Retrospective: Southern Mirkwood

The series of Middle-earth sourcebooks published by Iron Crown Enterprises during the early 1980s occupy a strange place in my personal history as a roleplayer. Like nearly every other gamer I knew at the time, I had, of course, read the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and I liked them well enough, though I'm not sure I'd have called myself a huge fan of them. That would come later, thanks in no small part to I.C.E.'s products, whose advertisements in the pages of Dragon I can still vividly recall.

The reasons those advertisements still linger in my memory decades later is their artwork, which is wonderfully evocative. They made me want to know more about the region of Middle-earth detailed in the associated product, which, in turn, helped fuel my appreciation for Middle-earth as a setting. (It would still be a little while longer before I'd come to a similar appreciation for Tolkien's storytelling, much to my embarrassment.)

My very first I.C.E. Middle-earth purchase was Bree and the Barrow-Downs, primarily because the hobbits' visit to the Barrow-Downs is one of my favorite sections of The Lord of the Rings and I therefore assumed the book detailing it would be similarly great. Unfortunately, I was disappointed and this dampened the enthusiasm those Dragon ads had elicited in me. Despite this, I decided to give the series another try, this time selecting Southern Mirkwood as my next purchase. I did so for the flimsiest of reasons: I liked the cover. I might also have been influenced by the book's subtitle, "Haunt of the Necromancer," since I was keen to know more about Sauron's hideout in the region, Dol Guldur.

Written by Susan Taylor Hitchcock and first release in 1983, Southern Mirkwood is 60-page softcover book covering not just southern Mirkwood but also southern Rhovanion, the region of Middle-earth commonly called Wilderland. Much like Bree and the Barrow-Downs (and Moria, which I'd acquire later), the pages of Southern Mirkwood feature a dense, two-column layout using a very small typeface that is occasionally broken up with a piece of spot art or a map. The overall effect, even when I was younger and had more patience – and eyesight! – for such things was mildly intimidating. This effect was made even more potent by the dry way that information was conveyed. This was not a book that one read casually; it took real effort to make it through even a couple of pages.

I began to feel some of the same disappointment I had felt about Bree and the Barrow-Downs creep back in. When I bought the book, I had hoped it'd present some frightening and exciting things about this part of Middle-earth. I remembered Mirkwood well from Tolkien's tales, particularly Bilbo and the dwarves' encounter with its spiders, so I expected the book to contain all manner of similar nastiness. Likewise, the presence of Sauron, in his guise as the Necromancer, certainly piqued my interest, since I remember wondering what he might have been up to while hiding in the forest from the prying eyes of the White Council. By all rights, Southern Mirkwood should have been a really good sourcebook, one that commanded my attention for a long time – but it was not.

A large part of the problem lies with the presentation of the material it contains. As I alluded to above, the prose is dull and focuses too much on minutiae and trivia. There are thus pages of history, enumerations of flora and fauna, people and places of note – all good in principle and precisely the kind of stuff one you'd want and expect to find in a book like this. But rather than detail all of this with an eye toward how to use them in adventures or campaigns set in and around southern Mirkwood, we get encyclopedia-style entries that do little to inspire. Toward the end of the book, there are some short suggestions for scenarios but they're quite sketchy and, frankly, boring ("Acquire 5 crates of Dwarven nails for renovation of Tree-town," "Trap and cure or kill as need be a trained mountain lion which has gone wild," etc.).

The banality of it all is really evident in the sections relating to Dol Guldur, the Necromancer's lair within Mirkwood. The book provides eight maps of the place, along with keyed descriptions. One would imagine – or at least I did – that such a place of supreme evil would be compelling and frightening. Instead, it comes across as little more than a run-of-the-mill dungeon filled with traps and orcs and storage rooms. It's all so dull and predictable, with only a few hints that suggest it's located in Middle-earth rather than in some vanilla fantasy setting. 

It's a shame, because I still think there's great potential in this region of Middle-earth, especially during the time period in which I.C.E.'s books are set (Third Age 1640 – nearly 1500 years before the War of the Ring). I can easily imagine fun adventures or exciting campaigns dealing with the growing corruption of the area and the Necromancer's role in it all. That's not what Southern Mirkwood provides, sadly. 

At least the full-color poster maps by Peter Fenlon are terrific, as always. 

White Dwarf: Issue #77

Issue #77 of White Dwarf (May 1986) features an immediately recognizable cover illustration by Chris Achilleos. The image is probably best-known for its appearance on the September 1981 issue of Heavy Metal, though it has appeared in many other places over the years. I've noted before that, compared to Dragon, WD more regularly used re-purposed artwork for its cover illustrations, though I've never come to a satisfactory conclusion as to why this was the case. My best guess is that it was a matter of simple economics, reprinted art being perhaps cheaper than commissioning original art, but I honestly don' know if that's the case. In any event, this particular cover induces a bit of cognitive dissonance in me, since I so strongly associate it with Heavy Metal, not White Dwarf.

Issue #77 is also the last issue under the editorship of Ian Marsh. Marsh only took over in issue #74, so his departure so soon after his installation comes as a bit of a shock. In his final editorial, Marsh states that "the other staff of the magazine" would also be leaving, though he doesn't specify which ones. He seems to obfuscate on the reasons for all these departures, simultaneously reminding readers that Games Workshop was moving to Nottingham and that he and the others "have decided not to accompany it on this move," while also couching their decision as being for nebulous "reasons of our own." The next issue will have a "fresh team" headed up by Paul Cockburn.

The issue proper begins with the reviews of "Open Box." The first of these is Mayfair's DC Heroes, which receives a quite favorable (8 out of 10) review by Marcus L. Rowland, who continues to be the workhorse of the magazine. The Stormbringer adventure Stealer of Souls likewise scores 8 out of 10, while The Sea Elves, a supplement for the Elfquest RPG gets 7 on the same scale. Another Chaosium product, Alone Against the Dark for Call of Cthulhu earns 9 out of 10, but Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues for Paranoia receives only 7 – another example, I think, of where the numerical scores don't quite align with the text of the review itself. Finally, there are reviews of two supplements for FASA's Doctor Who RPG: The Daleks (7 out of 10) and The Master (6 out of 10). 

Dave Langford's "Critical Mass" is mostly forgettable to me, as usual, but he does take note of the death of Frank Herbert, opining that Chapter House: Dune, to which he gave a "mildly favorable" review back in issue #65 might be the end of "galactic power-politicking" in the Dune universe. How I wish that had been true! Colin Greenwell's "2020 Vision" reviews a few movies, most notably Young Sherlock Holmes, a forgettable, even laughable, Steven Spielberg movie that nonetheless does feature one of the earliest examples of a computer-generated character in the history of cinema – a dire portent of things to come.

