White Dwarf Wednesday Issue 6

April/May 1978 gives us the topic of today's White Dwarf Wednesday, White Dwarf #6.

So we at one year of WD and we see some changes.  The first, most notable change is the right justification of the the text.  I does make the magazine a bit easier to read and looks cleaner.  The second is the introduction of a new feature called The Fiend Factory.  Something that in time will be a major feature of WD and spawn the AD&D Fiend Folio.

First up though is an article ripped from today's Internet postings on various types of Armor Class vs. various weapons.  Very old school yes, but the solution reminds me of the various armor classes we see in 3.x.

Next up is the Fiend Factory. The monsters presented here are from various authors but edited by Don Turnbull.  The format is near-AD&D/Basic D&D (no longer in OD&D format).  Each includes a picture (most times) and a Monstermark rating right there with all the other stats.
Out of the gate we have some monsters that would later live on in the Fiend Folio and some even in infamy.  We have in this issue, The Needleman, The Throat Leech, The Mite, Bonesnapper (no "The"), The Fiend (which later became something of the mascot of later articles), Disenchanter, and the first appearance anywhere of The Nilbog.  The article is longer than most WD articles have been to date (which were about 2 pages max).  This is a significant jump in the evolution of WD.

An article on minis follows then an article on how to adapt Jack Vance's The Dragon Masters to a D&D game.
Open Box reviews two new games, "Knights of the Round Table" by Little Soldier (no ranking is given) and "Elric" by The Chaosium which they loved, but still graded it down in terms of the price (7 out of 10).  Also reviewed are various D&D playing aids from Judges Guild.

The letters section has someone complaining about last issue's comic and another giving reasons why players should be allowed to roll your own attack dice.  See none of you are really old school at all if you let your player roll their own dice!  What's next? 4d6 and drop the lowest die? Anarchy!

Don Turnbull treats us to a lengthy overview/review of Traveller. He does spend a lot of time comparing it to D&D, which at the time I think made it read unfavorablly even if the article is positive.  Today of course it reads differently where our assumption is it should not be like D&D at all.  While he likes the game he feels there are some serious drawbacks to it.  Namely what to do with it once you have it.  While we can wink at that now, I do see where he was coming from.
Another full page of Kalgar.
Some new magic items in Treasure Chest.
Part 2 of the Asbury System of rewarding experience points by level and class.
A hit location system for Melee combat.
And finally an expanded Classified section.

Issue 6 now sees all the early vestiges shed from the pages.  No joke classes, no silly treasure.  White  Dwarf has stepped up.  Issue 6 can stand side by side with Dragon issues of the day and content wise I feel they are comparable.  The art is not there yet and the content is still only around two dozen pages (but the pages are longer and the font smaller).

Next month, cover art takes a big leap forward.

Sex and D&D

Man, you take a little break to collect your thoughts and the next thing you know the bloggers are going crazy again.  We all need to need to switch to decaf!

So the latest dramarama is WotC jokingly or not posting a list of choices to include in the next iteration of D&D.  One of which was gender-based attribute limits.
http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20120213/2#78477

Don't bother to look for it, it is gone now.

Now, the first thing I suspected was it was just a joke. Something no one wanted to take seriously.
Of course they started getting a lot of notice for it (planned maybe?  Nah...even I am not that cynical), so it was taken down as a choice.

This lead to the next level, blog posting, here three different takes.

• http://lotfp.blogspot.com/2012/02/whats-orc-babys-maximum-strength-score.html
• http://greyhawkgrognard.blogspot.com/2012/02/in-defense-of-gender-based-ability.html
• http://tao-dnd.blogspot.com/2012/02/no-sex-please-we-play-d.html

Now in reality I don't care.  Anyone with any passing familiarity with me or this blog know I love female characters.  I have played more than a few in my day, more than that even.  I think that the few female fighters I have played only 1 ever rolled a 17 for Strength.  But that is not the issue is it.  The issue is should it be there at all.

The people on the side of realism say, "yes, it should!  look at the evidence!" and they point to the real world.
People on the side of gender inclusion, or at the very least, people on the side of "less rules = better play" say there should be no differences".

I am, at least on the opinion side of things, on the side of equality.  Mostly because a.) I really don't need a rule for this, I have plenty ok and b.) I want to encourage more women to play the game, I don't want to give them any reasons why they might not want to.

