# White Dwarf: The First 100 issues. A Read-Through and Review.



## Dr Simon

White Dwarf magazine, from its first issue in June 1977 until the end of the 1980s, gives an interesting history of the birth and expansion of role-playing games, through its own particular lens of the hobby in the UK and, later, as published or distributed purely by Games Workshop.

This is a read-through thread, but I'm not going to go issue by issue; instead I shall be reviewing batches of ten issues at a time, from Issue 1 up to Issue 100. I'm not going page by page, but picking out particularly interesting examples of articles that are either representative of their era (for good or ill), are ideas that are worth resurrecting, or are predictions that prove either eerily prescient or amusingly mistaken.

These articles are broken down into subsections. *Overall *discusses the physical changes to the magazine in terms of layout, price and sometimes the range of topics covered. *Games* gives an indication not only of games covered by the magazine but also those that become available, often reviewed, some advertised only. *Scenarios* discusses just that - nearly every issue contains at least one usable adventure, sometimes a mini-game instead. *Articles* covers everything else, and looks at changing attitiudes to gaming as well as picking out some of the more interesting "crunch" from time to time. Finally, *General Thoughts* summarises the style of the era covered by the ten issues under discussion, and any particularly interesting changes in attitude or gaming style that occurs.

As I said, this isn't a detailed issue-by-issue, page-by-page dissection of each magazine (This thread by Private Eye covers that better, although only up to issue 38 or thereabouts.). I've tried to credit authors where I can although there are bound to be oversights.

Feel free to chip in with comments, reminiscences, arguments etc. I'm sure that some contributers to the magazine must post on this forum - your comments are more than welcome.

Covers come from RPG.Net, and if you click on them you'll be taken to a table of contents on the same site for each magazine.

*Thread Index*
Part One: The Early Years (Issues 1-10). June 1977-July 1979
Part Two: Consolidation (Issues 11-20). August 1979 - September 1980
Part Three: Rise of the Big Three (Issues 21-30). October 1980 - May 1982
Part Four: The Early Golden Age (Issues 31-40). June 1982 - April 1983
Part Five: The Late Golden Age (Issues 41-50). May 1983 - February 1984 
Part Six: Widening Participation a.k.a. The Ones Where I subscribed (Issues 51-60). March 1984 - December 1984
Part Seven: More Breadth, Less Depth (Issues 61-70). January 1985 - October 1985
Part Eight: A New Era (Issues 71-80). November 1985 - August 1986
Part Nine: The Rise of Games Workshop (Issues 81-90). September 1986 - June 1987
Part Ten: Warhammer Takes Over (Issues 91-100). July 1987 - April 1988
Epilogue (Issues 101-110). May 1988-February 1989


*Other WD Read-throughs*
WebWarlock's Blog
Private Eye's RPGNet thread (up to issue 39).


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## Dr Simon

*Issues 1-10*

*Part One: The Early Years (Issues 1-10)*


 



*Overview*
These issues cover a span from June 1977 to January 1979, published bi-monthly and costing 60p. From Issue 7 onwards (a year into publication), WD gets a colour cover as opposed to the single colour covers of the first six.

Most of the contributions come from two men, Don Turnbull and Lew Pulsipher. Editor Ian Livingstone contributes a few reviews and monsters but is otherwise unseen. Issue 4 has a cover by long-term GW artist John Blanche, and in issue 10 there are letters from Bryan Ansell and Pete Tamlyn, prominent names to come.



 



*Games*
At the beginning there are very few RPGs. D&D is in the form now known as “Original D&D”, and is a real mish-mash of rules. By the end of this period the *Monster Manual* and *Players Handbook* have been released and reviewed (10/10 for the PHB, the MM is reviewed before ratings are given). *Metamorphosis Alpha* is the other existing game, but during the period under discussion *Gamma World* is released, a game that essentially relocates MA and updates the rules a bit. *Empire of the Petal Throne* exists but, bar a few monster conversions (and one scenario much later on), never really features in WD. Also released during this run are *Traveller*, *RuneQuest*, *Chivalry and Sorcery*, *Tunnels and Trolls*, and *Starships and Spacemen*. The last evidently never took off, as bar one article it is never heard of again, but the others did relatively well, with RuneQuest and Traveller emerging as market leaders over the others (despite Don Turnbull  doubting the appeal of Traveller in his review).



 



*Scenarios*
There are only a few complete adventures published in this period. The predominant concept of the time seems to be that a Dungeon Master creates a single huge dungeon (a la Greyhawk and Blackmoor) that he keeps “stocked”, and that it must be some kind of designed challenge where rooms present puzzles and obstacles for players to solve. The prime example is Don Turnbull’s “_Greenlands_” dungeon from which he presents the “*Alice in Wonderland*” levels (mostly a series of Orc-and-Pie rooms) and the *Lair of the Demon Queen*, where solving a riddle gets you a fight and some treasure. The problem with these “puzzle dungeons” is that they make little sense in any kind of logical or realistic game-world. They exist solely as a game in themselves. There is nothing wrong with this as one option, but it can pall pretty quickly. It can also lead to annoying riddles and puzzles that may make sense to the DM but not to anyone else. Witness these examples by Fred Hemmings who describes a competition dungeon where doors will only open if riddles are answered. He was surprised that players got stuck at this point. Have a go yourselves. Answers in next post:

“What would you do with a flying door?”
“Someday...Judy Garland.”
“What fruit grow on pylons?”
“This street is closed.”
“State that you stand as did Maude’s suitor.”

Better is Lew Pulsipher’s “*A Place in the Wilderness*” except that it’s neither really an adventure nor a monster entry, but somewhere in between. He gives several pretty cool creatures based on Jack Vance’s “The Dragon Masters” and a potential set-up for an adventure, but only sketchy details for running it. This is good in that it is much more naturalistic than a puzzle-dungeon, and also allows for some pretty free-form play, but for more information, including descriptions of some of the creatures beyond bare stats, LP basically says “read the book”.

Best is Albie Fiore’s *Lichway*, which at 30 keyed rooms is classed as a “mini-dungeon” (a name based on the idea of the huge puzzle-dungeon described above). It manages to convey a lot of information and atmosphere in few words, with a unique and interesting background plus a few rumours, giving at least three different reasons for PCs to visit the location. They may be after the evil sorceress Dark Odo and her bandit retinue thought to be hiding in the area, or the band of Xvarts last seen heading into the Lichway, or after the treasure of the Sandlanders, the original (long-lost) builders of the place. Dark Odo with her urn full of the ashes of past lovers, is a character full of potential drawn in few words, and the Lichway itself is a great setting showing how an unusual monster can be made the centrepiece.

Finally, Issue 9 features a review of *G1-3, the Against The Giants* series and first commercially released D&D “modules” from TSR. It seems odd that most of TSR’s early output of adventures were for high level characters.



 



*Articles*
Most articles tend to be extended reviews of one game or another, or ways to improve the D&D rules. Some are horrendously complex (one that involves calculating damage absorbed by layers of armour, flesh and bone for 31 different hit locations) and some sensible (a suggestion from Roger Musson that essentially prefigures touch and flat-footed AC). There are a few articles by Don Turnbull and Lew Pulsipher about how to play the game which smack of one-true-wayism, and one or two supplements for systems like Metamorphosis Alpha and Chivalry & Sorcery. In fact, I can’t resist trying out the trout tickling rules for the C&S Forester class (Issue 9):

First, I roll on the Fish Encounter Table for Trout:  31% - Other. No trout for me today.
So, I need to roll on the Basic Fish Encounter Table: 34%, giving a fish of 6oz to 1lb in size.
To catch this, first I need to approach it a slip a noose around it. My Approach chance for this size fish is 80%, I roll 14%, the fish is approached.
Next, having got it within my noose I need to quickly tighten the noose and flip it onto land. My Pull chance for this size fish is 50% - I roll 91% and the fish gets away!. So I don't get a chance to roll to catch it when it is flopping around on land.

Too complicated? What do you mean? That's highly realistic gaming.

*Molten Magic* discusses new figures whilst *Treasure Chest* is a miscellany of ideas and *Open Box* covers reviews. These latter two will last a long while into WD’s future. New monsters are initially discussed in Treasure Chest, then briefly as a column called *Monsters Mild and Malign* (who wants a “mild” monster?) which essentially rehashes monsters from other publications (White Dwarf’s predecessor, Owl and Weasel, for example), before becoming the *Fiend Factory* with readers suggestions; another long-running column. Don Turnbull spends three issues describing his “Monstermark” system, a method for calculating the danger level of monsters, essentially Challenge Rating but to three decimal places. 

A lot of these monsters can be found in the 1e Fiend Folio (such as *Xvart*, *Sandman* and *Coffer Corpse*). Some can still be found today in modified form. The *Warlock Cat* has basically become the Bezekira (Hellcat), for example, and the *Necrophidius* is still with us. A few themes can be found in these early monsters. Some like to tag along with adventuring parties and cause trouble by attracting other monsters or hindering abilities (my favourite is the *Typo*, which causes spells to be “mis-spelled”, ho-ho, which could be fun in a light-hearted game. _Magic missile_ could become e.g. _magic missive_ and harmlessly shower your opponent with letters). Others are “reverse” monsters, such as the *Withra* (by Don Turnbull), a dud wraith who raises levels and the *Dahdi*, a dud mummy (see what they did?) who heals you with a touch. That one’s by the appropriately named Mervyn Lemon. In issue 10 they go for broke and give a pseudo-template, the *Inverse Monster*, to cover all eventualities. These get a bit wearyingly repetitive. Admittedly Gygax and co weren’t being serious with the likes of rust monsters and gelatinous cubes but these work somehow whereas *The Bragger* (by Roger Musson), an imp who follows the party around boasting, just seems pointless. Worst monster ever, however, must go to the *Stair Stalker*, a shaggy green creature that will only walk up and down a specfic set of stairs, and attacks anyone who tries to pass. Take a bow Roger Musson.

There are also a few character classes published of which three, the *assassin*, the *man-beast* and the *barbarian*, are serious (the others being the *pervert*, the *weakling* and the *scientist*, who if gifted the nobel prize is immediately attacked by all other scientists!). The assassin is fairly well balanced, getting an instant kill if it scores a “critical hit” on the first strike but for some reason can only be male. One problem is that critical hits are ill defined and no definition is given with the assassin class. Elsewhere, Lew Pulsipher offers one idea – if you roll a natural 20, roll again and if that roll hits then you’ve scored a critical. It’ll never catch on. Rather than simple double damage, however, his system then goes on to a hit location effect, which might be workable for a slightly more gritty and less abstract variant. Barbarians are pretty close to their 3.x version although their berserk strength only lasts the first round. They’re better than the official 1e version that came out in Unearthed Arcana anyway. The man-beast is an interesting idea with increasingly powerful natural weapons and beast’s senses as it progresses. I disagree with it needing a magic ring to gain the abilities – some kind of werebeast ancestry would be better, maybe. Actually the shapeshifter druid variant would give you a similar kind of character these days, particularly if it was also a shifter.



 



*General Thoughts*
There’s a general trend from really amateurish stuff to more professional games over this time period. It’s a bit like the early days of the OGL, really (and I say this as a semi-pro myself). Natural selection mostly went the right way with these products, I think. WD attempts a cartoon, *Kalgar*, which is a quite well drawn serious story full of cod-gadzookery, ending abruptly with “it was all a dream” when reader opinion goes against it. Also a preponderance of bare-breasted women throughout, in adverts and incidental illos (not to mention a worrying trend of trivialising rape). There’s also a terrible story (*Valley of the Four Winds*) which is coupled to selling miniatures (not well-made but interesting designs) and, oh look, later GW bring out a game of the story. It’s got some good ideas, but again features lots of gadzookery. Finally, a roll on Issue 9’s *Useless Items Table*:

84% - Octopus Leg

(Tentacle, surely?)


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## Whizbang Dustyboots

I was all excited, thinking there was going to be a re-release PDF or something.


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## Dire Bare

Whizbang Dustyboots said:


> I was all excited, thinking there was going to be a re-release PDF or something.




Well, Games Workshop is just beginning to dip its toe into digital publishing . . . so maybe we'll get lucky and they will start releasing older products, including back issues of WD, in digital form.


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## Dr Simon

Whizbang Dustyboots said:


> I was all excited, thinking there was going to be a re-release PDF or something.




Not to my knowledge, although it's something they ought to do, via RPGNow or similar.

I'll try to make the title less ambiguous!


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## howandwhy99

Whizbang Dustyboots said:


> I was all excited, thinking there was going to be a re-release PDF or something.




There was a CD of the first 90 issues that was halted at the last moment. A bunch (100s?) were released surreptitiously in the 90s and again later from someone in Europe in 200..5, I think? 

It's definitely a solid publication to review. At least until it went all Warhammer all the time.


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## Dr Simon

howandwhy99 said:


> It's definitely a solid publication to review. At least until it went all Warhammer all the time.




The first 100 covers pretty much the extent of the non-Warhammer Dwarf. Issue 100 is pretty much Warhammer, Warhammer FRP and Warhammer 40K, and has figures on the front, so it seemed like a good place to stop!


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## frankthedm

howandwhy99 said:


> There was a CD of the first 90 issues that was halted at the last moment.



 Don't expect to see many gaming magazines in electronic archives in the USA. The Tasini decision means the owners would have to track down all the individual article authors and negotiate the electronic rights. 

Tasini Decision - LexisNexis Academic Knowledge Center
New York Times Co. v. Tasini - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...n-mag-cd-roms-tasini-v-ny-times-decision.html


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## Dr Simon

*Part Two: Consolidation (Issues 11-20)*



 



*Overview*
The Dwarf is still bi-monthly over this period from February 1979 to September 1980, and the cover price rises to 75p. I’ve called this period “consolidation” because it is during this run that the magazine begins to be divided into regular “Departments” such as _Fiend Factory_, _Treasure Chest_ and _Open Box_, and “Features” that are particular to each issue. Lew Pulsipher continues to be a prolific contributor but Don Turnbull moves over to run TSR UK, leaving Fiend Factory in the capable hands of Albie Fiore. Other rising voices are Bob McWilliams who gets his first _Starbase_ department devoted to all things Traveller, and the Rogers Musson and E. Moore, prolific designers of monsters. Generally, the quality of production and writing continues to improve, with a better balance between the sensible articles and ideas and the silly ones.



 



*Games*
Consolidation is the key again. TSR’s D&D output stabilises to a steady stream of adventures, including _Tomb of Horrors_ and playing aids such as _Rogues Gallery_, with the most notable releases during this period being the hardback _Dungeon Masters Guide_ and UK-produced F_iend Folio_. Chaosium continue to put out new RuneQuest material such as _Balastor’s Barracks_, slowly but surely, and GDW unleash a fair torrent of Traveller books including _Mercenary,_ _High Guard_, _The Kinunir_ and _The Spinward Marche_s. Judges’s Guild churn out scenario packs for all three games, but their more amateurish quality is already beginning to lag behind the professional standard of the three main publishers. 
There are few new games – _Boot Hill_ and _Top Secret_ from TSR and _The Fantasy Trip_, one of those generic fantasy games that hung around without ever making a true impact.



 



*Scenarios*
Top of the heap is Albie Fiore again, this time with _The Halls of Tizun Thane_. Like _The Lichway_ this is a large setting occupied by a mix of existing and new occupants, with a logical and sensible layout, multiple paths and a great decadent feel remniscent of Golden Age fantasy (I think it’s the black lotus and slave girls that does it…). I remember finding it daunting when I first came across it back in Best of White Dwarf Scenarios I. Although designed for 1st level characters (albeit the inevitable 1e horde of 6-10 players) the first encounter areas include a stone golem in one and 50 inhabitants in another. It shouldn’t really pan out, though, that PCs would have to face either set of opponents in a fight. A truly excellent adventure, worth digging out today.

D&D-wise there are a few other adventures that made it to Best of White Dwarf Scenarios I, including _Grakt’s Crag_ (by Will Stephenson), which is much more linear and belongs to the “dungeon as series of puzzles” school of adventure design and doesn’t make much logical sense, with such tricks/traps as the elevator rooms. _The Pool of the Standing Stones_ (by Bill Howard) is also to be found in Best of White Dwarf Scenarios 1. This adventure sets itself up as having a druidic theme but quickly becomes a series of “orc-and-pie” dungeon rooms with little relevance to druids, although the Big Evil Boss is a good design, a kind of skeletal half-fiend. Issue 20 features the first of a run of new-style Fiend Factories, adventure outlines designed around thematically-linked monsters. The first is swamp-based, but most of the creatures are not far off others. John Gordon’s _Creeper_, for example, is pretty much a shambling mound variant, and there’s not much between Phil Masters’ _Frog-Folk_ and bullywugs. Michael Wilkinson’s _Melodemon_ is quite good, a kind of singing snake with a range of song-based spell-like abilities. I do love the _Cauldron Born_, though; zombie-like creatures where the survivors get stronger as each one is killed off (by Tim Walters). Lew Pulsipher’s _Bar-room Brawl_ is a D&D-based mini-game. I’ve played that one, it’s good fun and I think was used at a convention.

Notably, the other scenarios are all for a range of systems. _Paths of the Lil _is for Gamma World by Drawmij himself, Jim Ward, featuring the eponymous pixie-like mutants in their hedge lair. Functional, but no interesting twists. RuneQuest gets _Jorthan’s Rescue_ ( by Steve Marsh and John Sapienza Jr.) and _Lair of the White Wyrm_ (by John Bethell). Wyrm is a fairly simple “zoo” dungeon, not overly exciting but the duck barbarian Quincy, Master of Quack-Fu, is an entertaining NPC if you are of the kind of RQer who likes rather than hates the ducks (I am unashamedly pro-duck. I think Quincy may have been an influence on Al Orange, the recurring duck NPC in my old RuneQuest campaign. And to think I complain about “silly” ideas…). Jorthan’s Rescue is a simple raid scenario against trollkin but is set up to showcase the RQ combat a lot better than Wyrm. I’ve played this one, it’s brief but fun with trollkin getting flung down staircases and the like. For Traveller there is _The Sable Rose Affair_ (Bob McWilliams), a very detailed scenario that allows for plenty of scope for player and referee freedom but ultimately feels very low tech (it really comes down to a bar fight). The presentation, laid out as if the adventure elements were notes from a file, is one that is used for Traveller adventures for some time to come. Chivalry and Sorcery gets a little wilderness scenario, _Ogre Hunt_ (by Tom Keenes); a simple but pleasant adventure with seven encounter areas that goes for mood over problem-solving and combat but is none the worse for that.



 



*Articles*
Over this period the magazine moves away from the more whimsical (or just plain silly) material (such as the Weakling Class in issue 11) to a more predominantly serious tone, with just a touch of whimsy instead. It also sets up the regular “Departments” such as Fiend Factory (new monsters), Open Box (reviews) and Treasure Chest (miscellany) as separate from Feature articles.