"The Crazy File" by Peter Tamlyn provides a handful of new "crazies" – zealous devotees of social fads – for use with the Judge Dredd – The Role-Playing Game. The article contains no game statistics; it's pure background information intended to give the referee something inspirational for use in his own adventures and campaigns. "Spellbound" by Phil Masters looks at "magic in superhero games." Again, there's nothing mechanical here. Instead, it's an overview of how magic has been used in comics over the years and then offers advice and examples of how to make use of it in one's own original superhero RPG adventures and campaigns. It's well done in my opinion and helped by the fact that it's not geared toward any particular superhero RPG. 

"The Final Frontier" by Alex Stewart does something similar for Star Trek gaming: it's an overview of the unique characteristics of Gene Roddenberry's science fiction setting and how they can best be used to create enjoyable adventures and campaigns. As a fan of Star Trek – or at least I once was – I think the article is pretty well done for what it is, though I do find myself wondering about its intended audience. White Dwarf used to have lots of these introductory articles in its early days. To see them return so late in its run strikes me as odd, though I'm sure there's a logic to it that eludes me. 

Graham Staplehurst's "A Secret Wish" is an adventure that's written for both D&D and Middle-earth Role Playing. The scenario itself assumes the players take on the role of hobbits and deals with the disappearance and return of Glorfindel. How well it jibes with the actual history of Middle-earth as laid out by Tolkien, I can't rightly say, though, to me, it reads a bit like a work of fan fiction rather than something that could have come from the mind of the Professor himself. "A Cast of Thousands" by Graeme Davis is yet another look at NPCs and how to give them "personality." It's fine, though, as is so often the case with articles like this, I find it difficult to sift through the conventional wisdom repeated for the hundredth time from the genuine insights.

"The Cars That Ate Sanity" by Marcus L. Rowland is a set of car chase rules for use with Call of Cthulhu. Is this something anyone needed? I don't mean to be flippant, but I cannot recall any car chases in Lovecraft's fiction. Maybe my memory is failing me again. Chris Felton's "Gaming for Heroine Addicts" – a clever title – is about how avoid "sexism" in one's games and make them more enjoyable to women. As you might expect, the article is a very mixed bag of topics, not to mention perspectives. I'm not sure the article offers a coherent viewpoint on any of its topics, which range widely and make many assumptions about RPGs, men, women, and everything in between. I've already spent more time thinking about it than it probably deserves.

Joe Dever's "Tabletop Heroes" looks at the best techniques for photographing one's painted miniatures. I found it fascinating and very much appreciated the little diagrams that accompanied the article. They showed the placement of lighting, camera, and background and did a great job of illustrating the principles Dever discusses. "The Travellers," "Gobbledigook," and "Thrud the Barbarian" are all here as usual. "Thrud" pokes fun at superheroes by having the tiny-headed barbarian face off against the All-American Legion of Incredibly Stupid Heroes, such as

After reading Ian Marsh's farewell editorial, I now feel an obligation to read at least a few more issues. I'm genuinely curious now to see how much will change under a "fresh new team" at the helm of White Dwarf. If nothing else, it'll be fascinating purely from a historical perspective. Till then!

White Dwarf: Issue #76

Issue #76 of White Dwarf (April 1986) features a cover by Peter Andrew Jones, whose art has appeared on the cover of the magazine several times in the past, the most recent being a year before, with issue #64. Like his previous work, this cover is quite striking, depicting a hippogriff – a mythological creature not often shown in fantasy gaming illustrations, so it definitely wins points in my book for its uniqueness (though its inclusion here is in reference to the issue's AD&D adventure).

Ian Marsh's editorial notes that the "unannounced demise" of many long-running columns in WD, such as "Starbase" for Traveller, "Heroes & Villains" for superhero gaming, "Crawling Chaos" for Call of Cthulhu, "Rune Rites" for RuneQuest, and, most significantly, "Fiend Factory," a staple of the magazine practically since its inception. Marsh claims that, "with the greater variety of popular games on the market, having a department for each is impractical, and indeed restricts the content of the magazine." Future issues would include articles according to different metrics, such as themes. Issue #76 is the first example of this, focusing as it does on thieves. 

The issue begins with a longer than usual "Open Box" that devotes three pages to its many reviews. The first is ICE's Riddle of the Ring boardgame, which received only 6 out of 10. Better reviewed is another ICE product, Ereech and The Paths of the Dead for MERP (9 out of 10). Chaosium's solo Call of Cthulhu adventure, Alone Against the Wendigo, receives 8 out of 10, while the Paranoia scenario, Send in the Clones, is judged slightly more harshly (7 out of 10). TSR's Lankhmar – City of Advenure, meanwhile, gets a rare perfect score (10 out of 10), which is slightly generous in my opinion, but I can't deny that the product is a good one nonetheless. Two adventures for FASA's Dr. Who RPG, The Iytean Menace and Lords of Destiny, are reviewed positively and, oddly, receive a joint rating of 8 out of 10. Finally, there's Hero Games's Fantasy Hero (8 out of 10). That's quite a large number of products for a single issue – and not a single GW product among them!

Dave Langford's "Critical Mass" does its usual thing and I do my usual thing of mostly not caring. More interesting to me is the first of this issue's thief-themed articles, "How to Make Crime Pay," by John Smithers. It's written as if it were a lecture given by a guildmaster to apprentice thieves and it's all the better for it. Smithers presents lots of practical advice on how to handle a wide variety of larcenous activities within a fantasy RPG. What makes the article stand out is that its framing device makes it such that the article is useful to both players and referees without having to shift perspectives or divided itself into different sections. Articles of this sort are hard to pull off, so I'm all the more impressed that Smithers succeeded.

"You're Booked" by Marcus L. Rowland is an expansion of Games Workshop's Judge Dredd RPG, introducing the "misunderstood" Accounts Division of Mega-City One's Justice Department. The article lays out the purpose of Acc-Div, as it is known, and how it could be used within a campaign, with several scenario outlines presented as examples. The division is not suitable for Player Judges, but its inclusion in an adventure or campaign could help to flesh out the Justice Department and add a note of levity, as Judges deal with paperwork and expense accounts. 

"Glen Woe" is a Warhammer miniatures scenario by Richard Halliwell. It's intended to expand upon the material provided in McDeath – a Shakespeare-inspired scenario pack released around this time. Not being a Warhammer player, I can't to much about the quality of the material presented here, only my amusement at knowing there was ever a miniatures scenario based around MacBeth. "Banditry Inc" by Olivier Legrand looks at thieves guilds within the context of AD&D from the referee's point of view. While hardly revolutionary, it nevertheless raises some useful questions about the organization and operation of the guild that any referee should consider if thieves and thieves guilds become important in his campaign.

"Caped Crusaders" by Peter Tamlyn is a three-page article on "running Golden Heroes campaigns," though most of its advice is equally applicable to superhero campaigns using another RPG system. Tamlyn covers a variety of topics and the quality of his advice will depend, I imagine, on how familiar one is with both refereeing and the superhero genre. I judge it pretty positively myself, though I imagine others might find it old hat. "Thrud the Barbarian," "Gobbledigook," and "The Travellers" are all here, among a handful of only a few remaining connections to the eatly days of White Dwarf. Since I was not a reader of the magazine at this time, I can't help but wonder how much longer they will continue to grace its pages.

