines up better with my (admittedly skewed) expectations than Judgement Day. There are traitors and sleeper agents in the ranks aiding agents of a terrorist group from the Japanese Mega-City, which was destroyed in a nuclear conflict with the US (pretty sure this played out memorably in the comics). They want revenge, obviously, and are working on releasing a deadly, incurable plague. To stop them, the player judges need to team up with some Japanese judges (from a not-nuked Japanese Mega-City?). The whole thing is a little off-color by today’s standards, but I didn’t notice anything super egregious.

And that’s it, the whole Judge Dredd line from Games Workshop, far as I know. It was, far as I can tell, fairly popular. I’ve not seen a clear explanation as to why GW dropped it in 1992, which is a pretty significant time to keep a line going without new material. Stranger still: they hung on to the license for another three years after that. Doesn’t make a lick of sense to me. But then, so little of what Games Workshop ultimately does.

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