Wow. 50 Issues. We are half-way through my collection now, give or take a couple of Best of's. The staff of White Dwarf is just as excited in this February 1984 issue. Let's go!
Now this issue I have some pretty fond memories of. First I enjoyed it when it came out and it was also one of the first one I sought out in the 90s when I wanted to get back into Call of Cthulhu. The cover art represents the main feature of this issue, a new CoC adventure.
There is a big ad for Warhammer which includes some game bits about Dark Elves. I liked how "elf maidens are a as cruel and murderous as their menfolk."
Ian Livingstone starts out my also being amazed at 50 issues. It's a pretty big milestone really. He lets us know some more changes are on the way by Issue #52.
Garth Nix is up first with Red Tape in Traveller. Almost as exciting as red tape in real life. Glad he went on to
bigger things.
Open Box has the first set of reviews in a long time that do not have any D&D or RuneQuest books. Marcus Rowland reviews GW's Steve Jackson's Socrcery for use with Fighting Fantasy. He liked it but didn't think it brought anything new to the game, 7/10. A bunch of ICE Middle Earth RPG supplements are also reviewed. Back in 84 ICE's Middle Earth was a big deal for me. I loved the books, but no place local had them and no one around me would play it. Reviewed by Jonathan Sutherland are: Guidebook and Gridded Map (6/10), Angmar - Land of the Witchking (7/10), Court of Ardor - In Southern Middle Earth (7/10), Umbar - Haven of the Corsairs (7/10), Northern Mirkwood - The Woodelves Realm (8/10), and Southern Mirkwood - Haunt of the Necromancer (8/10). Rereading this review still makes me want these books, even if I never play MERP. Finally Tarsus for Traveller is up. It is called an "Adventure module"; scenario having been dropped. Andy Slack, Traveller expert in residence, gives it 9/10.
Critical Mass reviews some Brian Aldiss. Aldiss gives me a headache sometimes. I get why he is liked, I just don't share it.
Fiend Factory self-indulges in stating up the various personalities from White Dwarf in both RQ and AD&D versions. Included are The White Dwarf, Gobbledigook, Thrud the Barbarian, Agaroth the Unwashed (guy from the ads), Ugbash Facesplitter, and Ian Livingstone (??). Also included are Griselda and Wolfhead for AD&D, their RQ stats having premiered earlier. While I normally am cool to these sort of things and don't care for the stating up of real people as themselves in game, I like this because of the dual stating.
Jim Bambra has another look of Clerics in Divinations and the Divine. I remember using some of this for my cleric classes.
The Watchers of Walberswick is the aforementioned CoC adventure. I was excited for this adventure back then, and it is fine, but it doesn't stand up to the tests of time and memory.
Dean Aston has some "hardware" for RuneQuest characters. Again this one is generic enough to be used anywhere.
Part 2 of the The Key of Tirandor is next, picking up right where Part 1 left off. It is quite long at 5 pages.
Thrud is messing things up on the next page.
Microview is still chugging away, this time with two short programs on vehicle capacity and costs for three different games. I liked this one becuae it ws using the flavor of BASIC I was using at the time, so no need to convert. Though I seem to recall that the ' for comment didn't work on my CoCo and I had to use REM afterall.
Letters has some quibbles about the survey.
Lew Pulsipher has an alternate view of leveling up in AD&D in Going Up. The same idea would end up being reused in True20 and D&D4 (for the most part).
Counterpoint covers ICE's The Fellowship of the Ring board game.
Treasure chest has weapons for the Assassin: Garrote, Two-Stage Poison (used a lot of that!), The Killing Cup and Dagger of Slaying. I don't recall this article per se, but I do recall these items.
Another attempt at a gossip, rumor, small news page is rolled out. This time it is "KaLi Presents: Baelpen Bulletins". Still under the "News" header. Nothing jumps out at me in this one save that TSR is working on a "Spider-man" game.
Travellers is next, followed by Small Ads and Gobbledigook.
We end with ads.
All in all a great issue. I remember using quite a bit of these things back in the day so this issue holds up for me. Funny that the reason I re-bought it turned out to be the least interesting to me now.