The Fiend Factory continues to offer much of the same, although I think the new editor Albie Fiore prefers creatures that can play a multitude of roles as opposed to the gimmicky creatures favoured by Don Turnbull. A readers poll reveals that the top 10 monsters are (from 1-10), Necrophidius, Russian Doll Monster, Svart, Needleman, Hook Horror, Githyanki, Imps (who later became mephits), Volt, Urchin, Dahdi. Note that many of those have survived through multiple editions, mainly because they are well-thought out and not just a joke or a bad pun. The Russian Doll Monster is a Hill Giant, which when killed opens to reveal an Ogre, then a Bugbear, a Hobgoblin, a Goblin and finally a Leprechaun who has been controlling the whole thing. A gimmick, but quite a fun one. The Dahdi, as you may recall, is an inverse Mummy that heals you (apparently it was thrown out of the pyramid for trying to wear the trousers). The worst 5 were voted as (from 1 (worst) to 5) - Nas Nas, Dahdi, Withra, Stinwicodech, Pebble Gnome. Two of these; the dahdi and the withra, are “inverse” undead. The nas-nas (half a person) and the stinwicodech (which randomly raises or lowers one of your ability scores) are simply unimpressive creatures that are more likely to cause scorn than fear, and the pebble gnome is a species of gnome who don’t fight, have no magic and don’t adventure.

Good creatures to come out of this period include the aforementioned _Githyanki_ (by Charles Stross). We all know about them. Also the Cauldron Born, _Mandrake People_ (by Glen Goddard) and the _Phung_ (by Simon Tilbrook), which has a great picture. This latter is adapted from The City of the Chasch, part of Jack Vance’s Planet of Adventure series. Tilbrook also invented the necrophidius. The mandrake people have quite a well-developed life cycle with added adventure fodder – their young, acorn-like things known as bantlings, can be used as an aphrodisiac by humans, setting up a source of conflict.






*The Phung, by Polly Wilson*

Treasure Chest similarly moves away from whimsy to sensible. During this period it has themes each issue – this might be new spells, artefacts and relics or NPCs. Notable examples include the _Swords of Meryn Caradoc_ by Roger Coult; which aren’t that well thought-out in terms of their mechanical effects but I like the idea that they function as magic items but aren’t magic, they’re simply from another world. The potions special seems to bring out the worst in vindictive or abitrary DMs, with loads that are harmful and only one or two that are beneficial. The _follicle philtre_ (by James Meek) might be fun; it causes the imbiber to grow hair uncontrollably. The _potion of wall delusion_ by Marc Gascoigne is just a very bizarre exercise in messing with the players. It causes the imbiber to think that all doors are walls, and they become frenzied if anyone tries to make them walk through what they think is a solid wall. Odd. I liked Daniel Adler’s spell, _Jebanself’s Eye of Back-Seeing_ when I misread the name as Eye of _Black_-Seeing, implying some kind of Vancian artefact that allows you to see in the dark but with dangerous consequences. As it is it grows an extra eye, and tries to use Science! to explain it, not as interesting as I’d hoped.

There are some interesting ideas on new character classes, so much so that a new department, Character Conjuring, is set up. _The Berserker_ (by Roger E Moore) seems redundant next to the already existing barbarian, but its powers are remarkably similar to modern barbarians; I think it’s an upgrade from the earlier class as its by the same author. _The Alchemist_ NPC class (Tony Chamberlain) is quite limited in scope, not far off the modern Adept. More interesting is an article by Lew Pulsipher which basically predicts Savage Species, with character classes for the _Lammasu_, _Stone Giant_, _Werebear_ and a pack(!) of _Blink Dogs_ (as you increase levels you gain more dogs – I’d love to know if/how this worked in play). It includes some 1st Ed.-style arbitrary rulings (monsters can only heal naturally, not with spells) but contains some good ideas. _The Houri_ class (by Brian Asbury) is a good old-fashioned sexist idea and useless for dungeoneering (her powers revolve around seduction and magical charms). You could do the same with a Beguiler these days; the various kiss spells are a good idea, though.

Traveller gets a lot of material, pretty much something each issue with new rules or rules expansions, mostly in an ongoing series of articles called _The Expanding Universe_ by Andy Slack. Since GDW are also publishing at a rate of knots some of this quickly gets superceded by official material but it is generally well thought-out and was probably useful at the time. _The Criminal_ career, for instance, becomes largely redundant with the publication of _Citizens of the Imperium_, but there is an expanded _Scout_ career (along the lines of Mercenary and High Guard) that lasts a long time before GDW get around to releasing Book 6: Scouts. So prolific is the Traveller material, in fact, that it leads to Starbase, a regular Traveller department edited by Bob “Sable Rose” McWilliams.

Other articles tend to give crunch rather than advice on “playing the game”. Phil Masters’ _Dungeons and Dragoon_s is a useful discussion on the armaments and tactics of various historical troops, from Aztecs to Carolingian franks, good in that it moves the focus away from standard knights-in-armour fantasy. Roger Musson’s “_How to Lose Hit Points and Survive_” article essentially predicts the Vitality/Wounds variant, and he also attempts rules for clerical conversion which are okay – I tried to incorporate them into my game once but they never really saw much use. Also of interest are interviews with Gary Gygax and Greg Stafford where they outline how they got started in the RPG writing business. Both seem like nice blokes.



 



*General Thoughts*
The rise in quality of production and writing continues. I for one am glad to see the reduction in just plain silly ideas. There’s a place for whimsy (in a game that include the Gelatinous Cube and the Rust Monster) but it’s a finely drawn line between whimsy and stupid, and I think that the Fiend Factory Readers’ Poll shows that I’m not alone (with some creatures like the Dahdi demonstrating that the line between them is often a personal one). I think one of the problems with the silly ideas was that they were largely vindictive, along the lines of cursed magic items. You can play a game like that, but it palls quickly. 

What’s also good to see is the opening up of the gaming world to different settings and game systems. I have to confess that I’ve never been big fan of Traveller but it’s interesting to see how quickly it takes off. Granted, some of that perception of speed is due to the contracted timescale of re-reading these magazines, but there’s a lot of material released by GDW on a regular basis. By issue 20 it is roughly 2 years since the release of Traveller, which Don Turnbull predicted would be of only marginal interest to roleplayers…

The "answers" to Fred Hemmings’ riddles (from Issue 3) 
_“What would you do with a flying door?”_ Smoke it (Condor, a brand of cigar).
_“Someday...Judy Garland.”_ Opened by wishing upon a star. (Surely that's Jiminy Cricket? Shouldn't it be something to do with over the raindbow?)
_“What fruit grow on pylons?”_ Electric Currants
_“This street is closed.” _Open Sesame
_“State that you stand as did Maude’s suitor.”_ I stand at the gate alone.

I wonder why the players had such trouble with those…. On re-reading this, it occurred to me that this intrusion of real world things (such as cigar adverts and Tennyson) is another area of whimsy that was indicative of the early years.


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## Dr Simon

*Part Three: Rise of the Big Three. Issues 21-30*

*Part Three: Rise of the Big Three. Issues 21-30*



 



*Overview*
Over the period of October 1980 to May 1981 there is a definite sense of the hobby maturing, with a further move away from whimsy and gamism (where dungeons are places deliberately set up as a challenge with a solution) towards a style of play where the character, its personality and a believable setting are more important than artificial tricks and traps. Perhaps this is in part due to the rise of games such as Traveller and RuneQuest with their different emphases on what a player character does, or perhaps it is the shift in writers contributing to the magazine away from the likes of Don Turnbull (a strong advocate of the big-dungeon-full-of-traps style of play) towards the likes of Andy Slack, Marcus L Rowland and Oliver Dickinson who emphasise settings and ideas. Quality-wise the magazine remains strong with plenty of useful articles per issue and a colour cover, bimonthly for 75p.



 



*Games*
As suggested in the title, this is the period where *Traveller* and *RuneQuest* rise massively in terms of output and popularity, and such gems as *Twilight's Peak*, *Deluxe Traveller*, *Griffin Mountain* and *Cults of Prax* are released. Although RQ, according to reader polls during this period, remains a niche system (played by 9% of respondents of the first reader’s poll, I think), it still stands well above other systems out at the time, and one only needs to look at the adverts for games shops, and the coverage given to the games that they advertise, to see this. The nearest challenger is *Tunnels and Trolls* which has a steady output of material, but the Dwarf tends to lack coverage. Perhaps as a simpler game there are fewer rules ideas that can be introduced, perhaps there just aren’t the contributions for it. However, Ken St. Andre, creator of T&T, gets a brief column putting him on a par with Gary Gygax, Marc Miller and Greg Stafford and shows that there isn’t an inherent anti-T&T bias to the Dwarf. Other games that are released during this period include *Aftermath*, a post-apocalypse RPG by FGU, *Man, Myth and Magic* by Yaquinto (which is more of a campaign with a game system attached) and *Champions*, which adds superhero gaming to the list of available genres (although the reviewer, Dave Morris, thinks it’s of limited appeal, c.f. Don Turnbull and Traveller). Chaosium take their RuneQuest engine, Basic Roleplaying, and use it to give us *Stormbringer *(the RPG of Moorcock’s Elric) and, in production, some game based on the works of an obscure pulp horror writer, called *Call of Cthulhu*. It’ll never catch on.



 



*Scenarios*
The scenarios illustrate the trend in gaming from trap-filled dungeons to more serious scenarios quite well, with the first two issues (21 and 22) featuring The *Tomb of the Maharaja* (by S. Hartley) and *The Search for the Temple of the Golden Spire* (by Barney Sloane) and the last two issues (29 and 30) featuring *Weed War* (by S. McIntyre) and *The Curse of the Wildland* (by Phil Masters). 

The first of these, *Maharaja*, is a pretty uninspiring zoo/trap dungeon, the second, *Spire*, is one of those adventures where the PCs have to solve a riddle to solve the scenario (although it’s not clear what they get at the end. General treasure, it would seem. No specific treasure, no saving the world or any discernable end-point). To be fair it _is_ a competition scenario where such things seem to be more acceptable. It’s good in parts, but it does feel like a very artificial set-up, a game rather than a world. 

By way of contrast, *Weed War* is a Traveller adventure set on a water world where pirates are stealing the harvest of a sea plant vital for drug manufacture. As with most published Traveller adventures, the referee is given the bare bones and left to get on with it. There is nothing in it specifically designed as a puzzle; all the obstacles come from the scenario itself and whatever results the actions of the players create. Good stuff, however the map of level 2 of the underwater base bears an uncanny resemblance to Hitler.





*Maps That Look Like Hitler*

*The Curse of the Wildland* is a simple wilderness adventure (with 6 encounter areas) and although it too has a riddle, this doesn’t form the crux of the adventure but is instead the words of an oracle that may or may not help the PCs. It’s not too difficult to complete, but again it presents a world and a scenario that feels real rather than artificial. 

There is one other full Traveller scenario, *Amber to Red* (by Neil Cheyne), involving the theft of a starship, which might make a good campaign opener. Notable D&D scenarios include the *Hive of the H’rrl* (by Daniel Collerton), a general purpose setting to go with the “Flymen” monsters given in the same issue, and the *Lair of Maldred the Mighty* (by Mark Byng), a highly-detailed puzzle dungeon, which is okay for that kind of adventure but the print is tiny in order to fit it all in, and I’m afraid the aesthetics mean that I’ve never warmed to it (how shallow!). Those last three are all winning entries in various competitions.



 



*Articles*
There are two sizeable series of “How to...” articles running through these issues. *An Introduction to Dungeons and Dragons* by Lew Pulsipher gives an overview of game play and tactics whereas Roger Musson’s *Dungeon Architect* series gives sage advice to the DM for designing dungeon adventures. RM’s series contains more meat and is an entertaining read; both are a little dated but still quite useful for that style of play. If you could only read one, read Roger Musson’s series. Given his past entries into the Fiend Factory, such as the notorious stair stalker, it comes as a surprise that Roger is not a keen advocate of the “silly” style of play, although I suppose his “purple mold”, used for preventing access to un-written areas of the dungeon, is in that kind of dungeon-specific monster vein. Paul Vernon’s series on *Designing a Pseudo-Mediaeval Society* starts near the end of this batch of issues and gives some very detailed information about creating a more realistic economy for a D&D setting based on the “Ale Standard”. Probably more detail than you’d really need, although it does distill into a useful table of costs for services and contains some food for thought. *The Magic Jar*, by Andy Slack, is an article about converting characters stats from one game to another. There are a few mathematical tables that match the probabilities from different types of roll (3d6 vs 2d6, etc.) and some examples mostly for games that never made it. Nevertheless, I’ve found this useful from time to time.

Other D&D articles discuss such matters as a spell point system (by Bill Milne), alignment (in a very intelligent article by OC Macdonald that considers how morality is measured in other games as well as D&D) and Marcus L Rowland prefigures Spelljammer with a series of excellent articles on fantasy space travel, backing it up with an adventure, *Operation Counterstrike*. One JP Hasledene of Boston (I suspect of Lincolnshire rather than Massachusets) gets very irate at the idea of D&D in space – “...this spacefaring system doesn’t fit in with the general atmosphere that AD&D creates...Perhaps if the author feels he needs a change from ‘ordinary’ AD&D – insult though it is to call AD&D ordinary – he should play Traveller instead”. Ouch! Operation Counterstrike misses an opportunity and is really just another dungeon crawl but with added alien machines, quite mundane compared to MLR’s other innovative ideas. It’s another one where the hard-to-read font puts me off.

Character Conjuring comes to an end as a regular feature, after a range of offerings. Most of these could be created under d20 rules quite easily, and these days seem almost mundane. *Brownies* (by Bob Lock) and *Lizardmen* (Roger E Moore and Michael Brown) are added to the list of playable monsters. *The War Smith* (by Roger E Moore) is a sort of fire/war cleric. *The Summoner* (by Penelope Hill – a girl?!) and *Elementalist* (Stephen Bland) are specialist wizards who do what you would expect from their titles. *The Merchant* class (also Roger E Moore) could be covered by an Expert with the appropriate skill set but is an attempt to create a character class that focuses on trade and discussion. *The Black Priest* is an interesting NPC class from Lew Pulsipher, albeit illustrated in dubious taste, not unlike the “Cultist” class from the Freeport Trilogy, giving mechanics to an archetypal villain. Finally the *Detective* by Marcus L Rowland could be created using Urban Ranger and/or Master Inquisitive from Eberron. Most of these classes are a bit underpowered compared to mainstream clerics and magic-users and although I offered them in my games at the time nobody was interested. It’s fun, though, with these old 1e classes where people felt that they had to make titles for each level – one of those great unquestioned oddities about AD&D.

On top of that, Traveller. Lots of Traveller. Not only is there a Starbase column each issue but there is usually another feature article, be it on setting up and running Traveller adventures and campaigns, or new vehicles, variant character creation, the *Android* and *Secret Service* careers (by Roger E Moore and Robert McMahon respectively), a complex critical hit system (that could be ported elsewhere if you like a lot of realism, by Steve Cook), expanded rules for jump drive problems, vac suits, nobles, even, shock, laser swords! Andy Slack and Bob McWilliams are the prime source of articles, but other contributers add their two credits. Not to be overlooked, there's a good article by Andy Slack called "*A Backdrop of Stars*" which, apart from some layout artist taking the title as an instruction and setting it in almost unreadable white on black, is an excellent discussion on setting up a Traveller campaign, drawing inspiration from various SF sources.

Starting Issue 19, Oliver Dickinson introduces some regular RuneQuest material, both in the form of his excellent *Griselda* stories and in the new monthly *Runerites* column, the first of which features unarmed combat by E Varley. There is a wierd symmetry to this which we shall see in the last of these columns.

*Fiend Factory* and *Treasure Chest* continue to do what they do, for better and worse. The days of magic items specifically designed to mess with adventurers, or monsters with a jokey theme are largely done with (bar some purposefully silly monsters for the April issue). The offerings from Treasure Chest are either things that now exist in 3rd Ed. (or similar), or not very interesting, and so I won’t cover too many specifics. *The Staff of Earthquakes* (Phil Masters) is quite neat; not only can the wielder use it to cast an earthquake spell, but can brace against it to be immune to such effects himself. The items in the “*assassin’s toolkit*” (by MF Ozanne) are also nifty, particularly the *Scarab of Assassination*, a kind of remote control Scarab of Death. Finally, I like the spell “_leafskin_” (Roger E Moore again) that allows the caster to photosynthesise; kind of a lesser version of barkskin, perhaps.

Fiend Factory moves towards more interesting monsters, and notably both the monstermark and the annoying illuminated names for the monsters are gone. Quality remains variable, but stand-outs worth keeping are the *dream demon* (by Phil Masters. Just the picture is evocative - a butterfly-winged skeleton), the *shadow goblin* (by Barney Sloane. I used these to great effect in an adventure), the *argorian wormkin* (that splits in two unless you kill it outright – a creation of Kyuss, perhaps? Barney Sloane again), the *stirge demon* (a fitting creation for a D&D setting by Ivo [sic] Smith) and the *birch spirit* (by CN Cartmell, a kind of undead dryad – the birch spirit, that is, not CN Cartmell, who might be I suppose...). The birch spirit could, pretty much, be made in 3.x by applying a ghost template to a dryad, and some of the other monsters, like the Trevor French’s *coacula* (vampire wolf), are also creatures that the inclusion of templates makes so much easier to create, and removes the necessity for a special monster entry.





*Dream Demon, artist unknown.*



 



*General Thoughts*
There’s some good material in these issues. An expanding range of games covered means more variety to the material and more contributors. Attitudes in gaming have already changed from the early days, at least as reflected in the magazine. The player of 1982 wants believable, logical adventure settings with maybe a dash of whimsy, rather than monsters with silly powers in a complex of specially designed traps and tricks (early players may well have wanted that kind of thing too, but the industry standard didn’t reflect it so much). A range of different settings; post-apocalyptic, wild west, spies, super-hero, samurai, rabbits, horror and sci-fi as well as several flavours of fantasy are available for play (pre-GURPS and d20, however, each system tends to be either  unique, with varying degrees of playability, or a thinly-disguised D&D clone). Even the idea that D&D can be used in radically different settings, such as fantasy outer-space, is taking root. Finally, the news section of issue 30 mentions the possibility of playing D&D via computers, using the Prestel system. If you ask me, it’ll never catch on, even with the swanky Commodore PETs seen in the photos of Games Day ’81.


----------



## Dire Bare

Thanks again for doing this, this thread has been a fun read!

The covers, once they went full color, are fantastic, and remind me of early Dragon covers . . . which I suppose was around the same time.


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## S'mon

Dire Bare said:


> Thanks again for doing this, this thread has been a fun read!
> 
> The covers, once they went full color, are fantastic, and remind me of early Dragon covers . . . which I suppose was around the same time.




The quality of art in White Dwarf was consistently astounding. Ian Livingstone had the strangely-rare ability to get famous sf/fantasy book cover artists like Achilleos to license their work, plus Games Workshop had tons of fantastic illustrators like Blanche.


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## WebWarlock

Very cool.

I have been doing something similar with White Dwarf for a while now.  
"White Dwarf Wednesdays" is a regular feature of my blog, the Other Side.  Though I go into more detail on each issue.
The Other Side blog: white dwarf

The advantage of your approach here is to see the larger trends. You see the forest, where I only see the trees.

I am going to keep following this!