"Castle in the Wind" by Venetia Lee, with Paul Stamforth, is a lengthy AD&D scenario aimed at characters of 5th–8th levels. As its title suggests, the adventure concerns the sudden appearance of a "sky castle" above a desert in the campaign area. There are several things that make "Castle in the Wind" stand out aside from its length. First, there's its vaguely Persian setting, a culture that doesn't get much play in fantasy games in my experience. Second, there's the clever design of the sky castle itself (including its hippogriff nests). Finally, there's the open-ended nature of the adventure itself, which spends most of its text presenting a locale rather fleshing out a traditional "plot" for the player characters to follow. 

"How Do You Spell That?" presents a collection of six new AD&D spells culled from reader submissions. The article is listed as being part of the "Treasure Chest" column, which surprised me, since so many other standbys of White Dwarf were axed this issue. Part two of Joe Dever's look at oil painting closes out the issue. In addition to the usual color photographs that always accompany it, the article also includes a mixing guide for how best to achieve certain results when using oil paints.

I must admit, I found this issue a bit of a slog. I don't know that it was objectively any worse than most issues. Indeed, I suspect it was probably better than many I'd read in the past. Nevertheless, I can't shake the feeling that the magazine has changed and that change has started to sap my enthusiasm for reading it. Of course, I might simply be tired of this series. Slightly more than three-quarters of the way to 100 issues, I hope I can be forgiven a little White Dwarf fatigue. Still, I will attempt to soldier on for a little while longer.

White Dwarf: Issue #73

Issue #73 of White Dwarf (January 1986) features a cover by Lee Gibbons, an artist whose work I recall from various Call of Cthulhu products over the years. Inside, Ian Livingstone boasts of the fact that the UK pharmacy chain, Boots, has "decided to stock role-playing games, Citadel miniatures, and Fighting Fantasy books." He sees this as a major victory that will help "dispel the illusion of [the hobby's] being a weirdos' cult." 

Having grown up in the United States, I find this fascinating. For all the overheated rhetoric about Dungeons & Dragons in certain quarters, RPGs and fantasy games had been readily available in major retail chains across the country since the beginning of the 1980s, if not before. However, Livingstone states that Boots is "the first major chain to stock a large range of rolegames in the country." This surprises me. When I was an exchange student in London in 1987, I had no trouble finding RPGs in most of the bookshops I visited and so assumed they had been a fixture in such places for a long time, as they were in the USA.

"Open Box" reviews Queen Victoria & the Holy Grail, a scenario for Games Workshop's  Golden Heroes, which nets a score of 8 out of 10. Also reviewed is another Games Workshop product, Judge Dredd – The Role-Playing Game, which earns a perfect 10 out of 10. I remember wanting a copy of this game for a long time, but never encountered it for sale anywhere on this side of the Atlantic. The Dungeons & Dragons Master Rules receive a (in my opinion) very charitable 8 out of 10, while Unearthed Arcana is given a serious drubbing (4 out of 10). The reviewer, Paul Cockburn, has many reasonable criticisms of the book, a great many of which I share. His biggest complaint seems to be that UA "is about as important to running a good game as Official character sheets or figures." I find it hard to disagree.

"2020 Vision" is a new column "covering fantasy and science-fiction movies" by Colin Greenland. The inaugural column focuses on two movies, Back to the Future, which Greenland enjoyed, and The Goonies, which he most certainly did not. He also reviews The Bride, "a hokey new variation on The Bride of Frankenstein," about which his opinion is more mixed. Dave Langford's "Critical Mass," meanwhile, does what he usually does: looks down his nose at various books, only a couple of which I've ever heard of, let alone read. It's a shame really, because it's clear that Langford is quite a talented writer in his own right, but most of his columns simply leave me flat. Some of that, no doubt, is the alienating effect of time. He is, after all, writing about the literary ephemera of three or more decades ago; it would be a miracle if it were still of vital interest to me today.

"Power & Politics" is an interview with Derek Carver, in which he talks about his boardgame, Warrior Knights. From the interview, it would seem the game is in the same general ballpark as Kingmaker in terms of overall focus and complexity, though it's set in a fictitious medieval European country rather than a real one. The game was (of course) published by Games Workshop, hence the two pages devoted to what is essentially an advertisement for it. 

I usually don't comment on the letters page of most issues of White Dwarf, because they're rarely of lasting import. This issue is a little different in that it's been expanded to two pages (from the usual one) and it's given over to lots of arguments back and forth about the merits of previous articles, not to mention letters attacking and defending said articles. This time, much ink is spilled with regards to Marcus L. Rowland's review of Twilight: 2000 from issue #68. Rowland, you may recall, intensely disliked the game and what he saw as its inherent immorality, calling it "fairly loathsome." Judging by the letters in this issue, not everyone shared Rowland's assessment and felt the need to say so. Of course, others very much agreed with him. Reading the letters for and against, it's a reminder that the past really is a foreign country.

Simon Burley's "The American Dream" is a lengthy scenario for Golden Heroes that focuses on a former American superheroine who has gone rogue in order to take down corruption within the secret government organization that trained her. It's delightfully overwrought and cynical and very much in keeping with the general spirit of the late 1980s. "3-D Space" by Bob McWilliams takes another stab at a classic Traveller "problem," namely, the game's star maps are two-dimensional. As he so often does, McWilliams makes a challenging topic easy to understand. In this case, though, I remain unconvinced that much is gained by adopting a more "realistic" style of stellar mapping.

"Star Spray" by Graham Staplehurst is an adventure set in J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, written for use with both AD&D and Middle-earth Role Playing. The adventure takes place in southern Gondor and concerns the fate of Maglor, the second son of Feänor, who disappeared during the First Age. It's clear that Staplehurst knows his Tolkien and "Star Spray" makes good use of that knowledge to present a situation that's more than just a dungeon delve in Middle-earth. Good stuff!

"First This, Then That" by Oliver Johnson is a fairly forgettable bit of advice on adjudicating the rules of RuneQuest. I'm sure the article seemed very relevant at the time, but, in retrospect, it's hard to muster much interest in it – the fate of a lot of gaming material, alas. "Cults of the Dark Gods 2" by A.J. Bradbury looks at the Bavarian Illuminati from the perspective of Call of Cthulhu. "A New Approach to Magic Weapons" by Michael Williamson is an interesting, if frustratingly sketchy, plea to give magic weapons in AD&D more "oomph" by rooting them in a setting's history. I'm very sympathetic to this approach, since I think there should be no "generic" magic weapons in any campaign, but, unfortunately, Williamson provides only the barest hint of a way to implement this mechanically. That's a shame, because I very much think he's on to something.

