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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr Simon" data-source="post: 5984188" data-attributes="member: 21938">Part Nine: The Rise of Games Workshop (Issues 81-90)<a href="http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=6923" target="_blank"><img src="http://index.rpg.net/pictures/show-thumbnail.phtml?picid=7633" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></a> <a href="http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=6948" target="_blank"><img src="http://index.rpg.net/pictures/show-thumbnail.phtml?picid=7645" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></a>OverallThis is the period, September 1986 to June 1987, when the magazine morphs into an almost entirely house magazine, a fact stated explicitly at one point by Marc Gascoigne in the letters page. At this point in time this isn’t so bad, since Games Workshop is either printing or distributing a large number of games, which now includes RuneQuest 3rd Edition as well as Call of Cthulhu, Paranoia and Middle Earth Role-Playing. However, alongside the usual range of RPG articles there is a creeping influx of articles for Games Workshop boardgames such as Blood Bowl, Chainsaw Warrior, and Rogue Trooper. This is not a new thing historically and most articles don’t significantly take up space that could be used for RPG coverage, so it can’t be entirely said to be a bad thing either although the articles are generally less useful and carry an air of advertisement about them. The review policy in Open Box changes so that Games Workshop products no longer receive reviews as such, but instead are designer’s notes – the rationale being that the objectivity of an in-house review would be suspect. For the moment, though, the Dwarf does continue to review non-GW products as well and the reviews seem reasonably fair to me.The game of editor shuffling continues, with Mike Brunton getting the hot seat for most of this run, and new staffers such as Jim Bambra and Phil Gallagher joining GW from TSR UK. A new comic strip is introduced (from the defunct Warlock magazine); Derek the Troll alternates with Gobbledigook but thankfully doesn’t last long – it’s very weak. Thrud continues (his Barbarian-o-gram in Issue 90 pretty much repeating the joke from his first appearance in Issue 45), as does ‘Eavy Metal and a new column, Illuminations, begins. This is another introspective column looking at the various artists currently working on GW games, each week highlighting a different one. Nice to look at, but carries the air of an “advertorial”.<a href="http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=6738" target="_blank"><img src="http://index.rpg.net/pictures/show-thumbnail.phtml?picid=7467" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></a> <a href="http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=6677" target="_blank"><img src="http://index.rpg.net/pictures/show-thumbnail.phtml?picid=7387" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></a>GamesOne of the most notable occurrences as far as I was concerned with White Dwarf is the successful acquisition by Games Workshop of the license to print RuneQuest 3 in the UK. This results in an upswing of RQ material in the magazine, and it’s generally as good as it was in the old days of Runerites. GW also publish, under license, Paranoia, Call of Cthulhu and MERP (released in a 2nd Edition), and finally their own Warhammer FRP sees the light of day after months of teasing news items, the other significant occurrence whose full force will be felt in later issues. TSR are on another burst of releases, unleashing their third wave of hardback books including the Dungeoneers and Wilderness Survival Guides as well as the Immortals set, and there are rumours of some campaign set called Forgotten Realms in the works. It’ll never catch on. Elsewhere in gaming land, Steve Jackson releases GURPS, which is reviewed in issue 83 but WD never produces any material for it. Skyrealms of Jorune also gets a favourable review; I had it and it was okay, I think it was the Empire of the Petal Throne of its time, beloved by aficionados but never achieving more than cult status, partly due to a clunky game system. Lovely illustrations though. There’s also an advert in one of the issues for the intriguingly named “Teenagers from Outer Space” – anyone ever play this? Elsewhere in SF, GDW releases Traveller 2300, ICE release Spacemaster (the SF variant of Rolemaster) and again there is news that West End Games have got the license for a Star Wars RPG.Games Workshop release a range of new boardgames including Blood Bowl, Chainsaw Warrior and Rogue Trooper and there is a run of “Beat the Commies” games including the (hopefully) tongue-in-cheek Price of Freedom from WEG, the less tongue-in-cheek Delta Force and the Vietnam game Recon (a revised version of an older game) which add to the post Theatre-Europe Twilight 2000. These provoke controversy in the letters page over their tastefulness, with WEG’s Greg Costikayan himself getting involved to defend his publication.