White Dwarf: Issue #42

Issue #42 of White Dwarf (June 1983) is one of a handful of issues for which I have particularly strong memories, in large part because of the two articles that feature on the cover: "Irilian" and "Cthulhu Now!" The magnificent cover by John Blanche also likely played a role, as it nicely incorporates the historical, creepy, and goofy elements I so strongly associate with British fantasy in the '70s and '80s (and that Warhammer honed to perfection). Ian Livingstone's editorial notes that he'd received a certain amount of what he describes as "hate mail" concerning the changes to the magazine's appearance that began with issue #39. Long-time readers apparently preferred the "quaint" look of the earlier issues. As a proud hater of change, this does not surprise me to say the least.

The issue kicks off with the first part of "Cthulhu Now!" by Marcus L. Rowland. The purpose of the article (and the series it inaugurates) is to provide rules additions and expansions to make playing Call of Cthulhu in the 1980s possible. This issue's installment focuses on new skills, firearms, and careers (including rock musician). While I am no longer as enamored of the idea of playing Call of Cthulhu in the present day, I simply adored this article in my youth.

"... to Catch a Thief …" by Graham Staplehurst is an article devoted to crime prevention, detection, and perpetration in Traveller. It consists entirely of new technological items, such as alarms, locks, IDs, and personal gear of various sorts. The article is fine for what it is, though, even in 1983, I felt that the last thing Traveller – and, by extension, most SF RPGs – needed was yet more technological items. "Shamus Gets a Case" by Oliver Dickinson is another tale set in New Pavis featuring Griselda. Like its predecessors, this is a fun story that offers a unique spin on Glorantha's most famous city and its denizens.  

"Open Box" begins with a review of SoloQuest 3: The Snow King's Bride for RuneQuest. The reviewer, Oliver Dickinson, has some minor quibbles with the solo scenario but is otherwise quite pleased with it, giving it a score of 8 out of 10. Marcus Rowland is similarly pleased with two new Fighting Fantasy books, The Citadel of Chaos (9 out of 10) and The Forest of Doom (10 out of 10). I have a particular fondness for The Forest of Doom myself, so this pleases me. On the other hand, FASA's Grav Ball – a game I only know from old advertisements in Dragon and elsewhere – gets a mere 4 out of 10. Neither The Morrow Project nor its scenario, Liberation at Riverton, do much better, earning 5 and 6 out of 10 respectively.   

In his "Critical Mass" column, Dave Langford offers his opinions on the nominees and winners of various science fiction and fantasy awards, including the Hugos. I remember a time when I not only recognized but had read many of the books on such awards lists. Nowadays, like so much else, I have no knowledge of them. "Castles in the Air" by Lewis Pulsipher is a short but interesting article in which he muses about why dungeons might exist in a fantasy setting. In the process, he implicitly raises the equally relevant question of why so many fantasy worlds resemble copies of medieval Europe, despite the presence of magic and monsters that would, for example, obviate the utility of traditional castles. "Careers in Traveller" by Marcus Rowland presents the code for a computer program that will randomly generate Traveller characters – a staple of 1980s gaming magazines.

Daniel Collerton's "Irilian" is the first part of a six-part series describing the titular city of Irilian. Each part includes a scenario that introduces a new aspect or portion of the city, along with additional information about Irilian's society and culture. The first part, in this issue, is mostly an overview of the city, detailing its laws, calendar, diseases, religion, and so on. What stands out is that Collerton makes use of Old English words to name the people and places of Irilian, which gives it a unique flavor. I adored this article in my youth, along with its sequels. I read and re-read them many times and even placed Irilian into one of my old campaign settings.

Phil Masters continues his "Inhuman Gods" series, this time giving us information on the deities of norkers, svirfneblin, and trolls, among others. "Rune Rites" presents "Horses" by Graham Cobley, a collection of RuneQuest game statistics for different breeds of horses. In principle, I've long liked the idea of such details; in practice, though, it's rarely been the case that any player has cared as much as I did. "The Sorceror's [sic] Spell Book" by Gary and Terry Saul is a fairly typical collection of new spells for use with D&D. The only truly memorable one is Valin's Total Inversion, which kills its target by turning him inside out. The spell was quite infamous in many of the gaming circles in which I moved back in my youth and understandably so.

