White Dwarf Wednesday #72

This week I cover White Dwarf #72 from December 1985.  Not quite sure what I was doing at this time, I was a Junior in High School and generally speaking having a pretty good time of it.  Lee Gibbons provides the Cthulhu-esque cover for this edition.  I remember thinking it was cool when I first saw it.

Open Box has two staples of "why I thought the British were just better" when it came to games.  The FASA Doctor Who RPG was one of my favorite Sci-Fi games ever.  Despite the fact there was some wonkiness with with the timelines (wibbly wobbly) and the system was just the Star Trek one.  I loved it.  It got an 8/10 but looking back on the game now I can see we were all just starved for anything Doctor Who.
Up next is Chaosium's fantastic Pendragon. It got a 9/10 from Graham Staplehurst. It should have gotten a 10/10.  And just to really drive the point home, the only American company to have a game is one of my favorite companies, Pacesetter, delivering a game I had thankfully had forgot about, Wabbit Wampage.  It gets a generous 6/10.

An article on Talisman and the new expansion set is up next after some ads.  It is advertised on the cover as "Expansive Coverage" and it is, but it also feels a little like an advertisement.

Fear of Flying is a short Call of Cthulhu adventure taking place on a plane.
Heroes & Villains this issue covers mad and super science.  It is written generically enough to use in any supers game, or even any steampunk one.

The Necklace of Brisingamen is next. An AD&D adventure for 7-10th level characters.  Pretty high for a magazine adventure.  It is also pretty long too.  It is generic enough to use anywhere, but I like the Nordic feel to it.  My first thought was it could be used as a nice side adventure while doing the whole GDQ series.

Pete Tamlyn covers character generation in Origin of the PCs. While there are some interesting ideas here, in particular to designing a new game, it is my experience that people come to the game with an idea of what they want to do early on.

Sliegh Wars is a Christmas themed board game for 2-4 players. Frankly it just doesn't look that interesting to me.

Crawling Chaos has a bunch of books for characters to read, not players. Too bad really.  But these are still cool and can be used anywhere to provide some color to a Victorian or Modern horror game.

Big ad for the new game Dragon Warriors.

Treasure chest offers up some tables and events for characters.  Things like "Arrested" and "rumors".  Neat idea, but takes control away from the DM and players in my mind.

Tabletop Heroes covers dioramas. I knew this guy in high school that was fantastic at doing these dioramas of the Grenadier lead minis.  I think he rather enjoyed doing those more than the actual gaming to be honest.

The last 14 or so pages are ads, including one for the D&D Masters rules, Marvel Super Heroes and more MERP.

I am happy to still be getting regular CoC and AD&D material.  The adventures are still rather good. There are still some new games being featured.  I am looking forward to seeing some Doctor Who material, if there is any, I don't remember. don't spoil me. Dragon only ever had 2 articles on it if I recall.  More Pendragon is always nice.  I always put Pendragon into that category of "Way Serious RPGs".  I hope it gets covered more in the next 20 some odd issues.

Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, Part 4. Do You Wanna Build a Darklord II?

Nothing exists in a vacuum. RPGs are no exception to this rule. While Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft is a great tool for a DM wanting to add horror to a D&D game and it is the tool to use to run a D&D 5e Ravenloft game, it is by no means the only tool.  

I have so many horror RPGs that I have tools for just about any type of horror game I ever want to run.  I have not even gotten into doing things like adding WitchCraft's Book of Hod to Ravenloft (and I have been doing it for years) or even getting into the material from World of Darkness or Call of Cthulhu RPGs.  

WitchCraft, World of Darkness, and Call of Cthulhu are all fantastic games.  Each one has a different approach to their own types of horror.  If I am fighting against the cosmic horrors then CoC is my game.  If I want to explore the horrors of existence within myself as a monster tr something that is no longer truly human then WoD.  If I want a mixture of the two with a grounding in philosophies of the world as all being true then WitchCraft/Armageddon is my game of choice.  This is only three games. I can grab from Chill, Kult, Little Fears, and more.   All are great. All are fun. Not every one of them is great for a Ravenloft game.

So. Let's build another Darklord like I did last week with Darlessa. I am not going to go into the same level of detail as I did with her.  Instead, I am going to use some other horror sources to do my heavy lifting.  NOW to be sure, I don't NEED to add anything to Ravenloft for me to use it.  Everything I am doing here I could do from scratch from the material in Chapter 2 of VRGtR. I happen to also have all these other books with great ideas. 

I have this thing that happens with all my campaigns.  I collect a lot of data, materials, products whatever for a campaign. I pick, I choose, I write, I rewrite and in the end, I get something that is often not at all exactly like what I wanted, but that is great really. But I also have this stack of other "Stuff" that I didn't use but is still compelling to me.  My campaign "Ogre Battle" grew out of my old "Shadow War" for example.  I ran this huge war that worked as a prequel to this big AD&D campaign.  The Second Campaign grew right out of Come Endless Darkness.  Right now my big campaign taking a lot of my creative energy is War of the Witch Queens.  I have barely got into it (characters are 3rd level) and I already have leftovers and plot threads that have grown larger than the campaign can handle.

Before I pull that into this conversation let me shift gears and talk about Pathfinder.

Pathfinder is the biggest alternative to D&D out there.  They gained a lot of traction in the 3e days and boomed in the 4e days as the go-to choice for D&D-like games.  I have a lot of really cool, really well-written Pathfinder books. None of them are currently in use because I am not currently playing Pathfinder.

For Ravenloft, the best Pathfinder book you can get is Pathfinder Horror Adventures.  I reviewed this book a while back and there is a lot overlap between what this book does and what Ravenloft does. The Pathfinder book is more "Domain agnostic" so it has more room for things like new classes and spells.  The Pathfinder book also covers sanity, fear, and madness.  I mentioned in my overview of Ravenloft that I usually don't like how most games do "madness." What they do here works well, for Pathfinder, I am not sure how it would work for D&D 5.   I do like Pathfinder's approach to Darklords in their Dread Lords. I am going to keep this in mind for the next bit.

Note: The Horrific Inspirations on pages 252 to 253 in Horror Adventures covers movies, television, and print for the same types of Horror Genres found in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft. 

Land of the Ice and Snow

Pathfinder forever gets a special place in my heart because it gave me Irrisen, the land of the Witch Queens. Home to the Daughters of Baba Yaga and has included such notables as Tasha/Tashana/Iggwilv. I have a bunch of material from the Winter Witch Queen adventure path from Pathfinder and other books.   I love the idea of Winter Witches, both in fiction and history.   If I am going to pull in some Pathfinder bits from various books then why not build a Dark Domain that is Pathfinder based.

So. Let's do this.  Irrisen is a land ruled by a Witch Queen and she gets 100 years to rule until Baba Yaga comes in a pulls her out. There have been a few that rebelled and try to go longer and there is always a rivalry between the various Daughters of Baba Yaga over who will get to rule. Queen Elvanna is a good example. There is a lot of potential her then for someone to be a little more pissed off and try to kill her rivals. Now. That in of itself is not a good enough reason to drag someone into the mists. In fact, Baba Yaga encourages such machinations to guarantee the strongest one will rule. It's hard to imagine then what a Witch Queen would need to do to get the mists' attention.  One would have to assume a crime or act so vile that mists have to take notice.