Tim


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## Dr Simon

WebWarlock said:


> Very cool.
> 
> I have been doing something similar with White Dwarf for a while now.
> "White Dwarf Wednesdays" is a regular feature of my blog, the Other Side.  Though I go into more detail on each issue.
> The Other Side blog: white dwarf
> 
> The advantage of your approach here is to see the larger trends. You see the forest, where I only see the trees.
> 
> I am going to keep following this!
> 
> Tim




Thanks for the link, I'll take a look!  I noticed that Private Eye's thread on RPGNet (and the preceding one as well, whose name escapes me) all flagged up similar good (and bad) things to me; I'll be interested to see if we spotted the same things as well.

S'Mon and Dire Bare - I agree, some of the covers are very evocative. I think they are best up until around issue 50 or so, when they begin to become a bit more mundane but there are some really nice pieces of artwork, particularly the ones by Immanuel (see issue 23 in the last post for example).


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## WebWarlock

Since I am getting ready to do issue 21 it will be interesting to see if I can see the same trends on the microscopic-issue by issue level.

Tim


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## Dr Simon

*Part Four: The Early Golden Age. Issues 31-40*


 



*Overview*
Over this period, spanning June 1982 to April 1983, the magazine continues to offer solid support for the “Big Three” of AD&D, RuneQuest and Traveller, but other systems get short shrift beyond the review sections, at the moment. Two more regular departments appear – *Microview* which mixes computers (like that new-fangled ZX Spectrum thing) with gaming, and *Critical Mass*, Dave Langford’s often witty and acerbic book review column. The layout continues to become more professional, with some splashes of colour to the pages, and the title changes to the block font from the old-fashioned looking scrolled font. Most significantly, the magazine goes monthly starting from issue 32.



 



*Games*
The “Big Three” of _AD&D_, _Traveller_ and _Runequest_ continue to expand in the range of support material on the market, with chock-loads of D&D adventures from TSR (including *White Plume Mountain* and The *Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh*), lots of Traveller supplements and adventures from GDW and FASA (including FASA's *Sky Raiders* series), and Chaosium releasing the likes of *Borderlands* and *Trollpak* for Runequest. Judges Guild seems to be fading in the face of more professionally produced material. Chaosium are also plugging away at other systems, and the most notable release in this period is *Call of Cthulhu*, carrying the air of something special from the moment of its arrival (or should that be when its rugose form rises from the impenetrable darkness like some indescribable eldritch terror?). *Bushido* and *Pirates & Plunder* arrive, both of which garner something of a cult status but never make much impact in WD, even though Bushido gets a rave review (that review, however, is lots of gushing praise that tells you nothing of how the game actually works). TSR adds *Star Frontiers* to its range of games, a more space opera type of SF compared to Traveller. Steve (US) Jackson’s *Car Wars*, although not exactly an RPG, is quickly established as a firm favourite and, also not exactly an RPG, *The Warlock of Firetop Mountain* unleashes the oncoming wave of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, with TSR joining in the solo gamebook market with their *Endless Quest* series.



 



*Scenarios*
For me, there are three stand-out scenarios in this period. Paul Vernon’s *Trouble At Embertrees* is a good low-level eco-warrior adventure, using all the elements of his previous articles on creating believable societies to give a detailed (overly, I would say) village and the troubles besetting it. It could be an interesting way to start a campaign although it would need an experienced DM to do it justice because there's So. Much. Information. However, as a living, breathing village, Embertrees points at Hommlet and laughs.

*Green Horizon* by Marcus L Rowland is an innovative Traveller adventure where the PCs are an alien race who happen to be in need of deuterium in order to repair their spaceship. Fortunately for them the primitive planet that they are stranded on happens to have a factory nearby. Not so fortunately, they happen to be in Nazi-occupied Norway. That the alien race resembles creatures from German and Norwegian folklore is an added bonus of fun. Shades of Heroes of Telemark, with small warty-skinned heroes, ensues.

*A City in the Swamp* by Graeme Davis is straightforward, but gives a useful and interesting organic-looking city and a swamp-dwelling race that can be inserted into any campaign, even if you don’t use the specific adventure set-up (involving a rogue slaad and its would-be assassin).

Of the other scenarios, *Eagle Hunt* is a passable take on detective noir in D&D by Marcus L Rowland, making use of his Detective character class but not dependent on it. The assassin’s lair described within could be used anywhere and so it makes a useful resource for pillaging even if you don’t use the adventure whole-cloth. 

*Chaos From Mount Dorren* is a solid if not enormously exciting D&D adventure from Phil Masters with a good premise (pterodactyl-riding gnome anarchists) weighed down with a mundane dungeon, and finally issue 39 sees the first Champions scenario published, *Slayground*, a fairly simple combat scenario set in a fairground by the ever-prolific Marcus L Rowland.

There are a couple of mini-game style scenarios; *Rumble at the Tin Inn* is a RQ bar-room brawl (by Michael Cule) and *The Druid’s Grove* (by Mark Byng) is an AD&D druidic skirmish to ascertain dominance amongst high-level druids. I’ve never played it despite owning this magazine for years, but it looks like it could be fun. A definite D&D bias, but notably all the AD&D adventures shy away from the “puzzle dungeon” style of Grakt’s Crag and are more like the living dynamic of The Halls of Tizun Thane.



 



*Articles*
Several big series span this period. Lew Pulsipher does what he likes doing best with a multi-part series titled *An Introduction to Dungeon Mastering*. Then Andy Slack does something similar with Traveller, in *An Introduction to Traveller*. Both have some reasonable advice, and a closer look highlights different attitudes on the different games. Andy’s Traveller advice is all about working with the players to create a setting and a series of adventures that caters to their needs, Lew’s is more about creating and stocking a dungeon, an attitude that even this far back is beginning to look dated, and isn’t as detailed as Roger Musson’s *Dungeon Architect* series from the last batch of issues. He caps the series with an introductory adventure based on Tolkien’s Moria, to mixed reaction from the letters page (it’s a bit of a zoo-dungeon and doesn’t really capture the feel of Moria).

Paul Vernon follows up his series on pseudo-mediaeval economics with a look at creating believable villages, towns and cities. It’s potentially useful but to my mind worries a bit too much about getting every last detail correct, as witnessed in the massive level of detail in the Embertrees scenario dedicated to the village itself. As with his previous article, however, it distils down to some useful advice.

Finally there is an interesting series on the denizens of *Faerie* by Allen E Paull – some discussion on how to run an adventure in the land of the Fey, some creature stats and finally a scenario which is a disappointing zoo-dungeon featuring all the creatures given and follows none of the suggestions in the first part of the series about creating the mysterious atmosphere of Faerie in a scenario. Interestingly there is a Fiend Factory “mini scenario” in issue 31 featuring fey creatures which is a much more thematically appropriate adventure (called *In Search of a Fool*, and good it is too, edited by Albie Fiore but including submissions by Daniel Collerton, Craig Cartmel, Phil Masters and Roger E Moore). It also means you get two different sets of stats for the Leanan-Sidhe, a sort of Fey vampiress who can hide in mirrors and likes to collect handsome musicians. 

Fiend Factory and Treasure Chest continue to churn ‘em out. Stand-outs include the aforementioned *Leanen-Sidhe* or *Fey Stirge* (both variants, Craig’s and Paul’s) and the *Spidron* (an intelligent ooze, by John R Gordon after The Forever People), the *Druids Cudgel* (a magical staff that reacts with extra vigour to a shillelagh spell, by Mark “Maldred” Byng), the *Shaft of the Spider* (a magic arrow that webs who it hits, by Jeremy Dunn), the *Wizard’s Wand* (which is sort of a Spell Familiarity feat item, by Paul Cole) and *Manbane* (a potent magical sword that gradually drains the wielder and turns him into a wraith if he draws on its power too much. By Eddie Whitaker). The article on drug use and abuse by Graeme Davis is good, too (more black lotus).

Runerites and Starbase produce some solid work for RQ and Traveller, both coming across as more mature than the new-monsters-and-toys stuff for D&D (although both do feature new monsters and toys...). I particularly like the rules for *Spirit Cults* by Dave Morris, for RQ. Also for RQ, in articles too big for Runerites, we get rules for playing samurai, the first example (I think) of rules for Asian-style cultures outside of specific games like Bushido, and we get *Runeblades*, magical weapons tied to the Runes in terms of power and ability. Nice. Both of these articles are by Dave Morris again (no wonder he takes over editing Runerites later on). Traveller gets some bits and pieces, best is probably Andy Slack’s article on robots in Traveller with a range of examples.

There are some good, longer, articles for D&D. Phil Masters’ rules for whips are workable (superceded by official rules now, of course, but worth considering for some of the ideas for magical whips). The *Dungeon Master General* (by Alan E Paull) gives a fairly neat system for simple mass combat and *Bloodsuckers* by Marcus L Rowland gives some variant options for vampires; worth a look. Lew Pulsipher takes a break from telling everyone how to play to bring us the *Necromancer* class. Don Turnbull complains about this in the letters page, saying “the whole emphasis of the game rests on the triumph of good over evil” and that he “cannot imagine a party of characters including one of these”, prompting a tirade of responses telling him how out of touch he is (and asking why, in that case, is the assassin a class in the Players Handbook?). Tremendous fun.

Finally, two new columns make their debuts. *Microview*, edited by Mike Costello, considers home computers, with a couple of BASIC programs to type in (for generating Traveller planets and RQ characters, I think). It’s always doomed to be a bit of an also-ran column, given how many dedicated home computer magazines are about to erupt onto the market at this time, and how their uses in gaming are (at this time) a niche thing and mainly useful for number-crunching. My favourite, though, is *Critical Mass*, Dave Langford’s book review column which usually sticks to SF&F books but often looks at borderline fiction and reference works that might be of interest to RPGers. Langford has a wry sense of humour and a healthy distrust for books bearing the legend “Part One of the [whatever] Trilogy” (such books usually also bearing a quote of praise from Anne McCaffery), and his demolition of L. Ron Hubbard is a joy to read (we will return to this later, as it’s not in this period). He’s not the type of reviewer who is critical for the sake of it, though. You will find him enthusing over good and original works, not to mention classical re-releases, plus he gives you some insights into the often illogical world of publishing.



 



*General Thoughts*
Some good, solid articles in this run of issues, mainly for D&D, Traveller and RQ but many are such that they could be adapted to any system quite easily (a lot of “other” systems around at this time are just rip-off of the Big Three anyway). I forgot to mention the brief foray into Tunnels and Trolls, with another article and a solo adventure from Ken St. Andre. Neither really makes you think that WD are missing a great deal by not featuring it much, but Ken’s more easy-going, “fun first” attitude to rules and settings rubs up against Don Turnbull who (again) gets snarky in the letters page. What is interesting, however, is the steady increase not only in commercial material for the Big Three, but also many new games coming onto the market, most notable of which will prove to be Call of Cthulhu. Also of note, I think, that WD publishes its first superhero RPG article in the form of a scenario. Lew Pulsipher and Don Turnbull, with their views on dungeon-crawling and what is acceptable as a player character, are beginning to look increasingly out-of-date in the face of an ever-expanding hobby, expanding enough to support enough material for a monthly magazine.


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## magicsandman

Thanks for the reviews. I now have a much greater appreciation for these kinds of threads. Someone tried to review all the White Dwarf magazines in detail on RPGNet and managed to get to issue 39 before petering off. I decided to see if I could do one of these and got halfway through issue 40 before giving up. Cheers.


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## Dr Simon

Thanks!  
I've linked to that RPGnet thread up at the top, and I'd recommend it to anyone as a companion to this piece, also WebWarlock's blog as well is worth checking out to fill in the gaps I've left.

Fortunately I have the dogged determination of a monomaniacal dwarf, plus waited until I had a pretty hefty buffer before posting. Most of these are written apart from 91-100, and I'm working through issue 98 at the moment. It doesn't help that the magazine gets bigger as you go on, although I'm skipping most of the WH40K and WH regiments stuff.


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## Dire Bare

Dr Simon said:


> Thanks!
> I've linked to that RPGnet thread up at the top, and I'd recommend it to anyone as a companion to this piece, also WebWarlock's blog as well is worth checking out to fill in the gaps I've left.
> 
> Fortunately I have the dogged determination of a monomaniacal dwarf, plus waited until I had a pretty hefty buffer before posting. Most of these are written apart from 91-100, and I'm working through issue 98 at the moment. It doesn't help that the magazine gets bigger as you go on, although I'm skipping most of the WH40K and WH regiments stuff.




I don't play WFB, but I do play W40K.  I'd be interested in knowing when GW started first started introducing the games, then of course later at some point dropped all content except for Warhammer . . .


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## Dr Simon

Dire Bare said:


> I don't play WFB, but I do play W40K.  I'd be interested in knowing when GW started first started introducing the games, then of course later at some point dropped all content except for Warhammer . . .




It'll come up in future posts, of course, but WH40K comes out around issue 94 or so (late '87/early'88), as does the 3rd edition of WH Fantasy Battles. Columns like Chapter Approved and Index Astartes emerge pretty quickly (they're actually quite interesting and mostly fluff, but I've tended to skim them at best), and you've got both 'Eavy Metal and Blanchitsu concerning miniatures and painting , then up until about Issue 105 the roleplaying element gradually vanishes, first all systems apart from WHFRP, then even that gives way to the wargames element.


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## nerfherder

Dr Simon said:


> then up until about Issue 105 the roleplaying element gradually vanishes, first all systems apart from WHFRP, then even that gives way to the wargames element.



I still remember the sadness I felt when the RPG stuff started disappearing from WD and Games Workshop (especially since I'd just gone to university in London and had Dalling Road almost on my doorstop).

Great thread - brings back so many memories.


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## Dire Bare

Dr Simon said:


> It'll come up in future posts, of course, but WH40K comes out around issue 94 or so (late '87/early'88), as does the 3rd edition of WH Fantasy Battles. Columns like Chapter Approved and Index Astartes emerge pretty quickly (they're actually quite interesting and mostly fluff, but I've tended to skim them at best), and you've got both 'Eavy Metal and Blanchitsu concerning miniatures and painting , then up until about Issue 105 the roleplaying element gradually vanishes, first all systems apart from WHFRP, then even that gives way to the wargames element.




Thanks.

I think it's interesting that Dragon magazine basically did the same thing, move from a general RPG magazine to covering only in-house games.  Warhammer for White Dwarf, and D&D for Dragon.  Not sure if this happened around the same time or not.

The current White Dwarf frustrates me, as there is really very little content for even the wargames!  Lots, lots of ads, and the articles on their new miniature releases are effectively more ads, and often spread out over many pages with redundant info.  I won't subscribe, and I only pick up issues that offer a cool new rules article, like unit rules or scenarios . . . but each time I feel a bit ripped off at $9/issue.  I do like all the pretty pictures though, and I know all that modeling, painting, and photography is why the magazine is so expensive.

Reading about the older issues back in the day, pre-Warhammer, has been very interesting!


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## chaochou

Dr Simon said:


> There are a couple of mini-game style scenarios; *Rumble at the Tin Inn* is a RQ bar-room brawl (by Michael Cule)...




I didn't know (until today) that Mike had contributed to WD. He ran a weekly, and very popular (or at least noisy!), AD&D game my local rpg club when I was in my late teens. And - as an aside - was the Vogon guard in the BBC serialisation of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

Good fella, and good times.


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## Dr Simon

chaochou said:


> I didn't know (until today) that Mike had contributed to WD. He ran a weekly, and very popular (or at least noisy!), AD&D game my local rpg club when I was in my late teens. And - as an aside - was the Vogon guard in the BBC serialisation of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
> 
> Good fella, and good times.




That's good to know, it's nice to put some personality to the names behind the articles!  I don't think that was his only contribution either, his is one of those names that's familiar from lots of small-scale contributions (like Barney Sloane) rather than in the league of a Phil Masters or Marcus Rowland, or one of the many Graemes and Grahams that seem to crop up.


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## tomBitonti

Dire Bare said:


> The current White Dwarf frustrates me, as there is really very little content for even the wargames!  Lots, lots of ads, and the articles on their new miniature releases are effectively more ads, and often spread out over many pages with redundant info.  I won't subscribe, and I only pick up issues that offer a cool new rules article, like unit rules or scenarios . . . but each time I feel a bit ripped off at $9/issue.  I do like all the pretty pictures though, and I know all that modeling, painting, and photography is why the magazine is so expensive.




Ditto on that.  Recent issues have definitely been overwhelmed by ads and colorful photos of new items presented as articles, but which are really just more ads.  As a nit, they have not always provided unpainted photos of the new items, which (to me) crosses a line into weaselly behavior.

TomB


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## Dr Simon

*Part Five: The Late Golden Age. Issues 41-50*



 



*Overall*
May 1982 to February 1984. The magazine continues in much the same vein as the ‘30s, offering much the same mix of games as before. Some new departments appear – _Lew’s Views_, _Counterpoint_, _Super Mole_ and _Zine Scene_, but these are all short-lived. There is a growing sense of a tongue-in-cheek magazine identity. Adverts for Games Workshop Mail Order are illustrated with the darkly comic figures of Lord Zlargh of the Black Sun (“Fear Me, Man-Things”) and his henchmen Agaroth the Unwashed and Ugbash Skullsplitter. The cartoons of Gobbledigook (by Bil), Thrud the Barbarian (by Carl Critchlow) and The Travellers (by Mark Harrison) appear (to mixed response). There are more of Oliver Dickinson’s excellent Griselda stories. Finally in Issue 50 the game statistics (in AD&D and RQ) are given for a bunch of “White Dwarf Personalities”. More on this below.

Elsewhere the gaming world sees the release of *Imagine*, TSR UK’s in-house magazine with many White Dwarf writers producing material for both, and adverts appear for *Tortured Souls*, a UK fanzine containing quality scenarios each issue. 



 



*Games*
The two newest games to receive the most coverage are *Call of Cthulhu* and GW’s own *Warhammer*, in this, its first edition it is primarily a wargame with a bit of roleplaying tacked on. Iron Crown Enterprises have the license for Tolkien’s Middle Earth and are bringing out a lot of sourcebooks, initially for their *Rolemaster* rules (they only produce a dedicated Middle Earth RPG later on). Tie-ins seem to be on the increase, with the arrival of a *James Bond RPG* from Mayfair Games, and the announcement that FASA are working on a *Star Trek RPG*. TSR release their *Star Frontiers* SF game and also re-issue Basic D&D in the “red box” set. FGU add to their stable with *Privateers and Gentlemen*, set in the golden age of sail, and *Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes* for running a generic pulp/spy/action hero game (I daresay with one eye on James Bond and the other on Indiana Jones). 
Not RPGs, but influential; more *Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks* are published, numbers 2-5 (Citadel of Chaos, Forest of Doom, Starship Traveller and City of Thieves). GW also release the boardgame *Talisman*. I’ve played it, it looks gorgeous and it’s good fun, but it never quite reached the levels of Magic: The Gathering as a method for Not Playing D&D.

TSR continues to push out a steady stream of AD&D adventures (including the *Desert of Desolation* series), along with the *Monster Manual 2* and *Endless Quest* gamebooks, but there are rumblings within the company about disgruntled freelancers. Chaosium continue to release material for RuneQuest (notably the *Pavis* and *Big Rubble* boxed sets), not to mention Call of Cthulhu with rumours of a *Ringworld RPG* in the works. However, they also sell the rights to RQ to Avalon Hill.and the future of the game looks uncertain. GDW’s output of Traveller stuff slows from the massive burst at the beginning. Despite saying that he had no plans to do with scouts as he did with the military and navy in Mercenary and High Guard, Marc Millar releases *Book 6: Scouts*. There are also rumours that he and GDW are in a rocky patch. The Big Three wobble on their perch whilst new pretenders emerge around them.



