White Dwarf Reflections #22

In this issue’s editorial, Ian Livingstone asks if popularity in game system is the same as being the best. D&D is the front runner, but does that mean it’s a better game than Runequest or The Fantasy Trip? Of course not, but it’s nice to hear him say it. The best game is always the one you like the best. While last issue seemed oddly sparse they have packed this issue will all manner of stuff so there is a lot to get through!

On the Cover​

A warrior riding a giant stag beetle prepares himself to face a huge globe shaped installation (that looks very much like the front of the Discovery from the film 2001). This is another one by Eddie Jones, making his fifth cover for the magazine.

Features​

• 3D Dungeon Design (Mervyn Lemon): An interesting article for low budget dungeon creation. Essentially the idea is to take ceiling tiles and cut rooms out of them to make your dungeon floor plans three dimensional. A little bit “Blue Peter” (for you non-Brits, a show about crafting) by today’s standards, but we didn’t have so many accessories back then.
• Games Day ‘80: A quick photo report on the recent Games Day on Sept 27th 1980 at the Royal Horticultural Society’s New Hall. I remember later ones of these still being basically one huge crowd with attendees and designers together in one vast room. It’s also awards time again, but with few surprises given D&D, Traveller and Runequest are the RPG leaders, and Citadel, Asgard and Ral Partha claim the awards for miniatures. Best wargames are Squad Leader, Diplomacy and Kingmaker and the best family games are Sorcerer’s Cave and Cosmic Encounter who are both beaten by Monopoly (the horror!). Best new games of 1980 are Top Secret, Air War 80 and Bushido. White Dwarf and Dragon are the best RPG magazines, along with Ares (with its first issue in 1980, but sadly the last one in 1984) and the old warhorses have still got it for the wargames magazines front with Strategy & Tactics, Military Modelling and Phoenix also getting awards.
• Robe and Blaster (Rick D Stuart): This article takes a look at nobles in Traveller. It grants their titles a lot of power, so the Referee might prefer to make this an NPC option. But it certainly offers some interesting abilities and options for patronage.
• The Search for the Temple of the Golden Spire (Barney Sloane): This was the competition adventure for Dragonmeet III. It’s a wilderness search across a local area, following a riddle that might lead to the Temple of the Golden Spire and treasure! There are two mini dungeons (the temple itself and a kobold stronghold) as well as plenty of forest and village encounters. It’s a good sandbox adventure but it’s a little unclear why the adventurers might get on the hook for this except for ‘isn’t this what you people do?’ The riddle is not especially well done and some of the clues are easily missed with a wrong turn, but otherwise it’s a cut above the usual dungeon fare.
• What the Numbers Mean (Lewis Pulsipher): A variety of suggestions for what the numbers in D&D are trying to portray for the various attributes and abilities. Lew makes an interesting point that an 18 doesn’t make you ‘the best’ just puts your character in the highest percentile for their species. There are also some suggestions that as hit points include your defensive ability, you might reduce the hit points of sleeping characters to make a dagger at the throat more lethal.