Let's take an easy example.  I'll start with Elvanna, but I don't have to.  Let's just say any Winter Witch Queen.  We don't know what happens to these queens when Baba Yaga is done with them.  Tashanna is the only we do know about, but she has been banned from returning to Golarion.  We can assume that Grandmother Bony Legs doesn't let them retire to a beach home in Florida.

When Elvanna was defeated let's say she came up with a plan, if she could not rule Irrisen then no one could.  She whips up a ritual to destroy the whole land in a winter that even the inhabitants of Irrisen would fear.  She started her ritual managed to wipe out a village or two, the key here is that people important to Baba Yaga have been killed. Either the mists open up to grab her OR maybe Baba Yaga has the power to summon them. One thing is for certain.  She killed her own sister, who was going to be the next Queen. Her name likely ends in "-anna."

I would steal some ideas from the 4e adventure Winter of the Witch.  I could even use Koliada the Winter Witch. I did 5e stats for her, but I really don't need stats.  I also have access to the Snow Queen a Winter Fey creature from Kobold Press' Tome of Beasts for 5e.

If it looks like I am going for evil Elsa, then you would be right. Well. Elsa actually was evil before Disney got to her.

The idea with this Domain is to use the rules presented in Pathfinder Horror Adventures to get my ideas and then the rules from Ravenloft Chapter 2  to detail them. 

I do admit, I am likely to steal some ideas from the old Domain of Vorostokov from the 2nd Ed Darklords book.  The Darklord of that land, Zolnik, was not all that interesting as a Darklord, but the land was.

Think of a landlocked in an endless deadly winter.  Everyone is poor, miserable, cold and the only source of food is what the hunters can bring in.  I would call it Ikkesen.  Combining the Norwegian word for "not" (Ikke) and Irrisen. 

The Dark Domain (5e) / Realm (Pathfinder) is one of Dark Fantasy, but it is also really Survival Horror and just enough Folk Horror to keep you on your toes. Ikkesen rarely gets above sub-zero temps and never above freezing.  It is a dark land of endless winter.  Wolves of the worst sort roam the woods. There are skinwalkers, wendigos, undead and worst things. It is what happens if Ragnarök occurred and the Frost Giants won. 

I will detail this one some more, but I am also waiting to see what I have leftover from War of the Witch Queens.  

Willow & Tara: Kult

Going to the vaults today!
It's the start of a new term here so I am crazy busy. I had some other posts ready, but this one was all good to go.  Plus I have been talking about Anime and Supers for so long I missed my favorite topic; Horror gaming.

So without further ado, one of the premier horror games of the 90's and into the 2000s.  Kult.


Kult, Death is Only the Beginning

Kult is a very interesting game. I had heard about it from the WitchCraft RPG list and decided to check it out. I found a copy of 1st Edition on eBay and really liked it. It was not a game I played much, but freely stole ideas from. Kult is a very different kind of world from WitchCraft, World of Darkness, Call of Cthulhu or even Ravenloft. It is almost “Dark City” in it’s feel and tone. Sort of gothic-noir-splatterpunk, something I noticed that the new World of Darkness seems to have adopted and the eventual evolution of Chill. The pervasive dread in the game is more Call of Cthulhu, while the world on the surface looks much like WitchCraft. It also has a tone (to me) similar to Warlock, Black Spiral. The two *could* be set in the same world, with some tweaking, but that might be more than I want to do.

In the end I found that WitchCraft was more enjoyable, but I keep my copy of Kult handy, just in case.

Conversions

Conversions between Kult and other systems are not too bad. Kult has 8 abilities, 4 physical, 4 mental, that range from 2-20. There are two ways to generate abilities, one (the D&D method) is roll a 2d10 for each (ì=11). The other (the WitchCraft method) is to parse out 100 points to the 8 abilities (ì=12.5). For a d20 conversion the best bet is to match up the Abilities and -2 to get a d20/D&D (ì=10.5) score.
For Unisystem conversion I take a modification of my D20 to Unisystem conversion.
To generate a Unisystem value from a Kult one, divide the Kult Ability by 2 and minus 4.
BTW: To generate a Unisystem value from d20 I divide the d20 score by 2 and minus 3 (or -2 depending on the game’s power level) I find this works a little better than just dividing by 3.

The abilities match up like this.

Kult	Unisystem	d20/D&D
Strength	Strength	Strength
Agility	Dexterity	Dexterity
Constitution	Constitution	Constitution
Comeliness	Attractiveness Quality	*
Education	Intelligence	Intelligence
Ego	Willpower	Wisdom
Perception	Perception	Perception Skill
Charisma	Charisma Quality	Charisma

*These conversions are covered by Qualities in Unisystem. Since these scores run both positive and negative a slightly different conversion is needed. Figure either quality can run from -5 to +5 for normal humans, but use -3 to +3 as a more realistic range. So add 6 to the Unisystem Quality/Drawback to generate the Kult ability. So a character with a -5 Charisma has a Kult ability score of 1.

Both Kult and Classic Unisystem have a set of similar Secondary Attributes that are derived from the Primary Abilities. Convert the Primary Attibutes/Abilites and then generate the Secondary ones anew from these numbers. This is the best way to handle Essence.

Kult also offers a couple of extra quirks. Dark Secrets are similar to WitchCraft’s character concept. The difference is basically that concepts define what you are, Dark Secrets define what made you the way you are today. Subtle, but in these two worlds it is a big difference. Dark Secrets can be ported over to WitchCraft as is for added (darker) variety without much trouble. The archetypes for either game would work well in the other game.

The other is Mental Balance, Kult’s quasi-equivalent to CoC’s Insanity or Mythos score. Since mental balance is the ration of Advantages to Disadvantages, Unisystem characters will always be on the positive side. To convert I am thinking that Kult to Unisystem characters will have to have a Quality called “Positive Mental Balance” or a Drawback called “Negative Mental Balance”. No points should be converted, gained or loss from these.

Willow and Tara in Kult

(Special thanks to Ronnie Bradley for helping put these together and notes from his Willow & Tara based Kult game.)

Ron’s Notes:

As anyone who has casually glanced at the GM’s section of the Kult rulebook will be aware, the world according to Kult is very different from the world according to the Buffyverse. So how do you make the two worlds collide? I offer these thoughts.

The theory that there are a multitude of Heavens and Hells within the Buffyverse can easily be explained by the idea that man’s grasp of the reality is crippled by it’s own inability to grasp the concept of one complete city. Each “dimension” is in fact merely a part of Metropolis, with it’s own rituals and doors, rather than separate entities. The ending of Buffy season 5, in fact, could be easily seen as the Key dropping the illusion completely, as any player of Kult would be hard pressed to find a better single image of Metropolis than the building that suddenly has an infestation of demons in it when the illusion shatters.

The reason for Demons who are good becomes more obvious. With the disappearance of the Demiurge, there really is no proper side of “good” as we understand the term, or “evil” for that matter. There are only the Archons and Death Angels with their own agenda, vendettas and characteristical quirks. In this regard, it easy to consider that a monster, even one in demonic form, might be a “good guy”, even in the sense of wishing to help mankind break some of the shackles. GM’s should always remember that the black and white has gone, only the grey remains, and those who wish to take advantage of that grey.

The Bete-noir of course is another reason for some demons being good guys. Any demon seen on the show who is “good” (I am thinking of Lorne in “Angel” Or Whistler) could easily be a Bete-noir who has allied him or herself to the powers of good, or to aid mankind at least.