 



*Scenarios*
*Irilian*, Irilian, Irilian. This massive town-based adventure by Daniel Collerton spans six issues and provides a complete working city with loads of detailed encounter sites and a distinctive “pseudo- Old English” language, midway between Beowulf and Chaucer. The adventure itself only occupies a small part of the material and is mostly linear and simple, but there’s a good atmosphere throughout. It introduces a trend that continues in the two-part AD&D adventure *The Keys of Tirandor* by Mike Polling, of story-boarded adventures where the players are led from one set-piece to the next with little chance to influence the chain of events. I say “storyboarded” rather than “story-telling” as it is possible to use storytelling methods to collaboratively build a narrative where all participants can influence the outcome; it is not necessarily railroading. However, in the case of Irilian and Keys particularly, the adventure writer wants things to happen in a certain way, in a certain sequence, and the adventure is written without much flexibility.

The Keys of Tirandor itself contains some good ideas but as well as the storyboarding it also has a unique setting with a very specific take on the AD&D rules, so it’s general utility is lessened. As a source for concepts, though, it’s good, with a very mystical ending that seems to blend elements of Jung and Buddhism for a very different feel from early dungeon scenarios. Beyond these there is a pleasing array of adventures for other systems. 

Travellers get *The Snowbird Mystery* by Andy Slack which revolves around a drug-smuggling operation gone awry and *Shuttle Scuttle* by Thomas M Price, an audacious set-up where the characters can play, variously, the part of hijackers taking over a shuttle in the name of a revolution, the crew of the hijacked shuttle, the local air traffic controllers, the police or the local government, giving them access to levels of resources not normally allocated to player characters. Sort of Taking of Pelham 123* in space. The Snowbird Mystery is much more typical of Traveller adventures, with the now-hoary plot of a mysterious ship floating dead in space, but seems to lack a particularly strong hook for the PCs.

Similarly afflicted by lack of narrative drive is *The Watchers of Walberswick* by Jon Sutherland, a Call of Cthulhu scenario set in 1920s Suffolk where, although there are Deep Ones in them thar sand banks, they just want to be left alone, which doesn’t seem behaviour typical of Lovecraftian horrors. Shouldn’t they be doing some menacing or something, or building towards a ritual to summon worse horrors? What’s cool, though, is comparing the map of Walberswick in WD with the reality on Google Maps – very close indeed except that modern Walberswick has a pub called The Anchor, not The Coach and Horses. Probably not coincidentally, Walberswick, Suffolk, is just down the coast from Dunwich...

*Thistlewood *(by Joe Dever) is a “scenario” for Warhammer (in other words a set-up for a battle) and *Kwaidan* (by Oliver Johnson and Dave Morris) is a scenario for Bushido inspired by various Japanese and Chinese ghost legends, and very nicely done it is too, with heaps of atmosphere. To complete the mix of games there’s even a set of Car Wars scenarios from, who else? Marcus L Rowland. Finally, but one of my favourites, the *Lone and Level Sands*, by Oliver Johnson and Dave Morris again, is an adventure for RQ and AD&D that forms the capstone for the Dealing With Demons series and is dealt with more below.



 



*Articles*
RuneQuest gets two big series, and arguably the best articles of this period. *Dealing with Demons* by Dave Morris looks at mechanics for summoning demons and binding them to perform favours, giving a magic system with quite a dark and dangerous feel. The first article in issue 44 covers the mechanics and to my mind breaks the method down into too many skills – Demonology, Draw Pentacle, Ritual of Summoning. Ritual of Binding, Cast Possession. I think that it could instead be broken into two skills – Demon Lore for knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of demons, and Ritual Casting (plus maybe specific spell knowledge) to cover the others, but it’s a sound idea. Where the fun really starts is in the types of demon that can be summoned. Lesser demons are covered in issue 45, and the demon lords in issue 46. These are a wonderful assortment of gruesome creatures with odd shapes and eldritch names. Amongst lesser demons we may find the usual likes of the succubus/incubus and the demon-wolf but also creatures like the maggoty sraim, good for finding lost things, and the fly-headed rult, able to teleport you; much more interesting than the “Type I, II, etc.” that AD&D had at the time. The demon lords are wonderfully evocative, such as Bakshuro the Screamer who lives in a dimension so hostile that only he (it?) can survive it, or Lord Kesh, the Jewelled Serpent, Demon of Confusion and Terror. D&Ders are finally given a taste of the action in issue 47 with a *Demonist* class from Phil Masters and some D&D conversions for the RQ lesser demons by Liz Fletcher. Finally all this demonology is bought together in a scenario in issue 48, the Lone and Level Sands. This is a bit of a zoo-dungeon (like the adventure tied to the Faerie series, it showcases as many of the new monsters as it can), and it also features tricks and traps (being a desert tomb). However, it carries these off with some panache and can be very atmospheric, with the assumed Questworld setting having an evocative pulp feel.

The second of the big RuneQuest specials is *The Travels of Tralk True-Eye* by Ian Bailey, being a study of the goblins. The goblins in this instance are small grey forest-dwelling creatures, with variants having been driven into swamps and mountains by the action of other races. They are not inherently evil, unlike D&D goblins, but many of the goblin cultures bear no love for other races. Stats are given for several goblin sub-races, and then details of two cults over the course of issues 47-49. Crom Cruach, the Worm of the Night, is an evil, vengeful entity, with a Celtic/Lovecraftian flavour to its mythos whereas Curnos is more of a hunter god, blending elements of Celtic and Native American myths. All are very good and impart a lot of flavour and mechanics, crunch and fluff, in a small amount of space (I was surprised that the cults only took up a page apiece).

These series are aimed at the Questworld setting, probably to avoid any copyright issue or to avoid being “Gregged”, as the term is for sudden contradiction by edicts from Greg Stafford concerning Glorantha. Looking back at them, I think you could combine them to give a really good setting with a feel all its own. Most of the RuneRites articles are either about new combat subsystems or errata, clarifications and tweaks to existing rules. One article gives stats for the ki-rin (by Dave Morris) and the golem (by Simon Basham), both with a twist compared to their D&D equivalents; the article is titled *A RuneQuest Bestiary* but altered, courtesy of my friend who had mild dyslexia, into the *RuneQuest Be-Stainery*, thus converting a relatively minor article into a legend amongst my RPing friends.

If RuneQuesters are well served, what do Travellers get? A wide range of ideas and expansions, solid if not earth-shattering and no equivalent large series. There are a couple of new organisations to act as patrons for player characters – *ICE* by Marcus L Rowland, which is a transport company that acts as a front for illicit activity, and the *Covert Security Bureau* by Andy Slack, spies for the Imperium. These tie in quite nicely with the article on security devices and ways to overcome them, by Graham Staplehurst. Other articles cover red tape (Garth Nix - yes, _that_ Garth Nix), starport design (Thomas M Price), designing fleets (Andy Slack) and an update to Traveller’s rather dated view of computers (Marcus L Rowland). New ideas include what is essentially a Stargate, of the SG-1 variety (Bob McWilliams), some unusual planetary governments (Andy Slack) and a couple of alien races from Phil Masters – the Phulg’k’k’k crab-people and the Gashruan, chimp-like mercenaries. Most of these articles come with some scenario ideas, which is always a good touch, enough to spark plenty of adventure material from a referee prepared to do a little work.

Material for AD&D seems to be dominated by the prolific pen of Lew Pulsipher who gets his own column, *Lews Views*, to hold forth on a range of topics that seem quaintly peculiar to AD&D when compared to the articles for other games – the rationale behind dungeons, how fast should characters go up levels and the relative pros and cons of allowing buying and selling of magic items - but he also writes broad discussions on realism in gaming and on using non-fiction as a source of ideas. Non-Lew articles include a closer look at playing assassins (*The Dark Brotherhood *by Chris Felton) and clerics (*Divinations and the Divine* by Jim Bambra), on constructing buildings (Chris Felton), the purpose of wandering monsters (Philip Palmer – an good article that suggests the idea of the “wandering event”, random happenings but still holding to the idea of the dungeon complex) and on running large scale battles (Allan E Paull). The general trend is away from mechanics and into a more discursive style; many of the articles contain little or no game mechanics but plenty of food for thought.

Crunch is left to those venerable columns Fiend Factory and Treasure Chest. Fiend Factory finishes Phil Masters’ series on non-human gods at the beginning of this period, but apart from the demon conversions and the humourous stats for White Dwarf personalities it doesn’t produce anything particularly stand-out. Most are chromed variants on existing creatures such as Dan Lucacinsky’s *Blackling* (does for Halflings what drow do for elves) or Dale Hueber’s *Ivyx* (a poison-ivy based dryad). Most lack any kind of exciting fluff to make them seem unique. My one favourite is John R Gordon’s *Trist*, admittedly a throwback to the early days of monsters that stir up trouble in the party, but this evil little rootlike creature is quite evocative and I’ve used it as the basis for a larger adventure. *The White Dwarf Personalities* by Phil Masters and Steve Gilham are amusing, giving AD&D and RQ stats for Thrud the Barbarian, Gobbledigook, Griselda and Wolfhead (from Oliver Dickinson's stories), Ian Livinstone, and Ugbash Skullsplitter and Agaroth the Unwashed (who supposedly run the GW mail order department); generally the RuneQuest mechanics get better jokes, with Gobbledigook having a skill for Ironic and Despairing Looks for example, but there are some good ones for the D&D stats as well, such Livingstone The Editor (a sub-class of thief), Alignment: Bar-wards, Weapon: Poison Pen, Treasure: Claims never to have any. They’re not really usable in a game, except maybe Griselda and Wolfhead, but I can forgive a bit of joking for the 50th issue! A boxed set of figures was later released.

Treasure Chest similarly seems to be running out of steam, but continues to do what it always has. It starts okay, with an article by Paul McCree converting Tron-style discs into AD&D weapons that sounds cheesy but is actually quite good. The magical variants might inspire some ideas in a setting that uses the chakram. There are some good new spells that are simple but effective, including _Silver Web_ (which is like a web spell but the web is made of silver, watch out lycanthropes), _Green Death_ (which turns you to green slime), _Shield of Disruption_ (undead destroying aura), _Lightshield_ (light aura) and _Valin’s Total Inversion_ (turns you inside out). All by Gary and Terry Saul and quite Vancian, as is Roger E Moore’s Prismatic Gun. The spell _Colour Change_ (by Jon Manktelow), on the other hand, seems pretty useless. It... changes the colour of things. And it’s second level.  Oh, and it suggests one use is to change the colour of a fireball to look like a sphere of annihilation, expect that the caster must touch an object in order to effect the spell...

Some of the new game systems get some material too, with a two-part series for Call of Cthulhu called *Cthulhu Now*, which give details for running CoC games in the 1980s, including new skills, professions and some scenario ideas. Marcus L Rowland again, who loves bending the assumptions of games, always in a good way. For Warhammer there is an article on giants by Rick Priestley (spelled Priestly here), including some amusing rules for which way they stagger if drunk, and a template to see who gets squashed when they fall over.

As well as Lews Views there are another couple of short-lived columns. *Counterpoint* by Charles Vasey reviews boardgames, and is a bit wordy for my tastes, as well as over-specialised – boardgame reviews have survived quite well in Open Box for ages, and the lengthy reviews of the first couple of years of publication never really took off then. *Zine Scene* by Mike Lewis looks at fanzines, much like Pete Tamlyn’s Tavern Talk from Imagine magazine, but doesn’t have enough space to do much justice to the range of fanzines. I can also see the editorial decisions to close this column as well – “Why are we telling people to read another publication?”. *Super Mole* is another iteration of the news items, an attempt at a “gossip column” but it feels like there isn’t enough material to sustain it. It is quite interesting, but the News column does much the same thing. All of these get folded into other columns pretty quickly. 

Finally the cartoons. A matter of personal taste, as is quickly displayed in the letters page. *Gobbledigook* is passingly amusing but doesn’t take up much room anyway. *The Travellers* has some good jokes hidden in it but the art style is very chaotic. *Thrud the Barbarian* is a moderately amusing pastiche of Conan and Gor style fantasy that doesn’t take itself at all seriously. The biggest (and best) joke is in the design of its hero – a huge muscle-bound body and a tiny, tiny head (which is not a vital hit location according to his game stats in issue 50).



 



*General*
There’s a continuing explosion of new products in the industry, with ongoing changes about what can be done in RPGs, but at the same time there is a sense of success outrunning some of the major companies, this is the period where it really feels like the RPG industry shifts from the home-grown, amateurish market into a fully professional one, where aspects such as production values, marketing and distribution all call for dedicated staff. It’s also the birth of the solo gamebook – although Flying Buffalo had been releasing solo adventures for Tunnels and Trolls for years, this is where the concept of fantasy gaming is put into a format that can be sold in regular bookshops.

The Questworld RuneQuest material really dominates this batch of issues, with the older columns of Treasure Chest, Fiend Factory and Starbase not quite reaching those heights. They haven’t run out of steam yet, but they lack the freshness and exuberance that they once had. 

The addition of the cartoons is a controversial one, with mixed responses in the letters page. Personally I don’t think any of them are truly outstanding, although there are a few good jokes from each that I still recall (most of them occur in the next batch of issues), but neither do they herald the end of days and a downturn in quality – it’s hardly as if more effort and attention is given to the cartoons than the RPG articles. In a way, it’s quite nice that they give the magazine a sense of identity; with recognizable characters.

*The vastly superior original version with Robert Shaw and Walter Matthau, obviously.


----------



## Ed_Laprade

I never could make head nor tails of the Travellers comic, but Thrud could be quite fun. And Gobbledigook had its moments.


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## Dr Simon

Ed_Laprade said:


> I never could make head nor tails of the Travellers comic, but Thrud could be quite fun. And Gobbledigook had its moments.




Mark Harrison has a colourised version of The Travellers online, and it makes it a bit easier to pick out what's going on in many of the busier panels.

My favourite Gook strip is the one with the great sage Gaxygygar, sitting under a tree like Buddha. "Betcha I know something you don't," says Gook. "You can't possibly, I know everything," replies Gaxygygar serenely. Gook grabs him and bangs his head against the tree. "Didn't know I wuz gonna do that, didya?" he says. Crude, but for some reason I liked that one.  

Best Thrud sequence is the Three Tasks of Thrud:

"You realise, my daughter, that the beast cannot be harmed by the hand of mortal man. Do you know what this means?"
"Oh Father, you don't mean..." (Thinks: The hand of mortal _man_)
"Yes. He's going to have to use his feet."

And

"Careful barbarian, that snake is poisonous!"
"I thought it tasted funny."


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## nerfherder

I don't usually enjoy cartoons in RPG magazines, but I loved Travellers!


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## Dr Simon

*Part Six: A Widening Audience, a.k.a. The Ones Where I Subscribed.(Issues 51-60)*



 



*Overall*
The main change to the magazine in this period begins with Issue 52, where White Dwarf becomes available in national newsagents (such as WH Smith). Up until this point it was only for sale in specialist hobby shops, now it reaches even non-gamers. With this comes an expanded number of pages (and ads!), more colour, and an increase in cover price to 85p. More characters are added to the Mail Order stable, including Gunatha the Zombie, his Teddy Bear and grey-haired anarchist Auntie May (short for Mayhem), and these are further expanded in the “fanzine” Black Sun, sent out to subscribers, a sort of dark and irreverent parody of White Dwarf.



 



*Games*
The Dwarf continues to mainly serve AD&D, RuneQuest and Traveller, with some inclusion of material for the likes of *Call of Cthulhu* and *Champions*. Games released over this period include Mayfair Games’ *James Bond RPG* and Chaosium’s *Ringworld* and *Elfquest* RPGs, demonstrating an increasing trend for licenced products. On these lines, Iron Crown Enterprises continue to release lots of *Middle Earth* sourcebooks and announce that they are working on an official Middle Earth Role-Playing game. Games Workshop gain the rights to publish various US stuff, and also announce the development of a *Judge Dredd* RPG, with new-ish company FASA working on a *Doctor Who* RPG. TSR are working on *Marvel Superheroes* and *Indiana Jones* RPGs.

In non-licensed games, Steve Jackson Games release *Toon*, exploiting a previously unseen niche in the RPG market. Avalon Hill release *Powers and Perils *and FGU release *Lands of Adventure*, two non-specific fantasy games that fail to really take off, because they don’t do much that pre-existing games don’t. Pacesetter Games release *Chill*, the Horror-Game-That-Isn’t-Call-Of-Cthulhu.

TSR have some other non-licensed works of import, amongst others the *Battlesystem* mass combat game and the first of the *Dragonlance* modules (DL1 Dragons of Despair). Chaosium continue to release a steady stream of Call of Cthulhu but, having sold the rights to Avalon Hill, nothing for RuneQuest. The biggest release for Traveller is *The Traveller Adventure*, a massive softback campaign book.

Moving in on the not-an-RPG front come more *Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks* and some more gamebook series including Steve Jackson’s *Sorcery*, Joe Dever and Gary Chalk’s *Lone Wolf* series, and two series by JH Brennan – *Grailquest* for younger readers and the *Demonspawn Saga* for older readers. 



 



*Scenarios*
The highlight, for me, is *The Temple of the Doomed Prince* by Phil Holmes, an adventure using RQ, AD&D and, uniquely, *Empire of the Petal Throne* game mechanics, set in the Empire of the Petal Throne world of Tekumel. It is fairly straightforward, with the player characters sent to investigate the loss of contact with a remote temple and encountering the things that caused the loss of contact. What makes it special is not only the evocative setting but also the fact that it provides an opportunity to expand it into a larger campaign, with several campaign seeds built into the adventure. 

The scenario features a log book left behind by the missing priests that gives an eerie description of the downfall of the temple, and strangely enough, the same device is used in two other adventures – Paul Ormston’s *Sky Rig* for Traveller and *The Last Log* for Call of Cthulhu, by Jon Sutherland, Steve Williams and Tim Hall. Sky Rig is an adventure set in a gas-mining facility in failing orbit around a gas giant inhabited by a mysterious alien entity; The Last Log is set in the far future around an abandoned archaeological dig on a distant planet, showcasing the versatility of the Call of Cthulhu system. These two adventures are good as well, all of them simple but allowing for a lot of player activity. Last Log has a nice miniature diorama in lieu of a map (using a Space 1999 Eagle), and looks like it was used at a convention.

