White Dwarf Reflections #26

Ian Livingstone reports that readers very much want a monthly magazine, but in return he needs more articles and material to support doubling the release rate! I would have certainly answered that call had I not been 11 and still learning the rules to AD&D.

On the Cover​

A dragon menaces an adventuring party, who seem taken by surprise despite its size. The warrior struggles to control his horse as a dismounted man at arms readies a weapon. The wizard is tries not to look behind him while he finishes tying up some sort of bundle. It looks very odd though. Is he on top of a deflated airship, or is he actually a very small Halfling securing the pack of an unseen horse in the foreground? Share your answers in the comments!

Features​

• Amber to Red (Neil Cheyne): This is the winning entry for the competition in issue 23. I did find it a little disappointing though. There is a solid background with a planet in turmoil as its people are being evacuated after chemical warfare. But the adventure itself just boils down to stealing a ship and taking off with it with a small addendum to reach a rendezvous. Still, it’s a good starter adventure to set up the PCs with their own ship.
• The Dungeon Architect, Part 2: The Constructed Dungeon (Roger Musson): This part deals with the architecture and physicality of your dungeon. Some excellent points about how rooms don’t need to only fit on one level and how you can mess with the map makers in the party.
• The Dungeon Master’s Guide to the Galaxy (Marcus Rowland): Marcus Rowland (already becoming a regular contributor as well as renowned games designer) continues his look at D&D in space with how gravity might work. Again, this is all before Spelljammer and his conclusions are very similar, with a good mix of H.G.Wells.
• An Introduction to Dungeons and Dragons, Part 4: fighters and Thieves (Lewis Pulsipher): This issue we move onto the warriors and the rogues. While the fighters don’t get much detail as their job in the party is to hit stuff (although I feel there might have been more here) Thieves get a lot of good suggestions about how to find their place.
• Quiz and Questionnaire Results: Thankfully we have the answers to last issue’s quiz, so it was nice to know I was right about the tiny amount of questions I could answer! More importantly we also have the result of the questionnaire/survey from last issue. So here’s what we know about gaming in 1981:

Dungeons and Dragons is the most popular game (no surprise) four times more popular than its closest rival Traveller. The other three of the top five are Runequest, Chivalry and Sorcery and Space Opera, who are each a third as popular as Traveller. The age range of gamers is 11 to 40 with the most common age being 16 and the average being 19.

As to White Dwarf itself, most readers want more, and are happy with any more of anything as its all pretty good. Fiend Factory, Treasure Chest and Open Box are the most popular features, although there isn’t much between any of them. It seems that now Kalgar is gone no one has any issue with any of the content (even though I liked Kalgar). The most popular adventures are The Halls of Tizun Thane (1st) The Lair of Maldred the Mighty (2nd) Bar Room Brawl (3rd) and The Lichway and The Sable Rose Affair (joint 4th). Seems like White Dwarf readers love adventuring in the lair of a big baddie. The favourite articles are The Dungeon Architect (1st) An Introduction to D&D and Expanding Universe (joint 2nd), The Magic Brush (3rd) and Backdrop of Stars (4th). So kudos to Dungeon Architect and Introduction to D&D who have only have their first or second part out when the questionnaire went out.

The top three covers turn out to be Issue 23 (1st, Wizard in Lab, Emmanuel), followed by Issue 19 (2nd, Ghoul, Les Edwards) and Issue 17 (3rd, Crashed Ship, Angus McKie). I think my favourite so far is Issue 12, what was yours?

Regulars​

• Character Conjuring: In a break from character classes we get a new character species, Lizard Men, from Roger E. Moore and Michael Brown. It’s a pretty solid set of options should one decide to leave the swamp for a life of adventure
• Letters: There is both praise and pedantry for Roger Musson’s Dungeon Architect articles, the praise coming from no less than TSR’s Don Turnbull. The “I know the books better than you” Tolkien pedants take issue with Lew Pulsipher using Gandalf as an example of a wizard last issue. There are questions on crossbows versus longbows for the editor, further discussion about the Silence 15’ radius spell and a suggestion about combining Strength scores when forcing doors. Finally, Roger Moore is surprised how much he liked the Detective class, and to be fair it is a little ahead of its time. We’ll not see city murder mystery adventures for a while yet (although The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh and Secret of Bone Hill will release this year).
• News: Now firmly in the format of a newspaper called Midguardian, the lead story is that White Dwarf lost the Best Magazine Award at Origins to The Journal of the Traveller’s Aid Society. TSR is releasing a series of “minigames” starting with Barbarian Prince and Outpost Gamma. The Judges Guild is diving into more Traveller content with “The Glimmerdrift Reaches” as well as more AD&D adventures. There are more figure releases, especially for Traveller, and Steve Jackson Games is soon to release a game called “Killer” which will be banned across college campuses very soon after its release!
• Starbase: As promised last issue, Starbase offers two systems for problems using your ship’s jump drive. Most are mechanical, so I’d have liked to see some strange space/time events as you fall through hyperspace. But these are still solid and very useful systems.
• Treasure Chest: This issue Treasure Chest gets two whole pages! It fills them with a collection of eight new magic items of varied power, the eighth item being a kit of five nasty assassination tools. Some interesting and off the wall choices here rather than just stuff that does more damage.

Fiend Factory​

This time we step away from the mini-adventures again, but I’ll forgive it as there is still a theme, this time tribal creatures. As the editor points out, these are useful for pretty much any level as you can decide how many of the tribe you might meet:

• Asrai (Roger E. Moore) A potent species of water creature that take female form and live in the deep ocean. They know many of the secrets of the deep but have no real concept of time. Very interesting role play potential.
• Forest Giant (M. Newton & D. Healey) A good take on a type of giant you realise should have been included a long time ago. They are essentially non-plant Ents but a solid new monster nonetheless.
• Shadow Goblins (Barney Sloane) A rather dangerous mixture of Goblin and Drow, complete with scimitars and illusion magic. Very cool and very dangerous.
• Winter Kobolds (Jonathan Hardwick) A nice twist on an old classic. Not what the PCs will expect as they shelter in a cottage as the snows come down.

Open Box

This month’s reviews are:

• Apocalypse, Board Game (Games Workshop): One of the other big 4 games GW advertise together (with Doctor Who, Valley of the Four Winds and Warlock). This has been describes as “Risk with Nukes” although there seems a lot more to it than that.
• Book 5 High Guard (2nd Edition), Supplement for Traveller (GDW): Only a year after release, this book gets a second edition. It feels like GDW realised the previous version wasn’t quite fit for purpose. So it’s good they released an upgrade, but bad their more dedicated customers couldn’t get this version originally.
• Knights of Camelot, Board Game (TSR): This game appears to be a version of King Arthur’s Knights, previously released by Chaosium. The main disappointment to this review is that the reviewer (Charles Vasey) spends half the review explaining how mundane and inane RPGs are (his problem seemingly being that a game you can’t win is just rubbish). Eventually he does get down to reviewing the actual game and does a decent job. Board Game Geek thinks there was a Second Edition of this released the same year, but I’m not sure if it’s an upgrade or correction.
• Module S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, AD&D Adventure (TSR): The PCs set out to deal with an array of new monsters haunting the local area. But - Spoiler warning – it turns out they are escaped from a crashed alien spacecraft (linking AD&D to Metamorphosis Alpha). You either loved or hated this module when you discovered the secret, or lost a character pointing one of the new weapons they find in the wrong direction!
  

 

[GuyBoy]

Regarding the cover, I assumed the spheres were the dragon's eggs, and Mama returned none too happy about what the adventurers were doing to her brood.