<a href="http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=6323" target="_blank"><img src="http://index.rpg.net/pictures/show-thumbnail.phtml?picid=7147" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></a> <a href="http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=7009" target="_blank"><img src="http://index.rpg.net/pictures/show-thumbnail.phtml?picid=7670" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></a>ScenariosAgain a bias towards GW-printed games, but luckily there is a wide variety. Of the twenty scenarios published in this period, only five are for AD&D, and of these only two are specifically AD&D and no other system. There is an emerging style in scenarios over this period for fairly complex plotlines, and many of them have a tendency to lead player characters by the nose through a series of events. Compared to some of the early greats (like Tizun Thane) there’s a lot less choice for players and GMs, but also very few dungeons in sight. Some of the game systems used unfortunately have such individual settings that the adventures are not easily converted to other systems (Paranoia and Dredd in particular) and so the general utility of the adventures is less than in earlier times.Top of the pile is Jon Quaife’s A Tale To Tell, a massive 16 page RuneQuest adventure set in Prax that forms a sequel of sorts to the Borderlands campaign. Being RQ, a few of these pages are stat-blocks but it is a good adventure with plenty of scope for player action, although it needs quite high-powered characters if the PCs are to succeed. This was later reprinted as part of the Shadows on the Borderland scenario pack, along with Issue 52’s Black Broo of Dyskund. The other RQ adventure is When Mad Gods Laugh (Barry Atkins), a small scenario involving the schemes of an evil satyr with the twist of his followers being happy hippies who don’t take kindly to the music stopping (they remind me of Thulsa Doom’s followers in the second half of the Schwarzenegger Conan movie). Simple but fun.Also good is Graham Staplehurst’s Taurefanto, a MERP scenario involving a land-travelling ark full of entwives and those who would seek to capture or destroy them. Although steeped in Middle Earth lore, I can see this one being adaptable to other fantasy campaigns and it’s quite freeform.There are three Judge Dredd scenarios – the vaguely interlinked A Day in the Life of Sector 255 and A Night in the Death of Sector 255, and Tales From Mega City One which is really a trio of adventure outlines rather than a scenario proper. All of these are by Hugh Tynan. The Sector 255 adventures are really a sequence of encounters that occur on a typical Judge’s patrol. Inventive and funny but also marred by their sequential, story-boarded nature (an early encounter gives the Judges no option to change events, purely so that a later encounter will occur, for example). Nice cartography, though.Paranoia also gets four scenarios. The All New Computer Action Horror Show by Robert Lyn Davies, Happiness is Laser Shaped by Pete Tamlyn, Do Troubleshooters Dream of Electric Sheep by Marcus Rowland and Operation SNAFU by James Wallis. All are of the silly style of play with punning names and nods to other genres. They’re okay, I guess (I played in Sheep), but I prefer a slightly straighter style of Paranoia. All are written in a slightly annoying jokey style (“Won’t this be fun?”) and there is a tendency for the magazine to print Paranoia material with portions of it upside-down or back-to-front, which thankfully they stop doing.Marcus L Rowland provides two Call of Cthulhu scenarios. The Curse of the Bone is a modern day scenario involving ghouls, African folk beliefs and a used car salesman. Solid, but lacking any truly great twists. The Paddington Horror is a devious adventure involving zombies (not bears from Darkest Peru), discussed more below.There is one Traveller adventure, the last published by the magazine. Mercy Mission by Simon Lewis is reminiscent of early Star Trek and is interesting in that the PCs are sent to help cure a disease – less mercenary than the default Traveller style adventure. The disease, on a primitive planet, is being caused by the power plant of an old crashed spaceship. Trouble is, it’s the holy object of the local tribe.Warhammer FRP sees the first scenarios written for it. On the Road by Graeme Davis is not an adventure as such but a couple of extended encounters which can be slotted into an ongoing campaign (for example, why not try The Enemy Within campaign available from Games Workshop?) The first fully Warhammer adventure is Night of Blood by Jim Bambra which tells of an inn which wouldn’t get a very good Trip Advisor score. The gory, cartoonish, full-page illustration is a bit off-putting, and in common with many adventures around this time it is a bit storyboarded.Warhammer shares a couple of adventures with other systems. The Black Knight by Bryan Sturdy is for WHFRP, AD&D and Pendragon, an Arthurian tale of renegade knights, bandits and monsters. It reminds me of Ogre Hunt from issue, what, 19? and is quite a nice little adventure. On Ealden Byrgen by Jim Bambra is for WHFRP, MERP, Fantasy Hero or AD&D and is a Robin