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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr Simon" data-source="post: 5970367" data-attributes="member: 21938">Part Six: A Widening Audience, a.k.a. The Ones Where I Subscribed.(Issues 51-60)<a href="http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=6069" target="_blank"><img src="http://index.rpg.net/pictures/show-thumbnail.phtml?picid=6961" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></a> <a href="http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=6071" target="_blank"><img src="http://index.rpg.net/pictures/show-thumbnail.phtml?picid=6964" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></a>OverallThe main change to the magazine in this period begins with Issue 52, where White Dwarf becomes available in national newsagents (such as WH Smith). Up until this point it was only for sale in specialist hobby shops, now it reaches even non-gamers. With this comes an expanded number of pages (and ads!), more colour, and an increase in cover price to 85p. More characters are added to the Mail Order stable, including Gunatha the Zombie, his Teddy Bear and grey-haired anarchist Auntie May (short for Mayhem), and these are further expanded in the “fanzine” Black Sun, sent out to subscribers, a sort of dark and irreverent parody of White Dwarf.<a href="http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=6077" target="_blank"><img src="http://index.rpg.net/pictures/show-thumbnail.phtml?picid=6966" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></a> <a href="http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=6083" target="_blank"><img src="http://index.rpg.net/pictures/show-thumbnail.phtml?picid=6967" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></a>GamesThe Dwarf continues to mainly serve AD&D, RuneQuest and Traveller, with some inclusion of material for the likes of Call of Cthulhu and Champions. Games released over this period include Mayfair Games’ James Bond RPG and Chaosium’s Ringworld and Elfquest RPGs, demonstrating an increasing trend for licenced products. On these lines, Iron Crown Enterprises continue to release lots of Middle Earth sourcebooks and announce that they are working on an official Middle Earth Role-Playing game. Games Workshop gain the rights to publish various US stuff, and also announce the development of a Judge Dredd RPG, with new-ish company FASA working on a Doctor Who RPG. TSR are working on Marvel Superheroes and Indiana Jones RPGs.In non-licensed games, Steve Jackson Games release Toon, exploiting a previously unseen niche in the RPG market. Avalon Hill release Powers and Perils and FGU release Lands of Adventure, two non-specific fantasy games that fail to really take off, because they don’t do much that pre-existing games don’t. Pacesetter Games release Chill, the Horror-Game-That-Isn’t-Call-Of-Cthulhu.TSR have some other non-licensed works of import, amongst others the Battlesystem mass combat game and the first of the Dragonlance modules (DL1 Dragons of Despair). Chaosium continue to release a steady stream of Call of Cthulhu but, having sold the rights to Avalon Hill, nothing for RuneQuest. The biggest release for Traveller is The Traveller Adventure, a massive softback campaign book.Moving in on the not-an-RPG front come more Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks and some more gamebook series including Steve Jackson’s Sorcery, Joe Dever and Gary Chalk’s Lone Wolf series, and two series by JH Brennan – Grailquest for younger readers and the Demonspawn Saga for older readers. <a href="http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=6087" target="_blank"><img src="http://index.rpg.net/pictures/show-thumbnail.phtml?picid=6970" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></a> <a href="http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=6092" target="_blank"><img src="http://index.rpg.net/pictures/show-thumbnail.phtml?picid=6971" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></a>ScenariosThe highlight, for me, is The Temple of the Doomed Prince by Phil Holmes, an adventure using RQ, AD&D and, uniquely, Empire of the Petal Throne game mechanics, set in the Empire of the Petal Throne world of Tekumel. It is fairly straightforward, with the player characters sent to investigate the loss of contact with a remote temple and encountering the things that caused the loss of contact. What makes it special is not only the evocative setting but also the fact that it provides an opportunity to expand it into a larger campaign, with several campaign seeds built into the adventure. The scenario features a log book left behind by the missing priests that gives an eerie description of the downfall of the temple, and strangely enough, the same device is used in two other adventures – Paul Ormston’s Sky Rig for Traveller and The Last Log for Call of Cthulhu, by Jon Sutherland, Steve Williams and Tim Hall. Sky Rig is an adventure set in a gas-mining facility in failing orbit around a gas giant inhabited by a mysterious alien entity; The Last Log is set in the far future around an abandoned archaeological dig on a distant planet, showcasing the versatility of the Call of Cthulhu system. These two adventures are good as well, all of them simple but allowing for a lot of player activity. Last Log has a nice miniature diorama in lieu of a map (using a Space 1999 Eagle), and looks like it was used at a convention.Innovation shows in many of the other scenarios as well. Anna Price’s On the Road is an event-based adventure for RuneQuest set over the twenty-one days of a caravan journey, with internal strife, murders and broo bandits. The