Owl & Weasel Wednesday #6 July 1975

Owl & Weasel #6 from July 1975 will be forever immortalized as the "Dungeons & Dragons" issue.

Page 1 of the issue describes the game we all know so well and it is interesting to read something like this; the game as something new and different.  The editors admit they are already obsessed with it and there is even a dragon on the masthead, making the issue temporarily Dragon, Owl & Weasel.
The article is continued later in the issue. Steve Jackson describes the contents of the box, 3 "little" books and not thousands of pieces.  Though he adds that he thinks $10.00 is "too much" to pay for the game.  Some things never change really. Jackson concludes calling D&D a "modern classic".

Moving on in the issue. The Letters page has a letter complaining about the lack women in gaming.  Again some things never changing.

Later on Steve Jackson discusses the costs of D&D. Again the $10.00 price tag is mentioned, but also $5.00 for Chainmail and "at least" $2.50 for dice.  Minifigs are also mentioned with several genres mentioned.   Additionally Games Workshop reports that they will be selling D&D in at least three weeks.

Page 11 is the second part of Percy Kenyon's coverage of Mah Jong. Interesting and more complicated than I realized. I mean I new Mah Jong was a strategy game (and not the solitaire version found on lots of computers) but I guess I didn't think about how detailed it was.

The back page features a TSR price listing of what will be soon available in the U.K.

The enthusiasm in this article abounds. Sitting here comfortably on the other side of nearly 40 years (and after the largest Gen Con on record) it is easy to forget that once upon a time this hobby of ours was new. Not just new, it had a start and that start is documented here.   I am not trying to sound all sappy here. I am big proponent of always looking forward, but sometimes you have to look back to see where you have been.  Sometimes it doesn't amount to much, other times the difference is so striking that it leaves you somewhat agape or stunned. This is one of those moments.  Sure some of the actual words said are even the same (it costs too much, where are the women?) but these are the first times they have been said and that is something important.

Not sure what the next issues will bring, but for me I am looking for that joy of discovery of a new thing.  But I guess that is what it is all about all the time really.

eta: The middle pages

Owl & Weasel Wednesday #5 June 1975

June 1975 is the start of something new in the pages of Owl & Weasel and I think they knew it.  First off the crossword is gone. Detailed in the editorial there were just too few people interested in it and it took too long to do.   One first glance the thing you notice is the issue has expanded again. Now at 12 pages for 10p. Quite a bargain.
A dismal report from the London Toy Fair with only two new games that might of interest; "Waterloo" and "Trafalgar".

Steve Jackson reviews two new "games" from Avon Hill. They are both "Ritual Kits" for "Witchcraft" and "Black Magic".  In some ways they look like the adult interactive games like "House to Host a Murder" and in others like a Ouija board with pawns. OR they are meant as serious ritual tools?  Who knows really. Obviously meant to take advantage of the occult revival of the 70s and perfect of example of the type of zeitgeist that fueled my own games.  You can see these "games" over Board Game Geek for a better idea.  Witchcraft Ritual Kit and Black Magic Ritual Kit.  It looks trippy as all hell, or maybe cheap.  Sometimes it is hard to tell.  Honestly this is exactly the kind of thing I would have eaten up in the 70s and 80s.

Stuck in at the bottom of page 2 is paragraph. The title is "Dungeons & Dragons" and Steve Jackson is asking what people think of it. He has not played it yet but promises more when he has.  He is also soliciting reviews.

Other games covered are Red Cloud's War and Epaminondas (something like a checkers variant).  Interestingly enough when doing some research on these games it seems that the O&W article was one of the first reviews of the game published.
A discussion of Mah Jong shows up on page 11 and guidelines for how to play it with standard card decks.

Page 8 gives us some ads and some used games for sale.
Page 12 covers the Games Workshop Games Day.  Planning on running from "Early in the morning to late at night".  they promise demonstrations, meetings for game clubs and the possibility of a "Zine Stall".  There will also be an information stall, and a place to buy used games.  Refreshments will be available.

What I love about this exploration into Owl & Weasel is not just the nostalgia; in fact I was not gaming at this point so I don't have any nostalgia for this time. It is the whole DIY and Wild West feel of the Zine.  It is similar to what we have going on in the blogs and boards now, but there is an earnestness about it that I find appealing.

Owl & Weasel Wednesday #4 May 1975

Owl & Weasel #4 takes us to 1975.
Still 8 pages and still 10p.

The feel of this is still very, very local.  But I did enjoy the front page story on Go (a game I have always wanted to learn).
Outside of that the zine is still focused mostly on Wargaming.  Which is interesting comparing it more modern White Dwarfs.  I feel less and less like White Dwarf turned it's back on RPGs and instead just went back to its focus.

There is another Monopoly variant published here.  If you have three or more undeveloped properties then the lowest one goes on the auction block.  Also the bank can bail you out if you go bankrupt.  Though the editors dislike the Labour-style hand-outs.

Some newer movies are reviewed by comparing them to games.  Cute, but little utility in that.   Also a batch of "Urban" games are also reviewed, but they could also be called "Ecological" ones.  I can remember being in grade school and getting hit with a ton of ecology related curriculum or propaganda so I guess that it was in vogue over in England as well.

There is an editorial/letters page in which we learn that a Game Day is being planned. First of many as we now know.  And that the crossword puzzle is going away due to complaints.   There are not really any letters, but a place to send them is noted.

Some used games for sale are also noted.  See what I am saying about the local feel.

Finally we get to the aforementioned crossword.

Owl & Weasel Wednesday #3 April 1975

Owl & Weasel #3 takes us back to April of 1975.
We are still at 8 pages and 10p but there is more "layout" now.

Ian Livingstone's first Editorial is a sample of what we will see later in White Dwarf, only much more verbose and more personable.  It get the feeling that Ian and Steve knew their subscribers personally or at the very least knew where they were coming from.

There is still a lot of "Subscribe to us" and "Advertise with us" through out the zine.  This is not unexpected.

If you ever doubt the roll Chess plays in the gaming community then look no further than pages 4 & 5 of this issue.  Two pages of an analysis of a game played by Arjura Parakrama and John J. McCallion in Colombo Sri Lanka on December 8th, 1974.

There are discussions of Kingmaker and Avaon Hill's Baseball.

Page 7 has the various games now all in one place and Page 8 has a feature that will be a regular in White Dwarf; the Notice board.   People looking for games to play, players and some games for sell.