Regulars​

• Character Conjuring: This issue the character class is The Black Priest by Lewis Pulsipher. Effectively, this is an evil cleric with plenty of Hammer Horror bells and whistles, dedicated more to evil itself than a specific deity. It’s an interesting variant, and I wonder if we’ll have letters about playing evil characters being against the tone of the game next issue. Thankfully the Satanic Panic never really hit the UK like it did in the US.
• Letters: The format changes to make more space as there is a lot of opinion to fit in! There is the usual pedantry about the Dungeons and Dragoons article as one reader takes issue with some of the weapons and armour and their damage. But alignment is still the topic of the day with several opinions on its failure or other people’s failure to use it properly. There is also a long letter about the various other magic systems after Ian Livingstone questioned the Vancian format of D&D magic.
• Molten Magic: Squashed into a corner, Molten Magic is back with figures from Citadel Miniatures, Asgard Miniatures and Ral Partha.
• News: Slotted around Molten Magic this issue is quite a full news column. Steve Jackson has just formed Steve Jackson Games, presumably printing The Fantasy Trip and offering ‘Kung Fu 2100’ and ‘One Page Bulge’ soon, which many of you may remember. Chaosium has new titles on the way for Runequest in the shape of Griffin Mountain and a boxed set for the Thieves World setting (which I still have on my shelf). Traveller and Judges Guild releases are still powering along, and TSR will be releasing A1 Slave Pits of the Undercity soon. FGU will also be creating more titles with Space Opera and Land of the Rising Sun (as well as Bushido). Finally, Games Workshop held a celebration to open their new store in Manchester on October 4th. Plenty of costumes and giveaways were there as well as long queues of gamers.
• Starbase: A quick but useful off the cuff detail on port facilities for Traveller this issue. It offers different levels of facility and services for when your beleaguered ship needs a repair or a refit. A little statistical but useful for the thoughts on what might be on offer.
• Treasure Chest: This issue it’s the turn of magic items, with eight new ones detailed. Some interesting and fun ones here, my favourite being Tenser’s Shield, which can be used as a floating carry disc.

Fiend Factory​

A collection of new monsters created by readers. This issue the monsters are based on a theme rather than an adventure, all being exceptionally tough “The Heavy Squad”:

• Capricorn (Roger E Moore): Similar to the star sign, this sea goat is a powerfully psychic aquatic species.
• Crystal Golem (Robert Outram): A golem made of crystal that is as hard as stone and can blast out prismatic sprays.
• The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Ian Cooper): A group of high level undead, who are the main vassals of Orcus (everyone’s favourite not entirely historically used semi-mythological deity). They are three upgraded ‘supra’ skeletal warriors and a high level (23rd) Lich. Not to be tangled with!
• Ungoliant: Queen of the Spiders (Peter Cockburn): An adaptation from Tolkein’s biggest spider spirit, and just as powerful. Basically an eight legged, armoured beholder that can drain light and magic.

There is also an update on the competition to create statistics for the Flymen announced a couple of issues ago. The runners up are Phil Masters, Alan Harper, Y M Gay and Martin O’Donnell, with special mention of the art that accompanied Alan Harper and Keith McDonagh’s entries. But the winner is Daniel Collerton who also sent in an adventure the editor liked so much they will publish it with his winning entry next issue.

Open Box​

This month’s reviews are:

• Asteroid Zero Four, Wargame (Task Force Games): A nuclear space war erupts between two asteroid mining communities during a solar event. They’ve both been spoiling for a fight and a communication blackout gives them the opportunity!
• Mythology, Strategy Game (Yaquinto Games): This intriguing game involves each player controlling a god, each of whom are fighting to control the heroes wandering the land. There is a random element with fate cards and the ‘puppeteer’ style of the game is quite a new idea.
• Stellar Conquest, Wargame (Metagaming): Its 1980 and this game is being released in its 3rd edition already! Considered to be one of the first of the “4X games” (Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate!). Will see another edition in 1984.
• The Gateway Bestiary, Runequest RPG Supplement (The Chaosium): A big monster manual for Runequest, broken into section for Greek style monsters, Celtic horrors and even some Lovecraft beasties.

 

[sevenbastard]

On the Cover

Thats a solid cover. Darksun meets the Deathstar. Plus it looks like the hero is wearing a hoodie with the sleeves cut off.

 

[Starmaster]

The module map on page 20 reflects something that I've always liked about module maps made by UK authors rather than US authors. The maps of castles and other fortifications usually LOOKED more like realistic castles and fortifications, with a logical layout for defense, thick walls, arrow slits, support columns for large chambers, exterior buttresses, and such. For other examples, look at Alderweg keep in module UK3: "The Gauntlet" which came from the UK division of TSR as well as the town of Eylea in UK module I8: "Ravager of Time".