"Jungle Jumble" gives us four new jungle-themed monsters for use with AD&D, including vampire bats and army wasps. Joe Dever's "Dioramas" is the second part of his look at this intriguing topic, focusing this time on "scenic effects," like sand, snow, water, and foliage. I continue to find this column enjoyable, despite my own lack of experience with miniatures painting. The issue also includes new episodes of its long-running comics, "Thrud the Barbarian," "Gobbledigook," and "The Travellers," all of which are diverting, if not always memorably so. 

The transformation of White Dwarf into a full-on Games Workshop house organ continues apace. While there are still quite a few articles devoted to non-GW games and topics, more and more space is devoted to GW's own publications. While probably a good business decision – Games Workshop still exists today and most of its contemporary competitors do not – it does lessen the magazine's appeal in my eyes. I'm going to keep soldiering on with this series for the foreseeable future. How long I'll be able to do so is another question ...

White Dwarf: Issue #66

Issue #66 of White Dwarf (June 1985) is once again graced by a Chris Achilleos cover illustration. I've always been very fond of his artwork and this piece is no exception. This issue also marks another step, albeit a small one, down the road toward Games Workshop's transformation into an all-Warhammer-all-the-time company. Ian Livingstone's editorial opines that "there is obviously a resurgence of interest in wargaming," with the growing popularity of Warhammer Fantasy Battle being offered as evidence of this. I suspect his prognostication would ultimately prove correct. Warhammer's success was real and lasting; it played a huge role in revitalizing the field of miniatures wargaming, a segment of the larger hobby that continues to be very successful (and profitable) today. 

Speaking of miniatures wargaming, this issue's "Open Box" kicks off with a positive (7 out of 10) review of FASA's Battledroids, the earliest iteration of the Battletech line of games. Slightly more glowing (8 out of 10) is its review of the second edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battle Rules. There's also a review of the 48K Spectrum version of Talisman (7 out of 10). Rounding out the reviews are The Halls of the Dwarven Kings (8 out of 10) and not one but two Fighting Fantasy gamebooks: House of Hell and talisman of Death (both 9 out of 10). I owned and enjoyed House of Hell, which has a modern day haunted house setting. It also included a Fear score that increases as the reader's character deals with more frights within the titular locale. Once the score reaches a high enough number, the character is "scared to death." The mechanic introduces an interesting dynamic, as the reader tries to avoid encounters, since each one contributes to the Fear score and its inevitable consequences.

Dave Langford's "Critical Mass" laments the "fantasy explosion" in publishing with words I could almost have written: "SF is my true love ... Fie on fantasy: for me the highest literary values consist of megalmaniac computers, hyperspatial leaps and colliding black holes." He then goes on to review multiple fantasy books he considers "consistently better than the SF." Interestingly – or perhaps simply indicative of my own cramped tastes – the only one of these great fantasies he mentions that I recognize is Piers Anthony's On a Pale Horse, the first of his "Incarnations of Immortality" series – and I don't count myself a fan. Langford nevertheless does review a few SF books, including E.C. Tubb's twenty-second Dumarest of Terra novel, The Terra Data. In his review, he notes that "beyond rotten sentences [it] has a plot resembling the previous ones: hero Dumarest tepidly pursued by omniscient yet inept Cybers, fights through unconquerable barriers of padding to obtain secret whereabouts of lost Earth, only to suffer his 22nd failure. Soporific." Cruel but accurate (and I say this as a fan of Tubb).

"The Road Goes Ever On" by Graham Staplehurst is a very nice overview/review of Iron Crown Enterprise's Middle-earth Role Playing and some of its supplements. Reading it again almost made me want to dust off my copy of MERP and give it a whirl again. Part Four of the "Thrud the Destroyer" saga continues, as the evil necromancer To-Me Ku-Pa employs dark sorcery to summon "the essence of evil throughout time." Behold!

"A Web in the Dark" by Simon Burley presents rules suggestions for adapting Spider-Man and similar superheroes to Games Workshop's Golden Heroes (which I need to review one day). "Once Risen, Twice Shy" by Steve Williams and Barney Sloane is a fun collection of documents – news clippings, handwritten notes, reports – that outline a grisly scenario for use with Call of Cthulhu. It's all quite well done and evocative. My only complaint is that the layout of the issue would make it difficult to easily photocopy and use the documents in play. Meanwhile, "Ambush!" by D.P. O'Connor is a three-page treatment of how best to simulate ambushes in Warhammer miniatures battles. 

"The Horse of the Invisible" by A.J. Bradbury is an excellent Call of Cthulhu scenario adapted from the William Hope Hodgson story of the same name. The adventure is lengthy, detailed, and, above all, dangerous – as the best CoC adventures are – well done. "The Philosopher's Stone" by David Whiteland is another lengthy and detailed scenario, this time for AD&D characters of levels 1-2. As its title suggests, the adventure involves alchemy and quite cleverly makes use of alchemical mixtures and reactions as part of resolving it. I loved this scenario in my youth and used it to good effect in kicking off a new campaign in my high school era setting.

"The Silent Hater" is a well done installment of "Fiend Factory," which strings together five different AD&D monsters and a map to create the outlines of an adventure for the enterprising referee to drop into his campaign. This is "Fiend Factory" at its best in my opinion and I was always glad to see them. On the other hand, "The Rings of Alignment" by Graeme Drysdale does little for me. There are five such artifact-level rings – one each for Law, Chaos, Good, Evil, and Neutrality – each with their own powerful guardian and special powers to those who wear them, either singly or in conjunction with others. I suppose such magic items have their place in certain kinds of campaigns, but I've rarely found them all that useful.

"Open House" is Joe Dever and Gary Chalk's report Citadel Miniatures' "Open Days," which attracted over 2000 gamers to the company's factory to participate in miniatures battles and painting competitions. The article includes photos of some of the winners of the latter and they are, of course, quite impressive. I find myself, as always, wishing I'd taken up miniatures painting when I was younger. Oh well! Closing out the issue are new episodes of both "The Travellers" and "Gobbledigook."

All in all, this is another worthwhile issue, filled with several excellent articles. That said, the increasing presence of Warhammer and related things is quite clear. I can't say that I blame Games Workshop for emphasizing their own products, especially at a time when they're growing in popularity. However, never having been a miniatures wargamer of any kind, let alone a player of Warhammer Fantasy Battles, I could see the writing on the wall. It wasn't too much longer before I ceased reading White Dwarf and turned my attention elsewhere.

White Dwarf: Issue #64

Issue #64 of White Dwarf (April 1985) features a cover by Peter Andrew Jones that, as so many previous covers of the magazine have, mixes elements of fantasy and science fiction. Meanwhile, Ian Livingstone's editorial discusses his visit to Planet Photon in Dallas, Texas, the originator of the "laser tag" phenomenon of the '80s and '90s. What I find interesting is that Livingstone seems to think, as many people did at the time, that "real" roleplaying was an inevitability and that venues like Planet Photon were the first steps on that road. Nearly forty years later, I'm still unconvinced that even VR technology will ever prove more than a novelty.