In practice though, I am falling short.

In AD&D we did use this at first, but we countered it with giving female twice the amount to develop a psionic wild talent (per the old AD&D 1st ed rules) since we logicked out that since psionics are a dominate sex-linked trait on the X chromosome then women had twice the chance to have it than men.  The balance of course didn't pay off since there was always a good chance that female character had some psionic power.

In Ghosts of Albion "Female" is a minority and worth a 1 point Drawback.  Women also have 1 level less of Status and have a 1 Point Obligation to cover the loss of their freedoms.
All of this is of course appropriate to the time in which Ghosts of Albion takes place.   I will also point out that one of the most physically powerful characters is the ghost of Queen Boadicea and the most magically potent character is Tamara Swift; and this is all from the mind of Amber Benson (who even got higher billing on the book cover than i did!).

So yeah.  I might not have a leg to stand on this one.  I do see both sides.
This is not Dead/Evil Lesbian Cliché bad or even  Women in Refrigerators bad.
For me.  I 'd rather not see it since I am going to ignore it anyway, and it is one less thing I barrier to the game I'll have to overcome to get people to play.

How about you?  What are your thoughts?

Victorian Games

I have gotten a bunch of "new" Victorian Games in the mail here recently.

I don't have a lot to say yet, but you can follow the discussion with myself and some of the authors of these games.
We are talking over at the Victorian Gamers Association (on Facebook).

Come on by.

Could this be my next Ghost of Albion idea?

New trailer out today for "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter".
As an Illinoisan, I approve.



Sure it might better suited for Rippers, but hey this is fun stuff.

Caves of Chaos in HiRes

How awesome is this?

http://www.theweem.com/2012/02/01/caves-of-chaos-reimagined-by-weem/

HiRes, and otherwise just plain cool maps of the Caves of Chaos.

I am planning on printing these out as soon as I can cause you jest never know when you are going to get that itch to go back to the Keep.

With Extra Pulp

One genre I enjoy, but never really play much with, is the Pulp era.  Now I love the horror that comes from this time, and I watched a lot of movies filmed in and about this time.  So I do have a fondness for it.  But if I am going to pick up a historical game it will be either the Dark Ages, or the Victorian Age.  I tend to overlook the pulps.

I am much the lesser for it I think.

There is something about the pulp era that screams (yes screams is the right word) Adventure! Suspense! Action! Thrills! all with exclamation points too.

Here are some games I have been exploring over the last few years.  I have more, but this is a good batch.

THRILLING TALES: Omnibus Edition
I will admit that the Pulp Era is not one I seek out to either read or play games in.  I see the appeal and every interaction I have had with the material has been a positive one.  Thrilling Tales then is no exception, except for the fact I might actually seek out to play this one more often.
Physically this book is very nice. The layout is clean and easy to read.  The art is very evocative of the time and my first thought was the old Universal movies from the same time frame (and movie still from the serials was really nice).  That is a very good thing in my mind.
I loved the time line of the 30s.
The game is designed with d20 Modern in mind and I think it is a very good fit.  I love the minor changes like renaming the core classes to something more "Pulpy" and addition of the Seduction skill, something I pushed for in other games.
There are a bunch of new advanced classes appropriate to the era. If you have ever seen a movie, serial or read a book from this era then the cast will look very familiar.
The section on weapons and gear is great, and perfect for any pulp-era game, not just a TT one or even just a d20 one.  What I liked most about it is it is full photos and illustrations.
This is followed by sections on how to run a Pulp game and a wonderful section on Villains.  Again the villains section is great for any game in this era or even a supers game in any era.  Besides any game with a Nazi Vampire cult leader as a villain is an instant win in my book!
Speaking of which, all of chapter 8 is devoted to the only human enemy everyone can openly hate and kill without moral repercussions; the Nazis.  Not so much a history of the Nazi, but a a history of the Nazi-as-a-boogeyman; the all-Enemy.
The Thugee likewise get a chapter, but I am sure this is due 100% to Temple of Doom.

The book ends with a Random Adventure generator.  Which is 100% appropriate to this sort of adventure era.  Watch the old serials, it sometimes looks like they were rolling on a similar table while writing the scripts.   A bit of tweaking and this could work for any era.  Replace Nazi with "Drow" or "Soviets" or "Dark Cabal" and you get the idea.