Fortress maps appearing in those TSR modules that were designed by American authors were often drawn as a something like a simple square with thin lines for outside walls and a random jumble of rooms & corridors on the inside. There are exceptions to the latter, of course. For example the maps of Strahd's castle in I6 and the various maps in N3: "Destiny of Kings" are reasonably believable.

 

[Sir Brennen]

Steve Jackson Games was formed after Steve left Metagaming. That company kept the rights to The Fantasy Trip (until just a few years ago), so SJG came out with Man To Man, a combat game that was an obvious expansion and evolution of Steve’s work in TFT.

Man to Man itself was just a stepping stone to SJG’s GURPS system that came out shortly after.

 

[Starmaster]

The tale of mighty, unstoppable Ungoliant and her all-consuming appetite was my favorite part of "The Silmarillion". I especially enjoyed

Spoiler: SPOILER

the horrifying ending she where she wandered away to the south and no-one heard of her again, but it was said that in the end, in her uttermost famine, she devoured herself.

 

[Paragon Lost]

Steve Jackson Games was formed after Steve left Metagaming. That company kept the rights to The Fantasy Trip (until just a few years ago), so SJG came out with Man To Man, a combat game that was an obvious expansion and evolution of Steve’s work in TFT.

Man to Man itself was just a stepping stone to SJG’s GURPS system that came out shortly after.

If by shortly, you mean five years later for Man to Man. Which is when I first saw it and the books copyright is 1985. On the rest, yep freaking Metagaming keeping TFT for so long sucked....

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Steve Jackson has just formed Steve Jackson Games, presumably printing The Fantasy Trip

As others have noted, TFT only came back into SJG's hands after Howard let it lie fallow so long Steve could legally reclaim it without his permission, going through the court systems instead. His new company's biggest output consisted of expanding OGRE and GEV at a steady clip, the increasingly successful The Space Gamer magazine (which would eventually lose that awkward "the" in the title), Car Wars (which launched in 1980) and in a few years Illuminati.

Asteroid Zero Four, Wargame (Task Force Games): A nuclear space war erupts between two asteroid mining communities during a solar event. They’ve both been spoiling for a fight and a communication blackout gives them the opportunity!

The game's often been likened to a carrier duel, although it might be more accurate to call it a slugfest between two island airbases since you can't actually sink the asteroids, just demolish the installations built on them. If you're nostalgic for Cold War Soviet-vs.-US nuclear war fantasies it's right up your ally. The two sides are very similar but different enough to tell apart (the uS use fighter-bomber hybrids, where the Soviets rely on more specialized designs) and I never could decided if one or the other had a clear advantage.

Stellar Conquest, Wargame (Metagaming): Its 1980 and this game is being released in its 3rd edition already! Considered to be one of the first of the “4X games” (Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate!). Will see another edition in 1984.

It'll eventually wind up with an Avalon Hill edition as well. It gave Diplomacy a run for its money in terms of popularity for a few years back in the day, with a similar slew of magazine articles analyzing best strategies and tourney play at cons.

If by shortly, you mean five years later for Man to Man. Which is when I first saw it and the books copyright is 1985. On the rest, yep freaking Metagaming keeping TFT for so long sucked....

It got us GURPS instead. Whether that's for better or worse is hard to say.

Thats a solid cover. Darksun meets the Deathstar. Plus it looks like the hero is wearing a hoodie with the sleeves cut off.

I can't recall seeing it on an actual novel, but it has that feel. The ship in particular is very typical of the ones described in H Beam Piper's stories, albeit writ large. Could be Lensmen- or Skylark-inspired as well - but yeah, any sphere-ship on 1980 raises a question of whether it was Star Wars influenced despite the idea having been around in the early days of pulp scifi.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The maps of castles and other fortifications usually LOOKED more like realistic castles and fortifications

Probably because we have more real castles!