Ballad of Times Past (Dave Morris and Yve Newnham) is an AD&D adventure with similarities to The Key of Tirandor; set in its own capsule universe (where magicians need powdered dragon eggs to power their spells). It is linear but not quite as story-boarded as Tirandor. Spiderbite by Oliver Johnson is a low-level AD&D scenario; not overly original in its subject matter of a trap-filled tomb in the jungle, but the three-dimensional aspect to the map makes it unusual and it is a good potential drop-in adventure. Strikeback is a superhero adventure for Champions and Golden Heroes with a heavy flavour of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, with potential encounters with Sherlock Holmes, Captain Nemo, Count Dracula and other such characters. The kind of crazy invention you’d expect from Marcus L Rowland. The Hour of the Tiger, by Chris Elliott and Richard Edwards, is nominally for AD&D, RQ or Bushido but is pretty much devoid of mechanics. It’s a scenario that follows up a lengthy series on ninja characters (see below) and is unusual in that the characters are expected to avoid all encounters, using stealth to spy on a conversation instead of hacking their way through.The remaining scenarios are generally solid but less innovative. The Bleeding Stone of Iphtah is a short Call of Cthulhu adventure from Steve Williams and Jon Sutherland, set in 1920s Egypt and fairly typical for a CoC adventure, involving investigation, archaeology, shifty foreigners and unspeakable things. Minas Tirith from Joe Dever presents Tolkien’s Battle of the Pelennor Fields for Warhammer with some impressive diorama photos. The Serpent’s Venom, by Liz Fletcher, is a low-level dungeon crawl that does what dungeon crawls do, functionally but with little in the way of twists. This is published in issue 52, the first one to potentially reach a wider audience and I think something a bit more special would have been better. The Sunfire’s Heart by PG Emery, is a two-part “mini-epic” (if such a thing can exist) with a search for an artefact, but in play it is very light in terms of content, with a lot of empty rooms and strangely little challenge. There are some good ideas in the background, however, and it could springboard a longer campaign. It is a winner of a scenario competition, but I can’t find which issue the competition appears in. The Fear of Leefield by Stuart Hunter is a decent low-level scenario, very similar to Paul Vernon’s Trouble At Embertrees but making good use of the various articles from earlier White Dwarfs, notably whips and the mandrake people. I’d have put this one as the introductory scenario, as its a good mix of intrigue, interaction, mystery, dungeoneering, local wilderness and ethical dilemma, although it is for 3rd-4th level characters, not beginning levels. The Black Broo of Dyskund is a “cavern crawl” for RuneQuest – straightforward in terms of design but it does manage to convey the sense of a natural cave system (with squeezes) rather than the usual 10 ft. wide regular passageways. This adventure was revised and expanded and later re-released as part of Avalon Hill’s Shadows on the Borderland package for RQ3. It’s written by Ken Rolston, who would go on to a prominent role in Paranoia material, 3rd Edition RuneQuest material and Something Rotten in Kislev for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (and get accidentally punched in the face by Thrud the Barbarian).<a href="http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=6094" target="_blank"><img src="http://index.rpg.net/pictures/show-thumbnail.phtml?picid=6977" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></a> <a href="http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=6097" target="_blank"><img src="http://index.rpg.net/pictures/show-thumbnail.phtml?picid=6983" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></a>ArticlesMost of the existing departments continue as always, although Lew’s Views (and the input of Lew Pulsipher in general) becomes less frequent. I don’t know if Dave Stone’s letter in Issue 51 where he refers to Lew as “Lew Penpusher” has anything to do with this. A new addition in Issue 52 is Tabletop Heroes by Joe “Lone Wolf” Dever and Gary “Also Lone Wolf” Chalk which brings miniatures back into the magazine for the first time since Molten Magic. The thin end of the wedge, in hindsight. This starts in a similar vein to Molten Magic with a simple review of figures but rapidly evolves into a “how to” column with advice on painting, customising and photographing figures and scratch-built scenery. It also quickly initiates a heated discussion in the letters page about whether Dever and Chalk are much cop as painters and photographers of figures. It has to be said, the naysayers have a point, the early efforts are very glossy, low detail and dubiously lit and focussed. It gets better.With the expectation of a new audience fresh to gaming, Marcus L Rowland follows in Lew’s footsteps with a series of articles called The Name of the Game, although this gives a description of role-playing in general followed by several issues worth of briefly describing existing games, rather than a guide for better play.Also ostensibly to entice in new players is the four-part solo adventure The Castle of the Lost Souls by Dave Morris and Yve Newnham, which is a mix of fantasy tropes, not entirely serious and harmless enough, although from some letters you’d think it heralded the end of days. I notice that it was later published in its own right.After these, the lengthiest series is Night’s Dark Agents, by Chris Elliott and Richard Edwards, a four issue series looking at ninjas for AD&D, RQ and