It is hard for me to gauge this issue.  By today's standards the articles are long(ish) and there is nothing to grab into the article.  To be fair this is Ian and Steve at 25 and 23 (respectively) and they are inventing our fandom here.  But this is less of a "rough draft" of White Dwarf and really a different sort of animal.
Though all the seeds are here really.  Just missing a comic really.  Though I do feel I need some more cultural context here.  With WD I had my own experience to draw on. Here I was 4 and the only board game I knew how to play at this point was checkers.  I'll do some more research.

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Owl & Weasel Wednesday #2 March 1975

Owl and Weasel hits Issue #2 and doubles in size!  That is something even White Dwarf can't claim.
Still mot of the articles are by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson, but some other talent is coming in.

Steve Jackson discusses the Brighton Toy Fair on page 1. Interesting in this perspective since this is a hobby on the verge.  How so? Well by how little he mentions is there. The Fair is big enough to take over "3 hotels"  he only mentions a handful of games and these are all board games.  Yes, at this point D&D has not come to England but there are no War Games mentioned either.

So a question the true Grognards out there.  Were War Games already dying out in 75?  I was under the impression that this was a good time for them.

A brief mention that the board game magazine Albion was no more. I had not heard of it at before this.

A little math puzzle for you to try at home:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 = 100
Add mathematical notations to make the answer equal 100.
(eg. 123 + 4 - 56 ... etc.)

Let me know if you figure it out.  Puzzles seem like a must add really to a games magazine. I wonder why it wasn't done more.

Ah that is why.  In the Editorial on Page 4 Steve Jackson reports a reader saying "get rid of the puzzles".  A thus the first irritated gamer raises his voice against the establishment or something. The editorial does mention more exciting things to come.

There are some more puzzles and a bit about the recent resurgence of Mah Jong.  1975 Percy Kenyon would be happy to know that nearly 40 years later the game is still played and in various formats.  At one point I remember my FLGS carried nice and expensive Mah Jong sets for a while.

The overall feel of O&W2 is a zine starting it's stride. It is obvious that Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone feel they are on to something big. While retrospect tells us they were right, it is not the same "big thing".

What I love is the frontier feel of this.  These are two guys, passionate about their hobby and want to share it with everyone and anyone they can.

Owl & Weasel Wednesday #1 February 1975

"Issue no. 1; preserve this copy carefully! Who knows, the very piece of paper you know hold between your fingers may become a rarity, its value soaring to 1 3/4 times its present cost!"

So that would put it at 17.5 p now?  Could not find a listing on eBay but I figure it must worth more than that.

This of course is the premier issue of Owl & Weasel, the precursor to White Dwarf.  Published February 1975 this actually makes it older than The Strategic Review (the precursor to The Dragon) by a couple of months.

The newsletter is dedicated to 'progressive games'.  But also mentioned are abstract games, psychological games and even computer games.  An interesting description of what would become our hobby.

In these four pages we have a review of "Killer" and a Monopoly variant "Dipoploly".  There is a discussion between editors Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson on wargamming.
But mostly it is a call for more content.

I missed the 'zine era by a few years.  Sure when I got to college there were still some local publications that were zine format, mostly sci-fi/fantasy ones, but they were rare even then.
While the feel is the same a say a blog post or web zine of today, the attention seems different.   I can put anything I like up with zero cost.  Sometimes it is good, sometimes...well you get you paid for.   Here, at 10p an issue I expect that more care and attention was put into the publication.  After all the editors only had 4 pages to work with and wanted to be sure their best material went in.

I am looking forward to see how this Zine and the Hobby develop over the next 25 issues.

White Dwarf Wednesdays? Sure!

Today is Wednesday.  That used to mean something around here at the Other Side.  I spent a nice long time reviewing White Dwarf from issue 1 to 100.

I missed doing something special each Wednesday to be honest.

Thanks to a kind benefactor I now have 25 issues of Games Workshop's precursor to White Dwarf, Owl and Weasel.

Owl and Weasel was launched in 1975 and was aimed at War-, board- and role-playing game enthusiasts.
Issue #6 is often considered their watershed issue where they devoted the entire issue to the new Dungeons & Dragons game.

The title was always a bit of mystery. Most people believe that it referred to the editors, Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, themselves.   I personally have never heard a definitive answer, but that is fine. I like the name.

So sit back and over the next 25 weeks I am going to briefly go over these issues.  Not a review so much as a looking for topics that interest me and readers of this blog.

White Dwarf Wednesday Index

Here it is. A link index to every White Dwarf Wednesday I have done.

Issues #1-#100
White Dwarf #1
White Dwarf #2
White Dwarf #3
White Dwarf #4
White Dwarf #5
White Dwarf #6
White Dwarf #7
White Dwarf #8
White Dwarf #9
White Dwarf #10

White Dwarf #11
White Dwarf #12
White Dwarf #13
White Dwarf #14
White Dwarf #15
White Dwarf #16
White Dwarf #17
White Dwarf #18
White Dwarf #19
White Dwarf #20
White Dwarf #21

White Dwarf #24
White Dwarf #22
White Dwarf #23
White Dwarf #25
White Dwarf #26
White Dwarf #27
White Dwarf #28
White Dwarf #29
White Dwarf #30
White Dwarf #31
White Dwarf #32

White Dwarf #33
White Dwarf #34
White Dwarf #35
White Dwarf #36
White Dwarf #37
White Dwarf #38
White Dwarf #39
White Dwarf #40
White Dwarf #41
White Dwarf #42
White Dwarf #43

White Dwarf #44
White Dwarf #45
White Dwarf #46
White Dwarf #47
White Dwarf #48
White Dwarf #49
White Dwarf #50
White Dwarf #51
White Dwarf #52
White Dwarf #53
White Dwarf #54

White Dwarf #55
White Dwarf #56
White Dwarf #57
White Dwarf #58
White Dwarf #59
White Dwarf #60
White Dwarf #61
White Dwarf #62
White Dwarf #63
White Dwarf #64
White Dwarf #65

White Dwarf #66
White Dwarf #67
White Dwarf #68
White Dwarf #69
White Dwarf #70
White Dwarf #71
White Dwarf #72
White Dwarf #73
White Dwarf #74
White Dwarf #75
White Dwarf #76

White Dwarf #77
White Dwarf #78
White Dwarf #79
White Dwarf #80
White Dwarf #81
White Dwarf #82
White Dwarf #83
White Dwarf #84
White Dwarf #85
White Dwarf #86
White Dwarf #87

White Dwarf #88
White Dwarf #89
White Dwarf #90
White Dwarf #91
White Dwarf #92
White Dwarf #93
White Dwarf #94
White Dwarf #95
White Dwarf #96
White Dwarf #97
White Dwarf #98
White Dwarf #99
White Dwarf #100

Two years, two months and 100 issues.  Quite a ride!

