Owl & Weasel Wednesday #18 September 1976

We take  big jump to September now. No I am not missing July and August, with Ian and Steve havig their wild adventure in the States this is the first issue we get since then.

Steve takes over the editorial in this issue to talk about their US trip. They visited TSR at Gen Con (more on that later) and generally took in the sites of the American side of the gaming hobby.  I found it interesting that they thought the America hobby stores were similar enough to London's.   I guess the differences were not as great as I expected either.  They loved Baseball and Frisbee (it was the 70s remember) and brought some home with them.

Reviewed this issue is the Lankhmr boxed game from TSR.   The whole Lankhmar stories and games are really something of a mystery to me.  I have not read the books nor played any of the games. This one sounds like an interesting game, but I wonder if it is more due to my romanticizing the time and subject matter.

Ia posts his take on their American trip They got to meet Gary, Fritz Leiber and the young Miss Wisconsin.   Tim Kask gets name dropped here as well.  Interestingly enough the report is very much like any Gen Con report you have ever read.  Coming from two such notables in the hobby though at their first Gen Con does make you smile.  Everyone has their first con sometime.

The first of the article competition is up from Andy Evans.  His article is about Reality in Fantasy.  It is the first in what will become many articles, Usenet posts, forum posts and blogs about how to build and deal with reality into your D&D game.  Andy here just happens to be one of the first.  Among the things he gets right is future of RPGs (namely they have one) and the flexibility. You can do anything in them and with them.  So he has quite a lot of good insight there.  

A brief article on the next two and last D&D supplements.  "Gods, Demi-Gods and Heroes" and "Swords and Spells".   There will be more on these in future issues, but "Swords & Spells" is really something of a semi-supplement.  Soon we will be entering my generation of D&D.

There is something else the guys picked up in the States.  Skateboarding. They devote and entire page to it in fact.  No need for commentary here from me.

Zine review is  very interesting for one thing in particular.  It discusses the last issue of The Strategic Reveiw (Vol. II No. 2) and the first issue of The Dragon. "Little Wars" is also discussed as the wargame alternate to The Dragon and the successor to SR.   Full price is £1 which makes it "expensive".  Subscribers to SR can convert their subscriptions over to The Dragon.

In this issue I can see why White Dwarf was every other month vs. monthly at first.  Things were still moving kind of slow back then.  Granted we see the same amount (or more) content in blogs and message boards in a day, but we have Internet speed and nearly 40 years of game development to talk about.  That all being said this issue benefited from the short break.  Ian & Steve seemed energized and ready to go and new games were being talked about.  To day this is the most "RPG"-centric OWl & Weasel to date.