White Dwarf #39 is another watershed issue for the series and for me in particular. Now typically I remember this as Issue 40 and always think of Issue 40 on as the time I began to get WD regularly. Up to this point my exposure to White Dwarf was either via photocopy or reading it through friends.
So this is going to be well covered ground for me. Maybe not easily remembered ground, but I have certainly been here before. This will continue till around the 60s or 70s.
Ok let's get going. What does March 1983 give us? Well we have the new White Dwarf logo for starters. This will be with us for the entire run of White Dwarf, well at least the entire run I plan on doing here (issue 100 or so).
The editorial is about all these changes and some coming up for 1983 including a new comic. Frankly I have been happy with the fact that there haven't been any comics in WD. We will see.
Up first is Fiend Factory with more non-human Deities. We get the gods of the Aarakocra, Bodachs (from WD 17), Bullywugs, Crabmen, Desert Raiders, and Dire Corbies. Not a bad collection really.
Open Box has a bunch of reviews. Marcus Rowland gives a mixed set of reviews to the first four D&D Endless Quest books (ranging 4 to 7/10). Nicholas JR Dougan gives a 7/10 to Flying Buffalo's Citybook 1. He likes the book for ideas but bemoans the lack of ready to use city. He particularly likes the adventure ideas. Both FASA and GDW offer a couple of books each for Traveller. Bob McWilliams gives the FASA books, Rescue on Galetea and the Trail of the Sky Raiders a 6/10 and 8/10 respectively. Andy Slack gives the more detail to the two GD books, Prison Planet and Night of Conquest/Divine Intervention. He gives them an overall score of 5/10 and 9/10 respectively.
Dave Morris gives us a new bit for Runequest, Runeblades. There is a lot of really cool swords here and I think we used a number of these. For us back in 83 playing our goofy hybrid of D&D and AD&D, Runequest was "serious fucking gaming" and anything from Runequest immediately had the air of being cool to us.
An Introduction to Traveller is back and this issue Andy Slack talks about Campaigns. I liked this article. I had my own ideas about what to do in Traveller and it usually had something more Star Treky in mind.
Marcus L. Rowland gives us something new for White Dwarf and in RPG mags in general, a new adventure for Champions. Slayground is designed for 3-5 player characters. The adventure is only 4 pages and I really have nothing to compare it to, but I really like seeing it here. Love to see more than just normal D&D stuff.
Starbase is up next with Starship Security for Traveller. Not bad, I don't think I have ever really read it before.
In a treat we get another adventure. This time it is one for AD&D. The Daughters of Danu using the monsters from the Fiend Factory from WD #37 and #38. Three pages, it is a good little adventure for a side quest.
Letters this month has a couple of letters focusing on the Necromancer debate.
A new feature is Critical Mass covers books in sci-fi and fantasy. This issue they cover the potential 1982 Hugo winners. Among my faves covered are Robert A. Heinlein's "Friday" and "2010" by Arthur C. Clarke.
Lew Pulsipher has more information on how to play monsters. Great stuff for the time really, but something I think we all kinda do now. OR at least I do.
There are some Runequest monsters that can be easily adapted to D&D, which is what I would do at the time. They are good as they are to be honest.
Treasure Chest has three new NPCs for AD&D including a neat 1/2 caveman, 1/2 frost giant barbarian like guy. Not sure how that guy came about, but he is a neat guy.
We end with a few pages of ads.
We are now in the time period I consider more "my" proper time frame of White Dwarf. I am really looking forward to the 40s.
