Tuesday, May 23, 2023

White Dwarf: Issue #75

Issue #75 of White Dwarf (March 1986) sports a horror – or I should I say Call of Cthulhu? – themed cover by Lee Gibbons, whose work appeared several times in the past few months, most notably issue #72. This issue marks a changing of the guard at the magazine, with Ian Marsh taking over its reins from Ian Livingstone. In his inaugural editorial, Marsh admits to "an element of trepidation" about his new job, especially at a time when WD is "mutating slowly into a different beastie." He elaborates on this, explaining that there is a "shift away from the usual formulaic style" of the magazine, by which I think he means an end to the regular, monthly columns and other features that have defined its content since the beginning. Regardless, the times, they are a'-changin' at the Dwarf.

"Open Box," for example, consists almost entirely of reviews of Games Workshop products, starting with the Supervisors Kit for Golden Heroes (8 out of 10) and Terror of the Lichemaster (9 out of 10) for use with Warhammer. There's also a review of Judgment Day (9 out of 10), an adventure for Judge Dredd – The Role-Playing Game. Rounding out the GW products covered this issue is its edition of the venerable science fiction boardgame Cosmic Encounter (also 9 out of 10 – I'm sensing a theme here). Finally, there's a look at Chaosium's second Call of Cthulhu companion, Fragments of Fear, which earns 7 out of 10. While it's inevitable that a periodical published by a company involved in the industry it's covering will include reviews of products it also publishes – TSR's Dragon certainly did – I nevertheless can't help but feel a line was crossed this issue, given the preponderance of Games Workshop releases reviewed. Perhaps next issue will be better?

I feel like a bad person for only enjoying Dave Langford's "Critical Mass" when he snarks about books about books and authors I, too, dislike. This month he brings the hammer down on the Darkover novel, Hawkmistress:

There will no doubt be hordes more 'Darkover' tales from Marion Zimmer Bradley: publishers love issuing books very similar to previous ones. Hawkmistress ... despite its veneer of science-fantasy, seems hauntngly familiar. Heroine Romilly wears breeches and gets on well with animals, but Daddy wants her to don girlish clothes and marry. One knows instantly that the chap Romilly finds most loathsome is Daddy's intended bridegroom: and so it proves. With hawk and horse our heroine to find her way in the world.
The interesting thing about Langford's critique of the novel is not that he thinks it's bad – he calls its "a readable yarn" – but that it is essentially a romance novel in very thin science fantasy dress, which I think is a fair criticism of her oeuvre (and that of Anne McCaffrey, come to think of it).

"Getting the Fright Right" is this month's installment of Colin Greenland's "2020 Vision" column. It's a collection of reviews of then-current horror movies, broadly defined, ranging from The Return of the Living Dead to Fright Night to Teen Wolf. Greenland's reviews of these films is interesting, because, as the article's title suggests, he takes some time to talk about the proper balance of thematic elements within a horror movie to make it enjoyable for him. I like this approach to reviews, since, even when I disagree with them, I at least understand where the reviewer is coming from and that's quite useful.

"Thrud Gets a Social Conscience" is this issue's installment of "Thrud the Barbarian," humorously addressing the claim that the comic (and, by extension, the entire genre of sword-and-sorcery) is sexist. This leads to an amusing exchange between Thrud and his occasional female guest star, Lymara the She-Wildebeest, about how her attire reinforces negative sexual stereotypes.

There are also new installments of "Gobbledigook" and "The Travelles," but they're not nearly as amusing.

Oliver Dickinson's "RuneQuest Ruminations" is a look at the third edition of RQ (published by Avalon Hill) with a special focus on those parts of its rules that he found vexing or inadequate in some way. A lot of the article is very "inside baseball" to someone like myself whose experience with RuneQuest is limited. What most comes across, though, is how much of a shock and disappointment this edition of the game was to many of its long-time fans, particularly in the way that it downgraded Glorantha to the status of an afterthought. 

"How to Save the Universe" by Peter Tamlyn is a lengthy and thoughtful look at "the delights of superhero gaming." Tamlyn's main point seems to be that there are a lot of different styles of play within superhero RPGs – more than enough to satisfy almost every preference. Consequently, one should not dismiss the entire genre as "kid's stuff." "Gamesmanship" by Martin Hytch is an oddly titled but similarly lengthy and thoughtful look at "injecting a little mystery" back into AD&D adventures. The overall thrust of the article concerns the way experienced players treat so many of the game's challenges in a procedural fashion, quoting rules and statistics rather than entering into the fantasy of it all. It's difficult to summarize Hytch's advice in a short space; suffice it to say that it's mostly quite good and filled with useful examples. I may write a separate post about it, because I think he does an excellent job of addressing the many questions he raises.

"Mass Media" by Andrew Swift looks at the nature of communications technology at various tech levels in Traveller. It's fine for what it does but nothing special. On the other hand, Graeme Davis's "Nightmare in Green" AD&D adventure is phenomenal. Aimed at 4th–6th level characters, it concerns the threat posed a collection of nasty, plant monsters crossbred by a mad druid. I'm a big fan of plant monsters, so this scenario immediately caught my attention, all the more so since some of the monsters are inspired by the works of Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith. 

