White Dwarf covers always had a "Heavy Metal" feel to them for me. The magazine not the musical style, though both are accurate. This cover was no exception.
Plus this cover, half naked girl with sword and space helmet riding a dinosaur just screams OD&D to me. I love the little lizard dude pointing the way.
This issue is larger than the past ones by 4 pages. Growth it good, even if it looks like most of those new pages are ads. But ads are good too, since to me the ads of WD and Dragon were just as good of an indication as to what was popular or at least had the money to buy the space. There were many games I looked at the ads and later HAD to have.
We have bit on feudal economics in Chivalry and Sorcery (by one of the authors of the game), but certainly fine for any FRPG.
Next up is a huge update to the Fiend Factory. This feature is about to hit it's apex and there a plenty of new but familiar creatures to be found here. We have the Necrophidius, the Rover (a large round creature that, um, rolls), a Living Wall (which later became the Stun Jelly) , Volt, the Gluey (which thankfully later became the Adherer), Squonk, Eye Killer, Witherweed, and the Withra. All are complete with Monstermark ratings too. What I find interesting here are not the ones that made it in to the Fiend Folio, but the ones that didn't. They don't seem any worse or better than the others.
Ripped from the blog posts of last week are carrying capacities in Treasure Chest. They are split out by male and female. Oddly enough they are listed in terms of kg (kilograms) instead of pounds or even "coins". Though they do state at 1kg = 100 gp.
Yet more on the Asbury system of experience rewards.
Open Box reveiws "The Warlord Game", "The Thieves of Fortress Badabaskor", "Bifrost, Vol. 1", "Lords and Wizards" (Overall 6), "The Sorcerer's Cave", and "Cosmic Encounter" (Overall 8).
WD gives us a section of the Greenlands Dungeon called Lair of the Demon Queen. Which is a just a quick encounter really with a couple rooms. Perfect to add into a game or "collect them all!" Though I can't recall if there ever were more articles on this.
A special guest in the form of Gary Gygax writes about the Proliferation of Magic Items in D&D. If you didn't know already, old school games are typically low-magic affairs. None was more low magic than Gary himself it seems. While his advice is good, and certainly germane to any old school blog, it's not my tastes since I tend to run a magic rich game.
The issue ends with some ads.
All in all the future is looking good for WD. It has found a nice stride here in's toddlerhood.
Good stuff!
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