A note on Purgatory. This place has become a virtual hell for all and sundry as they suffer for their own sins. Angel most certainly went to Purgatory as opposed to Hell, although to the layman there wouldn’t be much difference aesthetically, so it was an easy mistake to make. The bigger question becomes, who did release him? Was it an Archon or Death Angel? Or was it a lesser being with it’s own agenda? Maybe that which set him free hoped he would fight for the powers of good, as he did. Or maybe they had Angelus in mind. Either way, he was freed. I bring Angel up to give you an example of how the world of Buffy must be augmented to deal with the Kult backstory, which must take precedence.

As for the First? I leave that open to individual GM’s as to who or what it was in the end. There are plenty of ideas that would fit the First so rather than tie down the creative brain I will let GM’s in their own campaigns set their own agendas.

I will now deal with the specifics of Willow and Tara in their Kult guises.

(Note: Hey, me again.  I tweaked Ron's stats to better reflect my versions of the girls. These stats are from early on in the Dragon and the Phoenix time-line.)

Willow Rosenberg

STR: 11 Load Capacity: 11/33/6/10
AGL: 12 Movement: 6/36
EGO: 16 No. of Actions: 2
CON: 18 Initiative Bonus: +0
PER: 17 Damage Bonus: +1
EDU: 18 Endurance: 120
CHA: 15 Mod. To Ego Throw: +3
COM: 17 Mental Balance: -15

Damage Capacity:
5 Scratches = 1 light wound
4 Light wounds= 1 serious wound
3 Serious wounds = 1 fatal wound

DARK SECRETS

Forbidden Knowledge
Guilty of Crime
Occult Experience
Supernatural Experience

ADVANTAGES

Magical Intuition 20
Math Talent 10
Mechanically Inclined 5
Influential Friends 15

DISADVANTAGES

Black Sheep 5
Dependent 15
Magic Addiction 10
Mortal Enemy (The First) 15
Nightmares 5
Guilt 5
Rival (Amy) 10
SKILLS

Basic Skills

Climb 7
Dodge 11
Hide 8
Read/write native language 18
Search 15
Sneak 12
Swim 14
Throwing 8
Unarmed Combat 16

Projectile weapons
Bows 6
Handguns 8
Heavy Weapons 4
Machineguns/Automatic Weapons 1
Rifles & Crossbows 6

Melee & Throwing weapons
Axes 10
Daggers 8
Impact Weapons 11
Pole Arms 8
Swords 8
Throwing Weapons 5
Whips and Chains 8

EGO-Based
Accounting 19
Alternative Medicine 12
Astrology 12
Computers 24
Cosmology 16
Cryptography 21
Electronics 20
First Aid 14
Info Retrieval 25
Lore: Dreamworlds 10
Lore: Metropolis 10
Meditation 16
Numerology 20
Occultism 18
Security Systems 22
Written Report 16

CHA-Based
Acting 14
Instruction 18
Seduction 12

PER-Based
Forensics 14

Academic Skills

Natural Science 16
Spec: Computer Science 25

Magic

All five basic lores at 25*

Notes
Black sheep really covers her moving towards the Wiccan faith and acceptance of her Lesbianism. This would certainly upset her father, which is why the disadvantage is included. Note that this is a disadvantage as it causes lack of family interaction and is not a statement of guilt on the part of Willow.

Influential Friends refers to the Watchers Council and Giles contacts.

Dependent is Tara, which is why the score is at it’s highest.

Nightmares refer to Killing Rack and her treatment of Tara and her friends whilst under the influence of dark magic. Her Guilt is related to that.


Tara Maclay

STR: 12 Load Capacity: 12/36/6/120
AGL: 10 Movement: 5/30
EGO: 15 No. of Actions: 2
CON: 18 Initiative Bonus: +0
PER: 15 Damage Bonus: +1
EDU: 16 Endurance: 120
CHA: 14 Mod. To Ego Throw: +0
COM: 18 Mental Balance: +35

Damage Capacity:
5 Scratches = 1 light wound
4 Light wounds= 1 serious wound
3 Serious wounds = 1 fatal wound

DARK SECRETS

Family Secret
Occult Experience
Supernatural Experience
Victim of Crime

ADVANTAGES

Code of Honor 5
Empathy 15
Faith 5
Forgiving 5
Influential Friends 15
Motherliness 5
Magical Intuition 20

DISADVANTAGES

Anxiety 5
Black Sheep 5
Dependent 15
Nightmares 5

SKILLS

Basic Skills

Climb 7
Dodge 12
Hide 9
Read/write native language 17
Search 12
Sneak 10
Swim 14
Throwing 8
Unarmed Combat 6

Projectile Weapons
Bows 4
Handguns 2
Heavy Weapons 2
Machineguns/Automatic Weapons 1
Rifles & Crossbows 3

Melee & Throwing Weapons
Axes 7
Daggers 5
Impact Weapons 8
Swords 5
Throwing Weapons 4

AGL-Based

Dancing 15

EGO-Based

Alternative Medicine 15
Astrology 16
Cooking 18
Creative Writing 12
Erotica 16
First Aid 19
Herbalism 20
Lore: Dreamworlds 14
Lore: Metropolis 12
Meditation 19
Occultism 16
Parapsychology 14

CHA-Based

Diplomacy 12
Etiquette 18
Fortune Telling 20
Riding 15
Seduction 10
Singing 20

PER-Based

Counseling 22
Drive Vehicle 14

Academic Skills

Humanities Scholar 14
Spec: Classical History 16

Magic

Five basic Lores at 25*

Notes

Black sheep refers more to how the Maclay family view and treat her as opposed to how she feels about herself.

Dependent is Willow, hence the High score.

Nightmares are of Willow’s abuse of her and her family’s abuse. This is also where her Victim of Crime secret comes from.

*Willow and Tara are two of the most powerful witches in my game. So they get the
benefit of the doubt in being very powerful.

One word on the two co-operating to create a spell or device together. Either of them can be the High Priest and the other adds their entire Ego score to the other. Further there is no “tune in” time required to focus themselves unless one of them is injured or out of sorts. This does make them powerful when they cast together but they always were. One other thing, any Endurance loss is automatically split evenly between them.

White Dwarf Wednesday #94

White Dwarf #94 is an interesting one for me.  Not because of the content, which I'll get to, but because I didn't even own this one when I started doing this so long ago. Soon after though I found this one, added it to the box and then never really looked at it again.  I kind of like to be surprised when I first open them up and write about it at the same time.  So lets see what White Dwarf #94 from October 1987 has to offer.

First off we have another Chris Achilleos cover. Raven's Oath actually was a book cover fist. I remember finding the Raven, Sheildmistress of Chaos books at the local used bookstore that was my go to spot for old books, D&D and everything for my first year in college.  It's gone now.  But I did get a copy the original Deities and Demigods with Cthulhu and Elric for only 18 bucks.  Still have that.  Never bought any of the Raven books though.

New Editor, Sean Masterson, with an old story, big changes coming to White Dwarf.