All in all this is a great game and one that makes me want to play some two fisted pulp adventures!

5 out of 5 stars

Forbidden Kingdoms is one of the first d20 Pulp games I ever owned.  In many ways it is the yardstick I compare other pulp games to.  Sure I had Call of Cthulhu, which is sorta a pulp game, but it is more "Call of Cthulhu" and it's own thing than it is a pulp anymore. Forbidden Kingdoms (either version) is actually one of my more favorite Pulp era games. It is also the game that helped me see the value of D20 Modern.

Forbidden Kingdoms: Babbage Edition
FK is a great pulp-era game based around d20. It was very different than anything else out at the time and just a really fun read. The art is great and the game rules are a solid re-working of the d20 system to fit that Golden Era after Victoria and before WWII.
5 out of 5 stars


Forbidden Kingdoms: Modern
Forbidden Kingdoms: Modern is a slimmer version of the full FK book. This one uses the D20 Modern rules to cover the heavy lifting and leaves the rest of the book to focus on what is just Forbidden Kingdoms.
The Pulp Era is not one I spend a lot of time playing in, but it certainly tailor made for adventures. You have many of the advantages of a modern society and still have large areas of land that mysterious, unknown and ready for imagination.
The background information covers the end of the Victorian age till WWII and has a great overview of history. Not perfect of course, but perfect for a game.
If you like the Pulp era or any of the books that came out then, then this is a great game to have. I am using it for the history sections and the adventure hooks alone.
4 out of 5 stars

Weird Adventures
Weird adventures is, in my mind, a mix of things that usually do not work with me.  Pulp era heroics with Fantasy adventure and a sorta-semi-Earth like world.  Usually this is enough to turn me off of a game.  But here it seems to work well.  Very well.

So WA is a Pulp era game. Though not really OUR pulp era, but one on a world very similar to our own.  Not WoD similar-but-darker or even D&D world like but not alike.  This is our world with some odd distortions.  Sorta like the world of a pulp era comic.
We know that the creators of D&D and FRPGs were heavily influenced by the pulps.  What if that influence was more heavily felt than say the fantasy ones or the the Tolkien ones.  We might end up with some similar to Weird Adventures.

Now this book is designed as a fantasy campaign world. So it is not by itself a playable game, you need other rules in order to play it.  The book is written as system neutral, but obviously the prime influence here is older D&D.  Both Ascending and Descending ACs are given in the handful of monsters.

What I like about the book is that these different elements mix and merge so well.   Fantasy Adventure and Pulp Adventure seem to be two sides of the same coin.  I love the layout and look of this book too.  They made to remind the reader of a pulp era magazine and it works well.

The art is fantastic really.  The piece with the adventurers in a tomb with a beholder is fantastic.
The monsters were all great. I loved the Hill-billy Giant.

There are somethings though I didn't care for.
While I can see why they did it, I don't like some near-Earths.  This is not a deal breaker.  I like it for example in most Supers games.  I think I would have rather have used it with a real earth.
While it is designed for any game, I would have liked some more crunch.  At the very least give me some rules for guns.

I think it would a solid addition to any older D&D or the clones, and even a solid addition to any Pulp Era game.
4 out of 5 stars

Pulp Zombies

A "Zombie world" for the All Flesh Must Be Eaten game.  This one focuses on the two-fisted action adventures of the 1930s.
A special emphasis is given on the mystical side of the pulps and of course Nazi Zombies.

Even if you are not a fan of this era, there is a lot of good crunch that you can add to your AFMBE, WitchCraft, Armageddon or Conspiracy X game.

4 out of 5 stars

What do we know about D&D5 so far?

Here are a couple of links.

http://critical-hits.com/2012/02/03/initial-impressions-of-the-new-dd/

and this massive overview from ENWorld.
http://www.enworld.org/index.php?page=dnd5e

Again they are looking more for a "style" of play rather than out and out compatibility.
I am expecting it all to built on a 3.x base, in a presentation similar to that of the 4e Essentials line.
The core races and classes, with lots of add-ons to get more classes, monsters and skirmish battles.

I do expect skills and feats in the first sets of core books, but as kinda optional rules (like 2nd ed had for skills).

Otherwise the progress is moving along as I'd expect it too.
I am hoping to see some play-test games at Gen Con.