Ok the cover. This one is obvious and it might be the watershed issue of WD. The cover is the same as the then new Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying game. Personally I always thought that was an awesome cover and really colored what I thought the game was all about. I don't think that has changed much really.
Paul Cockburn's editorial is interesting since it reads more like a press release for Games Workshop rather than an editorial for the magazine. Now to be fair, Dragon was doing the exact same thing at this time.
Getting right to the reviews of Open Box we have the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide. I have to admit I am little surprised to read about how much the reviewer Jim Bambra liked it. the DSG and WSG get derided a lot but I always enjoyed them. For Call of Cthulhu we have an adventure, The Statue of the Sorcerer/The Vanishing Conjurer. Also liked. At this point I am really feeling the loss of the old scaled 1-10 reviews. There is a Paranoia product (Orcbusters) that I didn't like then and still don't. Not that it is a bad product, just gets on my nerves. Skyrealms of Jorune also is favorably reviewed. This was another game I always wanted to try, but never did. It also always seemed to be about 180 degrees away from Warhammer to me.
Win a copy of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay on page 5! Just answer the quiz and get it back to WD by October 17...1986. Damn.
Critical Mass covers the newest Stephen Donaldson book, The Mirror of Her Dreams, which I always though looked cool. But I never read it. I did read With a Tangled Skein by Piers Anthony. I actually liked but Dave Langford didn't. Yeah, I read all the Incarnation of Immortality books. Like many TV shows series' it was great for 5 but too much at 7.
A Dwarves on the high seas game is next. Interesting idea. But you need to basically buy or build your own ships. Mine would have been cut outs or stolen from a toy set.
Another ad for the Immortals Set.
The Light Fantastic is a short story sequel to Terry Pratchet's The Colour of Magic and an introduction to the Discworld article later on.
The article, A Stroll Across the Discworld for AD&D. There is a bit on how different the Discworld is from an AD&D world and how magic is different. There are some new monsters, including Death. It has some interesting ideas, but nothing is gone into detail. I think there is a GURPS Discworld.
Mercy Mission is our Traveller adventure for the issue. It is actually quite long.
It is interrupted by the Warhammer Fantasy insert. I have to admit it looks pretty. Not a word you normally use with Warhammer, but there is a lot of good use of color here. GW really put out the cash for this one.
The aforementioned Thrud is next.
'Eavy Metal features painter John Blanche. I like the Mona Lisa he painted on one of the shields.
Letters complains about the adventures.
Fracas has nice picture of Up the Garden Path another one of those ultra-rare D&D books that
Graham Staplehurst discusses how maps are used in RPGs.
Narks is about informants in Judge Dredd.
We end with ads.
So the overall themes with this issue are "Games Workshop is our Lord and Master" and every article is about a page too long. Most of the three page articles could have been two pages and the two page ones should be about a page and a quarter.
Well. Lets see what next week brings. We should be getting the results from the reader polls.
1 comment:
I have to admit I did like my copy of the Warhammer FRP rules, it's a mighty brick of a book with some great useful stuff in the appendices like maps of typical buildings etc.
Shame I sold it ages ago really.
Mercy Mission is quite an unusual adventure for Traveller in that the PCs are hired to give medical assistance to a plague stricken people. But there's a cunning twist. Reminds me of early Star Trek actually.
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