Bushido. The authors cover history, training, tactics and tools of the ninja, topping it off with a ninja class for AD&D (this is before Oriental Adventures is released) and the Hour of the Tiger scenario. The ninja class is interesting – characters get a set of skills at first level and then at subsequent levels they can either advance some of these skills or choose new ones, a very flexible approach that prefigures the 3rd Ed. Skill system (and feats, since some of the abilities are all-or-none). I’m surprised I didn’t notice this first time around, nor that anybody else didn’t try something similar for existing classes. The whole series is light on actual mechanics and, in a refreshing change from earlier articles, the authors give simple and elegant suggestions on how existing game mechanics can be used to emulate the abilities rather than introducing swathes of new charts and tables. It's a well-written and intelligent series of articles, not simply a “Ninjaz R Cool” cheese-fest, although inevitably some readers see it that way.This mechanic-light approach is continued in many of the other articles, ostensibly for AD&D or Traveller but adaptable to any fantasy or SF game respectively. Stephen Dudley’s article on traps (Its a Trap!), for example, discusses where and why a person would set a trap and which types would be appropriate to which situation, rather than the usual list of unlikely mechanisms. There are articles in Treasure Chest discussing character goals (J Anthony Nawson), recurring arch-enemies (JH Dickson) and technology in fantasy games (Phil Hine) which are brief but widely applicable. Longer articles include All In The Mind, Todd E Sundsted’s discussion on psionics, which looks more at the role of psionics in society than new powers or rules variants, and Graeme Davis’ excellent Beyond the Final Frontier, which looks at the views of the afterlife in various mythologies, and the idea of continuing adventuring in the afterlife when a character dies. Some intriguing possibilities, possibly better than Ghostwalk. For science fiction games there are articles looking at big philosophical topics like immortality (Andy Slack) and different types of universe (Marcus L Rowland) as well as smaller mundane topics like money (Thomas Price) and starship defences (Marcus L Rowland). Andy’s immortality article is the best, giving several SF-methods of achieving immortality of various kinds, and some scenario ideas thrown up by such concepts.Even articles more heavily rooted in AD&D and with more mechanical content are broad in scope and well thought-out. A couple of articles on clerics essentially prefigure the idea of clerical domains by suggesting spell lists based upon a god’s portfolio. Thomas Mullen sets up the idea in an article entitled Gifts From The Gods, where he suggests that clerics of different gods should have spells and abilities based upon that god’s sphere of influence, then Daniel Collerton punches it home in Out Of The Blue, where he converts the fluff into crunch with a set of spell lists. I used this many years ago, and it worked nicely. Tony Parry and Jerry Vaughn provide an interesting article on Animal Cults for AD&D, with a different mechanical take that allows any class to take on aspects of a particular totem animal, increasing with level. There are a couple of lengthy series concerning magic. Graeme Davis’ Eye of Newt tackles the subject of creating magic items in AD&D, something glossed over in the rules at the time. He goes through all the items in the DMG (or most of them), giving costs of creation, spells known required and any special ingredients. Although effectively superceded in the current rules it could be worth a look, particularly if you like the idea of exotic ingredients as part of magic item creation. Kiel Stephens’ Ars Arcana series runs in Treasure Chest and is simply a list of imaginative (or rules-bending, depending on your perspective) ways of using existing magic-user spells.Dave Morris takes over Runerites from Oliver Dickinson. There seems to be some unwritten rule that every third Runerites is about combat or errata, and this trend continues. On top of that, there are some good but very non-Gloranthan ideas, such as some magic rings by Dave himself and some interesting Celtic-themed spells by Robert Dale that would go well with the demons and goblins material from the 40s. Also worth considering is Visiting Other Plains by Ian Marsh, which considers using the Praxian animal nomad tribes in a setting other than Glorantha. Starbase is similarly trundling along but does have one excellent article with three detailed NPCs from Michael Clark, low-life chancers with an interconnected history who would fit well in a Firefly style of campaign. The Fiend Factory is getting a bit tired, with a large number of monsters that are simply chromed-over version of existing creatures. There are some attempts to convert creatures from Robert Silverburg’s “Majipoor” stories (Graham Drysdale) and Julian May’s “Saga of the Exiles” series (Paul Harden). Similarly, there is an article from Peter Ransome that attempts to convert elements of David Eddings’ “Belgariad” into AD&D, but none these are as interesting or effective as Lew Pulsipher’s conversions of creatures from Stephen R Donaldson’s “Thomas Covenant” series from way back in the early issues. The best “new monsters” are the surrogates and shapelings from Fred Lee Cain. Surrogates are invisible golems, shapelings are a race descended from surrogates that have somehow achieved sentience. There is a decent amount of information on the society and religion of the shapelings to inspire some campaign ideas.A mix of