Tuesday, January 11, 2022

White Dwarf: Issue #23

Issue #23 of White Dwarf (February/March 1981) features a striking cover by Emmanuel, probably best known for the cover of the Fiend Folio. It might well be my favorite cover of the magazine so far and beautifully encapsulates the arcane, almost forbidden quality I strongly associate with the first few years of my involvement in the hobby. Ian Livingstone's editorial is shorter than usual, in which he briefly muses about the possibilities home computers might afford roleplaying gamers in the future. From the vantage point of 2022, it's easy to poke fun at Livingstone's naivete and optimism, but he wasn't wrong to expect that developments in computer technology have an effect on how we play – and indeed conceive of – RPGs.

"An Introduction to Dungeons & Dragons" by Lewis Pulsipher is the first part of what is described as a series "written for those who have little or no experience of playing" the game. Much like "The Beginner's Guide to Role Playing Games" from the pages of Imagine, I can't help but question the purpose of articles like this. Would anyone utterly unfamiliar with D&D ever buy or read a copy of White Dwarf in order to become better informed about the hobby? Perhaps it was intended to be given to neophytes to read by someone hoping to expand his circle of players? 

The first part reads almost like a history – and prehistory! – of Dungeons & Dragons itself, with Pulsipher relating the fact that Dave Arneson had described the activities of his original Blackmoor campaign to him in 1972, long before he had any real understanding of just what was aborning in Minnesota. That Pulsipher highlights the contributions of Arneson is fairly remarkable to my mind, seeing as his was a name that wasn't much spoken in 1981, at least in the circles in which I moved. Pulsipher also states that "D&D is not a pastime for crackpots." He supports this claim by explaining that "one of the designers is in his early 40's, a minister and former insurance executive." Is he referring to Gary Gygax here? Gary would have been 43 at the time of this issue and he did work as an insurance underwriter, but minister? Did I miss something about Gygax's life?

Next up is a lengthy interview with Marc Miller of Game Designers' Workshop. It's a superb interview filled with lots of insights into Traveller – so superb, in fact, that I'll be devoting an entire post to it later this week. "Fiend Factory" continues after the model established a couple of issues back by a series of related monsters and then a scenario that makes use of them. In this case, the monsters are the Flymen by Daniel Collerton, a collection of humanoid houseflies, which I have to admit strikes me as faintly ridiculous. The accompanying adventure, "The Hive of the Hrrr'l," is better than it has any right to be, given the silliness of the monsters. It presents a large, twisting hive of Flymen whose internal conditions are at times quite alien and disorienting to non-insects. 

"Open Box" reviews four products, starting with GW's own game, Warlock (8 out of 10). I've always felt somewhat uncomfortable with a publisher reviewing its own releases, but this review seems even-handed and fair. Cults of Prax for Chaosium's RuneQuest and receives a much deserved 10 out of 10, while TSR's Deities & Demigods achieves only 8 out of 10, which I think is generous. The final review of the issue is Leviathan for Traveller (9 out of 10).  

"The Elementalist" by Stephen Bland is a new class – a variant magic-user – for use with D&D. As its name suggests, the class specializes in elemental knowledge and magic, including more than two dozen new spells. Not having had the opportunity to use the class in play, I can't speak to how well it stacks up against other classes. Based on reading it, I like it what Bland is attempting to do with it and think it might be a good addition to certain kinds of campaigns. "A Spellcaster's Guide to Arcane Power" by Bill Milne is a proposal for a power point magic system for AD&D. Again, I've not had the chance to use it, but it looks much like one would expect. The only thing about it that caught my eye is that Milne indicates that he modeled it on AD&D's psionics system, something I don't believe anyone has admitted to doing before.

"Khazad-Class Seeker Starship" by Roger E. Moore is a new small craft for use with Ttraveller, described in brief detail, along with a set of deckplans. "Non-Magic Items" describes four unusual but non-magical items for the referee to introduce into his D&D campaign. That sounds more exciting than it is, since three of the four items are simply exotic weapons (and the fourth "item," an odd plant, is there mostly for its damage-dealing capacity). That's too bad, because I'm generally of the mind that most D&D campaigns include too many magical items, even as I recognize the need for providing memorable rewards for the player characters. A collection of truly odd but non-magical items that aren't just weapons would go some way toward alleviating this concern of mine.

Issue #23 is a solid one. I particularly like the increasing presence of Traveller coverage in White Dwarf's pages, as well as its willingness to do things differently than magazines like Dragon. I'm keen to see what the next issue will bring.

19 comments:

  1. Are the comics showing up yet? I have fond memories of the recurring Travelers (name correct?) and Thrud the Barbarian comics.

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    1. Those comics have not yet shown up. They were favorites of mine as well.

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  2. "I can't help but question the purpose of articles like this. Would anyone utterly unfamiliar with D&D ever buy or read a copy of White Dwarf in order to become better informed about the hobby?"

