Why the Runaways’ Jackie Fox Made a Rock ’n’ Roll Board Game

Jackie Fox grew up with a guitar in her hand. In 1975, when she was 15 years old, she was pulled off the dance floor at a Hollywood nightclub and recruited to join an all-girl teen rock band. The Runaways became a sensation and tossed Fox and her young bandmates into a turbulent industry that was also violent and sexist. In 1977, Fox quit the band. She never played music professionally again.

Now, almost 50 years later, Fox has recast her experience in the form of a board game. In Rock Hard: 1977, Fox has shrunk the chaotic ’70s club scene to the size of a card table. She has written her own rules, anointed new kinds of rock stars and assumed control. Now she can play on her own terms — and win.

“As soon as I decided I was going to design a game, I knew it was going to be about becoming a rock star,” Fox, 64, said in a video interview from her Los Angeles home earlier this week. “People have been asking me to ‘tell my story,’ and there are a lot of reasons why I don’t want to sit down and write a book.” After all the years she has spent living and reliving that experience, she wanted to reimagine it — to create a situation where she could have fun.

In the game, you play one of 10 characters who are, much like Fox was, musicians on the verge of stardom in 1977. (They each have excellent hair.) As you roll the dice and pull cards, your rock hopeful hops around a board from day job to rehearsal studio, vying to achieve personal goals while growing your reputation and writing songs. Points are tallied on a board styled like an amp that turns up to 11.

As your avatar works her way up from bar mitzvahs to arena stages, you navigate managers, journalists, D.J.s and fans. The game’s protagonists are largely not the white men who dominated the rock scene in the 1970s, but characters representing the diverse musicians who played in clubs and toiled in studios, angling for their shot. You can play as Yolanda Delacroix, an Afro-Cuban studio musician, or “Doc” Sapphire, the androgynous child of Indian immigrants, and the game play is tuned slightly to reflect their experiences.