White Dwarf Wednesday #46

Happy New Year everyone!  Welcome back to the Other Side and my weekly feature White Dwarf Wednesdays. Every Wednesday I take an issue of White Dwarf and run through it both with an eye towards what the issue meant to me then and what it means in the scope of my gaming today.

This Wednesday we are going back to October 1983 and Issue #46.
Let's start with the cover.  An improvement over last week I think.  Futuristic flying city with jet fighters. Cool idea. I wonder if this was supposed to be taking place in 2013!

We have the usual pages of ads including a new one for Battlecars from Games Workshop.
Our editorial this month comes once again from Ian Livinstone. He discusses the latest landmark reached by White Dwarf, 20,000 copies per month. He credits this to the rise in the  RPG hobby, which at the time was nearly 10 years old and the inclusion of WD in WHSmith stores.

First up in the articles we have Phil Palmer trying to bring some logic to wandering monsters.  This is territory that has been well covered.  I am not even sure if games today even talk about wandering monsters anymore.  I still use them out of habit, but they have to make some sort of sense. I am not sure if it was reading this article that got to me to that point, or it just seemed logical.

Open Box is next with the RuneQuest Companion as reviewed by Oliver Dickinson. He gives it an 8/10. Mentioned as the first of the series, I'll have to go back and check to see if they kept up with that.   The next item up is the re-issue (as they call  it) of FGU's Chivalry & Sorcery.  Marcus Rowland gives it high marks all around with an overall score of 8/10.  I am a touch surprised that no one has tried to retro-clone this game.  And finally the Sanctuary Board Game from local guys (local to me now that is) Mayfair Games.  It gets a 7/10 from Allan E. Paull.

Critical Mass has some reviews of new books.  One that always grabbed my attention, but I never read was "Golden Witchbreed" by Mary Gentle.  I have to say that going back over these Critical Mass articles have made me want to go back and revisit some of the classics of my youth.  It is 100% nostalgia, but I know I missed some good ones from back then.

Counterpoint is back with a new board game, Dragonhunt.  These articles were always very detailed affairs. Which begs the question.  Was there a greater connection to RPGs and Boardgames in England than here in the US or was I just not that interested in Board Games?

Part 3 of the 3 part Dealing With Demons focuses on the Demonic Nobility.  There is a lot of good advice here for any game that has demons.  The demons themselves do not inspire me, but they are certainly usable.

Phil Masters has some world governments for Traveller.
Lew Pulsipher goes over some non-fiction sources for use in RPGs.

Letters has a letter complaining about the cover for WD 44. 30 years later we still haven't gotten the chainmail bikini worked out of our system. A later asking people to leave D&D for "newer and better" games.  And some alignment squabbles.

Part 5 or 6 of Irilian is up.  I don't recall this one as well but there is a ton of detail.

Play by Mail is the subject of Microview.  Using the computer to handle the PBM turns and then print out and send the GM responses to everyone.   This is a rare window on a time when we knew computers would change everything, we just didn't exactly know how.  While I would say that at least 80% of WD is still usable today,  with 10% of the remainder either needing updated or in use already.  The last 10% or so is something like this.  Artifacts of the hobby that have been left in the past.   PBM would be a foreign concept to many new players and the idea that you would print out something and mailing it makes very little sense.  This is also one of the cases where computers have really improved the experience in my opinion.  A Play By Message Board (PBMB) does allow for the same sort of interaction that MMORPGS only sort of do, but also the ability to connect to other players around the world.  Google+ Hangouts are the current ultimate evolution of these.

Thrud the Barbarian gets hungry and the Travellers leave hyperspace.

Fiend Factory has been lacking a bit for me lately.  The crazy monsters are thankfully something of the past, but now I find I miss the creativity that came along with them.  This one features a collection of woodland monsters and an associated mini adventure. We get some intelligent plants like the Ivyix, Crimson Carpet, the Puffbal Plant and the Acrophids which are a bit like Triffids. We also get the Vily (woodland spirits) and Dame Vertes (green lady), which are a sisterhood of protectors.

RuneRites has some combat related ideas for RuneQuest.

Lew Pulsipher devotes a page to a single spell, but to be fair it is a big one.  The Hellwalk Spell sends victims to a pocket universe where they must defeat monsters. It's a neat idea and one that would work with any game system or edition.  In D&D4 terms this would be more of a Ritual than anything else.