Innovation shows in many of the other scenarios as well. Anna Price’s *On the Road* is an event-based adventure for RuneQuest set over the twenty-one days of a caravan journey, with internal strife, murders and broo bandits. *The Ballad of Times Past* (Dave Morris and Yve Newnham) is an AD&D adventure with similarities to The Key of Tirandor; set in its own capsule universe (where magicians need powdered dragon eggs to power their spells). It is linear but not quite as story-boarded as Tirandor. *Spiderbite* by Oliver Johnson is a low-level AD&D scenario; not overly original in its subject matter of a trap-filled tomb in the jungle, but the three-dimensional aspect to the map makes it unusual and it is a good potential drop-in adventure. *Strikeback* is a superhero adventure for Champions and Golden Heroes with a heavy flavour of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, with potential encounters with Sherlock Holmes, Captain Nemo, Count Dracula and other such characters. The kind of crazy invention you’d expect from Marcus L Rowland. *The Hour of the Tiger*, by Chris Elliott and Richard Edwards, is nominally for AD&D, RQ or Bushido but is pretty much devoid of mechanics. It’s a scenario that follows up a lengthy series on ninja characters (see below) and is unusual in that the characters are expected to avoid all encounters, using stealth to spy on a conversation instead of hacking their way through.

The remaining scenarios are generally solid but less innovative. *The Bleeding Stone of Iphta*h is a short Call of Cthulhu adventure from Steve Williams and Jon Sutherland, set in 1920s Egypt and fairly typical for a CoC adventure, involving investigation, archaeology, shifty foreigners and unspeakable things. *Minas Tirith* from Joe Dever presents Tolkien’s Battle of the Pelennor Fields for Warhammer with some impressive diorama photos. *The Serpent’s Venom*, by Liz Fletcher, is a low-level dungeon crawl that does what dungeon crawls do, functionally but with little in the way of twists. This is published in issue 52, the first one to potentially reach a wider audience and I think something a bit more special would have been better. *The Sunfire’s Heart* by PG Emery, is a two-part “mini-epic” (if such a thing can exist) with a search for an artefact, but in play it is very light in terms of content, with a lot of empty rooms and strangely little challenge. There are some good ideas in the background, however, and it could springboard a longer campaign. It is a winner of a scenario competition, but I can’t find which issue the competition appears in. *The Fear of Leefield* by Stuart Hunter is a decent low-level scenario, very similar to Paul Vernon’s Trouble At Embertrees but making good use of the various articles from earlier White Dwarfs, notably whips and the mandrake people. I’d have put this one as the introductory scenario, as its a good mix of intrigue, interaction, mystery, dungeoneering, local wilderness and ethical dilemma, although it is for 3rd-4th level characters, not beginning levels. *The Black Broo of Dyskund* is a “cavern crawl” for RuneQuest – straightforward in terms of design but it does manage to convey the sense of a natural cave system (with squeezes) rather than the usual 10 ft. wide regular passageways. This adventure was revised and expanded and later re-released as part of Avalon Hill’s Shadows on the Borderland package for RQ3. It’s written by Ken Rolston, who would go on to a prominent role in Paranoia material, 3rd Edition RuneQuest material and Something Rotten in Kislev for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (and get accidentally punched in the face by Thrud the Barbarian).



 



*Articles*
Most of the existing departments continue as always, although *Lew’s Views* (and the input of Lew Pulsipher in general) becomes less frequent. I don’t know if Dave Stone’s letter in Issue 51 where he refers to Lew as “Lew Penpusher” has anything to do with this. A new addition in Issue 52 is *Tabletop Heroes* by Joe “Lone Wolf” Dever and Gary “Also Lone Wolf” Chalk which brings miniatures back into the magazine for the first time since Molten Magic. The thin end of the wedge, in hindsight. This starts in a similar vein to Molten Magic with a simple review of figures but rapidly evolves into a “how to” column with advice on painting, customising and photographing figures and scratch-built scenery. It also quickly initiates a heated discussion in the letters page about whether Dever and Chalk are much cop as painters and photographers of figures. It has to be said, the naysayers have a point, the early efforts are very glossy, low detail and dubiously lit and focussed. It gets better.

With the expectation of a new audience fresh to gaming, Marcus L Rowland follows in Lew’s footsteps with a series of articles called *The Name of the Game*, although this gives a description of role-playing in general followed by several issues worth of briefly describing existing games, rather than a guide for better play.

Also ostensibly to entice in new players is the four-part solo adventure *The Castle of the Lost Souls* by Dave Morris and Yve Newnham, which is a mix of fantasy tropes, not entirely serious and harmless enough, although from some letters you’d think it heralded the end of days. I notice that it was later published in its own right.

After these, the lengthiest series is *Night’s Dark Agents*, by Chris Elliott and Richard Edwards, a four issue series looking at ninjas for AD&D, RQ and Bushido. The authors cover history, training, tactics and tools of the ninja, topping it off with a ninja class for AD&D (this is before Oriental Adventures is released) and the Hour of the Tiger scenario. The ninja class is interesting – characters get a set of skills at first level and then at subsequent levels they can either advance some of these skills or choose new ones, a very flexible approach that prefigures the 3rd Ed. Skill system (and feats, since some of the abilities are all-or-none). I’m surprised I didn’t notice this first time around, nor that anybody else didn’t try something similar for existing classes. The whole series is light on actual mechanics and, in a refreshing change from earlier articles, the authors give simple and elegant suggestions on how existing game mechanics can be used to emulate the abilities rather than introducing swathes of new charts and tables. It's a well-written and intelligent series of articles, not simply a “Ninjaz R Cool” cheese-fest, although inevitably some readers see it that way.

This mechanic-light approach is continued in many of the other articles, ostensibly for AD&D or Traveller but adaptable to any fantasy or SF game respectively. Stephen Dudley’s article on traps (*Its a Trap!*), for example, discusses where and why a person would set a trap and which types would be appropriate to which situation, rather than the usual list of unlikely mechanisms. There are articles in *Treasure Chest* discussing character goals (J Anthony Nawson), recurring arch-enemies (JH Dickson) and technology in fantasy games (Phil Hine) which are brief but widely applicable. Longer articles include *All In The Mind*, Todd E Sundsted’s discussion on psionics, which looks more at the role of psionics in society than new powers or rules variants, and Graeme Davis’ excellent *Beyond the Final Frontier*, which looks at the views of the afterlife in various mythologies, and the idea of continuing adventuring in the afterlife when a character dies. Some intriguing possibilities, possibly better than Ghostwalk. For science fiction games there are articles looking at big philosophical topics like immortality (Andy Slack) and different types of universe (Marcus L Rowland) as well as smaller mundane topics like money (Thomas Price) and starship defences (Marcus L Rowland). Andy’s immortality article is the best, giving several SF-methods of achieving immortality of various kinds, and some scenario ideas thrown up by such concepts.

Even articles more heavily rooted in AD&D and with more mechanical content are broad in scope and well thought-out. A couple of articles on clerics essentially prefigure the idea of clerical domains by suggesting spell lists based upon a god’s portfolio. Thomas Mullen sets up the idea in an article entitled *Gifts From The Gods*, where he suggests that clerics of different gods should have spells and abilities based upon that god’s sphere of influence, then Daniel Collerton punches it home in *Out Of The Blue*, where he converts the fluff into crunch with a set of spell lists. I used this many years ago, and it worked nicely. Tony Parry and Jerry Vaughn provide an interesting article on *Animal Cults* for AD&D, with a different mechanical take that allows any class to take on aspects of a particular totem animal, increasing with level. There are a couple of lengthy series concerning magic. Graeme Davis’ *Eye of New*t tackles the subject of creating magic items in AD&D, something glossed over in the rules at the time. He goes through all the items in the DMG (or most of them), giving costs of creation, spells known required and any special ingredients. Although effectively superceded in the current rules it could be worth a look, particularly if you like the idea of exotic ingredients as part of magic item creation. Kiel Stephens’ *Ars Arcana* series runs in Treasure Chest and is simply a list of imaginative (or rules-bending, depending on your perspective) ways of using existing magic-user spells.

Dave Morris takes over *Runerites* from Oliver Dickinson. There seems to be some unwritten rule that every third Runerites is about combat or errata, and this trend continues. On top of that, there are some good but very non-Gloranthan ideas, such as some magic rings by Dave himself and some interesting Celtic-themed spells by Robert Dale that would go well with the demons and goblins material from the 40s. Also worth considering is *Visiting Other Plains* by Ian Marsh, which considers using the Praxian animal nomad tribes in a setting other than Glorantha. *Starbase* is similarly trundling along but does have one excellent article with three detailed NPCs from Michael Clark, low-life chancers with an interconnected history who would fit well in a Firefly style of campaign. The* Fiend Factor*y is getting a bit tired, with a large number of monsters that are simply chromed-over version of existing creatures. There are some attempts to convert creatures from Robert Silverburg’s “*Majipoor*” stories (Graham Drysdale) and Julian May’s “*Saga of the Exiles*” series (Paul Harden). Similarly, there is an article from Peter Ransome that attempts to convert elements of David Eddings’ “*Belgariad*” into AD&D, but none these are as interesting or effective as Lew Pulsipher’s conversions of creatures from Stephen R Donaldson’s “Thomas Covenant” series from way back in the early issues. The best “new monsters” are the *surrogates and shapelings* from Fred Lee Cain. Surrogates are invisible golems, shapelings are a race descended from surrogates that have somehow achieved sentience. There is a decent amount of information on the society and religion of the shapelings to inspire some campaign ideas.

A mix of other genres begins to creep into the articles as well. Steve Jackson (US) gets a semi-regular column *Crash Course* with ideas for Car Wars, Simon Burley begins a series on introduction to superhero gaming and Marcus L Rowland gives us an entertaining article on modern religious cults with ideas for use in spy games, Call of Cthulhu or superhero games. Several cults/organisations are given, with what they might be up to in the different genres. The Temple of Excellence Inc., for example, is a bit like Fight Club whereas Technodeology is trying to create a computer god (and in the Call of Cthulhu version, have succeeded). The First Church of Omphalology is run by a former science fiction author called Bob R Chubbard….

Talking of whom, issue 54 has Dave Langford’s review of Battlefield Earth, which I’m going to reproduce in full here. It still makes me chuckle at his shock at the sheer awfulness. No other book or author ever gets such a point-by-point demolition.

_“Tensely the specialists hovered round the hospital bed. ‘Absolute quiet, please Absolute quiet for Mr. Langford’ Outside, vast crowds of both the Critical Mass fans waited trembling for the latest sickbed news. A Harley Street expert adjusted the real-ale dripfeed into Langford’s haggard arm, whispering ‘God, what happened to him? Did he fall off Everest? Wrestle a rhino? Get breathed on by Gary Gygax (TM)?’
‘Worse than that, Doctor. He read the whole of L Ron Hubbard’s Battlefield Earth in a single weekend.’
‘The...fool. The poor brave fool.’
[...]
Battlefield Earth should be popular with everyone who disagrees with all Langford reviews: I loathed it. Young chap liberates Earth from vile ‘Psychlo’ oppressors circa 3000AD, wiping out the entire Psychlo race in such style as to make Hitler greenly envious, and ends up owning the galaxy. This, adequate for a 1930s pulp novelette, is distended to 819 pages by merciless use of short one-sentence paragraphs, banal repetition, flatulent speechifying and other devices from when authors were paid by the line.
Particularly offensive is Hubbard’s introduction, which tries to rewrite history and establish him as a major figure of Golden Age SF. Wrong. (Why do you think he’s been out of print since?) L Ron further explains that this book is real SF, with plausible science, no fantasy rubbish. Examples of plausibility:
1)	Psychlos have a different periodic table
2)	Their world’s entire atmosphere explodes on contact with uranium.
3)	Their instantaneous conceptual knowledge transmitter, designed for alien brains, happens to work on humans.
4)	They build tough armour: ‘Here was a mark where an atomic bomb had hit it’.
5)	Someone dissects a Psychlo and looks at the bits with an optical microscope. ‘Their structure isn’t cellular. Viral! Yes, viral!’ In mere paragraphs this same someone, limited to primitive technology, has completely mapped the Psychlo nervous system using a multimeter and test prods.
6)	A planet-busting bomb explodes! Pause. A second bomb, which was sitting right next to the first, explodes! Pause. A third, a fourth...
7)	A moon is reduced to its constituent electrons and nuclei, which show no urge to recombine. Therefore (?) the thing has a vast electric charge which zaps anything nearby.
8)	Hubbard electrolysis: molecules flow along a wire.
9)	Having 5 talons on one hand, 6 on the other, Psychlos use base 11 arithmetic – which we’re told is inherently almost impossibly difficult, while decimal is the best and easiest in the universe no matter how many fingers you have: ‘Whenever they discover it on some planet they engrave the discoverer’s name among the heroes.’
Battlefield may sound worth looking at for its sheer laughable badness. No. It’s dreadful and tedious beyond endurance. In fact it’s [Editor’s note: for legal reasons we are substituting a less actionable ending to this sentence] not as good as Foundation’s Edge."_




 



*General Thoughts*
It’s interesting to see how both scenarios and articles are moving away from the more mechanistic approach towards ideas and atmosphere. There’s less in the way of immediately usable material, but more in the way of food for thought. The expanding range of genres (if not necessarily specific games) covered by White Dwarf is on the one hand good because it gives a wider range of views on what RPGs are “about”, but on the other hand it dilutes the amount of material useable to players of just the one game system. However, articles like the ones on SF immortality, life after death and crank cults can be used not only in any game within a genre but in some cases across genres. It’s a fine line to walk between being universally usable and so vague as to be unusable at all. So far, the articles stay on the right side.

It’s funny, also, to note the attitude of older gamers to the likes of the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks and the cartoons in White Dwarf, with noises of scorn that the hobby is being “watered down” and how a “serious” hobby is becoming awash with trifles. However, look back to the early days of the Dwarf and you find things like the Pervert character class and monsters like the Dahdi, so, really, how serious was it?


----------



## Dr Simon

*Part Seven: More Breadth, Less Depth (Issues 61-70)*



 



*Overall*
These issues span the period from January 1985 to October 1985, during which time the general appearance and production values of the Dwarf remain much as they were in the previous year. The cover price goes up to 95p, and the main change is the introduction of yet more departments. The old stalwarts of Runerites and Starbase become bi-monthly, alternated with the new columns of Crawling Chaos (edited by Marc Gascoigne) for all things Call of Cthulhu, and Heroes and Villains (edited by Simon Burley) for all things superhero. Everything else continues much as it has done, except for the old Fiend Factory, now limping along, which opens its doors to other systems, and there is one final edition of Steve Jackson’s Crash Course (for Car Wars). Personally, I find that the standard of the covers declines as well but take a look and decide for yourself.



 



*Games*
It is during this period that the range of games covered by the magazine increases notably, with the regular inclusion of the new departments discussed above. Notable new releases during this period include *Toon*, *Paranoia* and *RuneQuest 3rd Ed*.. TSR bring out *Marvel Superheroes* to add to the growing number of supers RPGs, as well as the *Conan RPG*, the *Adventures of Indiana Jones RPG* and the *Battlesystem* rules. Pacesetter games bring out *Star Ace* and *Timemaster* to add to their stable with Chill, and the UK company Standard Games brings out the fairly minor fantasy game *Dragonroar* (most well known as the one with the solo adventure on tape, and for killer penguins and war hedgehogs). Still in the works are the *Doctor Who RPG* (FASA) and *Judge Dredd RPG* (Games Workshop) as well as Steve Jackson’s *GURPS*.



 



*Scenarios*
Each issue features two scenarios, and although D&D still dominates as the system of choice there are a range of settings including some of the more niche ones, such as the adventure *Starfall* for Star Trek by scenario-meister Marcus L Rowland, nicely written as always, with shades of Heinlein’s Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. There’s not too much in it that couldn’t be converted to other SF settings, which is just as well as the pickings are slim for Travellers. Probably the best of the Traveller adventures is *Lone Dragon* by Phil Masters with a good set-up in which spacefarers from one world pose as gods to the primitive inhabitants of another, with the PCs caught up in a civil war between the “gods” (which also sounds like a Star Trek storyline and could probably be converted to the STRPG). The odds at one point, however, are so heavily stacked against the players that railroading is inevitable; a pity as it mars an otherwise nicely flexible adventure. *An Alien Werewolf in London* by Jae Campbell takes another hoary SF plotline also seen in Original Trek – Jack the Ripper – in an unusual adventure set in Victorian London. Not an easy one to integrate into an ongoing campaign without completely altering the feel since it requires time travel. Graham Miller’s *Smile Please* is an adventure guaranteed to annoy your players with its Candid Camera/Big Brother kind of set-up (it reads more like a Paranoia adventure, really). One for Referees to enjoy and players to hate.

There are three Call of Cthulhu adventures set across the English countryside. Marcus L Rowland provides two – *Draw The Blinds on Yesterday*, a modern day scenario involving the last of the gorgons and depraved Wiltshire yokels whilst *The Surrey Enigma* is set in the 1920s and involves Jewish archaeologists, a Bronze Age horror and a cheeky Famous Five reference. The latter is more atmospheric, I think, although both feel a little lacking in cosmic horror. Not some of MLR’s better works, and I reckon he misses a trick by setting an adventure in Wiltshire and not utilising Stonehenge. AJ Bradbury’s *Horse of the Invisible* is a haunted house tale set in Norfolk, although the date is uncertain (from the pictures it looks Victorian). As an adventure it is marred by the narrative requirements of ghost stories – lots of unresolved “encounters” with mysterious bumps and manifestations makes it feel like the PCs are just along for the ride.

Superhero RPGs get a couple of adventures. *Peking Duck* by Phil Masters is basically a punch up in a Chinese restaurant whereas *Reunion* (Simon Burley) is more of a campaign involving shards of an alien intelligence and the various factions seeking them. I’m not much of a judge on this genre, but both look like they’d do the job.

To much controversy in the letters page there is another solo adventure (using Fighting Fantasy stats); a three-parter entitled *The Dark Usurper* (which is quite easy to complete). Fighting Fantasy is also used in Ian Marsh’s *Beyond The Shadow Of A Dream*, a referee-run adventure involving a mysterious woman loose in a city of thieves. It could prove an interesting campaign-opener but lacks much in the way of exciting atmosphere. The only remaining non-D&D scenario is *Dawn of Unlight* for MERP, a well-constructed but quite small adventure involving Ungoliant.

And so, to the D&D adventures. Pick of the bunch is *A Plague From The Past*, by Richard Andrews. This is the winner of a contest set in issue 61 and is all good fun. On the surface it seems like a Scooby-Doo style adventure like The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, but it takes that concept and loads it with all the good stuff you’d expect – ancient curses, haunted follies, mysterious lighthouses, family curses - and adds more, like a ghostly Miss Haversham character and a giant whose corpse forms a major part of the adventure landscape. Good stuff, meaty but with a light touch and plenty of flexibility in play.

There’s obviously something about coastal adventures in 1985, as most of the others revolve around the sea. Michael Heaton’s *Murder at Flaxton* is a low-level adventure involving smugglers, whilst *The Sahuagin Heel* (Graham Drysdale) and *In Too Deep* (Peter Blanchard) involve islands and underwater caverns. Both of these last two have complicated backstories that don’t really play out in the adventures (a notable difference to Plague), which are fairly standard dungeon crawls in the end and both wimp out of being too aquatic with their air-filled chambers. The non-aquatic adventures are also pretty standard dungeon crawls with something added. In the case of *The Philosopher’s Stone* by David Whiteland it’s a lengthy treatise and rules for alchemy in AD&D (with one location an alchemist’s lab where PCs can mess around with mysterious compounds) whereas in David Marsh’s *Star of Darkness* it is the Artificer class, a machinist in a magical world. Star has a good theme of nature vs. technology and the underlying concept of a magical symbol etched across the countryside is a good one, but the execution is nothing special, with a sequence of more rather tired-looking dungeons. The artificer class, like most new classes, seems to be very restricted in its scope.