White Dwarf Wednesday #100

Here we are. At the end.  I started this a little more than two years ago but I finally made it to my stated goal of issue 100 of White Dwarf. But before I go all reflective, let's tackle the issue at hand, White Dwarf 100 for April 1988.

The cover of this issue includes photos of miniatures, which I guess is appropriate.  Compare to the cover of Dragon 100 it really isn't a stretch; both did something different.  But with a history of great covers I expected more.  This is a common theme throughout this issue in fact.
Unlike issue #90 (ten years) which featured a look back, this issue is nearly indistinguishable from the last save that there is no other game content except for Games Workshop games. Now I don't want it to sound like I think this is a bad thing. It's not. TSR/WotC did it, most magazines did it and still do it. It's good economic sense.  I like generalist magazines myself and once upon time White Dwarf was the best of the lot.

Sean Masterson makes it clear that issue 100 is not about looking behind, but ahead. Ok. I was hoping for some retrospective, but I am not going to fault them.  This is the blueprint of next 25 years of White Dwarf.
It wouldn't bug except for the teaser of "Special Anniversary Issue" on the cover.

Marginalia discusses The Power Behind the Throne for Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play and another expansion to Dungeonquest.  I think I am going to need to pick up both WFRP and Dungeonquest at some future date just to see what they were all about.

Highway Warriors is a sneak peak into GWs next near future game.  At this point it was unnamed, but a little research and I found out it became Dark Future.  I love reading little insights like this to games.  I remember about the same time reading about the upcoming AD&D 2nd Edition.  It was articles like this that got me thinking about what sorts of things went into making a game.

The Floating Gardens of Bahb-Elonn is an adventure for Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play. I can't judge it on it's own merits.  The players are all some sort of native race with some dumb sounding names, but outside of that it looks like an adventure that could be ported over to any system.  I could see it being run with primitive halfings in D&D or MERP.

The rest of the issue is split up between Warhammer Fantasy Battles and Warhammer 40k.  In fact the only clue that there are other games out there is an ad for Dragonlance Tales vol. 1 (of all things).

Here at the end (not to sound too maudlin) I can see how this magazine is changing into something that Warhammer fans will find useful.  Plus it is also a good example how a company can maintain seperate parallel game lines.  But it is a good place for me to bow out.

What Did I Learn From All of This?
That things really have not changed all that much.  Some of the same discussions on the letters pages and int he editorials are the same as some message board and blog posts today.  Each generation of gamers looks at the generation that cam before as old Grgonards and at the generation that comes after as kids with no respect for the way things were done.  Debates will always rage on and maybe it not the goal of the debate but simply the discussions themselves that are important.

I learned that it doesn't matter what I think I know about games, there is always more to learn. A new game, an obscure one, new ways of doing things. This hobby is more diverse than even we give it credit for.

I learned that there was a ton of great stuff being published back then.  I was fortunate to have lived in a area where I still had pretty good access to games. I now live in a place where any game I want is often a mouse click away or if I need it sooner in physical form, an 8-minute drive.

What I most enjoyed though was going through the older magazines, the ones up to issue 30-40; the Golden Age of RPGs or at least of D&D.  Yes I can be accused of being an old nostalgic gamer and that is fine with me to be honest.  I also liked reflecting on what I was doing at those times as well.

That was a lot of fun. I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did.




Now what should I do??

White Dwarf Wednesday #99

March 1988 and White Dwarf #99. This might one of my least favorite covers ever for White Dwarf.  Some weird looking space marine (research tells me it is a Chaos Marine).  In The Eye Of Terror Collective by Creativity Inc is the credit.
Sean Masterson gives us lackluster editorial.

Marginalia gives us two products, Curse of the Mummy's Tomb and Heroes for Dungeonquest.  Curse of the Mummy is a new board game and Heroes another expansion for Dungeonquest.

Lots of stuff for Warhammer 40k.

Letters moves up to the start of the issue.

The Ritual is a Warhammer Fantasy introductory scenario.   It's 10 pages and looks like it could be fun.  It has a serious old school vibe about it (naturally) but it really looks like something that could be published today for the OSR crowd.

For RuneQuest we get a guide on Martial Arts.  Only a page, but some very 80s stuff.

A little bit more on some Warhammer 40k.

Spirit of the Mountain is a Call of Cthulhu adventure.  Taking place anytime between 1830 and 1930 it is a fun little adventure set in Navajo land in Arizona.  I like it. I am sucker for anything Native American in nature.  Growing up in the midwest near old burial mounds will do that.  Plus I was in the area of this adventure this past spring on vacation and I have been dying to try something out.  It looks like something that I could convert easily to Ghosts of Albion.

One of the reasons (I think) for letters getting moved was to make room for a new forum on miniatures. I have been poking my head in on various newer White Dwarf issues to know that anything miniatures was gold for White Dwarf.

End with more Warhammer 40k and various ads.

A lot of what I said about last issue is still valid here.

White Dwarf Wednesday #98

Heading into the last hurrahs now.  White Dwarf Wednesday takes us to February 1988.
On the cover "Games Workshop" takes front and center.  The cover is also a group of Space Marines by Dave Andrews.  While this is certainly a sign of the change here it is also the change itself.  This is basically how the issues will remain till the present day.

Sean Masterson's editorial covers how packed the issue is (it is) but that is about all he says.

Marginalia covers Timescape for Talisman and a Warhammer 40k product Chapter Approved.  Timescape is a boardgame expansion and includes a number of new cards.

Some articles on Centuars for Warhammer Fantasy battles and a preview of Chapter Approved for 40k.

Thurd and Gobbledigook both get the Warhammer treatment as well.

"Scenes for Courtly Life" is an article on using courtly characters in your FRPG. Examples of different sorts of characters are given, such as the King, Queen, Physician and so on. With some quotes from literature to help make the point.  There are some great ideas on marriage, rules, etiquette and more.  Think how popular Game of Thrones in now.  This article won't let you do all of that, but it will give you something to do in between dungeons.

