It’s finally happened! On the 5th anniversary of the magazine, first released in August 1977, White Dwarf goes monthly! Now at least I can write “this month” as well as “this issue”. It’s a great step forward and marks the last step for the magazine to be a full pro-zine, also establishing it firmly as the British gaming magazine of choice. Ok, there isn’t a lot of competition, but it’s still an achievement. We won’t see its only real home grown challenger, Imagine, until April 1983, and its arguable the success of White Dwarf is one of the main reasons Imagine got commissioned. But Dragon (and Dungeon) is still going strong and has done since June 1976. So it started only a year earlier, but monthly and with a lot more resources to back it up. If you are playing along with Dragon Reflections, this White Dwarf issue matches with Dragon Issue 76.
On the Cover
One of a flight of futuristic spitfires has been brought down. Its pilots have survived the crash, but they are now readying themselves to fight a huge sabre toothed bear/tiger beast approaching them. Maybe they can hope for rescue from the rest of the flight flying overhead. This is the first cover by Jim Burns, although many others have appeared to have his style. By this point Jim has been a professional artist for about ten years so is already established. He is well known for cover illustration but has also worked on movies, most notably with Ridley Scott on Blade Runner. He is probably best known for several collaborations with author Harry Harrison and his most recent work is as the cover artist for several Peter F Hamilton novels. He is now in his late seventies and apparently still working.
Features
- A World of Your Own (Ken StAndre): More of what is almost becoming a Tunnels and Trolls column, this issue looking at making the game your own. Ken StAndre seems to be a big fan of doing what you want rather than worrying about the game rules, which is certainly more my style. Plenty of interesting design notes and anecdotes too.
- Chaos from Mount Dorren (Phil Masters): This is a solid short adventure with a deeper background than the introduction leads you to believe. The PCs are engaged to investigate attacks being made on caravans in a particular pass. It turns out to be Gnomes from a chaos cult riding pterodactyls!
- Lore of the Ring (Stephen Bland): One for the Tolkein fans, a very solid look at all the magical rings of the Lord of the Rings books and how to use them in a game. Most are too powerful to add to most campaigns but the detail is solid and interesting.
- STL (Marcus L Rowland): A type of space craft we often forget, slower than light travel between planets. These craft still go pretty fast though, just not great for interstellar travel. We take a look at Ramjets and asteroids that explode bombs behind them for acceleration!
- The Town Planner Part 2: Designing Towns and Cities (Paul Vernon): This series continues by looking at larger habitations. Not only is it generally a good article, it is also a nice reminder that towns and cities aren’t just big villages.
Regulars
- Letters: The computer column argument continues, despite the editor saying several issues ago that it was happening. Strange today to think computers would be considered optional in anything (I remember the days of people advertising “computer aided” D&D games). However, they remain in gaming terms mostly a store for digital rulebooks or a way to prep maps and encounters than a part of running the game itself (although, that’s only my experience, is it the same for you?). In other letters there is praise for the Arms at the Ready weapon’s tables, and a call for one weapon that got missed. So there will be another set of these tables later on. While a bit late to the conversation, Roger E Moore references with sadness the lack of response to Ian Livingstone’s question about uncovered genres in RPGs (in WD#29). He offers a long list of things we have yet to cover, which is interesting to look at via the lens of future history. He first notes there is little historical gaming, and while this has been the purview of Wargames rather than RPGs that will get addressed, mainly by Call of Cthulhu. Interestingly he notes that while there is a lot of fantasy, few settings are based on licenced properties. There is still no Thomas Covenant or Earthsea RPG, although we have several Moorcock and even a Deryni game. The science fiction books he lists are not especially popular now, even if their authors are. We don’t have an I, Robot RPG, but might we see a Foundation one sometime? Finally he notes that in post holocaust there is still no Planet of the Apes game, and it will take until this year to rectify that!
- News: Midguardian delivers the latest news again with quite a lot going on this month. GDW is collating Traveller’s first four core books (0-3) into a single volume as well as offering new adventures and more board/wargames. Yaquinto is expanding Man, Myth and Magic with a new option to reincarnate your characters and expand the character class options. Judges Guild, who seem to have been quiet recently have a new collection of releases. Chaosium is creating solo adventures for Runequest and are rumoured to have acquired the rights to the Lankmar and the Ringworld novels (spoiler alert, they have). TSR is very prolific this month too. They have a set of monster card accessories on the way, four new minigames (Iceberg, Remember the Alamo, Viking Gods and Attack Force). Two new RPGs are set to appear, Gangbusters and Star Frontiers (both of which will prove popular). More AD&D modules are on the way, most notably B4 The Lost City and N1 Cult of the Reptile God, as well as many modules for their other games like Boot Hill and Gamma World. Milton Bradley are also releasing a new electronic board game “Dark Tower” that will prove so popular it will see a reissue nearly 40 years later on Kickstarter. In industry news, after the takeover of SPI by TSR, many of the SPI designers have left to form their own company Victory Games. No titles have been announced but they will go on to create the James Bond RPG among others. Interestingly this seems to have been a game of designer musical chairs. SPI’s assets were originally bought from the Avalon Hill Company by TSR. But then Avalon Hill lured back many of their design team to create Victory Games as a subsidiary. What a palaver. In other news, the British press fails to do the proper research and reported that Games Workshop was importing and distributing the “War in the Falklands” game from Mayfair Games. The game is two games, one being the British versus the Germans in 1914, the other being the British versus the Argentinians in 1982. As you might imagine, with the conflict only being the same year it was a pretty insensitive game to make. It’s no surprise GW didn’t want to import it, and sadly also no surprise that the retraction in the Sunday Mail to their headline story was only a small column on page 2.