    I don't know about the US but in the UK White Dwarf was available in local newsagents and W H Smiths (a chain of newsagents/book shops)...and browsing the magazine stands was something lots of people did. They would have been stacked next to the wargames and modelling magazines...and probably caught the eye of many a browser who may have been intrigued by the art and the subject material.

    In fact, the local game shop wasn't a common thing here in the UK...especially outside the cities. I picked up the Moldvay Basic box from a local small town toy shop in 1983. And I discovered White Dwarf and Imagine browsing the magazines in W H Smiths (along with a brilliant 'choose-your-own-adventure' magazine whose name escapes me)...I'd never heard of them before. I don't think I went to a proper game shop until I visited one in my nearest big city...though I'd already been playing for a year or so.

    So it is quite possible that White Dwarf hoped to attract newcomers via availability in local shops.

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    1. WD52 (April 1984) was actually the first issue to appear in newsagents. It's mentioned in the WD51 editorial, followed by a welcome to new readers in WD52. I guess it was game shops and subs only prior to that.

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    2. That makes sense. I was introduced to D&D in 83 and remember discovering Imagine and White Dwarf in the newsagents several months or so afterwards.

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  3. Edit to my original post: I remembered the name of the choose-your-own-adventure magazine...Proteus. I eagerly awaited it each month! https://annarchive.com/proteus.html

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  4. How many thousands of times has someone invented a magic-user class that specializes in one flavor of magic? How neat and tidy...and pointless! To couple that with the Aristotelian elements seems the lowest hanging of fruit. I think I was 10 years old the first time that thought occurred to me...and then independently to each one of a dozen of my D&D playing peers in Middle-School who owned Holmes Basic. (shakes head)

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  5. Whether you like them or not, someone thought the flymen were cool enough to merit reprinting in Best of WD Scenarios 2 - you can see it over here:

    https://dokumen.tips/reader/f/best-of-white-dwarf-scenarios-2

    Not the best thing ever, even within the same volume, which has a bunch of other reprint articles including Traveller adventures and One-Eye Canyon from last(?) issue. The visuals of the critters are kind of silly and obviously inspired by the old Fly movie, but I find it hard to entirely dislike the idea of adding more insect-ish intelligent species to D&D. Fantasy RP in general is awfully light on those for my tastes. TFT's Hymenoptera are more what I'd like to see, but Collerton sure put some work into the Hrrr'l so that's worth a bit of respect.

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  6. Belatedly occurs to me that the size-changing thing with the flymen is likely inspired by Leiber's Fafhrd and the grey Mouser story with the size-changing rats and the miniature underground city below Lankhmar.

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  7. “Would anyone utterly unfamiliar with D&D ever buy or read a copy of White Dwarf in order to become better informed about the hobby?”

    Computer magazines of the era did the same thing. You’d have articles on programming in BASIC and assembly right next to a very introductory article on why you’d want a computer and how you’d go about deciding which computer to buy.

    I can speak from personal experience, that it worked. When I picked up my first computer magazine on the local newsstand (Hobby Computer Handbook) I didn’t even do so thinking I’d be getting a computer. I picked it up because it had a bunch of ads for pocket calculators. By the end of the summer, I did not have a pocket calculator, but I did have a TRS-80 Model 1 (and I programmed a calculator into it, although it obviously wasn’t pocket).

    Had I not been introduced to D&D by a friend, I was already reading fantasy, and might well have picked up a magazine with covers like that.

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    1. I can second this. The first computer and White Dwarf magazines I read were the property of a friend's big brother who had left them behind while he was at uni.

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  8. Is it me, or had reviews a tendency to be exceedingly generous?

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    1. In this issue? Not tremendously. Prax and Leviathan are both spot on, and Deities is at worst a 6/10 to me, assuming it's the Moorcock & Lovecraft version. Warlock is a self-review so it's pointless to even bother looking at. Very poor form reviewing your own stuff.

      In general though, yeah, WD seems a little generous. They're no Space Gamer (with its "turkey" reviews) nor do they go for the derogatory, sneeringly superior tone SPI mags tended to adopt far too often for my tastes.

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    2. Well, the thing to remember I that Games Workshop was also selling the games it was reviewing so it makes sense to tart up even the less impressive products.

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  9. "one of the designers is in his early 40's, a minister and former insurance executive."

    Gary was a fairly observant Jehovah's Witness, at least earlier in his life; he put a notice in the IFW Monthly in February 1969 explaining why, as a JW, he didn't celebrate Christmas. I suspect Pulsipher either got slightly garbled info or was stretching a point.

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  10. As I understand it, all baptised members of the Jehovah's Witnesses are considered to be ordained ministers.

    So Gary Gygax was a minister.

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  11. It's interesting that in Warhammer RPG 1st edition there was five flavors or 'arcane' magicians: battle wizards (the generic mage), illusionists, daemonologists, necromancers and... elementalists. I think that D&D elementalist could be the first draft of that idea.

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