Tuesday, January 25, 2022

White Dwarf: Issue #24

Issue #24 of White Dwarf (April/May 1981) features a cover by Dave Pether, an artist whose name I don't recognize. Ian Livingston's opening editorial touches on the growing popularity of roleplaying as a hobby, noting that "Last year TSR sold 500,000 sets of D&D." Whether that figure is strictly accurate or not, it's nevertheless a useful reminder of just how successful Dungeons & Dragons was, despite being, in Livingstone's words, "an esoteric hobby." He later suggests that the success of RPGs has led to an overall improvement in their quality, not just in their physical appearance, but also in their designs, as "no manufacturer can afford to have a turkey in his range." Opinions vary, of course, but I'm not sure this was truly the case in early 1981, but it's undeniably the case that RPGs had, by this point, come a long way from "three badly written rulebooks in a little box."

Lewis Pulsipher continues "An Introduction to Dungeons & Dragons" with a second installment dedicated to "Dungeon Mastering styles." He identifies four such styles, which he labels "simulation," "wargame," "absurd," and "novel." Simulation, as you might expect, is concerned with "reflect[ing] reality as much as possible." Pulsipher associates this style with games like Chivalry & Sorcery and then boldly asserts that simulationists "have no place in D&D." The wargame style is "how D&D is designed to be played" and prioritizes character survival and enrichment as the the game's primary goals. The absurdist style "condones unbelievable occurrences" and "arbitrary" outcomes. This style, I suspect, is that of the "funhouse dungeon." In Pulsipher's view, "the average game tends to fall between wargame and absurd game." The final style is "an oral novel in which the players are participating characters." The article teases out the strengths and weaknesses (in Pulsipher's opinion, of course) of each style and their consequences for a campaign. While I can't say I agree with all of its perspective, it is a genuinely interesting article that, if nothing else, gives the reader a glimpse into how some viewed D&D and its play at the time.

"Backdrop of Stars" by Andy Slack is a Traveller article focused on building a campaign setting. Slack goes over the pros and cons of using GDW's Third Imperium versus "rolling your own" and then looks at the various decisions the referee must make in the latter case. It's a solid, "meat and potatoes" article of the sort that I used to enjoy when I was young and inexperienced. Meanwhile, "Open Box" reviews three games I've never played and a Traveller adventure. Said adventure is Twilight's Peak, which I recently included as one of my Top 10 Traveller adventures (it scores 10 out of 10 here). The games reviewed are Eon's Quirks (9 out of 10), Yaquinto's Shooting Stars (8 out of 10), and Games Workshop's own Valley of the Four Winds (9 out of 10). I mentioned before that I'm not a fan of magazines running reviews of their own publisher's products, but it was standard practice once upon a time (and perhaps still is). 

"Detectives" by Marcus L. Rowland is a character class for use with AD&D. The detective is like a cross between a thief and ranger, with a small selection of detection spells. It's an intriguing idea for inclusion in certain types of campaigns, but I don't see it as having wide utility. "The Lair of Maldred the Mighty" by Mark Byng is a lengthy AD&D adventure for a party of high-level characters led by a cleric or paladin. The scenario concerns an expedition to the secret lair of an evil wizard the past, who once ruled a kingdom in thrall to devils. There's perhaps the core of a good idea here, but it's so densely written and buried under unnecessary detail that it's hard to say for sure. 

"Laser Sword and Foil" is a very short Traveller article by Bob McWilliams in which he touches upon the adventure possibilities in starship malfunctions. McWilliams says he will expand upon these possibilities in a future article. "Alignment in Role-Playing Games" by O.C. Macdonald begins as an overview of the concept before inevitably noting that, outside of D&D, few games use this concept, which is just as well, because it "adds little to the game." What an unexpected conclusion … 

"Fiend Factory" presents a five silly monsters in honor of April Fool's Day. They range from the bonacon, based on genuine medieval legend, to the llort (a reverse troll, which degenerates) and the Dungeon Master. The last is fairly amusing, actually, and I'll post its full description in an upcoming post. "Special Rooms, Tricks & Traps" describes four examples of the kind of thing you might find in Grimtooth's Traps (complete with a diagram in one case). Not being an avid user of traps, it's difficult for me to judge these, but, on first glance, they seem decent enough. One is written by Roger E. Moore, which, as a longtime reader of Dragon, is fun to see.

