White Dwarf Reflections #16

White Dwarf slips into a new decade as this issue covers the opening of the 1980s. True to the spirit of self-examination at New Year the magazine contains a new questionnaire to see what the fans want. Interestingly the questions are not just about improving the magazine but what games people are currently playing.

On the Cover​

A huge ogre-like creature wielding two large blades takes on a very upset looking barbarian who has just delivered his enemy a nasty slice. Not sure who my money is on in this encounter. The image “Savage Heroes” is by Les Edwards, a newcomer to White Dwarf covers but who is now a veteran of fantasy art. His prolific 50 year career has also included a lot of horror work including the art for two Clive Barker graphic novels.

Features​

• Boot Hill (Dominic Beddow): An encounter table for Boot Hill, although not a very useful one to be honest. Just a list of which standard NPC you might meet with no really interesting new encounter options.
• Chronicle Monsters (Lew Pulsipher): Full detail and statistics for five monsters from the Thomas Covenant series of novels by Stephen Donaldson. The novels may have rather a mixed response (people loved them or hated them) but these monsters are a solid selection whether you’ve read the books or not.
• Expanding Universe (Andy Slack): The fourth part of Andy Slack’s series of Traveller expansions. This issue he offers a mixed bag of titbits, mainly social status for characters and NPCs and some expansions to the psionic rules.
• Games Day: A series of photos from Game Day (20th October 1979) at the Royal Horticultural Hall. Also contains the results of the Games Day Awards, covering board games, wargames and role playing (with predictable results given the size of the industry at this time).
• The Paths of the Lil (James Ward): This adventure for Gamma World would easily convert into a faerie based D&D game. It introduces this new fey-like species to the game which again converts easily. Sadly the adventure is very linear and is really a series of combat encounters. But setting it in a hedge maze is an interesting twist on a dungeon.

Regulars​

• Letters: The letters page returns in case you were feeling a lack of pedantry. There are notes on ancient multifiring crossbows and Phil Masters clarifies some of his previously published spells. Guy Duke of “The Beholder” fanzine defends fanzines and magazines against Gary Gygax’s assertion last issue that they added too much to the game of D&D and might break it. The argument over whether Fiend Factory is great or slipping in quality continues as well.
• Molten Magic: Returns again with a half page of new figure releases from Archive Miniatures, Asgard Miniatures, Citadel Miniatures and Q. T. Models.
• News: The big news is the release of the Dungeon Master’s Guide for AD&D. Unfortunately it should have been more widely available by now, but a printing error on the second print run caused a set of Monster Manual pages to be printed into it instead. I’ve no idea if they were pulped or some of these editions escaped into the wild. There are a lot of Traveller releases this month too with the fifth main rule book “High Guard” coming out with supplements “The Spinward Marches” (setting detail) and “76 patrons” (scenario hooks) hot on its heels. Judges Guild keeps up production and Runequest is back in print along with “Cults of Prax”. Chivalry and Sorcery releases “Arduin” a campaign adventure and a dinosaur sourcebook. But it is Citadel Miniatures that have the really big news, having secured a licence to make figures for the Star Trek: The Motion Picture film from Paramount (released this year in 1979).
• Treasure Chest: A huge pile of potions, as promised last issue, seventeen of them in all! A very mixed bag and some fun ideas, the potion of truth and its tragic effects being among the most notable.

Fiend Factory​

A collection of new monsters created by readers:

• Man Scorpion (Philip Masters) Exactly what it says on the tin, a sort of scorpion centaur with a nasty sting in the tail (from game designer Phil Masters possibly most known for several GURPS books, including Discworld).
• Ogress (Mark Barnes) An interesting group of exiled ogre/human offspring who are always female. They have a way to disguise themselves as beautiful human women to get better opportunities to cause murder and harm. Something of a dodgy trope these days although interestingly done, but could do with more thought in certain areas.
• Plantman (Brendon Bulger) Rather a fun and quirky vegetable person that would make a good garden guardian.
• Tenser Beast (J.D. Morris) A personal favourite as this is based on one of my favourite spells. What happens if you cast animate object, haste and permanency on a Tenser’s Floating Disc? You get a dangerous spinning weapon eager to take people’s heads off.
• Wrecker (Andrew Hicks) This artefact guard is a form of iron golem/robot but a much more dangerous one. This is potentially a party killer, and can gate in others of its kind. I love the idea of a party facing one, only to have it disappear when summoned by another of its kind!

Open Box​

This month’s reviews are:

• Boot Hill, Wild West RPG Core Boxed Set (TSR): One of two early TSR games that have stood the test of time with further editions (the other being Gamma World). This is already the Second Edition, upgrading the much shorter original to a full boxed set.
• Dungeon Master’s Guide, AD&D supplement (TSR): Out so swiftly the apostrophe fell off the cover (I’d better write a letter to White Dwarf about that!). This is the hotly anticipated third and final corebook for “Advanced Dungeons and Dragons”. Don Turnbull does a very rushed review as he’s not had a chance to really do a deep dive. But he makes the point that if you’ve come this far you’re probably buying it whatever he says anyway!
• Imperium, Campaign Board Game (GDW): Fully titled “Imperium: Empires in Conflict, Worlds in Balance” this is a very involved campaign empire building and space combat game for two players. Manage your planetary economy; build ships and then blow stuff up.
• Snapshot, Wargame (GDW): A small scale wargame of personal combat, also from Mark Millar, creator of Traveller (and many others).

