White Dwarf Reflections #13

This issue, Ian Livingstone talks about how gamers can get in touch. With no internet yet, one of the biggest questions in this age of the hobby was “how do I find a group?” I remember local games stores often putting up lists of groups looking for new players. But White Dwarf is helping a lot here by specifically calling on people to post their game clubs and groups in a special classified section so people can get in touch.

On the Cover​

A very conanesque barbarian with a sword and an angry look seems to be failing to help a young woman with barely any clothes on get to her feet again. She must have just fallen over and be trying to help herself up by clinging onto his leg like that, poor girl. This is another by Eddie Jones, although in all honesty I think I like his spaceships a lot better.

Features​

• Advanced D&D Combat Tables (Gary Gygax): In something of a coup for White Dwarf, this article presents the combat tables from the upcoming “Referee’s Guide” for the new AD&D edition. In 1st edition, the target number needed to hit (by class level versus AC) was on a table (several in fact), and in the DM’s Guide not the Player’s Handbook. Given THACO would be introduced in 2nd edition you couldn’t otherwise calculate it (although if you knew the numbers you could figure out the formula). So these tables are printed to not only offer a preview of the next book, but make the edition playable!
• Expanding Universe (Andy Slack): The first of what would become many general articles expanding the Traveller RPG. In this issue a look at skills and how to use them, and how to run poisons and chemical weapons.
• The Houri (Brian Asbury): A new seducer/enchantress character class for AD&D, and one of the more balanced and well-presented ones. While it probably wouldn’t fly in today’s climate, this has always been one of my favourite classes from White Dwarf (along with the Demonist). While it offers an unfortunate staple of fantasy games (and a rather sexist stereotype) the writer does try to address these. But what I find most interesting is that as a charm/manipulator class it is very suited to role play encounters, cities and political games rather than dungeons, and so in that case is possibly ahead of its time.
• Valley of the Four Winds, Part 6 (Rowland Flynn): The sixth and final part of a short story introducing the setting of a new Ral Partha figure range, where our heroes fight a desperate battle against an undead horde to decide the fate of a kingdom.

Regulars​

• Molten Magic: Quietly disappears again this month, but will return next month. Maybe it’s gone alternate.
• Letters: Its back, and people are still annoyed. This time about someone reviewing a game who didn’t like it as much as they did and someone else thinking Fiend Factory has gone downhill. Don Turnbull thinks it’s time we retired the Monstermark system and it is no surprise there are many letters about Don mistaking Gnomes for Halflings in his article on the Player’s Handbook.
• News: Not a lot of big news here. The industry is eagerly awaiting the upcoming Referee’s Guide for AD&D (I wonder when they’ll start calling it the Dungeon Master’s Guide) as well as the new DM’s Screen (possibly the first of its kind). TSR also announced some new boxed games, noteworthy among them being Boot Hill that will (along with Gamma World) be one of the more popular ones. The Judges Guild also gears up with a lot of new modules for D&D that TSR hasn’t approved but can’t do much about.
• Treasure Chest: A large collection of spells this month, 14 in total, for a variety of uses.

Fiend Factory​

A collection of new monsters created by readers:

• Doombat (Julien Lawrence): A rather neat undead bat creature for when you are bored of using Stirges.
• Imps (M. Stollery): An interesting and low level hell creature for a group not tough enough to face demons and devils. Lots of elemental varieties too to keep them fresh.
• Shadow Demon (Neville White): This one has an interesting background as it’s a demon suffering the punishment for being manifested in the form of a shadow. Lots of potential adventure ideas that come up with that one.
• Terithran (Ronald Hall): A really nice monster designed to limit mages who go too wild with spells. It is the ethereal police force that shuts down overuse of magical power that might damage the planer landscape.

Open Box​

This month the (only two) reviews are:

• B1 (In Search of the Unknown) and S1 (Tomb of Horrors) Adventure Modules (TSR) Two of the great grandfathers of adventures released for the first time. One, a great introductory adventure for low level (and to be included in the upcoming Basic D&D boxed set). The other, possibly the most deadly dungeon ever designed. I’ll let you guess which is which.
• Dungeon Floor Plans, Accessory (Games Workshop) The first of what will become a staple for floor plans for D&D players for the next two decades at least.

 

[GuyBoy]

The Houri class was certainly "interesting", though my view of it then (as a 16 year old rugby playing schoolboy) was less mature than I am now. I do remember the little joke of the backstory featuring an unfortunate rogue called Thaddeus Leaf, and wondering if the wordplay joke translated across the Atlantic?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I don't remember if the "imps" in this issue turned into mephits (I was too distracted by the few pieces of art in the houri article), but if so, then 100% of this issue's Fiend Factory made it into the Fiend Folio, although I think the doombat lost its undead nature along the way. The shadow demon, of course, also made the jump to the cartoon and has been a staple of D&D ever since.

