Different Worlds: Issue #4

Issue #4 (August/September 1979) begins with an editorial by Tadashi Ehara in which he declares – remember: this is just five and a half years after the release of OD&D – "The RPG state of the art is dull. You can count on your hands the number of innovative systems. And our hobby still plays second fiddle to historical board wargaming." If nothing else, it's a reminder that the past is a foreign country. That Ehara is bemoaning the lack of innovation in RPGs is hardly surprising; it's an eternal complaint, one that continues to echo into the 21st century and I think it's no more true today than it was then. More interesting, I think, is his assertion that board wargaming was more dominant than RPGs, based in part on the fact that "board game designers out-number RPG designers five to one." Amazing what a difference half a century can make.

The articles kick off with Rudy Kraft's "Games to Gold," in which he talks about the ins and outs of selling one's roleplaying game. The article focuses on what the author considers the major publishers at the time, namely Avalon Hill, Chaosium, Excalibre, FGU, Flying Buffalo, GDW, Gamescience, Heritage Miniatures, Judges Guild, Legacy Press, Metagaming, Simulations Canada, SPI, and TSR. The list is intriguing, because, while most of the names are recognizable and indeed notable, several (e.g. Legacy Press) are not and more likely reflect the magazine's editorial biases toward the companies of friends and contributors. Kraft offers an overview of each publisher, including their openness to submissions, pay rates, etc. Appended to the article is an anonymous note by "someone who has been bit," offering advice to would-be designers. The advice amounts to: never sell all your rights, get yourself a lawyer, and shop around for the best deal. I can't help but wonder if the author was Dave Arneson, given both his then-current lawsuits against TSR and his association with Different Worlds.

Charlie Krank's next installment of "Beginner's Brew" tackles the subject of "Mastering Your First Adventure." The article contains fine, if basic, information for a novice referee, the kind of thing most RPGs typically contain but that, in 1979, might not have been common knowledge. Emmet F. Milestone's "Kirk on Karit 2" is a report of the Star Trek scenario he ran at DunDraCon IV. Milestone incorporated elements of the miniatures game Starguard!, such as the alien Dreenoi (something J. Eric Holmes too mentions in various contexts). Milestone also presents some basic "romance" rules for use with the game, to simulate the tendency of Star Trek officers to fall in love with newly introduced characters.

John T. Sapienza offers up "Enchanted Weapons Table," a huge, 14-page article consisting of many, many tables for randomly generating magic weapons for use with "fantasy gaming," though it's clear from the text that D&D is what he has in mind. It's a bit much in my opinion, but I have known many referees who would have loved random tables as extensive as these. Stephen L. Lortz returns (yet again) with "A Perspective on Role-Play," in which he outlines the history of roleplaying – not roleplaying games but the activity itself. The article is filled with much of the pseudo-intellectual blather I've come to expect from Lortz articles – he namedrops Whitehead, Aristotle, and Einstein, as well as quoting from The Tao of Physics – but his perspective is interesting nonetheless. He gives the Viennese psychiatrist J.L. Moreno credit for inventing "roleplaying," for example, and does not, as is fashionable nowadays in some quarters, credit David A. Wesely as the "true" inventor of roleplaying games. Lortz is an odd fellow and I'm not entirely sure why Different Worlds provided him with a regular soapbox.

"Waha's Quest" by Greg Stafford is a sneak peek of the upcoming companion game to RuneQuest, HeroQuest. As fans of RQ know well, HeroQuest was never released, at least not in its originally intended form, though a later game, bearing the same name, was published by Stafford's Issaries Inc. From the little presented in this article, it seems Stafford imagined HeroQuest to be a more freeform and explicitly "mythic" version of RuneQuest, using many of the same mechanics. It's hard to say what the game's impact would have been had it ever been completed. 

"Different Views" contains numerous letters to the editor, including one by Greg Costikyan, in which he lambastes David Feldt's Legacy (reviewed in issue #2) in which he calls the game "an extrusion of horror." So humorously strident is Costikyan's letter that I reproduce it here for all to enjoy.

The issue ends with Gigi D'Arn's latest gossip column, which is surprisingly tame compared to previous installments. It's filled mostly with bite-sized reviews/announcements of new products, along with details of marriages, births, and new jobs among game designers and publishers. Here's hoping future columns include a little more red meat.