"News of the World" by Jon Smithers is a lengthy article that looks at "government, law, and conflict in fantasy campaigns." It's basically an extended examination of how the referee can use governments and their laws to foster compelling conflicts in a RPG campaign. It's a worthy topic and the article is decent enough. My main complaint is that Smithers devotes a lot of space to a single type of conflict, war, while reducing less blatant forms of conflict to afterthoughts.

Dave Langford's "Critical Mass" is, as I've commented before, a source of frustration to me. Most columns I find rather dull, in large part because it's difficult to muster much interest in decades-old reviews of books I've never read (and, in many cases, never heard of). At the same time, it's clear that Langford is a talented and often witty writer, though I have long suspected that, like many reviewers, he played to his audience by amping up his negativity and general curmudgeonliness – not that I'd know anything about that. Amusingly, this month's column begins by noting that readers have complained he has become "too nice." Langford is, of course, mock appalled at this and explains that, if the charge is true, it's only because that "publishers have hit on the idea of offering [him] good stuff." He then proceeds to gush over Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic, thereby undermining what he just said. (I kid ... maybe? I realize I'll be a pariah by admitting this, but I've never liked Pratchett's writing and find the Discworld series rather puerile, but there it is, my dark secret revealed.)

"Open Box" devotes most of its two pags to a massive review of the third edition of RuneQuest. This is the edition published by Avalon Hill, which caused a stir at the time for both its price and its removal of Glorantha as the default campaign setting of the game in favor of "Mythic Earth." Overall, the reviewer, Oliver Dickinson, seems pleased with the new edition (9 out of 10). Also reviewed is Secret of the Ancients for GDW's Traveller, an adventure the reviewer, Marcus L. Rowland, liked better than I did (7 out of 10). That said, he recognizes its many flaws and recommends it primarily for completists and those deeply invested in the backstory of the Third Imperium setting.

If you're looking for something in a Traveller vein that's more fun, I present you with the issue's installment of Mark Harrison's The Travellers comic. This month, we're treated to "Gavin's Swan Song," as the titular xeno-hating psychopath indulges in ultra-violence while singing the following:

I'm sure it speaks poorly of me that I found – and still find – this quite funny. This issue's "Thrud the Barbarian" and "Gobbledigook" are amusing, too, but it's The Travellers I still remember all these years later.

"Starfall" by Marcus L. Rowland is a terrific (and long) adventure written for use with FASA's Star Trek. The scenario involves a distress call from a civilian Klingon vessel in the vicinity of the Neutral Zone. The twist is that, while the distress signal is genuine and the Klingons aboard are political dissenters fleeing execution by the Empire, they're also extreme hardlines who believe that the Empire is too soft in its dealings with the Federation. The whole thing has a delightfully late Cold War quality to it – go figure; it's from 1985 – making it one of my favorite Star Trek adventures of all time. I had a lot of fun using it back in the day.

"Megavillains" by Simon Burley and Peter Haines is the inaugural entry in the new "Heroes & Villains" feature for Games Workshop's Golden Heroes (which I really must write a post on someday). The article presents Earthlord, an angry elemental earth-spirit angry at the despoiling of the Earth. Ho-hum. Much more interesting is "Dawn of Unlight" by Graham Staplehurst, which presents an adventure in Middle-earth's Mirkwood for both AD&D and Middle-earth Role Playing. The scenario features a cult of Men devoted to Ungoliant, which creeped me out as a younger person, but then I hate and fear spiders. Because of that I was weirdly fascinated by this adventure, as well as by its AD&D conversion. Around this time, I was in the midst of one of my periodic fits of obsession with Tolkien and "Dawn of Unlight" scratched that itch.

"Dark Agents of the Night" by Phil Masters is yet another article about ninjas, this time focusing on modern, science fiction, and superhero games. For what it is, the article is fine, even good, because it includes examples of how to make use of ninjas in these genres. However, I simply cannot understand why White Dwarf published so many articles about ninjas in its pages – oh, right, yes I do: it was the 1980s. "Trogaar" is the name of this month's "Fiend Factory," presenting four new (A)D&D monsters themed around the desert: sand golem, desert orc, cactus cat, and sand sniper. I hate to snark at these, since they're all serviceable but mostly obvious additions to D&D menagerie and I find it hard to muster any enthusiasm for any of them.

"Bearers of the Mark" by Steve Williams and Mark White is a cult for use with Call of Cthulhu. It's fine but rather vague in its immediate utility. For example, many details are left (intentionally?) undescribed, meaning that the Keeper will need to do a fair bit of work before including the cult in his own campaign. "Proxy Painting" by Joe Dever and Gary Chalk is another good piece relating to minis painting. This time, they tackle the subject of painting services that, for a fee, will paint your figures for you. The article is accompanied by photos of these services' handiwork. As a non-painter, I found this article particularly fascinating. Finally, there is "Spells for Friends" by Martin Fowler and David Marsh, which offers up six new D&D spells that provide benefits to two individuals bound by the spell. It's a solid idea and some of the spells look like they'd be handy in certain campaigns.

Issue #64 is one of those issues that I remember quite well, primarily because of its two big adventures, both of which I liked a great deal. Re-reading them now in preparation for this post was enjoyable. They served as great reminders of why I subscribed to White Dwarf during my high school years. It's a pity the magazine would, within a few more years, become little more than an advertisement for Warhammer. 

White Dwarf: Issue #58

Issue #58 of White Dwarf (October 1984) has a terrific cover by Chris Achilleos, an artist whose work I've long appreciated. Ian Livingstone's editorial bemoans the fact that Chaosium has signed a deal with Avalon Hill to publish the next edition of RuneQuest, which will retail at a much higher price in the UK, owing to import costs. Those import costs will be necessary since Avalon Hill has terminated Games Workshop's license to produce a British edition of the game. Livingstone goes on to speculate that this move will undermine RQ's growth in the UK. Whether he was correct in his prediction, I can't say. All I know for sure is that, for several years in the 1980s, RuneQuest was more popular than Dungeons & Dragons in Britain, which baffled my younger self, who could scarcely conceive the possibility that D&D would ever play second fiddle to another fantasy RPG (or indeed any other game).

The issue proper begins with Stephen Dudley's "It's a Trap!," which looks at designing traps in AD&D and other fantasy games. Though short, it's a thoughtful look at the subject and includes an example to illustrate Dudley's main points. In short, he suggests that while traps need not be "realistic," they should nevertheless function according to an intelligible logic. Likewise, the referee should include a means of disarming them or, lacking that, a means to circumnavigate them, even if doing so presents different challenges. 