The first big change is that Open Box is gone.
Yup. It has been replaced with Marginalia, or design notes from the GW team.  While it is an interesting idea and one I would have enjoyed IF I were at all interested in the Warhammer products, I can't help but think that it is a poor substitute for Open Box.  Sure most pretense at bias was given up a long time ago it was still no worse than the reviews in Dragon. Just a different slant.
Still. It is quite sad to see this one last vestige of classic White Dwarf go away.
There are some reviews for RuneQuest's Land of the Ninja and Paranoia 2.

Stop Press is the new rumors column.  I seem to say that a lot.  Let's be honest, rumors are really not all that interesting in a 25 year old magazine.

Critical Mass covers Elric at the End of Time. A potentially interesting, but some what dull in the end, entry of the Elric saga.  I was pretty heavy into Elric, Corum, Hawkmoon,  and Count Brass at this point so I grabbed this one when it came out. I think it sat on my "to be read" pile for a number of years.

A Rough Night at the Three Feathers is a short adventure for Warhammer Fantasy.  Could be converted I am sure, but I think something would be lost in the process.   I almost picked up a copy of Warhammer Fantasy the other day at Half-Price Books.

Likewise we have adventures for Judge Dredd and Call of Cthulhu.

Some more about Warhammer 40k and Blood Bowl.

We end with the normal rounds of ads and letters.

Yeah, so kind of a disappointment really. More so I guess seeing how I actually sought this one out to complete my collection.

If you are looking for more details on the minis that appeared in this issue then head over to Realms of Chaos 80s. A new find (new to me).
http://realmofchaos80s.blogspot.com/2012/08/acceptable-in-80s-white-dwarf-94.html

Next week: Anyone have a turn-table I can borrow?

White Dwarf Wednesday #78

Big changes are in store for White Dwarf in issue #78.  But first a point of reference.  When I started these so long ago they were meant as a retrospective.  That is going to get harder here on out since I didn't own any of these issues when they first came out and some I didn't even own till I started doing this and found the gaps in my collection.  So that makes a retrospective a little harder to do really.  So instead of out and out reviews or "read mes" I am going to focus on what I know was going on at the time.  These last 20 or so issues might even go by pretty quick if I choose to double up on them near the end.
So let's get into it.

Issue #77 takes White Dwarf to their new address and new team.  The cover is different too. Still the same price, but now it reads "GAMES WORKSHOP PRESENTS" instead of "THE ROLE-PLAYING GAMES MONTHLY".  Not a subtle reminder.
The editorial/toc page is resigned as well.  While Paul Cockburn, late of Imagine is the new editor, it's a familiar name on the editorial, Ian Livingstone.  Said editorial is just saying what I have said here.

Open Box gets a facelift and some color.  Among other things the */10 rating is now gone.
Covered is B/X1 Night's Dark Terror module for D&D and DL11 Dragons of Glory Play-aid for AD&D.  The treat in this batch is a look at Cthulhu by Gaslight by Chaosium for Call of Cthulhu.  This book became something of a Holy Grail for me back in the late 80s.  I loved Victorian gaming even then so this seemed like the perfect game to me.

Dave Langford takes over a redesigned Critical Mass.  Notable is the review for Gygax's own "Artifact of Evil".  Noting that it is nothing more than an adventure writeup and commenting on the "brutalities visited on the English language.

Graeme Drysdale looks into coming back from the dead in AD&D.
Wow. a bad review for Gygax and bringing characters back to life? This is not the Grognard's White dwarf anymore.

The Pilocomayo Project is an adventure for Golden Heroes.  I can't comment on the adventure but the NPC "Powerchord" a rocker turned super could be fun to use.  Mr. Magic is just a poor-mans Zatara.

After that we get an adventure for Judge Dredd, The Sprung Ones.

Fracas is the new rumors or news department.

The rest are mostly ads.

Ok. Not a great issue by any stretch of the imagination.

Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, Part 5. Plays Well With Others

I touched briefly on this with my posts on Building a Darklord, Castle Amber, and Horror Adventures, but one of the key strengths of  Ravenloft has always been its mutability.  It can go anywhere, it be what you need it to be and while some might bemoan its pastiche of horror literature stereotypes, that same familiarity allows it to work in a lot of ways with other books and games.

While I am perfectly happy, indeed happier now, that Ravenloft is more amorphous and less of a "world" there are plenty of sources out there if you want to expand it beyond what lives in between the book covers now to a larger world.

Here are some resources I am planning on using to make my Ravenloft campaign (whenever I can get that going!) a little more personalized.

Ravenloft and Cthulhu

While this seems to be a "no-brainer" just slapping Cthulhu into a game almost never works.  Sure there are some great monsters here, but the real value-add here are the sections on running a cosmic horror game.  This is a great overall resource, and a fantastic one when running an adventure in Bluetspur.

Ravenloft and Fantasy Horror

I mentioned already the utility that Pathfinder's Horror Adventures provides in setting up some details for a Dark Fantasy Horror game.  The 3.x d20 system in Pathfinder is similar enough to the 5e one in Ravenloft to provide plenty of ideas with a minimum of conversion needed.   If you must have them, the Fear, Sanity, and Corruption rules can be ported over to 5e Ravenloft.  Even some of the Feats can be used (but used sparingly).  Spells and Magic items can be ported over almost as is really. 

In fact, I have found it so useful in the last few days that I have moved it from my "Pathfinder" shelf to my "Horror" shelf.

BlackRose

Going back to some of the earliest posts on this blog are my ideas for a BlackRose game.  Now with the new 5e Blue Rose out, it is practically begging me to use it for this.  For me, the ideas behind BlackRose have changed a bit.  I think a Domain that is similar to Aldea, but maybe more of one of sadness.  Not Aldea, but using a lot of the ideas and rules.  Something more akin to my Kingdom of Rain.  Which has one foot planted squarely in Blue Rose and another in a melancholic sort of Folk Horror that would find a home in Ravenloft.  I ran an adventure under the title "Kingdom of Rain" a while back. It was a little Aldea, a little bit Innsmouth, and a little bit Alton, Illinois.  There are some solid Fey elements to it as well; I introduced my River Hags here.  A version of Kingdom of Rain is set to be published under the name "Witching Weather," so watch this space for more on that.

Ravenloft and the Runewild

Speaking of fey lands, the Runewild from Sneak Attack Press also provides a bit of a wilder fey world with tinges of Horror and Dark Fantasy.  If you ever wanted to expand on the Domain of Tepset then this is a fantastic source.  Again, as with the Horror Adventures and Blue Rose, there is material here that can be dropped into Ravenloft "as is" with very little modification.  The Runewild also help build up that "dream-like feeling" I like to use in Ravenloft before hitting characters with the Nightmares.

My Kingdom of Rain lives in the intersection of the triquetra-shaped Venn diagram of Ravenloft, Blue Rose, and Runewild.  I can also use this for expanding my new Domain with The Snow Queen as the Darklord.  Though do I REALLY want my Kingdom of Rain converted to a Dark Domain?  I'll have to suss that one out as I go through my books here.

Ravenloft and Ravenloft

Sounds odd, but most of the grief the new book is getting online is "it's not like the old Ravenloft." Ok, fine. If you must, make it like it.   Most of the Ravenloft books are fluff anyway.  Grab what you want from any of the old books and reuse it.  Want Viktor back instead of Viktra? Ok, do that.  I might create a Domain where they are both there and there is an intense rivalry between them.  I am thinking Father and Daughter.  Their creations of course are caught in this battle.  Rival evil scientists. Using their creations to get at the other.  Both wanting to capture their opponents' creations to learn their secrets. Viktor is intensely jealous of his daughter fearing her creation Else is superior, all the wile claiming she knows nothing that he did not teach her.  Viktra hates her father for never sharing his work and finds Adam to be an abomination.  