It's difficult for me to be objective about this particular issue, since it was one of my favorites of old. "Irilian" remains the issue's centerpiece and I think it holds up quite well, even after all these years. I look forward to re-reading the next five issues, which further develop the city and its inhabitants.

150 Years is a LONG Time

One of the intriguing commonalities between Gamma World and The Morrow Project is that they're both set about 150 years after the collapse of human civilization. Likewise, in both cases, that collapse is the result of a destructive, global war, using (in the case of TMP) nuclear weapons or (in the case of GW) even more devastating weaponry. Furthermore, both games postulate settings in which there are ruined cities dotting the landscape -- futuristic "dungeons" for the player characters to explore and to loot, such as the one depicted in Dave Trampier's cover to the first edition of Gamma World, pictured to the left.

Now, I'm far from an expert in such matters, but it seems to me that, given both the destruction wrought by nuclear warfare (or worse) and 150 years without human habitation, power supplies, or regular maintenance, there wouldn't be many ruined cities left for the PCs to explore. There are plenty of examples in the real world of cities that were simply abandoned by human beings and, within fairly short order -- we're talking mere decades -- they've literally fallen to pieces. Add a century or two of neglect into the equation and it seems likely to me that Gamma World or The Morrow Project characters aren't likely to find the recognizable ruins of many cities.

That's not to say that some structures won't survive. I have little doubt that the comments to this post will soon include many examples of buildings whose unusual construction might allow them to withstand a century and a half of the elements without maintenance. But I'd hazard a guess that there won't be many such examples. We tend to forget just how much work is necessary to keep most large cities not merely operating but holding off the relentless march of Nature. New York City, as I understand it, pumps millions of gallons of water out of its subway every day. Without power, it'd rapidly fill completely with water, flooding the city's streets, not to mention the basements and lower levels of buildings, none of which would contribute to the continued stability of tall structures. Think what the city would be like after more than a century of that, plus the effects of nuclear and other weapons.

I don't fault anyone for wanting to ignore stuff like this. I don't think it's necessary that post-apocalyptic games should be any more "realistic" with regards to ecology than fantasy games, though I do think there's something to be said giving more thought to such questions. Back when I used to play Gamma World regularly, I very much liked to portray the post-fall society as a "clean slate." Sure, there were some remnants of the Old Days kicking around, mostly heavily-protected subterranean vaults, but most of the surface of North America had reverted to Nature, albeit a radiation-fueled Mutant Nature. That gave me a lot of freedom to create new settlements, societies, and cultures without worrying too much about how -- or if -- they mapped on to what had been extant 150 years previously.

Of course, the real reason so many post-apocalyptic settings, including those in RPGs, don't pay much heed to the effects of time and tide on the works of Man is that a big part of the appeal of these games are their references to contemporary people, places, and events. Moreso than most science fiction, post-apocalyptic tales are ready-made to comment on the present, particularly its foibles and vices. To present a post-apocalyptic world where one's character is not only ignorant of the past -- our world -- but likely to see very little evidence of its existence takes some of the fun out of the genre for a lot of people.

Besides, it's not as if having famous landmarks survive Armageddon is any less plausible than intelligent ape-men and most of us scarcely raise an eyebrow over their existence, right?

You maniacs! You blew it up!

Morrow Project Question

Can anyone confirm or deny that The Morrow Project was once available as a boxed set? Every fan of the game I know has always stated emphatically that the game was only ever available in a single volume without a box, but I have a strong memory of seeing someone with a boxed version. Am I misremembering this?

Thanks.

Petty Gods Update

That's Khaldranath the Ox Lord, another petty god who'll be making his appearance once this book is made available.

