Part Five: The Late Golden Age. Issues 41-50
Overall
May 1982 to February 1984. The magazine continues in much the same vein as the ‘30s, offering much the same mix of games as before. Some new departments appear –
Lew’s Views,
Counterpoint,
Super Mole and
Zine Scene, but these are all short-lived. There is a growing sense of a tongue-in-cheek magazine identity. Adverts for Games Workshop Mail Order are illustrated with the darkly comic figures of Lord Zlargh of the Black Sun (“Fear Me, Man-Things”) and his henchmen Agaroth the Unwashed and Ugbash Skullsplitter. The cartoons of Gobbledigook (by Bil), Thrud the Barbarian (by Carl Critchlow) and The Travellers (by Mark Harrison) appear (to mixed response). There are more of Oliver Dickinson’s excellent Griselda stories. Finally in Issue 50 the game statistics (in AD&D and RQ) are given for a bunch of “White Dwarf Personalities”. More on this below.
Elsewhere the gaming world sees the release of
Imagine, TSR UK’s in-house magazine with many White Dwarf writers producing material for both, and adverts appear for
Tortured Souls, a UK fanzine containing quality scenarios each issue.
Games
The two newest games to receive the most coverage are
Call of Cthulhu and GW’s own
Warhammer, in this, its first edition it is primarily a wargame with a bit of roleplaying tacked on. Iron Crown Enterprises have the license for Tolkien’s Middle Earth and are bringing out a lot of sourcebooks, initially for their
Rolemaster rules (they only produce a dedicated Middle Earth RPG later on). Tie-ins seem to be on the increase, with the arrival of a
James Bond RPG from Mayfair Games, and the announcement that FASA are working on a
Star Trek RPG. TSR release their
Star Frontiers SF game and also re-issue Basic D&D in the “red box” set. FGU add to their stable with
Privateers and Gentlemen, set in the golden age of sail, and
Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes for running a generic pulp/spy/action hero game (I daresay with one eye on James Bond and the other on Indiana Jones).
Not RPGs, but influential; more
Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks are published, numbers 2-5 (Citadel of Chaos, Forest of Doom, Starship Traveller and City of Thieves). GW also release the boardgame
Talisman. I’ve played it, it looks gorgeous and it’s good fun, but it never quite reached the levels of Magic: The Gathering as a method for Not Playing D&D.
TSR continues to push out a steady stream of AD&D adventures (including the
Desert of Desolation series), along with the
Monster Manual 2 and
Endless Quest gamebooks, but there are rumblings within the company about disgruntled freelancers. Chaosium continue to release material for RuneQuest (notably the
Pavis and
Big Rubble boxed sets), not to mention Call of Cthulhu with rumours of a
Ringworld RPG in the works. However, they also sell the rights to RQ to Avalon Hill.and the future of the game looks uncertain. GDW’s output of Traveller stuff slows from the massive burst at the beginning. Despite saying that he had no plans to do with scouts as he did with the military and navy in Mercenary and High Guard, Marc Millar releases
Book 6: Scouts. There are also rumours that he and GDW are in a rocky patch. The Big Three wobble on their perch whilst new pretenders emerge around them.
Scenarios
Irilian, Irilian, Irilian. This massive town-based adventure by Daniel Collerton spans six issues and provides a complete working city with loads of detailed encounter sites and a distinctive “pseudo- Old English” language, midway between Beowulf and Chaucer. The adventure itself only occupies a small part of the material and is mostly linear and simple, but there’s a good atmosphere throughout. It introduces a trend that continues in the two-part AD&D adventure
The Keys of Tirandor by Mike Polling, of story-boarded adventures where the players are led from one set-piece to the next with little chance to influence the chain of events. I say “storyboarded” rather than “story-telling” as it is possible to use storytelling methods to collaboratively build a narrative where all participants can influence the outcome; it is not necessarily railroading. However, in the case of Irilian and Keys particularly, the adventure writer wants things to happen in a certain way, in a certain sequence, and the adventure is written without much flexibility.
The Keys of Tirandor itself contains some good ideas but as well as the storyboarding it also has a unique setting with a very specific take on the AD&D rules, so it’s general utility is lessened. As a source for concepts, though, it’s good, with a very mystical ending that seems to blend elements of Jung and Buddhism for a very different feel from early dungeon scenarios. Beyond these there is a pleasing array of adventures for other systems.