The more I type this, the more I like it.  Go all Hammer Horror for Viktor and Giallo horror for Viktra.  Set them on different sides of Lamordia where their minions search the countryside for parts for their experiments and to hopefully capture one of the more successful ones of their rival Darklords. 

It's one part Frankenstein Created Woman (1967), one part Lady Frankenstein (1971), and one part War of the Gargantuas (1966).  All set in Fantasy Gothic Horror Switzerland. Sprinkle in a little bit of Reanimator and I am good to go. 

Horror is my favorite seasoning for most games.  Ravenloft lets me do this with everything.

Magic School: I have Hogwarts on my Miskatonic U!

Mulling some ideas over lunch today.

My kids have both over the years expressed an interest in more Lovecraft and Cthulhu themed games but not really wanting to go full on Call of Cthulhu.

So a few things came to mind right away.

- San Scores and Sanity rules.  As a former QMHP and someone with degrees in psychology, I have been largely critical of most of the "sanity" rules I see in games.  In fact, most of them suck.  My son is using an elegant option for sanity. Your wisdom modifier plus your constitution modifier plus 10.   I will still use San points as Sanity x 5.

- The College of Dreamers is gone.  If I am using the 2nd Ed Glantri school of magic as my base, then I am going to say that the School of Dream was destroyed last year.  No one knows why and because of that attendance and new admits are way down.  What happened of course is they connected to the Dream Lands and the Far Realm (mixing my CoC and D&D 3 terms) and it killed them all.  This is the first phase of the return of the Old Ones.  Totally stealing this idea from the Wizards 101 MMORPG.  This is the big mystery of the 1st Years, what happened to the Dream College (not to be confused with the Dream Academy).  They won't learn till later in the term or even next year.

- With the Dream College gone, the School lessens admit standards.  What this means is Bards are now allowed. I am even considering a type of healer.

- All characters will have a Psionic wild power.   This is another side effect of the return of the Old Ones.  I just have not figured out if I am going to use the wild psionic powers of Basic Psionics Handbook or Realms of Crawling Chaos.  I am going to use both books in other ways.

So this game will have much more horror influences even though I am planning on avoiding using demons and devils for the most part.  Undead will be fine. It is Glantri afterall.  I will add some of elements from Ravenloft, though "Gothic Horror" and "Cosmic Horror" are not always a good mix.

Not 100% sure how this will all fit into the "War of the Witch Queens", but I have lots of time to figure that one out.

The Stars are Wrong

Look. I love Cthulhu and Lovecraft as much as the next gamer.  But I was going through a stack of games today with my oldest and looking at things coming up and decided that I am not seeing anything new.

So can we get a moratorium on Cthulhu for a while.  Five years should be about right.
I was re-reading some Lovecraft between some meetings.  The Tomb, The Picture in the House, and Polaris.  Not a tentacle in the lot.

I think we need a collective break.

Kickstarter Roundup

Here are some of the Kickstarters I have been keeping an eye on.  Most of these are funded now so it is about the stretch goals. Most of these are also ending soon.

Tome of Horrors Complete - 28mm Heroic Scale Miniatures

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/centerstageminis/tome-of-horrors-complete-28mm-heroic-scale-miniatu

For 200 bucks you can get close to 50 minis.  They are white metal, like the old days, but not (as far as I can tell) painted. They look awesome, but even in my 3e game I am moving away from minis.

Still though these are very nice.

Adventures Dark and Deep Bestiary

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/623939691/adventures-dark-and-deep-bestiary

This one should be well known to all in the OSR crowd.  900+ monsters in a format that should be easy to translate to any old-school game.

The more backer's this one gets the more art it gets.  See to me this is how to do a Kickstarter.

Joesph delivered on all his promises for his last Kickstarter and even got them in early.  The next book in the series he didn't even need a Kickstarter for.  So Bloch is quietly building his game, delivering quality books and supplements and generally just getting it done.  So backing this one is the right thing to do.  Really he kind of is the model of what you should do in a Kickstarter.

Cartoon Action Hour: Season 3

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/800609645/cartoon-action-hour-season-3

Loved Cartoon Action Hour: Season 2, so this one is a no-brainer for me.

Deluxe Exalted 3rd Edition

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/deluxe-exalted-3rd-edition

This one is just crazy.  First off it needs $60k for the book.  They go on to get close to half a million bucks!

I liked Exalted 2nd ed but I never got a chance to play it. 

Jeff Dee: Re-Creating AD&D Module Cover Paintings Part 1

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jeffdee/re-creating-adandd-module-cover-paintings-part-1

This one has not met it's funding yet.  Some reproductions of some of Jeff Dee's module work. Featured are images from:

T1 Village of Hommlet (Back Cover) 

D3 Vault of the Drow (Back Cover) 

X1 Isle of Dread (Front Cover) 

S2 White Plume Mountain (Front Cover)

I'd love to see this one get funded too.

Adventure Maximus!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1801360072/adventure-maximus

From Eden's George Vasilakos.  Funded, but still looks like a lot of fun.

And yesterday's newest one, Call of Cthulhu 7th Ed.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/448333182/call-of-cthulhu-7th-edition

I was asked if I am going to back this one. I am not.  It's not that I don't like CoC, I love it. But to me this is not what a Kickstarter should be about.

CoC7 is funded. I like to fund Kickstarters though that look like they NEED my help. The ones that won't see the light of day without my input. Makes me feel like I am accomplishing something really.

But, shouldn't we aspire to be the Hero?

Back in the late 80s, but mostly in the early 90s there was a trend towards "dark" games.  Not just in terms of horror, but dark, grim subjects.  Obviously the ultimate expression of this zeitgeist was the classic "Vampire: The Masquerade", but you could see it in the FRPGs of the time too.  I called it sort of the anti-D&D mentality.   D&D was, at the time, about being a hero-even a super-hero, in a world that needed them.  Sure there was still plenty of "killing things and taking their stuff" but often the things killed were black and white evil, and saving the world was still the end game of many campaigns or at least the published ones.
This anti-D&D mentality was drawn out of the then perceived watering down of AD&D2's content.  In fact there are a number of publishers and authors from the time that I have talked too that have said they published their game in opposition to the loss of demons and devils from AD&D2 or as reaction to the popular media's stance on D&D.  "You think D&D is evil? Wait till you see my game!! ".  Such was the design philosophy of the products from Death's Edge Games.

We kinda got out of that for a while.  But now it seems we are heading back into it again only this time without some sort of reactionary motivation to account for it.

I like horror games. I have worked on a fair number of them over the years and one thing all horror games struggle with is the desire to motivate their players while putting fear into their characters.  Sometimes this is via mechanics.  The Fear saves/checks of many games are usually the first thing used.  The Sanity checks of Call of Cthulhu is also a prime example of a mechanical feature that has effects on the character and the player.  The game Dread does this brilliantly with Jenga blocks.  You can instill a sense of foreboding and doom in players IF you are willing to try.

The latest batch of supposedly Grim-Dark FRPGs don't do that.  They are more akin to the reactionary games of the early 90s.

I am going to pick on one as an example, but there have been and will be others.