That brings us to another highlight of this issue. You may recall that, back in issue #68, reviewer Marcus L. Rowland gave a very negative review to GDW's Twilight: 2000. This led to a flurry of letters in issue #73, both pro and con Rowland's review. With this issue, Frank Chadwick, designer of the game weighs in and he pulls no punches.
"The Heart of the Dark" by Andy Bradbury is "an illuminatingly different" Call of Cthulhu scenario, because it does not directly feature any encounters with the Mythos or its associated entities. Indeed, the adventure includes no game statistics of any kind "since it is doubtful that they will be needed." This is a pure, roleplaying scenario filled with lots of investigation, social interactions, and red herrings. It's intended as a change of pace 

"Local Boy Makes Good" by Chris Felton looks at character background in AD&D, with lots of random tables for determining social class, birth order, father's profession, and so on. I suppose this could be of interest to others, but not to me. Finally, Joe Dever begins a new series on preparing and using oil paints for miniature figures. I know nothing about this topic; despite that, I find it weirdly fascinating, like all of Dever's articles in his monthly "Tabletop Heroes" column.

Issue #75 of White Dwarf continues the recent trend of feeling slightly "off" to my sensibilities. There's still plenty of excellent content, but there's also an increasingly detectable undercurrent of change and not for the better. Perhaps I am simply hypersensitive to this because I know that WD will soon be little more than a house organ for Games Workshop and I am constantly one the lookout for signs – any signs – of this imminent transformation. Regardless, I will keep plowing ahead, though, for how much longer, I don't yet know.

18 comments:

  1. I'd recommend hanging in there until at least issue 85.

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    1. I'd love to stick around to 100 (the end of the issues to which I have access), but I don't know if I'm strong enough.

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    2. You can do it! We believe in you!

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  2. That Nightmare in Green scenario was good. From memory, it had the Brothers of the Pine, who I always thought were interesting humanoid plant monsters.

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  3. I'm somewhat ashamed to admit that I read Hawkmistress back in the days before Bradley's monstrous personal habits were known and I have to say, she's guilty of many crimes but that particular book is almost the polar opposite of a romance novel. If it apes any particular genre it would be young adult wish fulfillment aimed at teen girls, and even that isn't really a fair assessment. The "hawks & horses" thing grows out of the lead's inherited psionic ability to merge minds with them, making her family the best beast trainers and vets in the world, so at least the stereotyped "all girls want a pony" BS has a bit of a rational explanation.

    If anything I'd call it a less bloody-minded prototype of for Game of Thrones. The book's full of factional politics and clashes between religious factions, as well as dwelling on how much say adults should have on the course of a child's life as they reach their mid-to-late teens - which is admittedly a young adult theme as well. The lead decides on her own to pursue psionic training in the end, which is on par with entering a monastery and (as I said) the opposite of a romance novel ending.

    You still shouldn't read the damn thing because it was written by an inhuman monster who completely escaped paying for her behavior during her lifetime, but don't avoid it just because some idiot reviewer told you to expect a Harlequin romance novel. It isn't that, at least.

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    1. Same here, I fully agree with your comment

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  4. Chadwick really had some fun skinning his critics there, but I can't help but think the answer to his last question ("When was the last time anyone bitched about the plausibility of D&D?") is easily answered with "Right now. Someone, somewhere is bitching about D&D being implausible right this very moment. Hit points are dumb. Armor class makes no sense. Why can't wizards use swords? Etc., etc. etc."

    Kind of weakens an otherwise well-stated argument for me.

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    1. Amusingly, the editorial comment immediately after Chadwick's later reads, "Last Tuesday, as I recall ..." in reference to his rhetorical question.

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    2. Yes, obviously people bitch about D&D, and always have done. But they bitch about some aspect of the mechanics. They usually don't say that D&D is crap because its setting is implausible, whereas Chadwick is complaining that Rowland does just that: he rejects Twilight: 2000 because he thinks its setting is implausible, not because the game is poorly designed. I think he has a point there.

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  5. I was going to ask if there was a response either editorially or from Rowland to Chadwick's statement but the "Last Tuesday..." reply is glaring in what it doesn't say, if that's all there was to it.

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  6. I have some sympathy for Chadwick's frustrations that the previous review and follow-up letters were "playing the man, not the ball", but as I think I said when you first reviewed issue 68, the presentation of the game's theme was very much made from an American standpoint despite being set in Europe. It made me feel uncomfortable in a way that no other game of that era did, and it was for that reason that I didnt buy it and none of my rpg playing friends bought it either. The exception might have been the supplement about the LA class nuclear submarine City of Corpus Christi. I was interested in that.
    That there might be different cultural perceptions amongst a UK audience probably wasn't something that Chadwick gave much thought to. Not by malice or deliberate disregard, but simple omission, or perhaps more likely (as he said) that it was just a game and should not be taken too seriously.

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  7. I realised that at issue 75, there's less than 2y away to the point where GW said that they weren't covering anyone else's games in WD. It seemed a lot longer than that, more like 5y.

    If you are working from a digital archive then it might not be obvious to you that the physical appearance and feel of WD changed from the mid 60s and again around issue 90 I think. This also was a disappointment, and in my view the issues in the 50s and 60s were the best.

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    1. I am indeed working from the digital archive, so this is very useful information.

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  8. Were you slyly implying that the cover had appeared before (in GW’s hardcover publication of C&C from 1985)?

    In any case, very appropriate art given the editor’s statement that WD was "mutating slowly into a different beastie."

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  9. My recollection from the time is that GW had brought out a board game called Blood Bowl, and started using WD as a vehicle to promote that, to the detriment of other content. But skimming through some upcoming issues gives the lie to that. There are certainly some *very* jarring changes coming, in quite rapid succession too, but there are still some nuggets there. There's also a mini RQ revival around the corner as GW finally got a license to publish a local edition of RQ3.

    I think it's worth sticking it out for a while yet, but despite that I'd still admit that I'd hardly fault you if you bailed at any time.

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  10. That RuneQuest 3 review is ironic given that GW is about to publish its own version about a year later, and it may have even been in the works when the review was written. It can't have been that bad a game! ;)

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