other genres begins to creep into the articles as well. Steve Jackson (US) gets a semi-regular column Crash Course with ideas for Car Wars, Simon Burley begins a series on introduction to superhero gaming and Marcus L Rowland gives us an entertaining article on modern religious cults with ideas for use in spy games, Call of Cthulhu or superhero games. Several cults/organisations are given, with what they might be up to in the different genres. The Temple of Excellence Inc., for example, is a bit like Fight Club whereas Technodeology is trying to create a computer god (and in the Call of Cthulhu version, have succeeded). The First Church of Omphalology is run by a former science fiction author called Bob R Chubbard….Talking of whom, issue 54 has Dave Langford’s review of Battlefield Earth, which I’m going to reproduce in full here. It still makes me chuckle at his shock at the sheer awfulness. No other book or author ever gets such a point-by-point demolition.“Tensely the specialists hovered round the hospital bed. ‘Absolute quiet, please Absolute quiet for Mr. Langford’ Outside, vast crowds of both the Critical Mass fans waited trembling for the latest sickbed news. A Harley Street expert adjusted the real-ale dripfeed into Langford’s haggard arm, whispering ‘God, what happened to him? Did he fall off Everest? Wrestle a rhino? Get breathed on by Gary Gygax (TM)?’‘Worse than that, Doctor. He read the whole of L Ron Hubbard’s Battlefield Earth in a single weekend.’‘The...fool. The poor brave fool.’[...]Battlefield Earth should be popular with everyone who disagrees with all Langford reviews: I loathed it. Young chap liberates Earth from vile ‘Psychlo’ oppressors circa 3000AD, wiping out the entire Psychlo race in such style as to make Hitler greenly envious, and ends up owning the galaxy. This, adequate for a 1930s pulp novelette, is distended to 819 pages by merciless use of short one-sentence paragraphs, banal repetition, flatulent speechifying and other devices from when authors were paid by the line.Particularly offensive is Hubbard’s introduction, which tries to rewrite history and establish him as a major figure of Golden Age SF. Wrong. (Why do you think he’s been out of print since?) L Ron further explains that this book is real SF, with plausible science, no fantasy rubbish. Examples of plausibility:1)    Psychlos have a different periodic table2)    Their world’s entire atmosphere explodes on contact with uranium.3)    Their instantaneous conceptual knowledge transmitter, designed for alien brains, happens to work on humans.4)    They build tough armour: ‘Here was a mark where an atomic bomb had hit it’.5)    Someone dissects a Psychlo and looks at the bits with an optical microscope. ‘Their structure isn’t cellular. Viral! Yes, viral!’ In mere paragraphs this same someone, limited to primitive technology, has completely mapped the Psychlo nervous system using a multimeter and test prods.6)    A planet-busting bomb explodes! Pause. A second bomb, which was sitting right next to the first, explodes! Pause. A third, a fourth...7)    A moon is reduced to its constituent electrons and nuclei, which show no urge to recombine. Therefore (?) the thing has a vast electric charge which zaps anything nearby.8)    Hubbard electrolysis: molecules flow along a wire.9)    Having 5 talons on one hand, 6 on the other, Psychlos use base 11 arithmetic – which we’re told is inherently almost impossibly difficult, while decimal is the best and easiest in the universe no matter how many fingers you have: ‘Whenever they discover it on some planet they engrave the discoverer’s name among the heroes.’Battlefield may sound worth looking at for its sheer laughable badness. No. It’s dreadful and tedious beyond endurance. In fact it’s [Editor’s note: for legal reasons we are substituting a less actionable ending to this sentence] not as good as Foundation’s Edge."<a href="http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=6173" target="_blank"><img src="http://index.rpg.net/pictures/show-thumbnail.phtml?picid=7037" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></a> <a href="http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=6187" target="_blank"><img src="http://index.rpg.net/pictures/show-thumbnail.phtml?picid=7049" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></a>General ThoughtsIt’s interesting to see how both scenarios and articles are moving away from the more mechanistic approach towards ideas and atmosphere. There’s less in the way of immediately usable material, but more in the way of food for thought. The expanding range of genres (if not necessarily specific games) covered by White Dwarf is on the one hand good because it gives a wider range of views on what RPGs are “about”, but on the other hand it dilutes the amount of material useable to players of just the one game system. However, articles like the ones on SF immortality, life after death and crank cults can be used not only in any game within a genre but in some cases across genres. It’s a fine line to walk between being universally usable and so vague as to be unusable at all. So far, the articles stay on the right side.It’s funny, also, to note the attitude of older gamers to the likes of the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks and the cartoons in White Dwarf, with noises of scorn that the hobby is being “watered down” and how a “serious” hobby is becoming awash with trifles. However, look back to the early days of the Dwarf and you find things like the Pervert character class and monsters like the Dahdi, so, really, how serious was it?</blockquote>

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