Grapes of Wrath is a scenario for Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play for 5-7 characters, Advanced careers.  Scenario makes it sound small, this is one of the longest adventures I have seen in a while in the pages of WD. 17 pages with 2 pages of full color maps.  Again I look on WHFRP as something akin to trying to read Modula-2 or Oberon if you learned Pascal. Or Danish if you know German. The words are familiar and you can figure it out, but there is something lost in the translation do to my own lack of knowledge.  IF I do nothing else with this White Dwarf experiment I think I owe it myself to try out a game of WHFRP.

The Madcap Laughs is next with Part 3 of 3 of the Stormbringer Adventure.
Couple of pages of Letters and some Warhammer questions.

Not a lot for my games here, but the "Scenes for Courtly Life" is interesting enough on it's own.

White Dwarf Wednesday #97

We begin 1988 with White Dwarf #97.  This is another one I picked up to be complete.  I bought though because it was an "attack of opportunity" so to speak; it was there and I had cash.

The dragon on the cover is nice. It's the same cover as Dungeonquest by Peter Jones.
The editorial is a blast against nostalgia and favors looking towards the new.  It is using the metaphor of rock bands and "Classic oldies" stations, but the message is clear. White Dwarf is changing and if you don't like that, well you can always listen to your dad's 8-Tracks.

Marginalia covers the Judge Dredd Companion.  Of course given the 80s hair and giant shoulder pads it could have also been clothing catalog.  It was the 80s after all.

An interesting bit, a couple of pages from Games Workshop mail-order store.
The next 50 pages are devoted to Warhmmer.  Not that this is a bad thing, but I have nothing to contribute to it.

An article for Call of Cthulhu is next.  Three cases for 1920s Call of Cthulhu.  Seems like a weak effort to me.

The Madcap Laughs is next with Ruins in Madness for Stormbringer. At nine pages is also fairly long.  It is nice and detailed.

We end with Letters and ads including a Dungeonquest one.

We all knew this was coming.  Sure there are more pages, but less and less of the things I am interested and outside the focus of this blog.  I was just talking with my son on Tuesday about Warhammer (because if you don't talk to your kids about Warhammer then who will?) and how I never got into it.  We were at our FLGS and I showed him all the stuff you can buy for it and the new weekly WD.  It dawned on me then and there that WH is younger man's game.  Not that you need to be younger than me to play it, but you need a lot of time.  Frankly I don't have that anymore.   So I am popping in my 8-tracks.  Get off my lawn.

D&D40 Bloghop: Day 10

Day 10: First gaming magazine you ever bought (Dragon, Dungeon, White Dwarf, etc.).

The first ever Dragon magazine I ever bought was Dragon #85.

I had been hanging out in Belobrajdic's Bookstore in my home town and I looked at the Dragons every month.  But this one grabbed my attention for some reason.

Back in those days we milked every magazine for what it was worth.  It wasn't like now where the amount to fill a magazine is posted every day for free. Then the new material was few and far between.

My first issue of White Dwarf came later. The local bookstores didn't carry it so I had to order it.  Not knowing what to get, only that it looked really cool, I grabbed issue #44.

Very fond memories of reading both of these over the years.

White Dwarf Wednesday #96

White Dwarf #96 is the last issue of 1987.  I had considered stopping here to be honest. This issue marks the first of what I consider the "All Warhammer, all the time" issues.  But hey, I have gotten this far and 100 is more round number.
The cover art is the same as Casket of Souls by Iain McCaig.  We have a competition for it later in the issue.
The editorial is a bit of nonsense from Sean Masterson on what gaming is.  I guess the only really interesting thing about this is that it is a reflection of the gamin scene of the late 80s; everything going in a thousand directions at once yet still gaming.

Marginalia covers Dungeonquest, a game I have wanted to try out, and Warhammer Fantasy Battle, 3rd Ed.
This review of Dungeonquest only revives my desire to find a copy of this game.   By my estimates this $10 box of White Dwarf magazines has cost me a couple to three hundred extra bucks.  I had to buy other WDs to fill in the gaps (I still have a WD 105 that I am not going to review) but mostly in old games I see reviewed and want to pick up.  Some have been cheap. Most have not.

Culture Shock is the oft renamed news/rumor column.  Of interest, Citadel is selling a million miniature figures a month.  I wonder if that rate kept up.
Critical Mass covers the books of the time, none jump out at me.  I was reading the Chronicles of Corum at this point.

Barroom Brawl is the first Scenario for Warhammer Fantasy.  In my mind most of Warhammer was about fighting in large scale wars and then going to the pub to fight again.

After that, Elfwardancers for WH Fantasy.  This is something I could see being snagged for D&D or even ShadowRun.  I have seen stranger things in both games.  Plus it helps get rid of some the "Tolkienesque" qualities of elves.

The conclusion of "To Live and Die in Mega-City One" is next. I am told it is quite good.  I personally don't know enough about Judge Dredd to know for sure.

In a rare departure (and soon to be rarer) we have The Beast of Kozamura, an Eastern-themed adventure for RuneQuest. Overtly for Land of Ninja rules.

An article/ad for Casket of Souls.
The first Warhammer 40,000 regular article "Chapter Approved" is up.

On the Boil details various topics in Warhammer Fantasy, this time Middenheim the City of the White Wolf.

An aside for a bit.  There is a lot of Warhammer stuff going on here now and really I have no clue. I read through WH40k once and I see the appeal, but I am not into painting mins all day.  By extension I also guess I see the appeal of Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer Fantasy Battles. Wish I could offer more at this point.

'Eavy Metal paints some dragons.

Last issue we discussed The Madcap Laughs, this issue we have the first adventure in the series.  A Heart of Dust, A Hand of Death is for Stormbringer but it could be adapted to RuneQuest easy enough.

We end with the usual run of letters and ads.

So. Much less in this issue for me to be honest. Nothing against the change WD is making or the Warhammer stuff, just not where my gaming went at the time or now.

White Dwarf Wednesday #95

White Dwarf Issue # 95 from November 1987.
I want to state upfront that I actually don't have the flexi-disc. It was not part of the magazine when I got it (no surprise really). Plus I don't actually own a turn-table anymore so even if I did have it.

