White Dwarf - Myths and Legends
I feel compelled to add to this thread, to correct some of the misleading remarks that have been made about White Dwarf. Please forgive the hijack but some myths persist that should be dispelled.
It was Games Workshop's house organ from issue one. (The masthead gives the editorial address as 1, Dalling Road, Hammersmith, London - the original GW HQ.) And while it published D&D, Runequest, Traveller articles and all the rest, it did so for one reason:
In those days, GW published D&D, Traveller and everything by The Chaosium under licence from their respective American owners. GW was the main importer, distributor and publisher of these and other games in the UK. White Dwarf existed solely to promote GW's games (whether they were really GW's, like Talisman, or whether they were licensed products).
By 1987, everything had changed. GW no longer produced any TSR or GDW product under licence. It had some Chaosium licences still but the two companies weren't renewing those arrangements. GW was publishing West End's Paranoia under licence but that was a one-off deal. By 87, GW had published several of its own boardgames, WFRP and even the first edition of Warhammer 40000 appeared in time for Games Day. Development of Warhammer Fantasy Battle's third edition was almost complete.
At the same time, GDW's and TSR's house magazines were shifting their editorial ground. Both had covered other companies' games but such extraneous content was rapidly diminishing.
GW had no choice. White Dwarf did not make money; it was a loss leader. If it wasn't promoting GW's games, it could not survive.
So, it lent its full support to games GW developed. A lot of fans of RPGs were gutted, because who published what wasn't as relevant to them as buying a British RPG industry mag. The lay of the land had altered beneath their feet and they didn't like it. They were vocal about it, too. But here's the thing: When WD went full Warhammer, Bloodbowl, Dark Future, HeroQuest etc (GW had been sub-contracted by Milton Bradley to design HeroQuest and GW saw it as a way to introduce people to Warhammer), the magazine's audited circulation went from 56000 to 72000. You see, there were more gamers in the UK buying Citadel Miniatures than any other game product. Citadel Miniatures, run by Bryan Ansell, had taken control of GW from Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone a couple of years earlier, when GW had fallen into severe financial difficulties through bad accounting. Bryan knew that GW now depended on the vast Citadel Miniatures sales to survive.
So did I. That's why, in 1987, when I was appointed Games Editor at GW, I wrote a memo addressing this matter and suggested that WD should concentrate on its support for GW developed games. Three days later, I was sitting in WD's editorial chair.
Did I make mistakes? You betcha. I was 23 and very naive. I thought that we (GW) were going to do for WFRP what TSR had done for D&D. I thought we were going to make more great boardgames like Fury of Dracula and Curse of the Mummy's Tomb. We had taken the cream of TSR UK's development team and we had big names from Chaosium and West End Games coming over to England to work on various developments. We had a classic Frankenstein boardgame in development, along with something that I can best compare to d20 Modern. But these projects were canned. All the effort went into more and more Warhammer.
Today, WD still has the format and editorial I bequeathed it. I'm ambivalent about that. On the one hand, the fact that it hasn't changed a jot since suggests I had the right idea. The fact that it (and GW) is still doing practically nothing but Warhammer, fifteen years after I left it, is disheartening to me. I'm glad I left when I did.
A footnote: WD was quarterly for the first two years and bi-monthly thereafter, until around issue 36. Since then, it's been monthly.
I'll end the hijack now. If you're going to flame me, please do it in another thread and let this one go about its business. Thank you.