Travellers get
The Snowbird Mystery by Andy Slack which revolves around a drug-smuggling operation gone awry and
Shuttle Scuttle by Thomas M Price, an audacious set-up where the characters can play, variously, the part of hijackers taking over a shuttle in the name of a revolution, the crew of the hijacked shuttle, the local air traffic controllers, the police or the local government, giving them access to levels of resources not normally allocated to player characters. Sort of Taking of Pelham 123* in space. The Snowbird Mystery is much more typical of Traveller adventures, with the now-hoary plot of a mysterious ship floating dead in space, but seems to lack a particularly strong hook for the PCs.
Similarly afflicted by lack of narrative drive is
The Watchers of Walberswick by Jon Sutherland, a Call of Cthulhu scenario set in 1920s Suffolk where, although there are Deep Ones in them thar sand banks, they just want to be left alone, which doesn’t seem behaviour typical of Lovecraftian horrors. Shouldn’t they be doing some menacing or something, or building towards a ritual to summon worse horrors? What’s cool, though, is comparing the map of Walberswick in WD with the reality on Google Maps – very close indeed except that modern Walberswick has a pub called The Anchor, not The Coach and Horses. Probably not coincidentally, Walberswick, Suffolk, is just down the coast from Dunwich...
Thistlewood (by Joe Dever) is a “scenario” for Warhammer (in other words a set-up for a battle) and
Kwaidan (by Oliver Johnson and Dave Morris) is a scenario for Bushido inspired by various Japanese and Chinese ghost legends, and very nicely done it is too, with heaps of atmosphere. To complete the mix of games there’s even a set of Car Wars scenarios from, who else? Marcus L Rowland. Finally, but one of my favourites, the
Lone and Level Sands, by Oliver Johnson and Dave Morris again, is an adventure for RQ and AD&D that forms the capstone for the Dealing With Demons series and is dealt with more below.
Articles
RuneQuest gets two big series, and arguably the best articles of this period.
Dealing with Demons by Dave Morris looks at mechanics for summoning demons and binding them to perform favours, giving a magic system with quite a dark and dangerous feel. The first article in issue 44 covers the mechanics and to my mind breaks the method down into too many skills – Demonology, Draw Pentacle, Ritual of Summoning. Ritual of Binding, Cast Possession. I think that it could instead be broken into two skills – Demon Lore for knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of demons, and Ritual Casting (plus maybe specific spell knowledge) to cover the others, but it’s a sound idea. Where the fun really starts is in the types of demon that can be summoned. Lesser demons are covered in issue 45, and the demon lords in issue 46. These are a wonderful assortment of gruesome creatures with odd shapes and eldritch names. Amongst lesser demons we may find the usual likes of the succubus/incubus and the demon-wolf but also creatures like the maggoty sraim, good for finding lost things, and the fly-headed rult, able to teleport you; much more interesting than the “Type I, II, etc.” that AD&D had at the time. The demon lords are wonderfully evocative, such as Bakshuro the Screamer who lives in a dimension so hostile that only he (it?) can survive it, or Lord Kesh, the Jewelled Serpent, Demon of Confusion and Terror. D&Ders are finally given a taste of the action in issue 47 with a
Demonist class from Phil Masters and some D&D conversions for the RQ lesser demons by Liz Fletcher. Finally all this demonology is bought together in a scenario in issue 48, the Lone and Level Sands. This is a bit of a zoo-dungeon (like the adventure tied to the Faerie series, it showcases as many of the new monsters as it can), and it also features tricks and traps (being a desert tomb). However, it carries these off with some panache and can be very atmospheric, with the assumed Questworld setting having an evocative pulp feel.
The second of the big RuneQuest specials is
The Travels of Tralk True-Eye by Ian Bailey, being a study of the goblins. The goblins in this instance are small grey forest-dwelling creatures, with variants having been driven into swamps and mountains by the action of other races. They are not inherently evil, unlike D&D goblins, but many of the goblin cultures bear no love for other races. Stats are given for several goblin sub-races, and then details of two cults over the course of issues 47-49. Crom Cruach, the Worm of the Night, is an evil, vengeful entity, with a Celtic/Lovecraftian flavour to its mythos whereas Curnos is more of a hunter god, blending elements of Celtic and Native American myths. All are very good and impart a lot of flavour and mechanics, crunch and fluff, in a small amount of space (I was surprised that the cults only took up a page apiece).
