Ian Livingstone mentions he is going to Dallas for the Hobby Industry of America's annual show (and even gets off a even-tired-for-1985 joke about J.R.). There is quite a bit of chatter on the white metal miniatures production.
Up first is an article I really enjoyed back in the day. A Place of Damp and Darkness dealt with the levels under a city. Given that it was 1985 and my love of all things British I always thought of London. In my mind "D&D London" was a weird combination of London of 1066, Elizabethan and Victorian London as cobbled together from various sources as Doctor Who and Hammer films. Not a pretty place, or even a real place, but a fun one. Goblins lived in the sewers, something that you will see in my adventures to this very day.
Open Box gets Super-sized. hehe. Not is size, but two new Super Hero games. Golden Heroes by Games Workshop and Marvel Super Heroes from TSR. I have only heard of Golden Heroes, never played it. Marcus Rowland loved it and gave it a 10/10 (even though he gave it a 7/10 for Complexity). He comes back with MSH and introduces the reader to FASERIP and the differences between Feeble and Unearthly. He gives it a 8/10 but for the life of me I have no idea why OTHER than he doesn't like seem "tm" all over the page. At this point in my life I was moving away from DC and into Marvel, so this was an awesome time for me. I recall how much we had taking our current D&D characters and restating them up as Marvel Characters.
RuneRites in next with some great spells for RuneQuest. All have a nice Celtic feel to them.
The Dark Usurper is up, Part 2 of the Fighting Fantasy Solo Adventure.
Gary Draabwell gives us En Garde, Parrying rules for AD&D. My then DM latched on these and never let go. I don't think a single sword hit I had ever landed after this article.
Ok this one is an odd duck.
An Alien Werewolf in London is a Traveller Adventure set in 1888 London. A Vargr has time-crash-landed in London and you need to go in a get him. It's a very straight forward adventure. Frankly it would work FANTASTIC for Cubicle 7's Doctor Who game and I even ran it once under Ghosts of Albion..
Eye of Newt and Wing of Bat is up for part 4. This time Swords and other weapons. The section on "bane swords" was very helpful when we focused on making "Demonbane" a unique holy avenger for my then AD&D game.
Fiend Factory has some relatives of the Dryad, the O Caber. They seem interesting enough.'
Treasure Chest covers hermits and hags. In this case they are ways to customize forest encounters with the strange old man/woman of the forest.
Crawling Chaos is a new bi-monthly Call of Cthulhu feature. This time they cover two new monsters the Bokrug and their servants the Thuun'ha. I like the idea of new monsters in CoC, but in truth players
Tabletop Heroes covers painting faces. Crash Course has some more Car Wars has a bunch of smaller ideas and articles.
We end with ads.
Ok so a lot for me personally in this issue. A lot of material that I made use of over the years or later adapted to something else. Let this be a lesson to you. Don't throw out your old magazines!
10 of 10 is pretty generous for Golden Heroes, though it isn't a bad game by any means. It reminded me most of Heroes Unlimited (the Palladium entry into the superhero game market), though that might be the other way around since I played GH before HU*. In any case, it looks like WD's "house organ" status begins now, since MSH is (and was) clearly a better game by far.
ReplyDelete*To be clear, I only ever played GH once. I played HU a few more times than that, but preferred Champions or MSH to either one.
oh my - a whole new world to discover! Happy A to Z!
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A Place of Damp and Darkness reminds me of a city campaign in which I once played which seemed to be set entirely in the sewers. Of course, the article was written by Garth Nix, who went on to pen the Abhorsen Chronicles.
ReplyDeleteAdd my voice to the support of A Place of Damp and Darkness - a small, simple article that is very evocative. I've used the ideas as well, in the Gene Wolf-inspired City of Seven Sins campaign.
ReplyDeleteFunny, only registered the other day that the author was Garth Nix, whose name I've seen on the cover of young adult fantasy novels.
The monster on the cover is a Kur from the Gor novel series. As far as I can tell Ian Livingstone must have got a license to use fantasy novel covers for White Dwarf, likely from his Fighting Fantasy book publisher contacts. Many are Achilleos, but many other artists feature too. It gave White Dwarf a unique 'pulp literary' feel which I really love.
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