All in all, this was a pretty good issue of White Dwarf – or at least one I enjoyed reading!

12 comments:

  1. One suspects that the unknown Mr. Pether was working from a specific model for that cover illustration:

    https://images.app.goo.gl/U636SYm7NQFpK33F6

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    1. I'm not seeing it. Ms. Welch was hardly the first or only woman to pose in a skimpy pseudo-bikini, and none of the details really match.

      Pether did cover art for a number of scifi and fantasy novels novels. Obscure, but not unknown - and very much the kind of artist who White Dwarf would tap for a cover of their own.

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    2. Huh. To my eye all he did was change the orientation of her lower arms and put a cape on her. The pose, the boots, the loincloth, the top, the hair, the gaze are all 1:1 to me. But I’m no art critic; who knows.

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    3. Looks a little like Caroline Munro too https://www.carolinemunro.org/at-the-earths-core-9-c.asp

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    4. Well spotted Picador! That's an undeniable copy. Even the shading copies the shadows on the original. I suspect the features are different purely because he wasn't as good at faces. I bet the other figure is a copy too...

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    5. Infact by superimposing one image on top of the other you can see it has been traced - the head, and her left hand torso and leg, then the image shifted to one sife slightly for her other leg to make her torso wider!

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    6. LOL “nah, Racquel Welch’s breathtakingly large breasts aren’t QUITE massive enough for a fantasy mag cover, have to widen that torso a smidge…”

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  2. The "Dungeon Mastering styles” editorial sounds like the first stirrings of what would later become Ron Edwards’ tripartite GNS model, with (very roughly) “wargaming” = Gamism, “simulation” = Simulationism, and “novel” = Narrativism. The inclusion of the fourth category, “absurd”, might (from Edwards’ point of view) correspond to the incoherence generated by an unclear creative agenda, or might be regarded as its own variety of Narrativism.

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    1. I'd say the first stirrings (if we ignore earlier wargamer typologies or Pulsipher's earlier twofold model) were probably the year before with Glenn Blacow's fourfold model (Power Gaming, Role-Playing, Wargaming and Storytelling).

      Pulsipher's new model is best seen as a response to that and never really catches on in the same way. Partly because of the obvious "one true way" nature; the original name for the "absurd" was "silly" and he compares it to taking drugs.

      From his other articles, "absurd" is talking about high levels of randomness, especially arbitrary. Decks of many things, etc. So in Edwards' terminology I think it would be "gamist" despite the fact that it's being held up as a bad example against another "gamist" playstyle.

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  3. Dave Pether appears to have been primarily a cover artist for various scifi and fantasy books. Couple of good examples here:

    https://www.comicartshop.com/dealernewsdetails.asp?nid=6703

    and here:

    https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/author/gaskell-jane-cover-art-by-dave-pether/

    Many more out there, but search for "Dave" not "David" to find them. Don't see any biographical data offhand, though.

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  4. I question the utility of game reviews that range solely from 8/10 to 10/10, especially with that clunker Shooting Stars in the mix. Valley of Four Winds (which is the boardgame based on the earlier fiction pieces WD ran) is no shining exemplar of game design either, although it does have personality. I'll give it that. Quirks was one of Eon's most popular games, giving Cosmic Encounters a run for its money for a few years. Not my favorite game ever, but good beer-and-pretzels fun that you could drag out for parties with non-gamers to good effect.

    The detective class sounds like it would be best in an urban or at least politically-focused campaign, but perhaps it would work more for dungeon-delving and wilderness exploration if it were reskinned as a scout or explorer type, perhaps with a broader menu of spells?

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    1. I agree. From time to time I have to do ratings and gradings of the condition of ships, and I regularly have to commission other people to do them. In order to get useful information for the purposes of comparison any grading system must have the middle value as the expected value. A product should therefore score 5-6/10 if it does exactly what is expected of it. Superior products can therefore be given values of 7 or 8 out of 10, and an exceptional product gets 9 out of 10.

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