These series are aimed at the Questworld setting, probably to avoid any copyright issue or to avoid being “Gregged”, as the term is for sudden contradiction by edicts from Greg Stafford concerning Glorantha. Looking back at them, I think you could combine them to give a really good setting with a feel all its own. Most of the RuneRites articles are either about new combat subsystems or errata, clarifications and tweaks to existing rules. One article gives stats for the ki-rin (by Dave Morris) and the golem (by Simon Basham), both with a twist compared to their D&D equivalents; the article is titled
A RuneQuest Bestiary but altered, courtesy of my friend who had mild dyslexia, into the
RuneQuest Be-Stainery, thus converting a relatively minor article into a legend amongst my RPing friends.
If RuneQuesters are well served, what do Travellers get? A wide range of ideas and expansions, solid if not earth-shattering and no equivalent large series. There are a couple of new organisations to act as patrons for player characters –
ICE by Marcus L Rowland, which is a transport company that acts as a front for illicit activity, and the
Covert Security Bureau by Andy Slack, spies for the Imperium. These tie in quite nicely with the article on security devices and ways to overcome them, by Graham Staplehurst. Other articles cover red tape (Garth Nix - yes,
that Garth Nix), starport design (Thomas M Price), designing fleets (Andy Slack) and an update to Traveller’s rather dated view of computers (Marcus L Rowland). New ideas include what is essentially a Stargate, of the SG-1 variety (Bob McWilliams), some unusual planetary governments (Andy Slack) and a couple of alien races from Phil Masters – the Phulg’k’k’k crab-people and the Gashruan, chimp-like mercenaries. Most of these articles come with some scenario ideas, which is always a good touch, enough to spark plenty of adventure material from a referee prepared to do a little work.
Material for AD&D seems to be dominated by the prolific pen of Lew Pulsipher who gets his own column,
Lews Views, to hold forth on a range of topics that seem quaintly peculiar to AD&D when compared to the articles for other games – the rationale behind dungeons, how fast should characters go up levels and the relative pros and cons of allowing buying and selling of magic items - but he also writes broad discussions on realism in gaming and on using non-fiction as a source of ideas. Non-Lew articles include a closer look at playing assassins (
The Dark Brotherhood by Chris Felton) and clerics (
Divinations and the Divine by Jim Bambra), on constructing buildings (Chris Felton), the purpose of wandering monsters (Philip Palmer – an good article that suggests the idea of the “wandering event”, random happenings but still holding to the idea of the dungeon complex) and on running large scale battles (Allan E Paull). The general trend is away from mechanics and into a more discursive style; many of the articles contain little or no game mechanics but plenty of food for thought.
Crunch is left to those venerable columns Fiend Factory and Treasure Chest. Fiend Factory finishes Phil Masters’ series on non-human gods at the beginning of this period, but apart from the demon conversions and the humourous stats for White Dwarf personalities it doesn’t produce anything particularly stand-out. Most are chromed variants on existing creatures such as Dan Lucacinsky’s
Blackling (does for Halflings what drow do for elves) or Dale Hueber’s
Ivyx (a poison-ivy based dryad). Most lack any kind of exciting fluff to make them seem unique. My one favourite is John R Gordon’s
Trist, admittedly a throwback to the early days of monsters that stir up trouble in the party, but this evil little rootlike creature is quite evocative and I’ve used it as the basis for a larger adventure.
The White Dwarf Personalities by Phil Masters and Steve Gilham are amusing, giving AD&D and RQ stats for Thrud the Barbarian, Gobbledigook, Griselda and Wolfhead (from Oliver Dickinson's stories), Ian Livinstone, and Ugbash Skullsplitter and Agaroth the Unwashed (who supposedly run the GW mail order department); generally the RuneQuest mechanics get better jokes, with Gobbledigook having a skill for Ironic and Despairing Looks for example, but there are some good ones for the D&D stats as well, such Livingstone The Editor (a sub-class of thief), Alignment: Bar-wards, Weapon: Poison Pen, Treasure: Claims never to have any. They’re not really usable in a game, except maybe Griselda and Wolfhead, but I can forgive a bit of joking for the 50th issue! A boxed set of figures was later released.