- Runerites: A mixed double on the Runequest page this issue. We have a new monster in terms of the cyclops and more interestingly the statistics for Griselda, the heroine of the recent fiction pieces. The terms and conditions for Runerite’s submissions still take up quite a wedge of the page though so there isn’t as much room as other columns.
- Starbase: Bob McWilliams take a look at the new Striker rules for Traveller, especially their vehicle rules. They seem rather involved taking even an experienced Traveller player like McWilliams two hours to stat up a flying car. So he’s also setting up a competition for the best vehicle design with a prize of some of the new 15mm (the Betamax of figure scales) Traveller figures.
- Treasure Chest: A look at drugs, and their addictive properties in AD&D. This rather deserves to be a larger article as it’s both simple and comprehensive. It makes good use of the rarely used System Shock test as well (effectively a percentage based Con save in 1st edition AD&D) to determine how abuse of the drug will have an effect.
Fiend Factory
The big news is that finally the Monstermark system is gone! Huzzah! The editors have decided that as it’s not a part of official D&D, which is becoming more cohesive and consistent, it should probably go. Later on, Challenge Rating (CR) will do a much better job. Also, the original article is long out of print, even with a reprint the “Best of” magazines. So, it’s had its time. I’m happy to see it go as I never saw a point to so much maths to just decide if a monster was “officially” correct for the party level. If the PCs are getting hammered, make the monster drop earlier or toughen it up if it’s too easy. Any GM who can do the maths for Monstermark could do this on the fly. Am I wrong though? Do you lament the loss of this vital way to gauge a monster? Answer in the comments.
We don’t have a mini adventure again sadly, but we do have a theme, that of “small creatures”. It’s a rare type of beastie so I’ll forgive them the lack of an adventure.
- Greater Raven (Roger E Moore): Big raven, that’s about it, but clever enough to create an interesting social encounter rather than a fight.
- Mara (Simon Craddock): A rather nasty variant of the imp. A little standard compared to the others this issue, but still a decent submission.
- Nightling (Phil Masters): A tiny lizardman tribal people who will cause a lot more trouble than their size suggests.
- Qothe (Bob Greenwade): A really interesting and odd creature that is more material component than encounter, but is offered with a very interesting ecology.
- Wyrmlet (Peter Ryding): A truly odd creation that looks like a coin with a face on one, and face and arms and legs on its sides. But they can stack themselves into a line to create a very well-armed centipede-like creature.
Open Box
This month’s reviews are:
- Bushido, RPG Core Boxed Set & Valley of the Mists, Adventure (FGU): Technically this is the 3rd edition of the game, the previous two being two single books, one being an upgrade of the other. This is the first boxed set and probably the first version most people know. It’s a stand out game, in terms of historical interest and solid system and well worth the reviewer’s praise. Were it not for Legend of the Five Rings I’d still be playing it. Interestingly, while the setting is effectively medieval Japan the designers make a point of saying the setting is “Nippon” not Japan given they may get things wrong and might need game play to outweigh historical accuracy. Nice to see even 1981 had a decent share of cultural sensitivity. Valley of the Mists is a double adventure with a few rules extras and starting campaign background. A very solid first product.
- Call of Cthulhu, RPG Core Boxed Set (Chaosium): One of the great granddaddies of gaming gets a first edition release (for £15!!). It certainly impresses the reviewer (as well it should) who notes the focus on sanity and the need to avoid direct combat that make it so very different from most other games. It was the first non-D&D game I ever bought, although I’ll be waiting until I can afford the Games Workshop UK reprint in 1983.
- Dungeons and Dragons, Electronic Game (Mattel Electronics): The electronic game market reaches into AD&D. These sort of hardware computer games were very popular in the 80s but swiftly died out when home micro-computers appeared. It was much more convenient to load a new game into the same computer rather that have to pick up (and find batteries for) a whole new machine. Still, your own min-arcade was fun to have if you could afford it.
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