I don't like "Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Weird Fantasy Role-Playing".

It tries, oh so hard, to be edgy, but really all I see is like watching a little kid dress up in their mother's or father's clothes and pretending to be big.

Let's start with the suggested reading.  This is now nearly boilerplate text in any RPG these days.  Not just to include it, but to include these exact same authors.  There is a reason though, the works of Clark Ashton Smith, H.P. Lovecraft, Poe, Howard and Tolkien are all fantastic as sources for a game.  Each had a level of storytelling that was sublime.   LotFP is not sublime and I wonder truthfully if the author actually read those books.

The idea, as I take it, is that LotFP is supposed to be "wierd", but outside of the splatter-porn art and questionable abundance of violence on women, there is nothing in the game that I don't have already in Swords and Wizardry, Labyrinth Lord or Basic Fantasy.  Except with those games I get monsters.
Now the author claims there are no monsters because monsters should be unique.
Frankly that is not only lazy, it's bullshit as well.  The game has an introduction book aimed at new players, yet goes on to tell these new players to make monsters without ever giving them anything to work from?  That's also just bad design. This of course is the bias of an author who has not seemed to have played many games outside of AD&D; I am not sure what games Raggi has played, but venture outside of AD&D and there are a lot of ways to have monsters and make each and every encounter with them unique and fearful.

Let's compare this to Call of Cthulhu the pinnacle of horror gaming for most.  There is a whole chapter on monsters, right there in front of everyone.  In fact there is even a skill in the game so characters can know something, maybe a lot of something, about each and every one.  It still does not do them a bit of good.  Raggi quotes Lovecraft and Smith, but his depiction of what you do with those elements are almost antithetical to what the authors were actually doing.  Browsing through the art (which is fantastic by the way, when it is not over doing it with the violence on women) there is nothing here that would actually have appeared in any Lovecraft or Smith book.  Yeah, there is the vague Nyarlathotep-looking creature on the back cover of one of the books, but that was the exception rather than the rule.   He took the time (and use that phrasing rather loosely) to not include monsters, but didn't bother to say much at all about mood, tone and how to generate a sense of horror that doesn't involve a disemboweling.

Horror is not the only factor in these newer Grime Dark games, there is after all the Grim.
Well to get a good idea on how to best do this I'll take a very recent example, The Northlands, which I reviewed a while back is grim game. The stakes in this game are high; you screw up you will freeze to death and that is your best option.  It very successfully impresses on you the feeling of doom; yet people still live here and make a life out of it.  The Scarred Lands from Sword and Sorcery Studios a few years back is another grim world.  They are grim, but not to the point of nihilism. People/Characters still can rise up and be something more than they are now.

And so far I don't like Dungeon Crawl Classics.

Why are we looking at a game and extolling it's "non-heroic" mien as a virtue?

Plus, on a pragmatic point, neither of these games are particularly original or new.  What new has been added?  Specialists (LotFP) are new and I'll grant that something that would work well in a Swords & Wizardry game.  DCC? Well I am still reading through the BETA to be honest with you.  The art reminds me of the old school art, but lacks the charm of it.

I like the old school games. I still love playing B/X and it's modern clones.

Butt what I did then is what I like to still do now.

Play the game, save the village, town, kingdom,  or even just the princess (or prince), defeat the monster, and be the Hero.

I have both the Deluxe and Grindhouse versions of LotFP and I'll pick up DCC too.
I doubt I'll play either.

Character Creation Challenge: Star Trek Adventures

It's the start of May!  Let's begin the new month like I have been doing all year long so far with a new character.

My "soft" theme for May is going to be Sci-Fi games.  I am dedicating all month to it, but a good portion of the month to be sure.  So for this I am starting with a the character I played WAY back in the day under FASA Trek.   I wanted to pull out my FASA Trek rules I got as a gift, but I forgot how damn involved character creation was for that game!  So instead I am going to pull out the newer Star Trek Adventures from Modiphius.

Plus I like the Star Ship creation rules from Modiphius.

While I am still excited about the prospect of doing my BlackStar game set in the 2350s, right now it is my "Starfleet Doctors Without Borders" idea, Mercy, set in 2295 that has me excited today.

Plus I needed to work some of the details of the titular starship, the NCC-3001 USS Mercy.

The Game: Star Trek Adventures (and some FASA Trek)

Star Trek Adventures has a lot going for it right now including a ton of material out there, support by the publisher and the rules don't have me reaching for the Tylenol.   At the same time there is a nice feel of continuity here.  I do feel like I could play any era of Trek I wanted and these rules would cover me.  Plus the Modiphius Trek has the advantage of me being able to add some material from John Carter of Mars and Dune if I later choose.  

If my only game was BlackStar then I'd add in some of the material from their new Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 be done with it.   But Mercy needs something a little different and I am going to borrow heavily from FASA Star Trek on this one. BTW the 2d20 Achtung! Cthulhu looks amazing. I am going to grab it the moment I can.

FASA Trek had a more ship combat emphasis than Modiphius Trek does.  I think for my Star Trek Mercy game that will be important.  Not that the Mercy is going to fly into combat with phasers hot, but more like they will be needed in situations where there is plenty combat happening.  I am toying with the idea of the Orion Syndicate as the big bads, but no idea just yet.  

I do know that the captain of the Mercy will be a promoted FASA Trek Character.

The Character: Cmdr. Scott Elders, MD

Scott Elders was the CMO of the USS Andromeda, the last ship I used in FASA Trek all the way back in the later 1980s.  My game play covered the time between the TOS Movies and the TNG TV series.  So that is the time I like to think of him in. 

For Mercy he has been promoted to Commander and is now the "Captain" of his own ship, the newly christened USS Mercy, NCC 3001.  Second ship in the Asclepius Class medical starships.  Something of a cross between the Daedalus Class and the Olympic Class.  The ship is designed to be a state of the art (for 2295) medical transport and emergency response. 

Though I guess given the time the registry would be more like 25xx or something.

Before I get to the ship here is her Commander.

I do like these character sheets.

The Ship: USS Mercy

The Mercy is a new ship. But unlike the Protector, she is built on tried and true technologies. 

Not a bad little ship.  

I'll do some more tinkering, but I like how these both are coming together.

Now I just need to kitbash or 3D print a Mercy starship!

Links

• New Year, New Character Posts
• Star Trek: Mercy
• Star Trek: BlackStar
• Star Trek Character/Starship Generator
• Memory Alpha Federation Starship Registry

White Dwarf Wednesday #80

White Dwarf kicks of the 80s in this August, 1986 issue.
The cover seems to be a bit of a throw back to earlier issues, or at least earlier themes.
The new editor and staff waste no time and hit us up with a new reader survey.  More on that in a bit.

Open Box gives us Call of Cthulhu 3rd Edition. I do not recall any edition wars around this.
We have reviews for the FASA Doctor Who advnetures "The Hartlewick Horror" and "The Legions of Death".  I just picked up Legions of Death last Friday.  The Hartlewick Horror gets the edge, but I fear it was because of the inclusion of the 4th Doctor's stats.   Palladium is breaking into the gaming scene more and more with The Mechanoids.  Yes I know they were around before this, but two issues in a row of product reviews is still better than they had been doing.  And the AD&D module Destiny of Kings is reviewed.  I blame my braces at the time but I always called this one "Density of the Kings". Realms of Magic for MSH and OA1 Swords of the Daimyo are also reviewed.    Three TSR products with two of them AD&D. Not so bad really.