 

[Bolongo]

I don't remember if the "imps" in this issue turned into mephits

Not directly, but perhaps through mutation.

The imps in this issue are fiends (of variable alignment so they can be either demonic or devilish), not elementals, and the varieties are: fire, steam, smoke and molten.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

This is another by Eddie Jones, although in all honesty I think I like his spaceships a lot better.

Can't argue with that.

Not the most interesting of issues, but at least we're done with Valley of Four Winds and the regular Traveller feature has begun.

 

[Corone]

Not the most interesting of issues, but at least we're done with Valley of Four Winds and the regular Traveller feature has begun.

To be fair, I wasn't looking forward to reading Valley but it was better than I expected.

 

[ilgatto]

I don't remember if the "imps" in this issue turned into mephits (I was too distracted by the few pieces of art in the houri article), but if so, then 100% of this issue's Fiend Factory made it into the Fiend Folio, although I think the doombat lost its undead nature along the way. The shadow demon, of course, also made the jump to the cartoon and has been a staple of D&D ever since.

Not directly, but perhaps through mutation.

The imps in this issue are fiends (of variable alignment so they can be either demonic or devilish), not elementals, and the varieties are: fire, steam, smoke and molten.

As noted, the White Dwarf #13 imps, or "Imps of the Flame" (Martin Stollery, 1979), were "of the Imp class" as per the (lawful evil) imp in the Monster Manual (1977) and, perhaps more so, The Dungeoneer #3 (1976) and, later, All the Worlds' Monsters Volume Two (1977, Mark Norton in each case). The latter were "(best described as) demons", and therefore chaotic evil, though Stollery's imps could be "either Chaotic Evil or Lawful Evil, depending on whether they serve Demons or Devils."
The "mephits" in the Fiend Folio are also by Martin Stollery and they are virtually identical to his imps, though the molten imp has become the "lava imp" for some reason. The FF makes "the various mephits (...) the evil messengers and errand-runners of the powerful creatures of the Lower Planes (...) common inhabitants (...) from the Nine Hells to the Abyss. Their alignment varies, depending on their plane of origin, but they are always evil." Perhaps they became "mephits" instead of "imps" because of the alignment issue?
Later additions to the Stollery mephits were the ice mephit and the mist mephit (UK5, 1984; Graeme Morris), which also performed "missions for their powerful masters on the lower planes."
All of the Stollery/Morris imps were published together in WGR1 and MC14, which both still have them as "messengers created by powerful lower planes creatures".
Things started to go pear-shaped with MC16, which stated that all "16 known types of mephit draw their substance from the Elemental, Paraelemental, and Quasielemental Planes: fire, radiance, water, ice, magma, ash, mineral, steam, air, smoke, earth, ooze, dust, salt, lightning, and mist. (The Quasielemental Plane of Steam provides both steam and mist mephits. Alone among the Elemental Planes, the plane of Vacuum holds no life, not even mephits.)" -shudders-
Interestingly, the whole "imps alignment" thing sort of comes full circle in MC1, which has the "quasit" (CE) classified as an "imp".

Source: Mark Norton, in: The Dungeoneer, The Adventuresome Compendium of Issues 1-6 (Judges Guild, 1979)

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

To be fair, I wasn't looking forward to reading Valley but it was better than I expected.

It might be better read in serial format. I've only read it in one chunk via the board game, and it dragged in that format for me - and usually prefer longer fiction to short.

The "mephits" in the Fiend Folio are also by Martin Stollery and they are virtually identical to his imps, though the molten imp has become the "lava imp" for some reason.

At a guess, consistency? Molten is an adjective, while IIRC the others are all nouns. Certainly fire, steam, and smoke are - or at least can be when they're not verbs (fire that gun, steam that dumpling, smoke a coffin nail) because English is English.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Given how anemic the elemental planes were for a long time (and arguably still today), I can definitely see TSR UK moving mephits from being yet another set of sneaky little servants for fiends over to the elemental planes, although there, they really don't have a lot of powerful evil lords to serve. (The elemental princes of evil, who are still to come in White Dwarf, I believe, are pretty dopey.)

Sure, a few of them can serve efreets, but that leaves a lot of unemployed mephits hanging around, without their original purpose.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Sure, a few of them can serve efreets, but that leaves a lot of unemployed mephits hanging around, without their original purpose.

The poor things (and the elemental princes) fit better in 4e's cosmology where players are more likely to stumble on them either on the Prime due to random gates and dimensional slippage, or in the Elemental Chaos itself, which isn't so innately deadly heroic tier die just from standing there. And really, who goes the the quasi- and para-elemental planes regularly, much less at a low enough level to use mephits? The Elemental Chaos lends itself to that kind of mixed-element critter to start with, and the princes are pretty usable foes for upper-tier PCs.