White Dwarf #95 takes us to November 1987.  I asked my wife if she remembers what we were doing then. She didn't recall.  I know that gamewise my old 1st Ed DM had come up and we were running an adventure together for some other people in the dorm.  One of the characters we made that day would later live on as a vampire in other games and finally come back to my 3rd Ed game as the only person in my games to ever be cured of vampirism.  I think I mentioned this one before. (yup, WDW 93).

Sean Masterson discusses the influence fantasy and sci-fi has had on rock.  There is the obvious influence of metal at least on gaming, at least in terms of how WD does it.  So we should not be surprised when gaming influences metal. Thus the flexi disk that came with the magazine.

Marginalia, Open Box's lesser offspring, is next with "reviews" of some GW products.  Up first is "The Fury of Dracula" board game.  I'll admit I have always wanted to play this one, and it always looked rather cool.  Reading these design notes/reviews actually get me more interested in a game.  Though I do feel compelled to point out something. The review is written for the point of view of someone who has only known Dracula in movies and maybe never read the book.  That is fine, a lot of people don't like the book.  They are careful to point out that Dracula was killed with a Bowie knife to the heart in the book (true) but add that he was trying to build an empire of the undead (not true).  Not quite sure where they got that.  Of course people have also been looking for some deeper romantic connection between Mina and Dracula and that was also never in the book.
Covered next are two city books, one for Warhammer the other for Judge Dredd.

Critical Mass covers a number of Sci-fi books including the latest Stainless Steel Rat book.  Never could get into this series.

Our first big adventure of the issue is for Judge Dredd, "To Live and Die in Megacity One, Prog: 2 The Big Sleep".  Again hard for me to judge this one, but I have been told that the Judge Dredd adventures of this time are good. It is a long one, 10 pages with 2 more of maps.

Lots of pages of pictures of painted minis even before we get to 'Eavy Metal. Here is a review (more detailed than I ever could do) on the minis. http://realmofchaos80s.blogspot.com/2012/08/acceptable-in-80s-white-dwarf-95.html

Actually if you are looking for you White Dwarf fix every week I would recommend Realms of Chaos 80s as a good blog dedicated to things I only briefly touched on.

Ad for Fury of Dracula.  At first I thought it was a mis-print of the first page of Marginalia again.  Looked exactly the same.

"On the Boil" is an adventure (or is it Scenario?) for Warhammer Fantasy. 5 pages.  I wish I knew more about Warhammer to be honest.  Not just to judge these, but because reading these makes me aware of a huge gap I have in my RPG background.  I honestly don't think I would get much out of the Warhammer experience. I can't paint. I don't like collecting minis of armies.  But there is something so...well, Warhammer, about it.  I am sure there has to be something in this experience that I could port back over to my own old-school D&D games.

"The Madcap Laughs" deals with setting the scenes for new Stormbringer Adventures.

"Warhammer Rock" is where the flexi-disk would have been. It is also an interview with the band Sabbat.
Here is a link to the entire article. http://hem.bredband.net/b306090/white_dwarf.htm

And here is the song.



The lyrics are in the magazine and on the video page on YouTube.

Next are ads, then Illuminations featuring the art of John Blanche.
Letters follow and then some ads.

Again we see similar things here that we did in issue 94.  I have mixed feelings about Marginalia; I like the in-depth reviews but dislike that they are only focusing on house brands. Granted that is really the only way a magazine would do it and in 1987 I wasn't buying much of anything.

If you are looking for another good source of White Dwarf information I have been enjoying the fuckyeahbritisholdschoolgaming blog on tumblr http://fuckyeahbritisholdschoolgaming.tumblr.com/

White Dwarf Wednesday #94

White Dwarf #94 is an interesting one for me.  Not because of the content, which I'll get to, but because I didn't even own this one when I started doing this so long ago. Soon after though I found this one, added it to the box and then never really looked at it again.  I kind of like to be surprised when I first open them up and write about it at the same time.  So lets see what White Dwarf #94 from October 1987 has to offer.

First off we have another Chris Achilleos cover. Raven's Oath actually was a book cover fist. I remember finding the Raven, Sheildmistress of Chaos books at the local used bookstore that was my go to spot for old books, D&D and everything for my first year in college.  It's gone now.  But I did get a copy the original Deities and Demigods with Cthulhu and Elric for only 18 bucks.  Still have that.  Never bought any of the Raven books though.

New Editor, Sean Masterson, with an old story, big changes coming to White Dwarf.

The first big change is that Open Box is gone.
Yup. It has been replaced with Marginalia, or design notes from the GW team.  While it is an interesting idea and one I would have enjoyed IF I were at all interested in the Warhammer products, I can't help but think that it is a poor substitute for Open Box.  Sure most pretense at bias was given up a long time ago it was still no worse than the reviews in Dragon. Just a different slant.
Still. It is quite sad to see this one last vestige of classic White Dwarf go away.
There are some reviews for RuneQuest's Land of the Ninja and Paranoia 2.

Stop Press is the new rumors column.  I seem to say that a lot.  Let's be honest, rumors are really not all that interesting in a 25 year old magazine.

Critical Mass covers Elric at the End of Time. A potentially interesting, but some what dull in the end, entry of the Elric saga.  I was pretty heavy into Elric, Corum, Hawkmoon,  and Count Brass at this point so I grabbed this one when it came out. I think it sat on my "to be read" pile for a number of years.

A Rough Night at the Three Feathers is a short adventure for Warhammer Fantasy.  Could be converted I am sure, but I think something would be lost in the process.   I almost picked up a copy of Warhammer Fantasy the other day at Half-Price Books.

Likewise we have adventures for Judge Dredd and Call of Cthulhu.

Some more about Warhammer 40k and Blood Bowl.

We end with the normal rounds of ads and letters.

Yeah, so kind of a disappointment really. More so I guess seeing how I actually sought this one out to complete my collection.

If you are looking for more details on the minis that appeared in this issue then head over to Realms of Chaos 80s. A new find (new to me).
http://realmofchaos80s.blogspot.com/2012/08/acceptable-in-80s-white-dwarf-94.html

Next week: Anyone have a turn-table I can borrow?

White Dwarf Wednesday #93

Before going back to September of 1987 for White Dwarf #93 I want to mention that White Dwarf in its present incarnation will become a weekly magazine.  The Press Release was just posted today over at Games Workshop. So an interesting time in the history of WD.