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

A huge ogre-like creature wielding two large blades takes on a very upset looking barbarian who has just delivered his enemy a nasty slice. Not sure who my money is on in this encounter.

Given the era of D&D we're in, I think it depends on how well the monster's save-or-die rolls go against the venom from that funky serpent shield the barbarian's using.

Chronicle Monsters (Lew Pulsipher): Full detail and statistics for five monsters from the Thomas Covenant series of novels by Stephen Donaldson. The novels may have rather a mixed response (people loved them or hated them) but these monsters are a solid selection whether you’ve read the books or not.

The "mixed response" hadn't really taken off at this point, since only the first trilogy is out and ended on as upbeat a note as anything in this collection of misery porn. There were people who hit the SA scene early in book one and noped right out, but that was (unfortunately) nowhere near as automatic a response in the late Seventies. In 1980 Donaldson was still getting way more rave reviews than real pans, although that ratio would change steadily as more books came out.

The past is an alien place.

But it is Citadel Miniatures that have the really big news, having secured a licence to make figures for the Star Trek: The Motion Picture film from Paramount (released this year in 1979).

Good three years before FASA Trek came out to give you something to use them with, too.

Imperium, Campaign Board Game (GDW): Fully titled “Imperium: Empires in Conflict, Worlds in Balance” this is a very involved campaign empire building and space combat game for two players. Manage your planetary economy; build ships and then blow stuff up.

This really was not a complex strategic game by the standards of its day, with fairly few systems on the map, a quite basic economic system and clever but abstract combat that played out very quickly without resorting to using a CRT. The fact that they used an almost identical system for Dark Nebula is telling - that was a 120 series game, intended to be played in about two hours. Closest thing to "involved" were the random events during the interwar phases, where you rolled for political influences that could skew your strategies in weird, unpredictable directions and leave you ahead or behind when the next war started.

Give GDW a few years and they'd come out with Fifth Frontier War and then we'll see something truly complex.

Snapshot, Wargame (GDW): A small scale wargame of personal combat, also from Mark Millar, creator of Traveller (and many others).

Worth noting that it's all about fighting on board small spaceships, not a more versatile skirmish rules set that could easily be used for dirtside encounters. The system used in Azhanti High Lightning was very similar, with some tweaks to allow for fighting on a much larger warship than anything seen in Snapshot.

 

[Ghost2020]

Shrek sure has taken a dark turn!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

This is heresy to say in some circles, but historically, most random encounter tables sucked, just telling the DM "1-4 trolls, 6-12 orcs" and little else.

The best random encounter tables nowadays are massively better, offering scenes and hooks that offer more to players and DMs (see the encounter tables in Monster Overhaul or Shadowdark for good examples). But as far as I can tell, that's an innovation that really took off in the last 15 years or so.

 

[Bolongo]

Chivalry and Sorcery releases “Arduin” a campaign adventure and a dinosaur sourcebook.

You mean "Arden". C&S has a very different vibe from Arduin.
Though bizarrely enough, the dinosaur thing is true. "Saurians" was a sourcebook featuring dinosaur-riding lizardfolk (did GW nick the idea from here?). How that was supposed to integrate with the assumed realistic-apart-from-magic medieval Europe setting is anybody's guess.

 

[Corone]

You mean "Arden". C&S has a very different vibe from Arduin.
Though bizarrely enough, the dinosaur thing is true. "Saurians" was a sourcebook featuring dinosaur-riding lizardfolk (did GW nick the idea from here?). How that was supposed to integrate with the assumed realistic-apart-from-magic medieval Europe setting is anybody's guess.

You are correct, I just misspelled what was in the news section.

 

[Ramaster]

Well, the word of the day is "Titbit".

Awesome article and awesome series as usual!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

dinosaur-riding lizardfolk (did GW nick the idea from here

Pretty sure this is much older. Edgar Rice Burroughs had similar, and he had contemporaries who are less well remembered.

 

[BWP]

• Chronicle Monsters (Lew Pulsipher): Full detail and statistics for five monsters from the Thomas Covenant series of novels by Stephen Donaldson. The novels may have rather a mixed response (people loved them or hated them) but these monsters are a solid selection whether you’ve read the books or not.

No, no ... I loved them and hated them. (Although mostly I love them.)

Actually that's not fair. There's no reason to hate the story of the books, as they are superbly written. The hate attracts to (some of) the characters, most especially the protagonist, who you want to root for, while simultaneously hoping that someone inflicts a serious beat-down on them. And yet, I think it's impossible to feel so strongly negative about a fictional character without feeling a deep love of the world that the character inhibits and strong interest in the story being told about him. It's quite remarkable, really, IMO.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

There's no reason to hate the story of the books

Without derailing this thread entirely, the author chose to create a pretty repellent central character and have them behave in a repellent way, while telling the reader "this is the hero; you should be rooting for them."

I think it's possible to say that, at best, it was a product of its time. But even at its time, as a kid, I was grossed out by the first novel and didn't pick up the rest.

People have different tastes, but I strongly disagree with "no reason."