Treasure Chest similarly seems to be running out of steam, but continues to do what it always has. It starts okay, with an article by Paul McCree converting Tron-style discs into AD&D weapons that sounds cheesy but is actually quite good. The magical variants might inspire some ideas in a setting that uses the chakram. There are some good new spells that are simple but effective, including
Silver Web (which is like a web spell but the web is made of silver, watch out lycanthropes),
Green Death (which turns you to green slime),
Shield of Disruption (undead destroying aura),
Lightshield (light aura) and
Valin’s Total Inversion (turns you inside out). All by Gary and Terry Saul and quite Vancian, as is Roger E Moore’s Prismatic Gun. The spell
Colour Change (by Jon Manktelow), on the other hand, seems pretty useless. It... changes the colour of things. And it’s second level. Oh, and it suggests one use is to change the colour of a fireball to look like a sphere of annihilation, expect that the caster must touch an object in order to effect the spell...
Some of the new game systems get some material too, with a two-part series for Call of Cthulhu called
Cthulhu Now, which give details for running CoC games in the 1980s, including new skills, professions and some scenario ideas. Marcus L Rowland again, who loves bending the assumptions of games, always in a good way. For Warhammer there is an article on giants by Rick Priestley (spelled Priestly here), including some amusing rules for which way they stagger if drunk, and a template to see who gets squashed when they fall over.
As well as Lews Views there are another couple of short-lived columns.
Counterpoint by Charles Vasey reviews boardgames, and is a bit wordy for my tastes, as well as over-specialised – boardgame reviews have survived quite well in Open Box for ages, and the lengthy reviews of the first couple of years of publication never really took off then.
Zine Scene by Mike Lewis looks at fanzines, much like Pete Tamlyn’s Tavern Talk from Imagine magazine, but doesn’t have enough space to do much justice to the range of fanzines. I can also see the editorial decisions to close this column as well – “Why are we telling people to read another publication?”.
Super Mole is another iteration of the news items, an attempt at a “gossip column” but it feels like there isn’t enough material to sustain it. It is quite interesting, but the News column does much the same thing. All of these get folded into other columns pretty quickly.
Finally the cartoons. A matter of personal taste, as is quickly displayed in the letters page.
Gobbledigook is passingly amusing but doesn’t take up much room anyway.
The Travellers has some good jokes hidden in it but the art style is very chaotic.
Thrud the Barbarian is a moderately amusing pastiche of Conan and Gor style fantasy that doesn’t take itself at all seriously. The biggest (and best) joke is in the design of its hero – a huge muscle-bound body and a tiny, tiny head (which is not a vital hit location according to his game stats in issue 50).
General
There’s a continuing explosion of new products in the industry, with ongoing changes about what can be done in RPGs, but at the same time there is a sense of success outrunning some of the major companies, this is the period where it really feels like the RPG industry shifts from the home-grown, amateurish market into a fully professional one, where aspects such as production values, marketing and distribution all call for dedicated staff. It’s also the birth of the solo gamebook – although Flying Buffalo had been releasing solo adventures for Tunnels and Trolls for years, this is where the concept of fantasy gaming is put into a format that can be sold in regular bookshops.
The Questworld RuneQuest material really dominates this batch of issues, with the older columns of Treasure Chest, Fiend Factory and Starbase not quite reaching those heights. They haven’t run out of steam yet, but they lack the freshness and exuberance that they once had.
The addition of the cartoons is a controversial one, with mixed responses in the letters page. Personally I don’t think any of them are truly outstanding, although there are a few good jokes from each that I still recall (most of them occur in the next batch of issues), but neither do they herald the end of days and a downturn in quality – it’s hardly as if more effort and attention is given to the cartoons than the RPG articles. In a way, it’s quite nice that they give the magazine a sense of identity; with recognizable characters.
*The vastly superior original version with Robert Shaw and Walter Matthau, obviously.