Today's issue features the first Warhamer 40k inspired cover.  When you get right down to it, WH40k is pretty much everything White Dwarf ever did in one game. It's fantasy (like WH, D&D and RQ), it is Sci-Fi (like Traveller), it is horror (like CoC) and it is minis.  I guess it really is no surprise.

Mike Brunton delivers his last editorial urging folks not to read editorials and instead read the rest of the magazine.

Open Quest hits us with five Games Workshop related products.  Block Mania and Mega Mania are board games, Death on the Reik is a supplement for WH, The Talisman Dungeon a board game expansion and GW's reissue of RuneQuest Monsters.  The Talisman Dungeon board game expansion is an interesting one to me since I recently did something similar to my own sets of TSR's Dungeon game (not related).  Also covered are a couple of TSR aAD&D books. The I3-5 Desert of Desolation series (which Jim Bambra liked a lot) and Treasure Hunt a "well crafted and truly creative" adventure from TSR. Something that Carl Sargent says is a rarity these days.  There is a board game called "Chase" from TSR as well.  Mike Brunton calls it easy to learn but easily one of the hardest games to play (in a good way). It sounds interesting but I don't recall it all.

Awesome Lies discusses how soon you will be able to see your own local GW store! There is mention of TSR releasing Car Wars books, I am not sure if that is a typo or something that never came to pass. More on the New Infinities and TSR troubles.  One bit of interest to me is a mention of the GW Dracula game.  Later released as The Fury of Dracula. I rather enjoyed the plot behind this one, 8 years (7 in this article) later Dracula is back and fighting the original hunters.

Critical Mass covers more books, but the only one I had read on the list was Wielding a Red Sword by Piers Anthony.  I also had a number of issues with this book, though not the same as the review.  I tried to read Mirror of Her Dreams, but gave up and decided that Stephen Donaldson just isn't for me.

The first feature article is a Tournament Adventure for AD&D. Getting Away From Most Of It is designed for 8 characters of levels 2-4.   Interestingly enough the idea here is the characters are on vacation and have motivations while they are here (to get a tan, to get drunk, to buy/get souvenirs).  It is a bit tongue in cheek, but the fatality rate looks like it will be pretty high. The adventures are pressed into returning a minor artifact to a demon and they only have 2 hours to do it. That is 2 hours of real time.  Looks like it would be fun with the right people or even in a convention setting.

Vances Evocation of Arcane Delight covers, what else, the "Vancian" magic system of D&D.  The author, Simon Nicholson, states that the magic of Jack Vance is far more interesting than what we typically know of it in AD&D.  Reading through this I am motivated (again) to do more with my *D&D spells and motivated (again) to read the works of Jack Vance.  Spells should have cool names and, well, magic about them. This is one (of 100s of) thing CoC gets right.

The main focus of the issue is next, a huge color supplement/advertising for Warhammer 40,000.

Some miniatures awards are next.

Eureka is a smaller adventure for Warhammer Fantasy.  Though it is overshadowed in my my mind by the next adventure.

"Letters from a Foreign Land" easily wins the golden WTF award for concept.  It is an adventure for Warhammer Fantasy, Call of Cthulhu and MERP. Imagine the Venn Diagram of that. What can possibly be the spot where all three overlap.  And why not just throw AD&D into the mix while you are at it! This is one of those adventures I would want to run just to be able to say I did it. Granted, this is not a crossover, but a triple-stated one.  Still though.  It is a decent size and would take a couple of sessions to run.  If it were smaller, say four hours, it would a fun thing to try at GenCon, running it under a different system each night.

'Eavy Metal covers painting.  I new painting minis is hard, but there are lot more steps here than I ever knew about.

All The Lonely People gives us some NPCs for Judge Dredd.

Sound Familiar? discusses familiars and pets for your FRPG. While nothing I haven't seen elsewhere, it is a nice treatise on familiars and how they can be used.

We end with letters and ads.

In general I have to say the articles are improving. Everything is actually better quality than it was in the last two years.  Yes the focus is shifting, but it mirrors what was going on in gaming at the time too.  At this point in 1987 I wasn't playing much myself. Though there is an interesting note. I introduced a friend to the game around this time and her character later stuck around in my games as an NPC that became a vampire.  That character is still being used in my games today as the only known human to have ever been cured of vampirism.

I keep expecting each issue to have less and less that interests me, and that is roughly true, but the issue themselves have been quite good.

White Dwarf Wednesday #92

White Dwarf #92 comes to us from August 1987.  About this time I was headed off to college and my game playing took a slight hit. It would pick up again soon, but my game went for a change after this.  Interesting for me is the change White Dwarf was also going through as well. Something due to the time or just my perceptions?  Likely just me.

The cover is by David Gallagher. It has a vague Warhammer feel to it. The editorial is a rambling affair about how demons in RuneQuest are not real.  I may sound a bit glib here, but this was big deal here in the states just a few years before this.  Later in this issue we discuss more demons in RuneQuest.

Open Box covers the new Stormbringer RPG and RuneQuest (Advanced RQ).  Going back to my idea of "Plays Well With Others", Elric, Stormbringer and RuneQuest were always games I liked mixing up and together. The reviews are positive, as expected.  Also reviewed is the Ghostbuster adventure Scared Stiffs. I liked the idea of the Ghostbusters game, I just never got the chance to play it much.  Graeme Davis enjoyed it.  Also reviewed is the Miskatonic U. Graduate Kit, which is a product I always thought was fun but never used as much as I like.  DA3 City of the Gods for D&D continues the Blackmoor series.  I13 Adventure Pack I is not actually part of the I series, more of the REF series.  The general tone here is that WD is bored with D&D in general at this point.  I can't say that I blame them.  TSR at this point was in a bit of a rut.

Awesome Lies gives us the latest rumors.  The draft of West End Game's new Star Wars game is discussed. It is fast to play and the play-testers hummed Vader's theme while playing.  Cute.  Also covered is the new non-TSR D&D adventure from Gary Gygax's new company New Infinities.  I am not sure if this ever came out or not. I am pretty sure it didn't and my 20 second Google Search found nothing.  I do remember the dust up over Gary's and GDW's "Dangerous Journey" and TSR.

Three page article on how to work for Games Workshop. Sorta tongue in cheek, sorta serious, has me scratching my head.  Was GW needing a lot of people at this time?