Not a great batch of adventures – the best are Plague From The Past (by a long chalk) and Lone Dragon (which may need tweaking). The usually excellent Marcus Rowland produces some admittedly solid adventures but not up to his level of excellent invention. It feels a little like the adventures writers are feeling their way through the range of new genres.



 



*Articles*
There’s the ongoing mix of hardware and sage advice, and the most notable addition are the *Crawling Chaos* and *Heroes and Villains* departments. Call of Cthulhu and Supers RPGs are also well-served in the feature articles as well. I’m not a player of supers RPGs myself so most of these articles don’t interest me much, although some bits of sage advice on running games could be extracted. Simon Burley writes an introduction to superhero gaming and there some advice on types of non-player character by Phil Masters which is printed with an overwhelming background and almost unreadable (due to the printing, not the writing). The best of the “generic modern” articles is *Dark Agents of This Night* by Phil Masters, following on from the ninja articles from the last batch and updating the idea to discuss using ninjas in pulp, spy, superhero and science fiction settings, with some usable scenario ideas.

Another broadly usable concept comes from a Crawling Chaos article by Steve Williams and Mark White – the *Bearers of The Mark*. These are cultists who bear a mark on their foreheads that only other initiates can see. The aims of the cult aren’t specified but there are some useful spells and magic items to go with such a concept and could be ported into a fantasy campaign. *Haunters of the Dark* (Graeme Davis) is a good study of ghosts in Call of Cthulhu that could easily be adapted to RuneQuest or other systems.

As with the previous batch of issues, there is a trend away from hardware to articles full of ideas and concepts, particularly related to character in society. Jon Smithers’ *News Of The World* is an interesting and lengthy article on using politics and war to drive events in a campaign setting and *Worldy Wiles* by Anna Price is a very well-written Starbase article discussing cultures in Traveller, and how giving different worlds unique cultural quirks can make them more interesting (and spark adventure ideas). It’s scary how long it’s taken for someone to voice this opinion, really. 
Peter Blanchard pens a series of three articles (*Beneath The Waves*) discussing underwater adventures in AD&D, although I find them a bit lacking in imagination. Strangely dismissing potions of water breathing out of hand as an uninteresting method of allowing surface dwellers to explore, he is also quick to reject many other more fantastic concepts in favour of scientific feasibility. Writing, for example, argues Peter, is not likely for underwater civilisations and thus they can’t have much in the way of culture. This ignores such possibilities as knot-writing (with kelp?) or complex whale-song style oral traditions, or runes etched in stones, or sculptures grown in trained coral, etc.
My favourite of the “ideas” articles, however, is Garth Nix’s *Place of Damp And Darkness*, imagining a culture of bargees who live in the sewers and underground watercourses of some ancient and mighty city. Very evocative.

As far as hardware goes, the best articles come from *Runerites*, with some more Celtic-themed spells (Dave Morris and Robert Dale), some RQ-specific divining skills (Dave Morris and Oliver Johnson) and barbarian magic involving daubing with runes (Barry Atkins) that allows for the woad-painted, naked savage kind of barbarian. *Treasure Chest* and *Fiend Factory* continue to do the usual kind of thing with few real stand-out articles. Graeme Davis’ alternative rules for poison are probably the most useful for the time, updating the “save or die” option of AD&D. James Carmichael presents some humourous yet useful items for Halflings, including different magical (smoking) pipes and the “*Wayfood of the Matriarch*” (a packed lunch!). There are some interesting new spells too; Martin Fowler and David Marsh come up with some “spells for friends” such as *Life Candle* (which burns with a bright flame as long as the person who lit it is safe) and *Blood Brothers* which gives the two participants the ability to sense each other and bonuses when fighting side by side. *Know Value* by John Rudd and Steven Cairns is a useful low-level spell that one would think would be essential adventuring preparation for appraising treasure.

Despite becoming open to all game systems, Fiend Factory continues to focus on AD&D, except for a group of superheroes described in issue 70 (*The Starlight Pact*, by Pete Haines and David Smith). Most creatures are pretty uninspiring, although some come with scenarios or useful information. Amongst the more interesting are  the *O Caber* by John Chapman, elfish pine spirits with a detailed background and some scenario ideas, with potential for eco-warrior style adventures whilst the *Noegyth Nibin* (Steven Prizeman) take their inspiration from the Petty Dwarves of the Silmarillion, with a detailed tribe of individuals inspired by Mim’s gang. More Tolkien influence can be seen in Steve Palmer’s *Vivimancer*, something akin to the Maian Wizards with potent abilities of healing and inspiration, but with a rose theme as well. You could combine all three in a “standard” fantasy setting to give a twist to the common ingredients of elf, dwarf and wizard.

Open Box, Thrud, Gobbledigook, The Travellers, Tabletop Heroes and Critical Mass continue to do what they do with consistency except that Gobbledigook goes to a full page size with no evident need – it works best as a short joke (perhaps Bil was getting jealous of Critchlow and Harrison?). For those interested, Issues 68-70 include stats and background for the Travellers characters. A couple of significant publications pass under Dave Langford’s gaze in Critical Mass. He gives a glowing review to a new comedy fantasy novel called *The Colour of Magic* by Terry Something-or-Other. I can’t see that catching on myself. On the other hand, *Dragons of Autumn Twilight*, the thin end of TSR’s wedge of novels gets a glance but he finds it so bad he can’t finish it!



 



*General Thoughts*
There’s a sense of treading water and trying to find a way of coping with so many new games in these issues. The release of RuneQuest 3 in a prohibitively expensive boxed import set, and the slow-down in Gloranthan support material, means that interest in RQ has stalled, with many people waiting and seeing what will happen next (including former RQ-regular Oliver Dickinson). The fading popularity in Traveller is unusual in that there are no really popular SF RPGs that have taken over from it; my guess would be a combination of the slowdown in published material, and perhaps the old game is feeling a bit tired. Many people may well have moved to other systems and other genres – certainly Cthulhu is thriving, as are the superhero RPGs if one goes by the coverage in White Dwarf. 

Elsewhere there are many changes going on afoot in the RPG world. TSR UK closes Imagine magazine as a “rationalisation” of its products. Some former TSR employees form Pacesetter games, and in the times to come we will see the migration of TSR UK employees to Games Workshop including Jim Bambra and Phil Gallagher. Steve Perrin leaves Chaosium, according to one news items, and Games Workshop itself is set to move to Nottingham, with the mail order department leading the way. It feels a little like the innocent early days are well over, but there is still energy in the industry.

The letters pages are lively as ever, with some people still exhibiting the “That’s not proper D&D” attitudes as always, including Peter Murawski who complains about the ninja articles, John English who complains that the Cthulhu articles aren’t “Cthulhu enough” and George Stepanek who writes a very mean-spirited letter saying that younger gamers (i.e. those allegedly enticed in by Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks and the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon) have no place in the hobby and should not be allowed. I predict this’ll generate some lively response! And speaking of lively responses, Shirley Carbery writes in issue 70 to complain about the portrayal of women in fantasy RPGs and artwork. Oh, the fun this letter generates! But that’s for next time….


----------



## Dr Simon

*Part Eight: A New Era (Issues 71-80)*



 



*Overall*
This period covers November 1985 to August 1986 and sees some big changes in the appearance of White Dwarf. Ian Livingstone leaves as editor and passes the reins to Ian Marsh (ex- of the Dragonlords fanzine). The reality anyway has been that Jamie Thompson has been doing the main editorial work for a while, whilst Livingstone has been off writing Fighting Fantasy books and running the company, but Jamie Thompson also went off to write gamebooks (according to the editorial. I didn’t know which, but there are some ninja-based ones with his name on them). Marsh’s tenure doesn’t last long, however, as he decides not to move to Nottingham with the company, and the editorship is handed on to former Imagine editor Paul Cockburn. With this change in command comes a change in internal style. The old system-based departments, which have been gradually phased out during the beginning of this period, vanish altogether. *Open Box* and *Critical Mass* remain as regulars, as do the cartoons and the news features. *Tabletop Heroes* morphs into *‘Eavy Metal*, which begins with highlighting the figure-painting work of various artists and designers in the Citadel stable. This, along with more colour adverts for Citadel figures, can be seen with hindsight as the beginning of the miniatures magazine that the Dwarf will eventually become. Critical Mass is joined by a new column, *2020 Vision*, a bimonthly feature by Colin Greenland that reviews films with a roughly SF/Fantasy slant. You know what though? The cover price remains the same, 95p.



 



*Games*
Tie-ins are the order for 85/86, with the release of the *Doctor Who RPG* (FASA), *Judge Dredd RPG* (GW), *DC Heroes* (Mayfair), *Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles* (Palladium) and *Ghostbusters *(West End Games), as well as *Pendragon* (Chaosium) and the *D&D Master Set*. Other releases that have little impact in White Dwarf are the *Dragon Warriors RPG* (released in paperback format and probably hindered in its initial impact by distributers sending one of each of the three books to different areas of the country), the *Palladium RPG* and *Fantasy Hero*, precursor to the Hero System.

Plenty of support is released for *Call of Cthulhu* (which is updated as a 3rd edition and sold in the UK by GW under license) including the epic *Masks of Nyarlathotep* campaign, and there is plenty of material for *Paranoia* and *MERP* (also both distributed in the UK by Games Workshop). Chaosium suddenly start supporting their *Stormbringer* game, several years after it was first released, with scenarios and background material, and TSR enter a new phase of AD&D releases including *Unearthed Arcana*, *Oriental Adventures* and the long-awaited (but disappointing) *T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil*. It seems like every month the news section (currently titled *Fracas*) reports the progress of the *Warhammer Role-Playing Game*, but it has a long gestation and isn’t released in this period.



 



*Scenarios*
Each issue contains two full scenarios for a range of systems, probably the biggest variety in the run of the magazine (without specifically counting). Notably, of twenty scenarios, only eight are for AD&D and of these two are really for MERP with AD&D stats attached, one is really for Dragon Warriors and one is for AD&D and Call of Cthulhu, leaving four dedicated AD&D adventures. There are only one Traveller and one RuneQuest adventure, the rest being Call of Cthulhu, Judge Dredd and Golden Heroes/Champions.

It doesn’t feel like there are any truly great adventures in this batch but a few stand out, mostly by the ever-reliable Marcus Rowland. First of his is *Tower Trouble*, the sole Traveller adventure. This is ambitious in scope, an attempt to hijack a space elevator (of the Fountains of Paradise kind) with all the details needed and in typical Traveller fashion letting the players and referee unfold the action by themselves. Marcus’ *Fear of Flying* is a short Call of Cthulhu adventure set aboard a 1920s passenger aircraft. The plane is presented in some good technical plans and is a real aircraft, although this particular make was never really used for passenger flight (although it could have been). Fun and madness in an enclosed space, a good filler for a longer CoC adventure. *The Spungg Ones* (still Marcus) is the first Judge Dredd scenario to be published; a bank heist with a typical Judge Dredd twist (bouncing fatties). I think it works quite well. Marcus’ other scenario, *Ghost Jackal Kill*, is a prelude to GW’s Statue of the Sorcerer adventure, featuring Dashiell Hammet and the Hounds of Tindalos. It’s quite straightforward, unusually for Marcus, but famously he massively underestimates the distance between San Francisco and Los Angeles with a character driving there and back in one night. Oops.

*A Box of Old Bones* by Dave Morris is predominantly for Dragon Warriors (the only thing published for that system) and is an atmospheric mystery/role-play adventure set in an abbey, with quite a good “real” mediaeval feel to it. The Dragon Warriors versions of the magic items are really good, feeling magical and strange rather than a set of mechanical bonuses. The Whispering Hat (that’s Whispering, not Sorting...) is good enough; placed in a doorway it creates a shadowy illusion of a person, but the creepy and dangerous Casket of Fays makes the Wand of Wonder look like a carnival sideshow with its random selection of dangerous contents.

*Castle in the Wind* by Venetia Lee with Paul Stamforth is an Arabian Nights flavoured high adventure for AD&D with disguised princes and flying castles, a mix of roleplay and free-form action, good stuff. *Terror at Trollmarsh* (Peter and Janet Vialls) is another quite free-form AD&D adventure set in a sprawling manor house populated by characters inspired by Shakespeare (and, one case, prog-rock group Marillion!). Several intertwining plots and mysteries serve to keep the players on their toes. Interesting, but probably challenging to run and I found the various references too cute for my tastes.

Graham Staplehurst’s *Things Ancient and Modern* has an intriguing idea at its core – players have two sets of characters. One set are AD&D characters in the Hyborean-style setting of Theem’hdra (based on the writings of Brian Lumley and very much in the style of Lovecraft, Ashton-Smith, Vance etc.). The other set are modern characters (set in some undefined time between 1900-1940, to be decided by the gamesmaster). These use Call of Cthulhu mechanics. An intertwined plotline involving the usual kind of eldritch evil creature results in the two groups swapping places in time, and events in one timeline influencing another. This is the first part, the second (and final) part is published in Issue 81. The ideas are good, and the setting evocative, but much of it is quite storyboarded and weighed down with lengthy speeches by NPCs. The idea could be expanded, though, for a longer campaign and these days you could have more mechanically compatible characters for the different time zones. There’s just enough detail on Theem’hdra to whet the appetite and allow a referee to run a longer campaign in that setting.

The RuneQuest adventure, *Hide of the Ancestor* by Chris Watson, is simple but effective, basically involving a raid on a troll camp to recover the eponymous Hide, a tribal artefact for a new race, the ithillian-fane. These are lion-centaurs described in some detail and the article is as much a culture article as it is an adventure. A potentially good filler for an evening’s play.

Two MERP adventures are given, both written by Graham Staplehurst, with AD&D stats included but they are both deeply entrenched in Middle Earth. The better one, in my opinion, is *A Secret Wish* which seeks to explain how Glorfindel is seen getting killed at the Fall of Gondolin (in the Silmarillion) yet turns up to rescue Frodo in Fellowship of the Ring. The answer here is that after Gondolin he’s been “rescued” by a Maia of Ulmo (i.e a nymph) who has fallen in love with his sleeping/hybernating form. A neat ethical dilemma, then, revolves around “rescuing” him. There are some interesting ideas on the way, including some tree-dwelling hobbits and The Osier, a relative of Old Man Willow. Replace Glorfindel with a legendary hero of your own campaign and it’s a very adaptable scenario. Graham’s other adventure, *Star Spray*, deals with Elwing, (wife of Earendil, mother of Elrond), and her ploy to be reunited with her husband. It’s a bit more storyboarded than A Secret Wish and so less successful, but there are some interesting encounters especially the odd trio of monsters occupying the island of Tol Thule.

The two superhero scenarios seem okay. *An American Dream* by Simon Burley involves, ultimately, a fight on an aircraft carrier and a woman bred to be an all-American poster girl superhero who has gone renegade. There’s a bit where the player characters are captured because the plot requires them to be; I’ve never trusted this kind of plotting but maybe its acceptable in superhero RPGs where the play should be more like a comic book, I dunno. Pete Tamlyn’s *Pilcomayo Project* involves secret Nazi weapons in the jungles of Bolivia and erupting volcanos. Still story-boarded but less so than An American Dream, and all nicely over the top.

That leaves *Glen Woe* (by Richard Halliwell) which is a short Warhammer skirmish to go with the larger MacDeath pack produced by GW. More bad puns on Shakespeare. *The Necklace of Brisingamen* (Graeme Drysdale) and *Nightmare In Green* (Graeme Davis) are by comparison to the others very simple (and a bit old-fashioned) dungeon crawls for D&D, Necklace being very full of set-piece rooms and Nightmare being heavy on the plant-based monsters. Functional, but neither very exciting, almost like some subtle propaganda to make D&D seem old and tired compared to other systems. Nightmare is actually the kind of adventure I would have expected from the Pool of the Standing Stones way back in issue 12. Maybe a mash-up could be performed?



 



*Articles*
The old “Departments” quietly run to an end, to be replaced with much the same sort of articles but not specifically highlighted. This allows for a greater range of material to be published, and potentially of a more consistent quality without needing to fill a particular niche each month. Longest to stay is *Treasure Chest* which for this period is less about hardware and more about subsystems. For example Chris Felton gives a system for generating character background and Ian Berridge expands on musicianship. Like many things associated with AD&D this is a needlessly complex subsystem that tries too hard for “realism” over actual playability. A worthy attempt, nonetheless. Also of interest is an article title *Life’s Rich Pagean*t (I can find no credit) which gives a random table of “down-time” events, something that also exists in Oriental Adventures but these tend to be more personal. One of the last bits of hardware published is the *Destruction* spell by Wesley Phoa, which destroys the universe. Its reverse, Creation, creates a universe but takes six days to cast. It’s like being back in the first issues! 

*Fiend Factory* bows out with an unremarkable selection of jungle creatures but before that it hosts an article by Ian Marsh called *Just Good Fiends* which discusses what makes a good monster, which is useful advice even if he does try to sneak in his “woods vampire” from Beyond a Shadow of a Dream again! (Thinking about it, this is yet another iteration of the Fey Stirge/Leanan-Sidhe that we saw back in the 30s).

There are many more discursive articles, both about gameplay in general and about ideas that could be included in game settings. In the former camp, standouts include Peter Viall’s very well argued essay on alignment. This doesn’t just drag out the same old saws, but delves into different systems to see how they handle ethics and morality in a mechanical sense, if at all, and if not, how it affects play. *Gamesmanship* by Martin Hytch looks at how the mystery can be put back into gaming, particularly AD&D. I don’t agree with his conclusions that only the DM should keep track of mechanical things, but it’s an interesting read.

Graeme Davis wades in with a couple of good quality articles. *A Cast of Thousands* examines the role of NPCs and looks at how to make them not only more interesting but also to give them a bigger role in the game world. *Crime Inc.* looks at organised crime, indispensible advice for any modern era game but also adaptable to fantasy Thieves’ Guilds. Issue 76 includes a couple of thief-related articles by Jon Smithers and Oliver Legrand which are also worth checking out. Jon’s is sage advice to thief characters regarding tactics and Oliver’s looks in more detail at Thieves’ Guilds and how they would work.

Runerites rolls to a close with a couple of monsters and a look at non-combat skills, topped off by some ruminations by Oliver Dickinson regarding RQ3. He seems very cautious about it. RQ is replaced as “second tier fantasy game”, as far as material published in White Dwarf goes, by MERP, with some articles that do for MERP what Lew Pulsipher did a lot of for D&D back in the early days – ways of setting up a campaign (Graham Staplehurst) and worrying about how to explain going up levels (Micheal Veart). The first is interesting, the second less so.

Meanwhile, over in science-fiction land there are a few Traveller articles, ending with the useful *Mass Media* by Andrew Swift all about, well, mass media and communications in Traveller and SF in general. Star Trek and Doctor Who get an article each, serviceable but limited in interest, both articles are a miscellany of rules tweaks. Judge Dredd boots his way in; the first article is an oddly useless one by Marcus Rowland concerning the *Justice Department Accounts Division*. Probably the most useful of the batch of articles is Hugh Tynan’s *Something Specia*l, a crunch article with new Special Abilities (although why the Two Heads one? It’s a bit like some of those “special abilities” from F.A.T.A.L.). Also potentially useful as a source of ideas is Pete Tamlyn’s *Crazy File*, with some new fads for citizens (not crazies, as you might expect).