The Doctor Who RPG gets some love with a section on Combat.  Ok. So the irony here is that there actual little combat the characters should be doing in Doctor Who.  The FASA game though was a little more combat focused than the current C7 RPG is.  The biggest problem comes from the author's own point of view that he normally runs a D&D game. Ah well.

Critical Mass bemoans the recent injection of so many Lovecraftian elements in the recent batch of Sci-Fi books.

Some more Abilities for the Judge Dredd game.

"Clouding the Issue" by Chris Barlow covers detection powers in a game and how to make it more difficult or easy depending on your tastes.  This is one of those articles that were common at the time; adding more realism to your game or at giving the game another layer of complexity.

Graeme Davis has an article on crime in the 20th Century.  Focus is on the Pulp Era with such suggestions as Call of Cthulhu, Dardevils, and Indiana Jones.

The star of this issue though is "Ancient & Modern" a scenario for AD&D and Call of Cthluhu. Each player gets two characters, one for each system and they run through the linked scenarios.   I love crazy stuff like this. The adventure is long (10 pages and nicely done) and it is still continued next week month.  The interplay between the two is nice and build on each other.  Frankly I love it.  I might just have to run this one sometime.

'Eavy Metal covers painting various textures.

The Back to the Readers Poll is up.  33 questions. Notable are the inclusions of questions about computers and LARPing. Of course there are also more games.

Letter is next and now two pages long.

There is an article about leveling up in MERP.  Again, another example of adding a level of "realism" to the games.  Or if you would rather role-playing.  I get where this is coming from, you get your points from leveling up and they should be spent with some sort logic.  By the way to keep this topical the article could just as easily work for Superbabes or any other game where gaining a level gives you points for buying new skills, powers, magic and so on.

Fracas, the rumors and news column covers the new wargame coming out for the Trek Universe/Star Fleet Battles.  A plug for Dagon 13, a magazine for Mythos fiction is made.  The Immortals set from TSR is announced as well.

We end with ads.

Ok so there is something a little sterile about the recent couple of issues.  Sure the content of the last two has been better than the content of the dozen or so issues before it, but it is lacking some of that White Dwarf charm.  For a lack of a better word it feels a lot like Imagine.

ENnies 2019 Voting is Live

Voting for the 2019 ENnies Awards is now live.  Here are some of my picks.

2020 Judge
Gotta go with GameGeeks' own Kurt Wiegel.

Best Adventure
No contest for me. I choose Necormatic Gnome's Winter's Daughter.

Best Art, Cover
Toss up between two favorites. KULT: Divinity Lost, 4th Edition of KULT - Core Rules and Winter's Daughter.

Best Art, Interior
Again another toss-up between KULT: Divinity Lost, 4th Edition of KULT - Core Rules and
Symbaroum Monster Codex.

Best Electronic Book
Gotta go with Sly Flourish's Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master.

Family Game/Product
Kids on Bikes

Best Layout and Design
Symbaroum Monster Codex

Best Monster/Adversary
Hmm. Hard one, because I enjoyed them all. I am choosing Creature Codex for 5th Edition, Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos for 5e AND Symbaroum Monster Codex.

Best Podcast
Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff

Best RPG Related Product
Bluebeard's Bride: Book of Lore

Best Rules
Call of Cthulhu Starter Set

Best Writing
KULT: Divinity Lost, 4th Edition of KULT - Core Rules

You can see all the nominations here.
http://www.ennie-awards.com/blog/2019-ennie-nominations/

25 years of The Other Side!

"A fine website, but even more than that...THANKS FOR THE GREAT PARODY OF THE DARK DUNGEONS TRASH! Best wishes."

Gary Gygax circa 1999

Back in 1994, I moved to Chicago to work on my Ph.D. and be closer to my then-girlfriend (spoiler, I married her in 1995).   I was working at the College of Education at the time as their tech-monkey.  I told them I knew how to write code. I did/do, but it was all Pascal, Fortran, and some C and VisualBasic.  What they wanted was HTML though they really didn't know it at the time.   I built their student databases and worked on their nascent website.  

My very first website, made in 1995, was The Chicago Campus Crusade for Cthulhu.  I had all my Call of Cthulhu materials online and it was a parody site.  This was quickly followed by my Gateway2000 PC site (yes I was a huge fan of Gateway computers). I had built them both in Notepad, a tool I still use today to edit all my HTML.

The earliest captures were 1998, but by then I had been on for 2-3 years. I was using the "noarchive" tag and "Frame breaker" scripts a lot back then because there was a real concern for webpage theft and spaghetti publishers. I thought that would help. What they do was keep my site from being archived by bots.

This kept me from finding the very first versions of my sites, though I still have all the HTML code backed up.  I did notice that when I went back for my second Ph.D. my student account was reactivated and there are some captures from around then as well.

In any case, the knowledge I gained from those sites was poured into my newest site, The Other Side.

So dark. Very Internet. Much frames.

I named it after an old newspaper column I wrote for my school newspaper in High School and then my first year of undergrad.  Plus it sounded mystical and new agey.

I am not 100% sure of the exact day it went live. I know it was between March 10th and the 12th because that was my wife's birthday.  Also, I was in a Cognition of Memory course at the time when I jotted down my first ideas for it in my notebook.  So that was Spring term 96.

The site changed over the years. I added more and more material and soon it was the home of my first Netbook of Witches and Warlocks, published in 1999. I had moved from my campus site to RPGHost for the longest time. From there I was also on Xoom, NBCi, Tripod, and then PlanetADnD.

Whoa, easy there Darklord.

Around 2003 or so I kept getting hacked and my sie taken down.  My host asked me to take it down for a bit because of all the DoS attacks he was getting.  So for a while, all that remained were some mirrors of the site that I rarely updated.

The site was revived in 2007 on this blog. 

I still use the same background, though in a much-lightened fashion. Some of the material written for that old site has also come back here. 

Sadly many of my then contemporaries are gone. PlanetADnD is no more. BlueTroll has been gone a long time. All the old hosting services are long gone. I see that ADnDDownloads is still up after a fashion. Mimir, the Planescape site, is still going and looks the same as it did back in the 1990s, though I don't think it has been updated in 10 years and many links are broken.

While I miss some of the "wild west" days of finding the perfect, or the perfectly odd, netbook, things are better now.  DriveThruRPG gives me legal means to complete my collection and DMGsguild covers my need for fan-created material. And that is just the tip of the iceberg as it were. 

Do I have it in me to go another 25? Well...I'll be in my mid to late 70s then, so no idea.  But I am going to keep having fun with this as long as I can.

Thanks for being with me this long!

White Dwarf Wednesday #87

White Dwarf Wednesday takes us to issue number 87 from March 1987.
Again we are graced with another rather "Heavy Metal"-esque style cover. It is another Frank Brunner cover, this time from 1982.

Mike Brunton tells us that there are more changes coming to WD in the future. Including a 16 page adventure format that was introduced previously with the RuneQuest adventure.