"Open Box" begins with a mediocre (5 out of 10) review of FGU's Lands of Adventure, a game I've long wanted to see but never have. If the review is any indication, I'm not missing much. More favorably reviewed is Middle-earth Role Playing. The game scores 9 out of 10 in its book form and 7 out of 10 in its boxed form, based on the fact that the boxed set is more expensive and doesn't offer enough any significant additional value. Bree and the Barrow Downs, on the other hand, only garners 6 out of 10, because it's more a sourcebook than an adventure and thus of much more limited utility. Q Manual for the James Bond 007 RPG receives a much deserved 9 out of 10. It's one of the few RPG equipment books I've ever felt deserving of real praise. Finally, there's Star Trek the Role Playing Game, another favorite of mine. The reviewer gives it 9 out of 10 and I'd be hard pressed to disagree.

Dave Langford's "Critical Mass" keeps chugging along, reviewing plenty of novels I've never heard of, let alone read, along with a few I have. Most notable this issue is his praise for Robert Holdstock's Mythago Wood and his dislike of Jack Chalker's Twilight at the Well of Souls. The third part of "Night's Dark Agents" by Chris Elliott and Richard Edwards is surprisingly good. Whereas the previous two installments were filled with the usual mid-80s gaming material about ninjas, this one focuses on the nitty gritty details of how ninjas operated in the field. The material on their preparations and the tactics employed is both interesting and useful, as is the material intended for referees in running ninja-based games. Not being as enamored of ninjas as many gamers, I was impressed that this article held my attention as much as it did.

"Beyond the Final Frontier" by Graeme Davis is not, as its title might suggest, an article about roleplaying in the Star Trek universe. Rather, it's an examination of the beliefs of various real world historical cultures about death and the afterlife in the context of continuing to play a character in a fantasy RPG after he has died. The article is sadly short, but Davis offers some useful ideas for how to handle this in a campaign. "Grow Your Own Planets" presents a computer program, based on then-current astrophysics, that generates star systems and the details of the planets therein. Given the date of its creation, the program is necessarily limited in its output, but I can imagine it would have been very appealing to referees of science fiction RPGs.

"Strikeback" by Marcus L. Rowland is an adventure for use with Champions or Golden Heroes. The scenario is a fun one involving time travel, the Bavarian Illuminati, Baron Frankenstein, Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, and more. It's a kind of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen romp before the fact and, speaking as someone who made use of the adventure at the time, I highly recommend it. "Chun the Unavoidable" by Oliver Johnson, meanwhile, is an adaptation of certain elements of Jack Vance's The Dying Earth for use as a low-level AD&D scenario. I really liked this in my youth, largely for its write-ups of archveults, deodands, and pelgranes, in additional to the eponymous Chun the Unavoidable. 

"For a Few Credits More" by Thomas Price looks at the subject of money in Traveller. This is a solid treatment and I appreciate the way Price considers the ways that technology, whether high or low, might impact currency. Naturally, as an article written in the pre-Internet age, some details look dated – or perhaps "quaint" is a better word – but then Traveller has always been slightly retro, so this isn't really a knock against it. "Thinking in Colour" by Joe Dever and Gary Chalk presents helpful hints on the matter of shading, highlighting, and mixing paints for miniatures. Once again, I find myself wishing I'd devoted more time and effort to learning how to paint in my youth.

"Cameos" by Peter Whitelaw presents two short scenarios for use with RuneQuest. Both are set in Pavis and are quite short, so the referee will need to flesh them out considerably before making use of them. That said, they're both quite flavorful and do a good job of showing off what makes Glorantha such a compelling fantasy setting. "Bigby's Helping Hand" includes yet more ideas for using AD&D spells in unusual ways, along with ideas for using beggars as NPCs. Also included in this month's issue are further episodes of "Gobbledigook," "Thrud the Barbarian," and "The Travellers," the last of which receives a two-page spread.

This is a very good issue of White Dwarf and one whose content I enjoyed and made use of once upon a time. Re-reading it, I was reminded on several occasions of just how vibrant the magazine was at its height. There's a good variety of material and it's quite well presented. Though I was naturally more well inclined toward Dragon, there's little question in mind that, when White Dwarf was firing on all cylinders, it was the superior magazine. Issue #58 is a good example of that superiority. 

MERP UK

One of the things I remember most about Games Workshop of old was its publication of UK editions of American RPGs, often in a better and more attractive format. Unfortunately, most of these editions never made it across the Atlantic, so I only ever had the chance to see photographs of them rather than physical copies. In the years since, I've rectified this somewhat, as in the case of the 1987 version of Stormbringer, and these UK editions are every bit as remarkable as I hoped they'd be. 

One I have never seen, though, is the 1985 version of the Middle-earth Role Playing boxed set, which boasted this cover:

I only even know of the existence of this version because of advertisements I saw in the pages of White Dwarf. The artwork really grabbed my attention in a way that the US ICE version did not and I hoped I might one day be able to see it in the flesh, so to speak.

Did anyone reading this ever own or even see a copy? 

White Dwarf: Issue #50

Issue #50 of White Dwarf (February 1984) is an important milestone for the magazine, marking nearly seven years of continuous publication since its premier in June 1977. The cover, by Terry Oakes, is an odd choice for such a momentous issue. It's a re-use of an earlier painting used as the cover for the 1980 UK paperback edition of William Hope Hodgson's House on the Borderland. Why it was chosen in this instance, I have no idea, though the swine-things from the story are sometimes cited as possible precursors to the pig-faced orcs of which old school D&D fans such as myself as so fond.

Garth Nix's "A Few Small Formalities …" kicks off the issue proper, with a humorous discussion of the use and abuse of bureaucratic red tape in Traveller. Accompanying the article are four sample forms the referee can inflict on players when their characters must interact with meddlesome local planetary rules and regulations. I've always enjoyed articles of this kind, but then I'm also fond of scenarios like the infamous "Exit Visa" from The Traveller Book, too, so perhaps I'm a poor judge of such things.

"Open Box" reviews a large number of interesting RPG products in this issue, starting with Steve Jackson's Sorcery!, which receives a rating of 7 out of 10. There are also reviews of several Middle-earth Role Playing supplements: A Campaign and Adventure Guidebook (6 out of 10), Angmar – Land of the Witch King (7 out of 10), The Court of Ardor (7 out of 10), Umbar – Haven of the Corsairs (7 out of 10), Northern Mirkwood – The Wood Elves' Realm (8 out of 10), and Southern Mirkwood – Haunt of the Necromancer (8 out of 10). Reading these reviews fills me with a great deal of nostalgia for the days of Iron Crown Enterprise's series of Middle-earth sourcebooks, only a few of which I ever actually owned. The issue's last review is Tarsus for Traveller, which receives a much deserved 9 out of 10 rating.  