For the Warhammer Fantasy article we cover familiar ground; the psychology of Elves, Dwarves and Halflings (and Gnomes).  Long one and and an interesting read, but there isn't anything new here.  Dwarves are stereotypical drunks and so on.  A load of missed opportunity here if you ask me, especially if you consider the page count given to it.

Clarifications and Errata for the game Chainsaw Warrior.  Anyone play this? I have never heard of it.

The "Featured" article is Demons and it is for RuneQuest 3rd Edition.  I always rather liked the demons in RQ, they felt a little different than the ones in D&D and therefore had to be better.  At 12 pages it goes into some detail. Most of the demons presented are unique and could be ported over to any game.  Back in the day I would have worked out every detail of them to make sure their power was on par with their RQ counterpart. Today I am likely just use Balor stats and work from there.   A lot of interesting creatures though.

Rescue the Paladin is an AD&D adventure for 5-8 players with characters level 6-8 by Carl Sargent.  Interestingly enough it states it is NOT designed to use Unearthed Arcana. Though it is the first mention of "THAC0" I have seen in WD.  Instead of classic rescuing the princess, this is rescue the Paladin, Sir Lawrence Le Bon (I didn't make that up).   The antagonist is of course a woman named Janni who is a "witch in all but name".  The PCs have to defeat her before she "violates Sir Lawrence's vow of chastity".   This one would have been a hard sell to my group back then.  AS can be expected I find Janni far more interesting than pretty much the rest of the adventure.  But hey. That's me.

A couple of pages of Warhammer errata.
'Eavy Metal gives painting advice.
Thrice Upon a Time in Mega City 1 has three mini adventures for Judge Dredd. Again they look good in fact with a little tweaking they could work as hooks for a Mutant & Masterminds game.  It also had me thinking that a Judge Dredd / ShadowRun crossover might be fun to try.  Not that there is anything like ShadowRun in these to be honest, but it got me thinking all the same.

Letters and Small ads end this issue.

So the romance between D&D and WD is very much over and WD is just still mentioning D&D because they still have all the same friends.  Still a lot of interesting things in this issue and the new style is really starting to come into it's own here.

White Dwarf Wednesday #91

Daleks in Sombreros.  oops sorry. Getting ahead of myself.  I'll get back to this.

Headed into the deep summer of 1987 with White Dwarf #91.  I can honestly say this is the first time I have ever flipped through this issue. This was not one of the ones I had in my collection I bought a few years back and had to later get.  Not really sure if this was money well spent or not.  I guess it completes my collection.

White Dwarf 91 does look different than its predecessors.  Not just the "10" on the cover, but on the interior as well.  I recall that Dragon was due to make some similar changes here around 1988-89 just prior to AD&D 2 being released.  Here it is the herald of the "Warhammer Magazine".

This month's cover is Blood Royle by Chris Achilleos again.  The date on it is 1986, but it doesn't seem quite up to his normal quality.

Mike Brunton is still our editor and he gives us another insight on how the magazine is made. Didn't we just do that?

Open Box covers Mayfair's DC Heroes' take on Watchmen.  Sad as this is to admit, but I learned of Watchmen from this book. Hey, we had no comic book stores where I grew up, but I did have access to RPGs.  It was an interesting take on the Moore's classic to say the least.  Ah. Now I get the cover.  It is the cover of the Blood Royal board game from GW.  If you are one of those Grognards that believe all the ills that happened to AD&D can be blamed on Dragonlance then the review of the "Tales from the Last Inn" is for you. It confirms all your preconceived notions and fears; well at least for this book anyway.  My recollection of this book is there is almost no game material in it and it instead focuses on Dragonlance^TM.
Book of Lairs II gets a mostly positive review.  Interestingly there is a picture for the Egg of the Phoenix (one of the last pre-packaged modules I ever went through) but I can't find the review.  I am sure I am not missing any pages.

Critical Mass is next with the list of what was hot in the summer of 1987.  This is the sign of my turning away from Sci-fi and Fantasy; that is I have not read a single book mentioned.  Each installment of Critical Mass had at least one book I had read, this one doesn't.  I was sticking with Piers Anothony's Incarnations of Immortality out of some blind sense of duty or loyalty, but otherwise I was done with SciFi/Fantasy at this point.  No my muse had become Lovecraft and Poe and soon Clark Ashton Smith.

As if on cue, "Ghosties & Ghoulies & ... Squid?" talks about the mythos behind the Cthulhu Mythos and the Call of Cthulhu game.  In truth this article is much more needed now than it was then.  A lot of so called "mythos" games are a thin pastiche of what Lovecraft wrote about.  You can put tentacles on some horror and say it is Lovecraftian.  It also takes the shine off of Lovecraft. I enjoyed his stories, but lets be honest here, he wasn't great. He has had lasting effect mostly I think because his stuff was so novel and struck a chord in people. It did with me.  I think this article, or ones like it, need to be required reading for anyone attempting to play any game inspired by the Mythos or has Lovecraft's themes in it.

Moving on we get fumbles in Warhammer Fantasy.  Reading it over it could be adapted to any game really.

David Langford gives us "Quotes for a Newer Testament" which is part story, part fluff and part post-apoc RPG background.

A Matter of Pride is a short D&D adventure for 6-8 characters 3rd to 5th level. It is actually a longer one and involves some NPCs, a goblin lair and an evil (chaotic actually) elf.  And yes it is for D&D and not AD&D.  While it reads like most other D&D adventures of the time it does seem to have a few new twists here and there.  Might give this one a try. Since I am going to xerox the Lovecraft pages, might as well do these too.

Little Lost Warbot is a Paranoia adventure featuring the aforementioned Daleks in Sombreros.  Let those words sink in a little.  Or better yet look.

It is a really long adventure about finding a lost warbot, but honestly it looks like an excuse to blow up PCs and make silly Dalek jokes.  Maybe I am old and bitter but I just don't get Paranoia anymore.

Nobelese covers Nobility and Royalty in Warhammer Fantasy. Mostly rules free, but certainly very much in the Warhammer world. It could be paired with some of the Nobility articles from the last few issues.

A Hard Act To Follow is a nice little guide to Law and Order in CoC games based in Great Britain.

Of interest is an ad for the Manual of the Planes.  The art is a little different than what we got later on.
Of course we would have to wait till Planescape to get stats for that Astral Dreadnought.

