Wednesday, July 23, 2014

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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2 comments:

  1. I did not expect to discover this at ALL when I did what I would have thought was an unrelated Google search. I am STUNNED to reach this link!! I was Arjuna Parakrama's opponent all those decades ago in what has remained the most fascinating chess game I have ever played!! What a trip down DISTANT memory lane!!! I had forgotten that that little publication had once existed, and have no idea if Arjuna is still around. I enjoyed the game despite losing and hope you did too!
    John J McCallion

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