White Dwarf: Issue #1

I've talked about my experiences with White Dwarf before. It's a RPG magazine that I only read intermittently back in the day and so my memories of it are not as vivid as those of Dragon. Likewise, when I did read it more regularly, it wasn't until late 1982, long after White Dwarf was well established and had settled into a comfortable run. Consequently, I have no direct knowledge of the magazine's early days, which I imagine were pretty wild and woolly. That's why, after the cessation of my examination of Different Worlds, I knew that my next series would be dedicated to White Dwarf.

Issue #1 is listed as June/July 1977, which is one year after the first issue of TSR's Dragon appeared. I think that's significant, because it's a useful reminder of just how early it appeared in the history of the hobby. Remember, too, that the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide explicitly references White Dwarf in a section entitled "Aids to Playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons," mentioned by side by side with Dragon. The only other third party publications mentioned in that section are those by Judges Guild. This is telling and should be borne in mind as this series goes forward.

The very first article to appear is entitled "Metamorphosis Alpha," written by Ian Livingstone, the magazine's editor and co-founder of Games Workshop. For the most part, the article is simply an overview of the TSR RPG of the same name. However, the article is more than that, offering new rules for gravitation, as well as discussions of stories like Robert Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky and Non-Stop by Brian Aldiss that influenced the game's creation. More interestingly, Livingstone offers some criticisms and suggestions for improvement.

Back to the rules themselves and criticisms. There are not many but just enough to irritate. The initial task of designing the starship and its contents is lengthy – unless your players want to play for the next four years solid, I suggest a smaller starship (same number of decks). 

Don Turnbull's "Monstermark System" presents a complex mathematical system for assessing the relative challenge of a D&D monsters relative to others (and to the level of player characters). Honestly, I have little basis for evaluating the the utility of the system, since I've never used it. Truth be told, I've never seen much use for this kind of evaluation, but I readily concede that I'm probably unusual in not caring about such matters. I know that the Monstermark System has a solid reputation among fans of D&D, so I have little doubt that Turnbull had come up something worthy of consideration.

"Open Box" is a collection of reviews, focusing on two wargames: SPI's Sorcerer and Avalon Hill's Starship Troopers. Meanwhile, "Competitive D&D" by Fred Hemmings tells the tale of one referee's desire to "score" a dungeon expedition, as two competing parties attempt to make their way through it. I've long been curious about this sort of set-up, so I read the article with some interest. "D&D Campaigns" by Lewis Pulsipher is the first part of a series dedicated to exploring how to establish a D&D campaign and adapt the game's rules to particular styles of play. The article is fine as far as it goes, very similar to other articles Pulsipher was publishing in other magazine's at the time. 

"The Warlord" by Steve Jackson – co-founder of Games Workshop, not (confusingly) Steve Jackson Games – is a discussion of the self-published boardgame The Warlord by Mike Hayes. I'd never heard of the game before, which is apparently quite similar to Risk but with nuclear missiles. "What's Wrong with D&D" by Andrew D. Holt offers complaints and suggestions for "fixing" the game's combat and magic systems. Ho-hum. Alan Youde's "Poison" adopts the poison rules in Metamorphosis Alpha for use with D&D. Shrug. There's also a new magic item (helm of vision) by Steven Littlechild.

All in all, the first issue of White Dwarf feels very amateurish – as it should. It's an uneven mix of material, none of which is bad, but very little of which stands out as noteworthy, with the possible exception of "Monstermark System." Nevertheless, it shows clear promise and I know from personal experience that it does improve with time. Much like Different Worlds (or Dragon, for that matter), it takes a while before a roleplaying magazine finds its footing and I have little doubt the same will be true of White Dwarf.  

Pulp Fantasy Library: Glory Road

When thinking of fantasy, the name "Robert Heinlein" is not one that immediately comes to mind. Heinlein made a name for himself as a science fiction writer, which is why it's difficult to know what to make of his 1963 novel, Glory Road. The novel had first appeared earlier the same year as a serial in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and, as was once a common practice, particularly for genre fiction, it was collected together and published in a complete form.

Glory Road tells the tale of a veteran named Evelyn Gordon, who is spending some time on the French Riviera after having been discharged from the military after serving in an unnamed conflict in Southeast Asia (presumably Viet Nam, but this is never stated in the text). While there, he answers a newspaper advertisement that puts him in touch with a woman of -- literally as it turns out -- unearthly beauty named Star, who enlists his aid in a quest for a mysterious item known as the Egg of the Phoenix. Along with Rufo, an older man who acts as Star's assistant, Gordon and Star encounter a wide variety of dangers, from tricks and traps to minotaurs and dragons, in their quest for the Egg, an item whose true purpose and nature are very different than Gordon initially imagines and whose discovery opens up even wider vistas for him to explore.

As I noted, Glory Road is an odd book that doesn't sit comfortably within the science fiction genre for which Heinlein was well known. Neither is it a pure fantasy. Instead, it straddles both genres, borrowing liberally from each, which may explain why many modern Heinlein fans dislike it. For myself, I've long felt that Glory Road was Heinlein's attempt to produce a "sword-and-planet" novel after the fashion of Burroughs, but on a stronger science fiction. The result is a very uneven novel, but a fun one, provided you aren't distracted by the typically Heinleinian disgreesions into his then-evolving socio-political philosophy. The book thus has an odd feel overall. Some readers may see this oddity as contributing to their enjoyment, while others may see it as detracting from it. In either case, Glory Road is another book from an era before the boundaries between science fiction and fantasy were less well defined and even a writer as solidly in the former genre could freely borrow from the latter without too much comment.