There is an odd page, Pirate Eye, that is attempting some humor.  I like gamer and geek humor as much as the next guy, but this one seems too out there for me.  Maybe it is too British and I am not grounded in the same culture.  There are bits of news here too.  I guess it is trying to come off as a gossip column for gamers.
Though I will admit that the use of Steve Jackson was amusing. As in "Steve Jackson-not-of-Car-Wars" and "not-this-Steve Jackson".

Some small ads and Gobbledigook. More ads. An ad and sign up for Games Fair '84 featuring E. Gary Gygax. Color ads for RunwQuest and for the new Star Frontiers set, Knight Hawks.

All in all this issue didn't wow me.  I enjoyed Irilian as usual, but the rest didn't do much for me.  Ah well.  There is next issue!

Welcome 2013!

Here we are! 2013!  Let's get the new year started off right with some gaming.
Today I have to help my oldest make a Buffy RPG character, level up the DragonSlayers and find an adventure for their next trip.

Should be a great year.

Return of the Dragon Slayers!

I got a chance to play with the boys again today.  We continued the DragonSlayers game from a while back.  To recap they had just entered the Temple of Tharizdun and had held off the advancing hordes with a Wall of Flame spell.

I upped the stats of all the goblins, trolls and norkers in the place to make them partially demonic.  Centuries of interbreeding has made them them evil, but dumb.  The boys cleared out one side of the temple and found the access to the Black Cyst.  

They recovered the Lament of Tharizdun, but the mostly Neutral Good party wants nothing to do with it.  They have no issue with the legendary 333 gems of Tharizdun.  

I am setting Tharizdun up as the next big bad.  But not till the next generation. That is the 1st Ed AD&D game I started with the children of these characters.

I printed out the newer symbol of Tharizdun and had it ready. One of the demonic trolls had it on his armor, so I showed it to the boys.  After some Knowledge Arcana, History and Religion rolls I announced that they didn't know what it was.  My youngest, playing a half-elf Sorcerer/Ranger/Arcane Archer stated "I know exactly what it is. It's a target!!" and he fired two flaming arrows into the troll.

I have to admit, I was pretty amused by that!

They finished the adventure and high tailed it back to Glantri City.  They are planning on taking a couple of months break before the next leg of their adventures, but I doubt it will be that long.  There is some trouble brewing in Two Lake Vale and strange cloud over the land.

Zatannurday: Into 2013!

We are nearing the very end of 2012 and the last Zatannurday of the year.

I thought it might be nice to get a preview of the new year and next weeks Justice League Dark.

Looking forward to reading this arc! (Once I catch up of course.)

Grumble*Sprint sucks*grumble

Was going to work on a post today.  But been on hold fighting with Sprint over the crappy ass phone they sold my son.

Hopefully something soon.

Star Trek RPGs

I was chatting a little bit with my buddy Greg on Star Trek RPGs.  He had mentioned while he love Trek he has yet to find an RPG that really captures that proper Trek feel.

I give Greg the benefit of the doubt on this one, he has played all the Trek RPGs out there and playtested a few more.  He has also played more SciFi games than I have.

Now I will admit that so far Starships & Spacemen 2e seems to fit the bill rather nicely, it's not perfect. In fact in my mind it even has a couple of potential problems, but I am not talking about that one today.

So let me ask you all.
What does a game need to have or do to be a "Star Trek" game? 
Any series is fine.  Any game is fine.  Just let me know why it works.

White Dwarf Wednesday #45

Have a good Christmas/Yule/Festivist?  Good.  While we are all sleeping off the day and recovering from presents and Doctor Who and how ever much food we all ate let's sit back and cast our minds back to a simpler time.  The date is September 1983 and the Magazine is White Dwarf #45.

The cover is interesting.  I am sure she is supposed to be a demon of some sort, given the contents of the issue.  I don't really like it to be honest.  Something about it rubs me the wrong way.

Normally I don't comment on the ads very much and that is shame really.  The ads are always a good way to pulse of the gaming trends.  I should mention though that on page 6 is the first time we see the Mentzer edited D&D Basic Set, AKA the Red Box in pages of the White Dwarf.  To some this is the signal flare of the end of the Golden Age, to many others this was their start with D&D.  For me it was the first D&D product that I made a choice not to buy.  I felt I didn't need it.  I have the Holmes and Moldvay Basic sets, why did I need this?  Plus I was heavy into AD&D at this point.  Moving on.