There’s plenty for Call of Cthulhu players. Marcus Rowland introduces some neat car chase rules in *The Cars That Ate Sanity* – useful for any BRP-based game with vehicles, I’d say. *Gentlemen and Players* by Richard Edwards and Chris Elliott gives two backgrounds for 1920s British investigators who want to emulate Bulldog Drummond or Richard Hannay; an entertaining and atmospheric read. AJ (Andy) Bradbury writes a mini-series on *Cults of the Dark Gods*, a sort of conspiracy theorist’s version of the historical links between the Assassins, Knights Templar, Freemasons and Nazis. Handy if you want a Dan Brown feel to your campaign. This is topped by an adventure, of sorts, called the *Heart of the Dark* which uses some of these theories. It’s intriguing in that it uses no stats or maps at all, but is ultimately a bit of a drawn-out shaggy dog story. Like I said - Dan Brown.

Pete Tamlyn and Phil Masters give us plenty of meat on how to play superhero RPGs and how to incorporate elements such as superscience and magic into superhero settings. Well written and I like Pete’s section on how different UK papers would report on superheroes, a nice bit of satire.
Talking of satire, Dave Langford provides a couple of fictional pieces alongside his usual Critical Mass column, the best of which is *Play It Again, Frodo*, where he takes various well known SF/F books and films and re-writes the plot as it would run in the hands of role-players. He does a good impersonation of Stephen Donaldson’s dense prose. Aside from some cosmetic changes, where the titles of reviewed books are highlighted, Critical Mass continues much as before, with reissues from the likes of Jack Vance, Robert Silverberg and Robert Heinlein and new authors like Guy Gavriel Kay, MIichael Scott Rohan, Kim Stanley Robinson and even some with just the two names like Judith Tarr and Barbara Hambly setting off on Book One of an Epic Quest to….

As for the other review column, *2020 Vision*, although not popular in readers polls its okay. Colin Greenland, then Alex Stewart, review some minor indie films as well as blockbusters such as Highlander and Back to the Future. Anyone heard of an animation called The Victor, or a film called Shadey?



 



*General Thoughts*
I was less able to pick out any truly stand-out articles for this period, and it may be in part that the sheer breadth of games covered means that each issue includes something of little relevance to many gamers. The trend towards more discursive, system-light or systemless articles is useful, however and I agree with the decision to retire the rather shoe-horned departments. The Travellers cartoon strip finishes forever, Thrud and Gook continues with Thrud widening its field of parody (getting a driving lesson from Mad Max, for example, and more prominence for the character of Carl the Artist, busting that Fourth Wall wide open). Tabletop Heroes becomes ‘Eavy Metal, a glossier-looking production that starts off by highlighting painting and modelling work by Citadel staff.

Most fun comes from the letters pages, where several controversies rage. First off, *Shirley Carbery*’s letter complaining about the preponderance of chainmail bikinis and sexist attitudes sparks a reactionary response that comprises variously “it’s only a bit of fun”, “if you don’t like it go elsewhere”, “that’s what fantasy is supposed to be like” and “it’s a realistic portrayal of women in pseudo-mediaeval society” (This latter causes some confusion until it is clarified that whilst most of us would think of “pseudo-mediaeval” as meaning a made-up version of the middle ages it can mean a very specific period of history. That still doesn’t account for the presence of elves and dwarves in this “realistic” portrayal). Dragged into the light, these unreconstructed attitudes are exposed for what they are and we move forwards. Until, that is,* Laurielle Miller* writes from America to say that she’d be proud to pose in a chainmail bikini. Oh, the dribbling this provokes! I notice, however, that since issue 50 or so there have been more articles written, or co-written, by women.

Controversy number two – young gamers. This seems to be founded on a couple of premises – that Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, TSR’s bendy toys and the D&D cartoon have led to an influx of “juvenile” players who are somehow watering down the hobby by “playing it wrong”. Also by widening its distribution and adding an estimated 20,000 new readers White Dwarf has somehow contributed to the “downfall” of roleplaying. There seems to be a subsection of older gamers who want to take their football and go home, because these damn youngsters with their 33rd level wizards didn’t have to work out hit points with a slide rule and walk uphill to their gaming both ways etc. etc., ignoring the fact that new blood is always a good thing and that, in fact, the hobby at this point in time thriving, with loads of new games and companies appearing. There’s even a rather unpleasant letter from Phil Masters on the matter, a surprise to read such words from him. 

The final controversy stems from Marcus Rowlands’ review of *Twilight 2000* which he mostly spends deploring the American attitudes to foreign policy and the “Theatre Europe” nuclear war scenario. The two camps on this one basically fall into those who think that Marcus should have kept his personal politics out of the review, and those who agree with him and want to “America-bash”, quite unedifying all round. This is the first of a wave of “Better Dead than Red” games that came out around this time (just a few years before Glasnost and the fall of the Berlin Wall). However, those are for next time.


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## Dr Simon

*Part Nine: The Rise of Games Workshop (Issues 81-90)*



 



*Overall*
This is the period, September 1986 to June 1987, when the magazine morphs into an almost entirely house magazine, a fact stated explicitly at one point by Marc Gascoigne in the letters page. At this point in time this isn’t so bad, since Games Workshop is either printing or distributing a large number of games, which now includes RuneQuest 3rd Edition as well as Call of Cthulhu, Paranoia and Middle Earth Role-Playing. However, alongside the usual range of RPG articles there is a creeping influx of articles for Games Workshop boardgames such as Blood Bowl, Chainsaw Warrior, and Rogue Trooper. This is not a new thing historically and most articles don’t significantly take up space that could be used for RPG coverage, so it can’t be entirely said to be a bad thing either although the articles are generally less useful and carry an air of advertisement about them. The review policy in Open Box changes so that Games Workshop products no longer receive reviews as such, but instead are designer’s notes – the rationale being that the objectivity of an in-house review would be suspect. For the moment, though, the Dwarf does continue to review non-GW products as well and the reviews seem reasonably fair to me.

The game of editor shuffling continues, with Mike Brunton getting the hot seat for most of this run, and new staffers such as Jim Bambra and Phil Gallagher joining GW from TSR UK. A new comic strip is introduced (from the defunct Warlock magazine); Derek the Troll alternates with Gobbledigook but thankfully doesn’t last long – it’s very weak. Thrud continues (his Barbarian-o-gram in Issue 90 pretty much repeating the joke from his first appearance in Issue 45), as does ‘Eavy Metal and a new column, Illuminations, begins. This is another introspective column looking at the various artists currently working on GW games, each week highlighting a different one. Nice to look at, but carries the air of an “advertorial”.



 



*Games*
One of the most notable occurrences as far as I was concerned with White Dwarf is the successful acquisition by Games Workshop of the license to print *RuneQuest 3* in the UK. This results in an upswing of RQ material in the magazine, and it’s generally as good as it was in the old days of Runerites. GW also publish, under license, *Paranoia*, *Call of Cthulhu* and *MERP* (released in a 2nd Edition), and finally their own *Warhammer FRP* sees the light of day after months of teasing news items, the other significant occurrence whose full force will be felt in later issues. TSR are on another burst of releases, unleashing their third wave of hardback books including the *Dungeoneers* and *Wilderness Survival Guides* as well as the *Immortals* set, and there are rumours of some campaign set called *Forgotten Realms* in the works. It’ll never catch on. 

Elsewhere in gaming land, Steve Jackson releases *GURPS*, which is reviewed in issue 83 but WD never produces any material for it. *Skyrealms of Jorune* also gets a favourable review; I had it and it was okay, I think it was the Empire of the Petal Throne of its time, beloved by aficionados but never achieving more than cult status, partly due to a clunky game system. Lovely illustrations though. There’s also an advert in one of the issues for the intriguingly named “*Teenagers from Outer Space*” – anyone ever play this? Elsewhere in SF, GDW releases *Traveller 2300*, ICE release *Spacemaster* (the SF variant of Rolemaster) and again there is news that West End Games have got the license for a *Star Wars RPG*.

Games Workshop release a range of new boardgames including *Blood Bowl*, *Chainsaw Warrior* and *Rogue Trooper* and there is a run of “Beat the Commies” games including the (hopefully) tongue-in-cheek *Price of Freedom* from WEG, the less tongue-in-cheek *Delta Force* and the Vietnam game *Recon* (a revised version of an older game) which add to the post Theatre-Europe Twilight 2000. These provoke controversy in the letters page over their tastefulness, with WEG’s Greg Costikayan himself getting involved to defend his publication.



 



*Scenarios*
Again a bias towards GW-printed games, but luckily there is a wide variety. Of the twenty scenarios published in this period, only five are for AD&D, and of these only two are specifically AD&D and no other system. There is an emerging style in scenarios over this period for fairly complex plotlines, and many of them have a tendency to lead player characters by the nose through a series of events. Compared to some of the early greats (like Tizun Thane) there’s a lot less choice for players and GMs, but also very few dungeons in sight. Some of the game systems used unfortunately have such individual settings that the adventures are not easily converted to other systems (Paranoia and Dredd in particular) and so the general utility of the adventures is less than in earlier times.

Top of the pile is Jon Quaife’s *A Tale To Tell*, a massive 16 page RuneQuest adventure set in Prax that forms a sequel of sorts to the Borderlands campaign. Being RQ, a few of these pages are stat-blocks but it is a good adventure with plenty of scope for player action, although it needs quite high-powered characters if the PCs are to succeed. This was later reprinted as part of the Shadows on the Borderland scenario pack, along with Issue 52’s Black Broo of Dyskund. The other RQ adventure is *When Mad Gods Laugh* (Barry Atkins), a small scenario involving the schemes of an evil satyr with the twist of his followers being happy hippies who don’t take kindly to the music stopping (they remind me of Thulsa Doom’s followers in the second half of the Schwarzenegger Conan movie). Simple but fun.

Also good is Graham Staplehurst’s *Taurefanto*, a MERP scenario involving a land-travelling ark full of entwives and those who would seek to capture or destroy them. Although steeped in Middle Earth lore, I can see this one being adaptable to other fantasy campaigns and it’s quite freeform.

There are three Judge Dredd scenarios – the vaguely interlinked *A Day in the Life of Sector 255* and *A Night in the Death of Sector 255*, and *Tales From Mega City One* which is really a trio of adventure outlines rather than a scenario proper. All of these are by Hugh Tynan. The Sector 255 adventures are really a sequence of encounters that occur on a typical Judge’s patrol. Inventive and funny but also marred by their sequential, story-boarded nature (an early encounter gives the Judges no option to change events, purely so that a later encounter will occur, for example). Nice cartography, though.

Paranoia also gets four scenarios. *The All New Computer Action Horror Show* by Robert Lyn Davies, *Happiness is Laser Shaped* by Pete Tamlyn, *Do Troubleshooters Dream of Electric Sheep* by Marcus Rowland and *Operation SNAFU* by James Wallis. All are of the silly style of play with punning names and nods to other genres. They’re okay, I guess (I played in Sheep), but I prefer a slightly straighter style of Paranoia. All are written in a slightly annoying jokey style (“Won’t this be fun?”) and there is a tendency for the magazine to print Paranoia material with portions of it upside-down or back-to-front, which thankfully they stop doing.

Marcus L Rowland provides two Call of Cthulhu scenarios. *The Curse of the Bone* is a modern day scenario involving ghouls, African folk beliefs and a used car salesman. Solid, but lacking any truly great twists. *The Paddington Horror* is a devious adventure involving zombies (not bears from Darkest Peru), discussed more below.

There is one Traveller adventure, the last published by the magazine. *Mercy Mission* by Simon Lewis is reminiscent of early Star Trek and is interesting in that the PCs are sent to help cure a disease – less mercenary than the default Traveller style adventure. The disease, on a primitive planet, is being caused by the power plant of an old crashed spaceship. Trouble is, it’s the holy object of the local tribe.

Warhammer FRP sees the first scenarios written for it. *On the Road* by Graeme Davis is not an adventure as such but a couple of extended encounters which can be slotted into an ongoing campaign (for example, why not try The Enemy Within campaign available from Games Workshop?) The first fully Warhammer adventure is *Night of Blood* by Jim Bambra which tells of an inn which wouldn’t get a very good Trip Advisor score. The gory, cartoonish, full-page illustration is a bit off-putting, and in common with many adventures around this time it is a bit storyboarded.
Warhammer shares a couple of adventures with other systems. *The Black Knight* by Bryan Sturdy is for WHFRP, AD&D and Pendragon, an Arthurian tale of renegade knights, bandits and monsters. It reminds me of Ogre Hunt from issue, what, 19? and is quite a nice little adventure. *On Ealden Byrgen* by Jim Bambra is for WHFRP, MERP, Fantasy Hero or AD&D and is a Robin Hood themed adventure, inspired not a little by the mysticism of the Michael Praed/Jason Connory TV series. Again quite adaptable – personally I would have preferred it to be a bit less linear but it has some good ideas.

And so the only two adventures purely for AD&D are *Shadow Magic* by Carl Sargent and *A Killing in Silk* by Matt Connell. Shadow Magic is quite simple, really focussing on three antagonists and their particular abilities. There’s a bit of arm-twisting to the hook which may not work with all players. A Killing in Silk is a simple murder mystery that is pretty easy to resolve. One of my group at the time took the basics of the set-up and morphed it into an excellent game involving the dirty dealings of rival merchants (played by us), and I think this was a far superior scenario to the published adventure.



 



*Articles*
The majority of articles over these issues tend to be discursive in nature rather than rule additions, particularly those applying nominally to AD&D. These cover themes or ideas that are of use generically in fantasy RPGs, and sometimes other genres. *Wolves of the Sea*, for example, by Graeme Davis looks at pirates and sailing with a mix of technical and historical notes and scenario ideas. *It’s A Kind of Magic* (Steve Palmer) is an interesting essay on mixing high-tech and fantasy, drawing particular influence from Gene Wolf’s Book of the New Sun. No specific rules or items are given, unlike articles of old, but it is well-written and full of inspiring ideas. Recently I looked over Appendix N in the 1E DMG, a bibliography of works that inspired Gary Gygax. Given the nature of many of them, more pulp horror/SF than fantasy, it’s surprising that this concept isn’t more fully ingrained in the game. It’s certainly something I return to quite a lot. 

*Friends in High Places* (Simon Nicholson) looks at using politics and intrigue in RPGs, be it amongst nobles, merchants or other dignitaries. As with Graeme’s article it gives a handful of brief ideas with game use, leaving the individual gamesmaster to do with it as he or she needs. *Ley of the Land* by Graham Staplehurst is an interesting article concerning leys and ancient monuments, and possible uses for them if their supposed mystical properties were real. This is of use in anything from fantasy games through Call of Cthulhu, even in SF games. Note to CoC players; the concept of leys was first put forward by Alfred Watkins in the very Cthulhoid time of 1925. 

Greg Stafford himself provides a couple of articles for Pendragon. *Swords of Pendragon* is a fascinating account of various swords of Arthurian legend. Again, no mechanics are given but reputed properties of the swords are described. Very good for mining ideas to give magic swords in any setting more depth. His other article is more mechanical, giving solo rules for running jousts in Pendragon. This is paired in Issue 81 with rules for jousting in AD&D by Stephen Gardner. Short, but potentially useful particularly if coupled with Simon Nicholson’s article to give a game of knights and courtly intrigue (and then run the Black Knight adventure as well – funny how certain concepts seem to have their day). 

Chris Felton provides two articles that are also worth a look. *Dogs of War* examines the role of mercenaries and *A Dark Brotherhood* looks again at assassins, challenging some of the inherent assumptions in AD&D. Despite the same title and author it’s different to the article from the 40s.

Warhammer FRP is officially released at around the same time as Issue 87 (Feb 1987). Graeme Davis provides some articles for it, mostly discussing design choices and elaborating rules for Fate Points and Character Advances (along with an article on Career Changes by the other WHFRP designers Jim Bambra and Phil Gallagher). Most novel, however, are Graeme rules for Gnome characters which come with a gnome-specific career (the jester, inspired no doubt by the famous miniature Corbit Shortstuff - see Figure 10), details of gnomes in the Empire and of the gnome god. 

Marcus L Rowland is supplier of most of the Call of Cthulhu material, the best being a lengthy article on zombies, including both the Haitian kind where the victim is alive but drugged, to the true necromantic types. This is followed up with his adventure The Paddington Horror, where a hapless investigator is turned into a zombie (I’ve spoilt the twist, I’m afraid). Marcus also gives some rules for getting knocked out, a sample from the Green and Pleasant Land sourcebook for speaking the generic yokel accent known as Mummerset and a mock exam from Miskatonic U. Carl Sargent wades in with some new and unusual phobias, with entertainingly hysterical explanations on why they would suit Cthulhu investigators.

SF-wise, Traveller is ignored. Ron Currie gives a few rules tweaks and comments on running Star Trek, the rest being divided between Judge Dredd and Paranoia. Best of these is probably Carl Sargent’s article on playing perps in Dredd which gives some suggestions for rules changes and campaign outlines. Carl’s article entitled *Narks* by some enthusiastic sub-editor is actually about informers, defined as specifically distinct from narks (which require a special ability to acquire). Marcus L Rowland’s article on time travel in Judge Dredd covers ground that not only Marcus himself has covered back in issue 29 but also recently covered in issue 81 by Steve Palmer. I guess it is designed to tie-ion with Marcus’ campaign coming up in the next batch of issues.

The lengthy debate on sexism in the letters pages, which by this point has mostly blown over, has evidently sparked a couple of articles from women on the female character. Erica Lidman’s *The Difference* is a breakdown of different types of female archetype and, whilst interesting,  has a bit of an air of a gender politics essay. Alison Brooks’ *A Monstrous Regiment* is a fascinating article looking at real examples of female warriors and soldiers in history.

That Terry Pratchett fella generates some interest. Not only is a section of *The Light Fantastic* printed in the magazine, but Ashley Shepherd writes *A Stroll Across Discworld*, attempting to convert aspects of Discworld to AD&D. I think he (she?) is only partly successful in this, mainly because 1ed AD&D is a pretty poor engine for anything other than AD&D. Light Fantastic and Equal Rites are reviewed in Critical Mass, which reaches its 50th column in Issue 88, and it’s around this time that Iain M Banks makes his official SF debut with Consider Phlebas. 

Almost lastly, there are a range of rules add-ons for some GW boardgames such as Blood Bowl and Chainsaw Warrior. Finally Ian Livingstone returns in Issue 90 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of White Dwarf with a column looking back at the start of Games Workshop and White Dwarf, when he and Steve Jackson were living in a van and thought selling thirty copies of D&D was a lot. Definitely worth a look.



 



*General Thoughts*
This period more than any other heralds the shift from Old White Dwarf to New White Dwarf, towards an almost entirely GW house magazine and a shift away from RPGs towards wargames, boardgames and miniatures. The change isn’t complete yet, and the transition continues to happen gradually over the next batch of issues as well, but the seeds are evident with hindsight. 

