Wednesday, November 20, 2013

White Dwarf Wednesday #88

April 1987 brings us White Dwarf #88 and thankfully very little of the silliness that plagued Dragon mag in the month of April.  Mike Brunton even parodies this (a little unsuccessfully) in the editorial page.  But before that let's get to the cover.  I like it.  It is named "Dragonlady" by David Gallagher.  I can't see a date on the cover, but it looks older than 87.  Love the whole punk rock look of the Dragonlady.

So there is a fallacy in many gaming circles that "older" = "better" for some games.  That is certainly not true with this issue.  There are a some stylistic changes that bring it closer to the modern WDs, but time wise it is still closer to the WD of the late 70s early 80s than it is with the ones of today.

Briefly in things that interested me:

Open Box covers H2 The Mines of Bloodstone module.  I have the H series. And I desperately wanted to make them work, but they really don't.  Everything that is disliked in the adventure is magnified in the last of the series, H4.  I went through H4 and I might run it again someday with some the information from the previous modules (H1, 2 and 3), but I wont use this module for many of the reasons listed here (time wasting encounters, killer funhouse style dungeon, ill-planned Battle System tie-in, way too much treasure).

Some reviews on various books for the big tie-in Supers games, DC Heroes and Marvel Super Heroes.  This was a golden age for Supers games in my mind.  I wish I had played them more, but at this point I was wrapping an epic AD&D game and working all the time for extra money for college.

The Paddington Horror is a scenario for Call of Cthulhu by Marcus Roland.  It doesn't seem bad and I do seem to remember this one begin planned when I checked out the SIU Strategic Games Society.  I remembered because it was an example of an adventure I knew I could get my hands on.  Plus I always thought it would be funny if the cover had that kids  book Paddington Bear only with tentacles.

Hm..some Judge Dredd stuff.  Miss the days when the ads were all at the end of the magazine.

Fate Points in Warhammer.

New cards for Chainsaw Warrior (also reviewed in Open Box) my issue does not have the cards.

A RuneQuest III adventure.  Not dual or multi-stated.

There are some pages about assassins for AD&D.  Not too different than things I have read elsewhere.  Must have been something in the water back then.  My favorite character at the time was an assassin.

A little on Blood Bowl. A game that looked really stupid to me in the past, but now I kinda want to play.

Ending with Letters and ads.

Ok so. Not a great issue by any means.  It's only saving grace in my mind was it did not fall into the stupidity that Dragon did every April.  But I'd take Nogard over boring any day.

3 comments:

Alec Semicognito said...

You should try the PC version of Blood Bowl that came out a couple-few years ago. The AI opponent sucks, but it's a faithful adaptation of the game and you can play multiplayer. The non-expanded PC release can probably be bought for just a few dollars.

Darcy Perry said...

I remember buying this one when it came out! We used the Fate points in our Warhammer campaign too.

Trey said...

That is a good cover painting.