Dave Langford's "Critical Mass" is fascinating to me in that it regularly reviews books I never heard of, let alone read. This installment of the column is no different. The only book Langford discusses with which I am directly familiar is Helliconia Summer by Brian Aldiss, of which he thinks very highly (I was less impressed; my favorite of his novels has always been Non-Stop). Meanwhile, "White Dwarf Personalities" by Phil Masters and Steve Gilham is a fun little piece in which people and characters associated with the magazine, such as Ian Livingstone, Thrud the Barbarian, and the eponymous White Dwarf are given RPG stats for either AD&D or RuneQuest (sometimes both). 

Speaking of Thrud, we get new episodes of his comic, along with Gobbledigook, and The Travellers. "Divinations and the Divine" by Jim Bambra is a workmanlike article on clerics in AD&D, focusing on the role of the class both in play and within the fictional "society" of a campaign. It's fine for what it is and clearly geared toward newcomers, but it's vastly better than many of the beginner's articles that White Dwarf ran in its early issues. "The Watchers of Walberswick" by Jon Sutherland is a short introductory scenario for use with Call of Cthulhu, dealing with the Deep Ones along the Suffolk coast of England. It's a solid, straightforward piece of work that could easily serve as the start of a new UK-based campaign.

"RuneQuest Hardware" by Dean Aston is a collection of new equipment for use with RQ. The items in question are an odd group, running the gamut from the mundane (nunchaku – hey, it was the '80s) to the exotic (magic talismans) and downright weird (hollow panel detector). Part 2 of "The Key to Tirandor" by Mike Polling brings a part of AD&D characters inside the titular city. The city is a very strange place, even by the standards of a fantasy roleplaying game, but there's an explanation for its many oddities – the city is an illusion, a projection of an insane dreamer's imagination – and discovering this truth is what the scenario is about. I have mixed feelings about this myself, though I recognize that there's a lot to be said in favor of breaking the usual mold of D&D adventures. 

"Have Computer, Will Travel" by Marcus L. Rowland presents a couple of BASIC computer programs to aid in the creation of vehicles in Striker. I can't rightly comment on their utility, but, like the inclusion of nunchaku earlier, the inclusion of a computer program in a RPG magazine is a hallmark of the 1980s. "Going Up" by Lewis Pulsipher presents a new system for advancement in D&D that dispenses with experience points altogether, opting instead for tracking the number of sessions in which a character participates as a gauge of advancement. It's an interesting idea, especially for it time, though I am unsure of how it would work in practice. 

"One Ring to Rule Them All" by Charles Vasey is a lengthy examination of Iron Crown's Fellowship of the Ring fantasy boardgame. Part review, part strategy guide, it's the kind of article that would probably appeal most to those who've played the game in question. Since I have not, there's not much more I can say about it. "An Assassins Special" by M.J. Stock, on the other hand, describes four new items for use by assassins in AD&D, ranging from the garotte to a dagger of slaying. It's another workmanlike article whose utility depends almost entirely on whether or not a referee sees the need for more specialized equipment in his campaign. Finally, there's "Baelpen Bulletins," which collects news items from the far-flung corners of the hobby scene, including several tidbits that never came to pass (such as FASA's Battlestar Galactica RPG and Close Simulation's Road Warrior RPG).

Milestone issues are always a challenge, I suspect, because there's a natural expectation that their content will necessarily be "special" in some way. That mostly wasn't the case here and that's no knock against the issue. For the most part, issue #50 is simply another decent, if unexceptional, issue of White Dwarf. The main thing that it does well is present a wide variety of content covering many different games from many different companies, which is no small thing. Here's to the next fifty issues!

Retrospective: Moria: The Dwarven City

I owned – and enjoyed – the first edition of Iron Crown's Middle-earth Role Playing. I also owned several of the Middle-earth setting books published by ICE, such as Bree and the Barrow-Downs. Those supplements were a mixed bag for me, both in terms of how well they were produced and in how much they inspired me when I first read them. Among those of which I thought particularly well was 1984's Moria: The Dwarven City by Peter C. Fenlon, who was also responsible for most of its many maps.

While I remain firm in supporting Gary Gygax's contentious assertion that The Lord of the Rings had little direct influence on his conception of Dungeons & Dragons, it's hard not to waver on the matter when someone brings up Khazad-dûm. Better known as Moria ("black chasm" in Sindarin), it was once the greatest city of the dwarves in all of Middle-earth. This was before its inhabitants famously "delved too greedily and too deep," awakening a Balrog that had hidden itself beneath the Misty Mountains after the War of Wrath. Now a ruin of subterranean chambers, passages, and labyrinths, Moria is filled with orcs and trolls under the command of the Balrog – not to mention untold riches. If ever there were a prototypical D&D dungeon, Khazad-dûm is it.

That's why I readily grabbed a copy of Moria as soon as I came across it. At 72 pages in length, it contains a great deal of information on the dwarven city, starting with descriptions of the land surrounding its location. Everything from topography to climate to flora and fauna are exhaustively detailed, followed by an equally exhaustive history. Looking back on it now, I'd say that both these sections are probably too long for gaming purposes, but, at the time, I didn't care. I had a great deal more patience for voluminous background information. The dwarves of Khazad-dûm, their society, culture, and language get a similar (though shorter) treatment, which ought to give the referee a good sense of what Moria was and is like and why it is constructed in the way that it is.

It's the city itself that is the main attraction in this book and, much as I enjoyed the other sections, it's why I bought it in the first place. About two-thirds of Moria consists of descriptions of the city and its sights, complete with digressions into dwarven architecture and engineering (as well as the philosophy behind them). The reader is treated to details of every conceivable aspect of the city – doors, chambers, chasms, bridges, stairways, and even traps. In almost every case, we're also given drawings and sample maps to illustrate what these features look like and how they are used. It's frankly amazing stuff and precisely what I'd hoped it would be.

As described in Moria, the city is divided into seven levels proper and seven "deeps" – the portions of the city shrouded into darkness used for mining, forging, and related endeavors. It's in these latter areas that the Balrog and his evil minions dwell. Because of how vast Moria is, each of these fourteen layers is given a high-level schematic map, on which certain notable locales are definitively placed. The rest of the layers are detailed by the referee making use of random tables, with the structures and other results correlated to just where one is on a given layer. It's a complex and slightly cumbersome set-up, but, truthfully, I'm not sure how else one could describe a locale as large as Moria without inducing tedium. To its credit, Moria is filled with useful inspiration throughout, which ought to relieve the referee of some of the burden of describing this place.

As a whole, Moria impressed me greatly as a younger man, so much so that I suspect it played a sub-conscious role in my eventual design of my mountain megadungeon Dwimmermount. It's certainly one of the most ambitious "dungeon" products I'd ever seen up to that point and the wonderful maps for which MERP products were known cemented it in my mind as worthy of praise and emulation. Even now, re-reading it in preparation for this retrospective, I felt some of the same awe – and a little sadness, too. I never got the chance to use Moria back in the day. My MERP campaign didn't last long and the player characters never dared venture in the direction of the dwarven city. It's a great pity and one I doubt I'll remedy, but, at my age, I likely only have so many campaigns left in me. Such is life!