'Eavy Metal gets 4 full color, bright pages.  I can say this for sure the quality of printing is getting better since #89.

Moving on to a few ads I could not help but notice some art plagiarism in a Creations Unlimited ad.

These are things I notice.  Sure they are not exactly the same to the point of tracing, but very close.
Goes to show how long this sort of thing has been going on (and yes even Gygax did it on the cover of the original D&D boxed set).

Blood in the Snow is a Warhammer Fantasy adventure for 2-4 players. 8 pages, so a decent size to be honest.

End with Letters, ads, classifieds and full page ads.

Quality is up as is page count, but I am finding less that hold my interest here.  Crimony I am focusing stupid Daleks and art theft from 30 years ago.

White Dwarf Wednesday #90

June 1987.  I graduated from High School and started working two jobs to have extra money for college.  White Dwarf also hit a few milestones.  The price increased to £1.25, we hit the 90s (issue numbers), the issue is larger (as promised last week) and celebrate 10 years of White Dwarf.  It is also nearing the final turn from a general games magazine to a purely Games Workshop one.  But first lets see what is inside.

The cover features the White Dwarf himself by John Sibbick. The cover is marred by the unfortunate choice of blue and yellow text.  Not sure what the thinking was here.

The editorial is the expected reminiscing over the past issues and the long two month wait between those early issues.  More of this stuff later on.

Open box covers the new Warhammer Battle supplement teased last issue, Ravening Hordes.  It gets a good review.  There is The Shattered Ilse for Stormbringer, but the highlight (for me) is Terror Austrails for Call of Cthulhu proving once again that games are not immune to the popular trends of the time.  You might recall that just the summer past (1986) one of the biggest movies was Crocodile Dundee.  At least Terror Australis is much better reminder of this time than Yahoo Serious.  One does not normally put Australia and Lovecraft together, but they really are a chocolate and peanut butter mix.  Aboriginal myths and legends are practically Lovecraftian anyway.  This book, one of the must haves for CoC in my opinion, really gets into that.
Open Box also covers local favorites Mayfair Games adventures, Wizard's Revenge, Pinnacle, Crystal Barrier and Beneath Two Suns.  I had real love-hate relationship with Mayfair at this time. I liked thier D&D products on principle even if I thought some of them were not very good.  My opinion would change in a couple years when I got to play more DC Heroes, 2nd Ed Chill and of course their famous book Witches.

Awesome Lies, the upcoming news and rumors feature lets us in on the next Bloodstone/BattleSystem module, H3 Bloodstone Wars.  I remember picking this one up only after I had gone through H4.  There is mention of two branches of the same Greyhawk novels tree, the New Infinities "it's not in Greyhawk honest!" Gord the Rogue book and Rose Estes' The Price of Power.

Green and Pleasant Language was supposed to be included in the CoC adventure A Green and Pleasant Land.  It covers various bits of colloquial British and American slang and well as words from Cornish and Welsh.  Great actually if you want to capture the feel of some NPCs from some rural areas of Great Britain.

Ian Livingstone is back with Ten Years On a retrospective of the early days of  White Dwarf and it's fore-runner Owl & Weasel. There is a lot of interesting tidbits about Brian Blume getting a copy of O&W because he subscribed to Albion.  This lead to Blume sending Livingstone a copy of the Original D&D rules.   They loved it of course and turned issue 6 into a "D&D" issue.  O&W had 25 issues till it morphed into White Dwarf.  It was named that to cover both Fantasy and Sci-Fi gaming.   I think it would be interesting to see those early issues of Owl & Weasel.  Though I stumbled on these WDs and there were no Owl & Weasels to be had.  I didn't even know about it till I started doing this retrospective myself.

The Magard Scrolls is an interesting article.  It's a bit like the old Ecology of articles from Dragon. This one deals with a particularly silly (on the surface) monster, the Jack O'Bear. A bear with the head of pumpkin.  Yeah.  Though in the elvish they are called Yalarvagoon. Ok less silly. And they are some foul chaos monster with a swollen head. Ok even less sill now.  Might need to adapt this one.

Fear & Ignorance covers being a better Paranoia game master.

Practice Makes Perfect is more career guidelines for Warhammer Fantasy, but can be used as a guideline in other FRPGS.

Killing in Silk is one of the last of the AD&D adventures in the pages of White Dwarf and it is not a very long one.  Though it has everything I would have loved back then, a city-based adventure, lots of NPCs and dubious legality of the actions of the PCs.  You won't find a bunch of monsters in this one, save the townspeople and no dungeons to speak of.

There is article on playing criminals in Judge Dredd, something I am sure came up a lot in the game but the rules didn't cover.  It's a longer piece and a pretty good one too.  While I don't play Judge Dredd I could see the potential in the game.  There are some neat ideas that I could see applied to Shadowrun.

Two parallel articles are next, The Difference and A Monstrous Regiment dealing with the female persona and the female warrior respectively.  Interesting reads, just odd it took THIS long to get into the pages of White Dwarf.  But I am coming at this from a Post-90s, Post-White Wolf age and from the point view of guy that likes playing witches.  The Difference deals mostly with female sterotypes in the game. Not how they are played or portrayed, but what those stereotypes, or even archetypes, are.   This isn't Mongooses' rather awful Guide to the Female Gamer, but nor is it Confessions of a Part Time Sorceress either. There is a quite a lot of myopia here that I am not sure if it was because of the 80s or England or this particular author.   A Monstrous Regiment provides a different point of view that is closer to what we except now as the role of the female character in a game; ie anything one gender can do, so can the other in terms of role-playing activity.

Graham Staplehurst covers Ley Lines and their connections to ancient monuments.  No game is specified though many are mentioned (including Traveller), though special attention is given to MERP, Warhammer Fantasy and some AD&D.  It is a general guide on how to use ley lines as a power source.

More Judge Dredd in Tales From Mega City 1.  A bunch of adventure ideas.
Letters is up to it's usual odd bits of nonsense.

Finally there are some new cards for the Rogue Trooper board game.

Ok so 10th anniversary.  I was expecting more to be honest. Now keep in mind I have been reading and rereading these a lot over the last two years, but I would have liked more articles like Ian Livingstone's. Maybe an article on the covers or one on the changes they have seen in gaming hobby in England or even more insight on where WD wants to go next.  Huge build up, but only a little pay off.