Open Box covers the new and cheaper RuneQuest rules. The rules do not have a "proper" GM section according to the reviewer Peter Green.  The change would be regarded as a "money grab" in today's circles. But other games seemed to be immune to the edition wars that plague D&D and it's clones.  
Green and Pleasant Land is the long awaited British source book for England and Great Britain.  
The other interesting tidbit here are the reviews for the AD&D adventure modules "Day of Al'Akbar" and "Ravenloft: House on Gryphon Hill" two adventures I went through then and have run since.  The reviewer, Carl Sargent, makes note of Jeff Easley's cover of DaAA, calling sexploitation and "soft core". er. ok. Frankly my biggest issue with the image was would harem girls have 80s hair?  He also thinks Gryphon Hill is a worth successor to the original Ravenloft.  It is fun, but not quite up to the same quality in my mind.

Open Box X-tra goes into detail on Warhammer Fantasy.  Similar to what they did last time with the Dragonlance modules.  The article would have been more interesting if it hadn't been full of "this is the way D&D does it and its wrong! we do it like this!"  Yeah, ok, it is not as bad as that and comparisons are inevitable, but the game should stand on it's own.

The comics are next, the new acquisition, Derek the Troll and Thrud the Barbarian.

The highlight for me is the treatise on Zombies in Call of Cthulhu.  A bunch of different zombie types are covered including the common one found in D&D, the "voodoo" zombie and parasitic infection.  We are still few years out yet from GURPS Voodoo or Eden's "All Flesh Must Be Eaten" but this works very well.

We get three adventures up next.
Night of Blood for Warhammer Fantasy, Taurefanto for MERP and Happiness is Laser Shaped for Paranoia.  All in all a lot of pages devoted to adventures.

We wrap it all up with letters, ads and some coming attractions in the various Warhammer lines.

The Call of Cthulhu bit on Zombies is neat and there are still a number of games still be supported, but the issue itself leaves me feeling a bit flat to be honest.

White Dwarf Wednesday #55

White Dwarf #55 comes to us from July 1984.  Our cover this month is what can only be called a "Space Marine".  The cover is good as in well done, but it doesn't fill me with anything.  I might have passed this issue up in the stores. Still though, I was a bit down on Sci-Fi games at this point, so I am sure that it would have been lost on me anyway.

Ian Livingstone's editorial is once again ripped from today's headlines.  The Gaming Hobby is DYING! But he admits that despite the shrinking market and layoffs the hobby is only changing.  He is right of course and the hobby will never hit the peaks it hit at this time, but it is, and was, changing.  Interestingly enough I did not  have this perspective back then.  To me it seemed like the gaming hobby would go on forever, if I thought about it all.

Marcus Rowland continues his Name of the Game series with Supers, Spies and Scary Guys.  Superhero games are covered with Champions claiming the top spot.  Spy games are next with Top Secret featured. Next are the "odd" games which includes a diverse lot of Call of Cthulhu, Daredevils and Gamma World.  Historical games end the article.

Spiderbite is next and it is a short scenario for D&D/AD&D, for 1st to 2nd level characters.  There are some interesting changes here. First thing you notice are the "DM's" sections to each room/adventure area. Canned text for the DM to read that began with B3.  Also are the "newer" non-orthogonal maps, ala Ravenloft (see next section). It comes in at four pages, but seems smaller than that.  The newer format certainly takes more text.

Open Box has some reviews. We get our first supplement to Warhammer, Forces of Fantasy.  I will admit I know very, very little about Warhammer except what is commonly known.  Jon Sutherland gives it a 7/10 and asks why was the Warhammer book so full of errors (glitches as he says) to need this book?
A bunch of TSR modules are next, X5, L2, I5 and the immortal I6.  Dave Morris goes over them in turn. He has the highest praise for X5, Temple of Death which he gives 10/10.  L2 gets 7/10, I5 9/10 and Ravenloft gets a 8/10.  He loves the plot and does call it a straight Hammer Horror yarn, but bemoans the puns.
Sherlock Holmes - Consulting Detective and an associated adventure The Mansion Murders are reviewed.  Nic Grecas enjoys it as a welcome diversion from dragon slaying or blasting aliens and gives it a 9/10.  I have been looking for a copy of this for a while.  Still haven't found one yet.  Finally Stuart Aston has a few books for Starfleet Battles; SSD Books 1, 2 and 3.  All get a 9/10.

Critical Mass has more book reviews. The only book in the bunch I can recall is Stephen Donaldson's Daughter of Regals.  I remember getting this through the Science Fiction/Fantasy Book Club (ok hands up, who was a member?) and I enjoyed it, which is interesting because I didn't really care for much of Donaldson's other works.  The reviewer here disliked the book mostly (but liked his other stuff from the sounds of it).

ICE breaks up the flow (eh) with a full color ad for the Fellowship of the Ring boardgame.

Phil Holmes has more undead for RuneQuest.  Now back in the day I was not into RuneQuest except as a way to get more Call of Cthulhu into my D&D.  These days I am trying to educate myself more on RQ and this is the sorta thing I enjoy.

Another full page, full color ad.  This time to let us know that Finieous Fingers is going to Fantasy Gamer Magazine.  One though has to wonder if the big selling point of your magazine is the appearance of a comic.  BUT this is Fineous Fingers, and while I never was a big follower of any particular magazine comic (with maybe the exception of "What's New!") even I knew of FF.

Crash Course, bi-monthly Car Wars column is next.  This one concerns punks in 2034.  While it is easy to read this now and think "that is only in 20 years", its still an interesting insight into 1984.

Animal cults and worship for D&D is next.   Tony Parry and Jerry Vaughn correctly point out that this is an area that has gotten very little attention in D&D. And they are still correct.

Castle of Lost Souls part 4 is next, finishing up the series. This seems to be the longest one yet.  I think I should give this one a try sometime.

Letters covers some of the same observations that I have had.  The magazine looks better than ever, but showing signs of slowing down and not being as cutting edge as it once was.  Other bemoan the lack of Traveller articles and the increase in RuneQuest ones. Additionally one letter states how they don't like Travellers (the comic). 

Speaking of, Thrud is next.

Tabletop Heroes gets the color pages again.  It is my memory that at this time Dragon was moving away from minis while White Dwarf was embracing them more.  I could be wrong though.

RuneRites has some really cool looking threats for RuneQuest. First we have a bipedal bat-like monster, a rather nasty spell and a magic ring that seems to be just as cursed as it is magical.

Fiend Factory has the Gods of the Shapelings (from last issue). The gods seem more interesting than I recall the monsters being.  The trouble is they are presented as something along the lines of uber-archetypes to fit the psychology of the Shapelings.  Noble effort, but the result is the gods seem a little bland.  Though with some work I think they would work out well.

Treasure Chest has an interesting article about Arch Enemies in FRPs (and D&D in particular).  I like the idea.  The concept of the reoccurring villain is older than Lex Luthor or the Joker, and not something I think we use enough in fantasy games.  It is something VERY common in games like Buffy, or Ghosts of Albion sure.  But there is something to be said about having an enemy come back for more and more.  Keeping him alive though is the real trick.

Travellers is next followed by an article on variant universes in Traveller.

News is up. We learn about Mayfair's "The Keep" movie tie-in game/adventure.  Also from Mayfair are the Roleaids products.  RQ3 is on the way.  The Star Trek RPG from FASA will hit the shores of the UK soon.

We end with the usual rounds of ads.

Not much to say about this issue really. Nothing new or innovative from the last few issues to be honest, but serviceable material.  I think WD needs to shake it up a bit here soon.