Ian's editorial mentions this issue is the last phase of the changes that had begun a while back with the addition of two new comics to the pages of WD.  He reminds that there is a read survey.

Open Box gives us yet more classics.  The Avalon Hill classic Wizards is reviewed.  To me this game was what I really liked about gaming in this era.  All sorts really cool games that I could mine for ideas.  I loved the idea of Wizards and shameless mined it for ideas for my own Wizard Schools and Druid Groves.  I really should find a copy of this again someday.  Alan E. Paul gives is 7/10 total.   We have a collection of the new I Series from TSR.  I2, I3, and I4 plus M1, TSR's first solo module.  The "M" stood for the "Magic" of revealing the hidden text.  Or so I always have thought.  I always thought T&T did better with the solo modules, so I never cared for this one.  Jim Babbra gives them 9/10, 10/10, 10/10 and 6/10 respectively.   Oliver Dickson reviews Pavis: Threshold to Danger for RuneQuest.  I have never heard of this one before, but it sounds interesting (I am sure one you knows about this one).  It gets a 9/10.

Critical Mass reviews some more current Sci-Fi and Fantasy books and some outside of that.  I'll ignore the SStephen R. Dondalson poetry and move right to the 1982 Hugo award winning Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh.  He struggles to like the book, but somehow it just does quite get there.

Dave Morris has Part 2 of Dealing With Demons.  This time the Lesser Demons. Like a lot of articles written for other games I ported them over to to D&D, with the Porphyrs becoming Astral Vampires in my games.

Starbase has an Introduction to Traveller Scenarios.  I had finally thrown in the towel on Traveller at this point, but I still enjoyed reading the articles.

Marcus Rowland has an article on Thieves tools.  Interesting read, but not something we ever used.

We come to our first new comic Thurd the Barbarian.  Amusing liitle tale.
Next page is out next new comic, the Travellers.  I enjoyed what they were trying to do here, but never got into it.

Part 4 of Irilian is next. 6 more pages of urban goodness. I still think TSR missed the boat on doing an Urban Survival Guide.  I wish I still had all my notes for mine.

More letters. More people disappointed in Lew Pulsipher.

RuneRites has some clarifications on Divinations.

Thistlewood is a first, and certainly not the last, Warhammer Adventure in the pages of WD.  I hate to sounds all maudlin but this here is the signal of the beginning of the end.  I stopped reading WD regularly around issue 50.  It was harder to get by me by then and any extra money I had for magazine went to Dragon and the new Dungeon later on.

Fiend Factory, our constant companion here, has some monsters from the elemental planes, with focus on the "new" para-elemental planes.  Very interesting ones too.   To follow up on this there is the next article on various items from the elemental planes.

Ok this next article is an odd one.  Under the title of Super Mole it is an RPG industry gossip column.
I have no memory of this and I am not sure if it survived much after this.  There is a con report and then on to the gossip.  It is reported that 100 of TSR's 300 staff were laid-off (they don't use those words) and Kevin Blume is now President of TSR while Gary is out looking for that D&D movie.  Wow. I guess I have a right to be maudlin.  This issue reads more and more like an obit for the Grognards of the Golden Age of D&D.  Reports that 3 companies want the Marvel Super Hero license, TSR, Games Workshop and Mayfair. I wonder who is going to get it?  Games Workshop will publish their Golden Heroes with out the Marvel Content anyway it is claimed.   We get an overview of the Red Box D&D and promises of an Expert Set.  The HeartQuest books are mentioned as a means to get more girls into the fold.   And some rumors of Marc Miller's Traveller hardback not seeing the light of day anytime soon.

The page concludes with Gobbledigook.

The next page has the new reader survey. They are still offering a prize draw if you can get it back to them by October 1, 1983.

We end with more ads.

I don't want to say this is the beginning of the end for WD. It isn't. Nor did I feel so then.  But retrospect is a funny thing.  Know what I know now and knowing when things began to happen it is hard not to look at this issue as a transitional one.  At this time in 83 I was in my own personal Golden Age of gaming.  Things were great and they were going to get better. I had a job and I could buy the things I wanted, for the most part, or save for the things I really wanted.  The next five or so issues will be very interesting to revisit.  Some I have not reread since I picked up this box of White Dwarfs at a Garage sale so many years ago.   Some I will wager will be like reading them for the first time.  Once we get into the 60s and 70s I know there will be more like that.