Imagine Magazine: Issue #30

And so we come to the final regular issue of Imagine magazine, issue #30, which appeared in September 1985 (there is also a Pelinore-focused special edition dated October 1985, which I do not own). The issue is another special one, dedicated to the subject of Vikings, with a cover by Richard Clifton-Dey. There is a brief editorial by Keith Thorrson, commending the issue's contents but no indication that the periodical would be ending, which suggests the decision to kill Imagine was a surprise to its staff. Back in the USA at the time, TSR was in a state of chaos, with the power struggle between Gary Gygax, the Blume Brothers, and, later, Lorraine Williams in high gear. This struggle had financial implications too, with layoffs and the shedding of assets to deal with debts. It's quite likely that Imagine was collateral damage of all of this, but I can't say that for certain.

"Viking!" by Graeme Davis is a lengthy (6-page) article providing aid to referees and players on how to integrate various aspects of Norse society, culture, and myth into D&D and AD&D. It's a fine article but necessarily more of an outline than a detailed plan of how to bring these RPGs more in accord with the world of the Vikings. David Hill's "Rune Magic" is similar, though much shorter and narrower in its scope. "None for mortal men doomed to die …" by Carole Morris is an overview of the Volsüng saga, with some very brief notes on how it provides inspiration for Norse-themed RPG campaigns. 

Venetia Lee and Reif Dormann offer "Icelanders," which briefly describes the history and legends of medieval Iceland. It's fine as far as it goes but, like most of the content in this issue, is very light on game material and much more heavily focused on "real world" information – not bad by any means but less than I'd have hoped in a roleplaying games magazine. "Ragnarok!" – lots of exclamation points in this issue! – is a Battlesystem scenario based on the mythical Norse battle between the Aesir and the Giants. I have no idea how well it would play but the concept is an excellent one. "The Norse Planes of Gladsheim" by Rod Stevenson provides details on the home of the Norse gods, according to the cosmology of AD&D. Again, it's fine, given its limited scope, but it doesn't compare to the Roger E. Moore's treatment of the same subject in the pages of Dragon. 

This month's Pelinore piece is actually a collection of three entries, the Asylum, the Deathcart, and the Waxworks (the first two by Brian Garrod and the other by Linda Moore), each of which includes NPC descriptions and ideas for scenarios involving them. The tone and content of these entries reminds me quite a bit of early Warhammer Fantasy Role Play and points toward many of the things I tend to associate with 1980s British fantasy: black humor and general grottiness. Carl Sargent's "Dispel Confusion Special" continues what was begun last issue by tackling cleric and druid spells. Reviews cover a large selection of TSR products for AD&D, D&D, Marvel Super Heroes, and Indiana Jones, along with products for Twilight: 2000, MERP, and TOON. Neil Gaiman's "Fantasy Media" looks at the movies Legend and A View to a Kill (both of which he disliked) and Ttrancers (which he enjoyed), in addition to The Wishsong of Shannara, which he calls "a must for those who like fantasy trilogies with silly names." "Fanscene" continues with more letters and opinion pieces about the state of the hobby, while Roger Musson's "Stirge Corner" the oddities of AD&D's hit point and armor class systems – still contentious topics today.

As I expected, I find myself feeling slightly saddened by conclusion of Imagine's run. The final issue, like so many of its predecessors, is a mixed bag that points toward the potential the periodical had even as it also highlights its flaws. I've been attempting to reach out to some of the principals involved in Imagine, with the hope that I might be able to arrange interviews with them to talk about their memories and experiences of those day. So far I've met only limited success but I'll keep trying, because I'd love to know more about those days. The mid-80s were a fascinating time of transition in the hobby on both sides of the Atlantic and I'd love to learn more about it from people directly involved in it. Until then, I'll be moving on to a new magazine next week, Chaosium's Different Worlds, which ran for forty-seven issues between 1979 and 1987.

Retrospective: Bree and the Barrow-Downs

I started work on this week's Retrospective post under the misapprehension that I'd already written one, years ago, about Middle-earth Role Playing published by Iron Crown Enterprises. When I did a search of the archives, I discovered that the closest I'd ever come to doing so is this post on an advertisement for MERP and that must have been what I'd misremembered as a post about the game itself. Therefore, I briefly considered setting aside the work I'd done on this post and starting a new one on MERP, since I think it's a game well worth discussing here. In the end, though, I decided that, since I owned Bree and the Barrow-Downs before I owned Middle-earth Role Playing, it made more sense to talk about it first. I'll save MERP for next week's Retrospective. 

Published in 1984 and written by Heike Kubasch, this 32-page book describes Bree-land, a civilized area of central Eriador consisting of four settlements inhabited by both Men and Hobbits. Bree is, of course, the largest and most significant of these settlements and plays a role in The Fellowship of the Ring as the location of the The Prancing Pony inn, where Frodo and his companions first meet Aragorn. The book includes maps of Bree and the neighboring villages of Archet, Combe, and Staddle. The maps don't include a lot of detail but all four places are small and have relatively few buildings anyway. Still, I must confess I was disappointed, somehow thinking that Bree at least would receive more extensive detail. Indeed, I bought the book precisely because I was so interested in Bree after my reading of The Lord of the Rings.

This isn't to say there's no information on Bree and the surrounding villages. Rather, the information is mostly "high-level," which is to say, focusing on matters of history, agriculture, and economy, as well as the prominent people and families of the region rather than on each and every building in the town. It's an unusual approach, one I didn't expect at the time but that I've come to appreciate a little more in recent years. Having a good sense of the inhabitants of Bree, their relationships, and their place in the town is just as important to making good use of it as a detailed key. Still, it would have been nice if we got something more akin to The Village of Hommlet – at least that's what I wanted.

Much more interesting is the treatment of the Barrow-Downs, which is extensive. We get some history, in addition to an overview of their overall structure and the wights that inhabit some of them. Twenty-one of the barrows get not only individual descriptions but also maps, showing their layout for use in game. Their descriptions identify who is buried in the barrow and, where pertinent, who they were and their place in the history of Middle-earth. As a kid, I loved the Barrow-Downs section of The Lord of the Rings and so was glad to see the loving detail provided in this lengthy section of the book.

Bree and the Barrow-Downs is a strange product and clearly reflects the early days of Iron Crown's publication of Middle-earth materials, in that it seems to have been written with traditional RPG "adventuring" in mind. The amount of detail given to the Barrow-Downs when compared to Bree is, I think, evidence of this. The Barrows, after all, are full of monsters and buried treasure and are thus of more immediate interest to players used to dungeon delving and similar activities. Perhaps that's unfair but, having re-read the book for this post, I find that my youthful disappointment in this book remains. I had such high hopes for it and, when they were dashed, I became skeptical of the other books in the Middle-earth line of game products (though, as we shall see next week, I eventually overcame that skepticism).