So, where do things stand on this project? There are still some late submissions I haven't yet looked at, as well as quite a few art descriptions I need to send out. My plan -- and we all know how good I am at following through with such things -- is to sort through the last submissions today. Then I'll final table of contents for the book, which I'll post here in a few days, listing the names of all the gods, their areas of patronage, and their authors, as well as whether I have an illustration for them. That way artists who'd still like to contribute can pick a deity of their choice rather than having one assigned to them by me. My hope is to have the text all done and ready to go by month's end. After that, it's just a question of layout, which in turn depends on having all the illustrations in my hands. Once I do, we're in the home stretch. The final book will be made available as a free PDF or as a for-cost book on Lulu.com.

Let me also state here that, while I plan to release the text of the gods as Open Content under the Open Game License, neither Paul Jaquays's foreword nor any of the artwork are Open Content, with the copyrights to each remaining with their creators. If anyone who contributed to Petty Gods does not want their submission to be released as OGC, please contact me separately and I can accommodate you to the extent it's possible under the OGL. Otherwise, my intention is to release this material to the world in the hopes that others will adopt and adapt some of it in their own games and projects.

Another Petty God

As the artwork for Petty Gods keeps rolling in, I can't help but share it. Here's another amazing piece by Mark Allen -- hire him if you have any projects that need art! This is Jhillenneth, the Mother of Horrors, a petty god submitted by Matt Fischer.

Retrospective: The Morrow Project

As I think I've mentioned before, when I was a kid, there were certain games that had a mystique associated with them. This mystique wasn't always a good thing; sometimes it was a bad thing, as in the case of, for example, Chivalry & Sorcery, which my friends and I deemed "too complex" and "unplayable." Looking back on it, I realize that most such games were ones we didn't play or didn't know people who played and so either assumed were "bad" games or "elite" ones -- games so amazing that only a special few gamers were worthy to play them. TimeLine Limited's 1980 post-apocalyptic RPG The Morrow Project fell into the latter category.

Unlike Gamma World, which was my post-apocalyptic game of choice, The Morrow Project had a reputation for being "realistic." In retrospect, this reputation was ill-deserved, but, back then, games that fetishized firearms and military gear were typically considered realistic, even if, as in TMP's case, they also included "undead" beings reanimated by radiation. I think TMP's reputation was also based on its premise: the characters are all cryogenically frozen soldiers and scientists who awaken 150 years after a nuclear holocaust destroyed civilization as we know it. As a premise, it's a good one, since it allows the players to portray people not unlike themselves who are thrown headlong into a world gone mad where they're expected to try to lay the groundwork for a rebirth of civilization. This gives both players and referees a straightforward frame of reference and structure on which to build a campaign.

The Morrow Project suffered somewhat from having a fairly uninspired game system, except where combat was concerned, where the aforementioned gun fetishism comes into play. But like a lot of games from those days, gamers overlooked rules inadequacies because the world it described was a compelling one. Living nearly 30 years later, it's hard to remember just how plausible a nuclear holocaust seemed to many people, particularly young men. While I certainly didn't live in perpetual fear of World War III, I didn't discount its possibility and I spent many hours imagining what my life might be like if such a thing did occur. What made The Morrow Project so attractive was that it simultaneously acknowledged my youthful fears and assuaged them by giving us a chance to play men and women from the present trying to save the future. Even now, I find the scenario it paints a powerful one.

TimeLine Limited still exists, albeit under different ownership. There have been plans for a 4th edition of The Morrow Project for some time, but they have yet to see the light of day, owing, I suspect, to the limited resources of the current owners. That's too bad, because a revamped version of the game, with simpler but expanded rules and an updated setting could be just as compelling today as it was back in 1980. Fear of nuclear annihilation may not be as common as it once was, but most of us, I think, still worry about the future and the possibility that our actions today might create not a better but a worse world. Games like The Morrow Project speak to that possibility in an engaging way, which is a pretty good goal for any roleplaying game in my opinion.