That isn’t to say that the quality goes down; there are some excellent articles, but the overall feel you get reading this batch of issues is that the writers are bored with the older games and turning to something new and shiny. I can’t say I blame them for this, I was experiencing the same thing at the same time – new games with new concepts made D&D seem unwieldy and complex (at around this time I was playing mainly RQ3 and WHFRP, and we occasionally threw in a game of Dredd or Paranoia as a palate cleanser). The decision to openly become a house magazine makes sense to me too, shame though it is to lose the cosmopolitan feel of the earlier years. At this point there are so many games to keep track of, to try to do justice to them all would mean slim pickings for many rather than quality for a few. As it is, there is still a pretty solid range of games covered over this period, and still a lot of widely usable material, despite the creeping influx of chainsaws and chaos spikey bits and the letters page degenerating into a discussion of how many miniatures can be balanced on top of the Thrud the Barbarian figure.


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## Ed_Laprade

Dr Simon said:


> *Part Nine: The Rise of Games Workshop (Issues 81-90)*There’s also an advert in one of the issues for the intriguingly named “*Teenagers from Outer Space*” – anyone ever play this?



I played a demo game at an Origins when it came out. A fun game of the fairly silly kind. Toon players would have liked it, I think. The basic premise was that the characters were teenage aliens, mutants, etc., attending a sort of Supers High School, getting up to various hijink like saving the school, etc. I had fun with it, as did everyone else who played it there, that I know of. Never did pick it up though, although I thought about it every time I saw it in a game shop or at a con. Don't know why.


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## Dr Simon

Sounds a _bit_ like Tale From the Floating Vagabond, which could have been fun but tried a little _too _hard to be wacky for my tastes. The premise sounds like a laugh for a one-off, might mix something up with Mutants and Masterminds....


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## S'mon

Great stuff, thanks - I threw away my White Dwarfs 90+ on the basis that the end of staples made a good cut-off point, but this has reminded me of the huge density of great stuff to mine from the magazine that I could use for my current games.

There were giants in the Earth in those days...


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## Dr Simon

You're welcome. There is a lot of good stuff in those older mags, and I've been tempted whilst writing these articles to set up an old school campaign using various adventures and bits of hardware. I tried incorporating the Halls of Tizun Thane into my Iron Heroes PbP on these boards, but the game folded before that part really got going. Shame.


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## Dr Simon

*Part Ten: Warhammer Takes Over (Issues 91-100)*



 



*General*
I should come clean at the beginning and state that, although I used to own them, I’ve been unable to consult issues 91 and 92 for this discussion. Looking at the table of contents on RPGNet didn’t help and since none of them rung any bells it may be safe to assume that none were that memorable.

That said, this is the period where White Dwarf becomes almost entirely given over to wargaming and miniatures, mostly after Sean Masterson takes over as editor. Not quite, but by the end of this batch only Warhammer FRP remains as the RPG content. Look at the covers, you’ll note the “Games Workshop Presents” logo which becomes steadily more prominent. Those covers, in my opinion, lack the beauty of the earlier issues and lose something by being about something in the magazine, rather than a simple flight of imagination. The magazine itself is perfect bound (I think, my knowledge in such things is hazy) and costs £1.25. Issue 94 comes with a flexidisk by the band Sabbat, which I don’t think I ever played (I’ve got a feeling the dog chewed it!). Was it any good?



 



*Games*
In-house, GW continue to support some of their roleplaying products, releasing the *Land of Ninja* and *Griffin Island* hardbacks for RuneQuest (although the content was good, the binding quality, at least of the copies that I had, was poor with pages tending to come out easily). They also release the 2nd Edition of *Paranoia* and further episodes of the Enemy Within campaign – *Death on the Reik*, *Power Behind the Throne* (and its companion volume Warhammer City), with Ken Rolston handing in the manuscript for *Something Rotten in Kislev*. However, it feels like the biggest events for the magazine are the release of *Warhammer 40K* and *Warhammer Fantasy Battles 3rd Edition*. 

The magazine gives little coverage for other games, even in the news sections (known variously as Awesome Lies, Stop Press and Culture Shock) only looks at matters occurring in Games Workshop/Citadel. We have to look at adverts for GW mail order and the long-running Esdevium Games to discover that WEG has released the *Star Wars RPG*. Other games with ongoing support material include *MERP*, *Battletech*, *Twilight 2000* and *Star Trek*.

There is an intriguing mention in the news in issue 94 of *Mournblade*, an Elric-related supplement for WHFRP. Anyone know if this ever came to light?



 



*Scenarios*
As you might expect, most of the scenarios are for WHFRP, but there are a couple of multi-part adventures for other GW systems too. Marcus L Rowland gives us *To Live and Die in Megacity One*, as far as I can tell his swansong for WD. This is an epic three-parter and is sort of a love letter to the Dredd comics in the way that the Age of Worms campaign is a love letter to Greyhawk. It involves the time paradox centred on Owen Krysler, the Judge Child/Mutant and the possible return of this powerful evil being, but involves Judge Anderson and elements like the killdozer, a trip into rad-blasted MC-1 South, free robots and over-zealous Citi-Def members, recalling elements from Dredd epics like The Cursed Earth, Judge Child, Apocalypse War and City of the Damned. It’s good, but as is typical with this kind of adventure the ending is a bit of a disappointment. 

Surprisingly there’s also a lengthy adventure series for Stormbringer, *The Madcap Laughs* by Matt Williams. This is also a three-parter, but spread over four issues with an introductory section. It’s good at evoking Moorcock’s writing, with lots of exotic locales, larger-than-life NPCs and a bit of dimension-hopping. There’s nothing in it that’s really unusual when stripped of the chrome, but it’s a solid adventure nonetheless. Again, though, it has a disappointing set-piece ending.

Before I get to the WHFRP adventures there are a few more for other systems. Issue 93 sees *Getting Away From Most Of It* by James Wallis (later of Hogshead?) which is a tremendously silly AD&D adventure with lots of spoofs of English seaside holidays and surreal humour (the central artefact, the Rock of Aegis, is a pink peppermint-flavoured stick, and is guarded by a were-gannet armed with a loaded herring, for example). If you like Python, The Goons or Mighty Boosh, you’ll appreciate this. Although silly, it’s not as annoying as the early nonsense like the Stair Stalker! I think it may be the last AD&D adventure published in White Dwarf.

*The Beast of Kozamura* (by Graeme Davis) is a RuneQuest adventure using Land of Ninja. It revolves around a mysterious monster menacing a small village, and the Lady Macbeth-esque machinations of a kitsune. A simple plot, but atmospheric and for once it is a bit more open-ended and flexible than most adventures of this time.

Graeme also provides *A Trilogy of Terror* for Call of Cthulhu, three mini-scenarios entitled The Book, The Seance and A Capital Offence. The first two are pretty standard CoC fare, the last contains a good adventure seed, whereby a murderous cultist escapes execution by transferring his consciousness to a hapless prison warder. A nice twist. *The Spirit of the Mountain*, from Jon Sutherland, is classic CoC fare, set in an archaeological dig in Arizona. Graham Staplehurst’s *Letters From A Foreign Land* is an unusual multi-system adventure that can be used for MERP, CoC or WHFRP, involving monks and cultists. It’s a bold move, but by trying to be too many things at once it loses a bit of focus, and like most adventures of this time it is very storyboarded.

The WHFRP scenarios are a mixed bunch. Largest is *The Grapes of Wrath* by Carl Sargent, intended as a linker between Death on the Reik and Power Behind the Throne. It’s a mash-up of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow with A Cask of Amontillado, and good fun. It is, however, very detailed compared to older scenarios. In some ways it’s nice to have a bit of depth to, for example, NPCs, but it is a feature of this era for the level of detail to become almost stifling. Just as much character is imparted to Dark Odo, the evil sorceress of issue 9’s The Lichway in a couple of sentences as to most of the NPCs in Grapes of Wrath in a couple of paragraphs, and the GM is left with a bit more leeway to interpret – the old adage “To suggest is to create, to define is to destroy” holds true in this case, I think. Does it work as an adventure though? Yes it does, although at this stage in The Enemy Within campaign it may feel like an unnecessary side-step for the players.

*The Ritual*, by Philip Wells, is an alternative opening to the Enemy Within (or, indeed, any) campaign, involving skaven and necromancy. It’s quite straightforward, with one encounter area leading on to the next. Okay, but nothing earth-shattering. *A Rough Night At The Three Feathers* (Graeme Davis) occurs in one night in an inn with about ten separate plotlines running at the same time, giving the feel of a farce going on. A good idea, although I think it needs more hooks to get the PCs directly involved; I can see many groups not wanting to get mixed up in what seem to be mostly petty issues. *Eureka* is another location-based adventure, by Paul Hargreaves; reminiscent of the old RuneQuest adventure Gringle’s Pawnshop (from Apple Lane), the PCs must protect the home/laboratory of an eccentric DaVinci-esque inventor. Silly German names abound (the inventor is Herr Kugelschreiber - that's a ballpoint pen for those of you who don't know any German), and for some reason the author suggests that Kugelschreiber be portrayed with an exaggerated German accent – but surely all PCs from the Empire will have the same accent, so why make him stand out?

In issue 100 is a lengthy adventure from Games Day ’87, *The Floating Gardens of Bab-Ehlonn* by Basil Barrett. Set in Lustria (the South America of WHFRP) it uses a set of pregenerated pygmy PCs (with silly names - Banga Gong, Billa Bong etc.) sent to investigate the eponymous phenomenon, an ancient Slann artefact now occupied by an evil wizard. Some good ideas to be mined, even if the adventure itself is mostly really just a dungeon crawl.



 



*Articles*
Issue 93 sees the last articles for AD&D, although they are both largely systemless and could be used for other fantasy games. Simon Nicholson’s excellent *Vance’s Evocation of Arcane Delight* considers the magic of the Dying Earth series (largely Rhialto the Marvellous). His thesis is that although AD&D magic is frequently referred to as Vancian, it doesn’t really capture the baroque oddity of Vance’s work, and he gives ways in which this can be brought in without actually changing the rules of the game in any way. *Sounds Familiar?* by Alison Brooks and David Flin, takes a look at the reputed properties of “real” familiars, in this case, cat, crow, owl, weasel, toad and hawk, with some suggestions on how these could be emulated in AD&D. Worth reading.

Simon Nicholson reappears with another excellent article, *Scenes From Courtly Life*. Although nominally for WHFRP it’s really systemless, a followup to his *Friends in High Places* article with more details on how to survive politicking at court. Well written, with lots of entertaining examples.

There are a few articles for RuneQuest. *The Coliseum* part of Avalon Hill’s Monster Coliseum is published here (the Monster part having been included in GW’s RuneQuest Monsters book). Rules for gladiators and chariot racing, quite useful. In *Iron Warriors*, Jon Quaife provides some more NPCs for use with Griffin Island (although they could be used in any campaign); an interesting party of dwarf agents. Finally in Issue 99 there is an article on martial arts in RuneQuest by some idiot hack and his dyslexic friend. Yes, that was me and my friend Tim with an expansion for the Martial Arts skill, plus a martial artist profession. I have a few comments – first, we had nothing to do with the title (*Eeeyaargh!*) and in fact didn’t intend for it to be published. We sent it in as a taster for a martial-arts themed scenario we were working on (Enter the Dragonewt) and only discovered it had been published when we looked at the magazine in the newsagents. The cheque came a week later. Second, John Pitts of Glasgow in the letters in Issue 101 points out that we gave the Martial Artist profession too many percentiles. I can only hold my hands up for this – we did count how many the other professions get; I guess an error crept in there somewhere. I like his suggestions for different styles, a good addition.

And so, the rest is Warhammer in its various forms, or miniatures.
The new column *On The Boil* covers miscellany for Warhammer, both Roleplay and Wargames. The first edition includes rules for giants in WHFB3, by Rick Priestley, Jim Bambra and Graeme Davis) which are a call-back to the 40s, and the following edition features a *Bar-Room Brawl* for WHFRP, a call-back to the very early years. None of the characters want to rape anyone in this one, though, thankfully. Other items include *Otto’s Printworks* which not only gives a location and some NPCs but a few scenario ideas as well, a trio of artifacts for WHFRP, rules for elven wardancers and slann for WHFB and a lengthy extract from Realms of Chaos with hundreds of chaos mutations.

Warhammer 40K spawns the column *Chapter Approved* which has a range of additions to the game, both crunch and fluff, from rules for Dreadnoughts to the origins of the Space Marines. This column then gives rise to *Index Astartes* which goes into merciless detail on different chapters of the Space Marines, and by issue 100 the WH40K material has spread again into individual articles, mostly giving the rules to go with new miniatures.

*‘Eavy Metal* gives rise to *Blanchitsu*, which is more of a hints and tips column for painting and modelling whereas ‘Eavy Metal remains a showcase for pretty painting. Miniatures too engender their own individual articles, notably *Fantastic Immigery* which highlights the work of Michael Immig in Issue 100. Other articles are also quite introspective, covering the first *Golden Demon* awards for painting, the WHFB championships and the new range of plastic miniatures as well as expansions for various GW-produced boardgames like Blood Bowl and Block Mania. Thrud, Illuminations and Critical Mass continue but Gobbledigook, after a spell in the 40K universe, is reduced to a marginalia character, stealing page numbers and the like (which is actually quite a good use for him)



 



*Overall*
The standard of scenarios remains high, despite a tendency to over-detail everything, but elsewhere the general utility of material in the magazine diminishes. The imagination of Rick Priestley begins to inform a lot of the content of the magazine with his many articles discussing the WH40K universe in exhaustive detail, but there is a steady trend towards supplements for the miniatures wargames at the exclusion of all else, and the rise in features where articles on new mechanics for Warhammer and adverts for figures begin to bleed into one another. It’s probably not a coincidence either that the cover for Issue 100 features photos of miniatures. Whereas Issue 50 had the stats for White Dwarf personalities and Issue 90 had a retrospective article by Ian Livingstone, Issue 100 has nothing to mark the milestone, and no call backs to earlier issues.


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## Dr Simon

*Epilogue*

I originally chose issues 1 to 100 as that's (a) a nice round number and (b) pretty much the limit of role-play content in White Dwarf.

But not entirely.

Issue 101 features three scenarios. John Quaife proves another add-on for Griffin Island with *Trouble at the Number One Inn*, a flexible scenario involving slarges, pirates and dwarves all after the same Plot MacGuffin. It's mostly a set of NPC stats, with attached motivations, but that just makes it a bit more usable than the more typical story adventures that have been popular in the last couple of years of publication.
There's a WHFRP adventure called *The Affair of the Hidden Jewel* by Lewis Page, which is very high adventure, not so much a typical Warhammer Old World style adventure but full of interesting twists. Finally there is *Clone Day Surprise*, a Paranoia adventure from Games Day '87, where the referee is expected to get the players (that's the _players_, not the characters) doing aerobics and throw shaving-foam pies in their faces. All sounds quite annoying to me.

After that, scenarios proper fade from the magazine. They are replaced, for a while, by "Brief Encounters", which are adventure components for WHFRP. *There’s a One-Eyed Fellow Hiding to the South of Kammendun* by Graeme Davis can be used to introduce the fimir into a WHFRP game, and also features rules for using WH Battles to resolve some aspects. *The Vermilion Pawn* by Ken Rolston is a pawn shop for magical items, usable as a resource for PCs, or for somewhere they may want to rob - in that respect it recalls Gringle's Pawnshop from the Apple Lane scenario pack for RuneQuest, from way-back-when. *With a Little Help From My Friends* by Carl Sargent is a hostage situation and introduces a Poirot-esque gnome detective. *Element of Risk *by Ken Rolston uses the underdeveloped Elementalist specialist magician and is a nice little location-based adventure centred on some free-willed earth elementals. Finally *Terror in the Darkness* introduces the ambull, an umber-hulk type creature from WH40K, into the WHFRP setting. All quite simple but also all quite flexible in use. *Morglum's Marauders*, by Paul Murphy, is billed as a WHFRP campaign outline but may be more suitable to WHFB; it's a detailed description of an orcish warband and the goals of the leader.

Articles are all pretty much aimed at GW games, and the roleplay content peters out, mostly a series of (actually quite good) articles extracted from *Realms of Chaos*. The game* Dark Future* is released, a sort of Mad Max wargame that they really try to push. I vaguely recall it being around; the cars look really dated now! Dave Langford calls time on *Critical Mass*, which continues for a few columns under the pen of Dave Pringle before finishing altogether - a shame, but book reviews really don't mesh with the new direction that the magazine is taking. Once, when all and sundry were mining fantasy and SF fiction for ideas, it worked really well as a component of the magazine - remember that run back in the 50s where it seemed every issue had stats for creatures from a fantasy series, be it Majipoor, Many Coloured Land or Belgariad? By this stage in the magazine's history, however, everything has to be related to the Warhammer universe and it feels like there's little or no room for reader input. Which is probably why Enter the Dragonewt was never published, and why my Call of Cthulhu scenario set in modern gangland London (a sort of Guy Ritchie does Lovecraft kind of mash-up) was rejected (or it might have been that they were crap).

And on that note it's time to draw this trip down memory lane to a close.

In my opinion, if you look in any issue between about numbers 18 and 60 you are bound to find something good, and something that you could adapt to a modern game quite happily. In retrospect I'm impressed by how "modern" some of the ideas were, even if they tended to be couched in the AD&D mentality that you need lots of tables and finecky modifiers for every last subsystem. I've been inspired more than once whilst writing these articles with campaign ideas which I will probably never get to run.

The following are how many covers there are that feature each of these items. Correct me if I'm wrong, I may well have missed some:

15 *Chainmail Bikinis* (That also includes the leather bikini of issue 24, and I think I also counted the woman on the cover of issue 94 who is wearing sensible armour on her top half, but has forgotten to put her trousers on).
3 *Skin-Tight Spacesuits*
10 *Conan Muscle Men*
16 *Evil Wizards* (14? There are a couple of morally ambiguous wizards; if in doubt assume that they are evil)
15 *Spaceships*
17 *Orc-y Things* (ugly humanoids of medium-size)
15 *Demons* (roughly humanoid monsters of large size or greater, but also includes Cthuloid monstrosities)
8 *Dragons*
6 *SF meets Fantasy* (generally involving a person with a sword watching a high-tech thing pass overhead)
3 *Space Marines* (includes Chaos Marine on issue 99)


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## Dire Bare

Thanks again!  That was cool!


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## S'mon

Dire Bare said:


> Thanks again!  That was cool!




Agreed - I'd give more XP if I could.


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## Dr Simon

You're welcome, it was fun as well as work and I'm glad somebody enjoyed it. 

Added some more pics, by the way, mainly to the issues 21-30 section.


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## Ed_Laprade

S'mon said:


> Agreed - I'd give more XP if I could.



The same here.


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## Dr Simon

chaochou said:


> I didn't know (until today) that Mike had contributed to WD. He ran a weekly, and very popular (or at least noisy!), AD&D game my local rpg club when I was in my late teens. And - as an aside - was the Vogon guard in the BBC serialisation of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
> 
> Good fella, and good times.




Apologies for bumping my own post here, but:

I happened to re-watch Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future recently, and the guy who gets exploded by the blipvert is played by one Michael Cule.


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