Hood themed adventure, inspired not a little by the mysticism of the Michael Praed/Jason Connory TV series. Again quite adaptable – personally I would have preferred it to be a bit less linear but it has some good ideas.And so the only two adventures purely for AD&D are Shadow Magic by Carl Sargent and A Killing in Silk by Matt Connell. Shadow Magic is quite simple, really focussing on three antagonists and their particular abilities. There’s a bit of arm-twisting to the hook which may not work with all players. A Killing in Silk is a simple murder mystery that is pretty easy to resolve. One of my group at the time took the basics of the set-up and morphed it into an excellent game involving the dirty dealings of rival merchants (played by us), and I think this was a far superior scenario to the published adventure.<a href="http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=6802" target="_blank"><img src="http://index.rpg.net/pictures/show-thumbnail.phtml?picid=7534" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></a> <a href="http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=7047" target="_blank"><img src="http://index.rpg.net/pictures/show-thumbnail.phtml?picid=7744" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></a>ArticlesThe majority of articles over these issues tend to be discursive in nature rather than rule additions, particularly those applying nominally to AD&D. These cover themes or ideas that are of use generically in fantasy RPGs, and sometimes other genres. Wolves of the Sea, for example, by Graeme Davis looks at pirates and sailing with a mix of technical and historical notes and scenario ideas. It’s A Kind of Magic (Steve Palmer) is an interesting essay on mixing high-tech and fantasy, drawing particular influence from Gene Wolf’s Book of the New Sun. No specific rules or items are given, unlike articles of old, but it is well-written and full of inspiring ideas. Recently I looked over Appendix N in the 1E DMG, a bibliography of works that inspired Gary Gygax. Given the nature of many of them, more pulp horror/SF than fantasy, it’s surprising that this concept isn’t more fully ingrained in the game. It’s certainly something I return to quite a lot. Friends in High Places (Simon Nicholson) looks at using politics and intrigue in RPGs, be it amongst nobles, merchants or other dignitaries. As with Graeme’s article it gives a handful of brief ideas with game use, leaving the individual gamesmaster to do with it as he or she needs. Ley of the Land by Graham Staplehurst is an interesting article concerning leys and ancient monuments, and possible uses for them if their supposed mystical properties were real. This is of use in anything from fantasy games through Call of Cthulhu, even in SF games. Note to CoC players; the concept of leys was first put forward by Alfred Watkins in the very Cthulhoid time of 1925. Greg Stafford himself provides a couple of articles for Pendragon. Swords of Pendragon is a fascinating account of various swords of Arthurian legend. Again, no mechanics are given but reputed properties of the swords are described. Very good for mining ideas to give magic swords in any setting more depth. His other article is more mechanical, giving solo rules for running jousts in Pendragon. This is paired in Issue 81 with rules for jousting in AD&D by Stephen Gardner. Short, but potentially useful particularly if coupled with Simon Nicholson’s article to give a game of knights and courtly intrigue (and then run the Black Knight adventure as well – funny how certain concepts seem to have their day). Chris Felton provides two articles that are also worth a look. Dogs of War examines the role of mercenaries and A Dark Brotherhood looks again at assassins, challenging some of the inherent assumptions in AD&D. Despite the same title and author it’s different to the article from the 40s.Warhammer FRP is officially released at around the same time as Issue 87 (Feb 1987). Graeme Davis provides some articles for it, mostly discussing design choices and elaborating rules for Fate Points and Character Advances (along with an article on Career Changes by the other WHFRP designers Jim Bambra and Phil Gallagher). Most novel, however, are Graeme rules for Gnome characters which come with a gnome-specific career (the jester, inspired no doubt by the famous miniature Corbit Shortstuff - see <a href="http://www.solegends.com/citboxes/c2s2dwfkingcourt.jpg" target="_blank">Figure 10</a>), details of gnomes in the Empire and of the gnome god. Marcus L Rowland is supplier of most of the Call of Cthulhu material, the best being a lengthy article on zombies, including both the Haitian kind where the victim is alive but drugged, to the true necromantic types. This is followed up with his adventure The Paddington Horror, where a hapless investigator is turned into a zombie (I’ve spoilt the twist, I’m afraid). Marcus also gives some rules for getting knocked out, a sample from the Green and Pleasant Land sourcebook for speaking the generic yokel accent known as Mummerset and a mock exam from Miskatonic U. Carl Sargent wades in with some new and unusual phobias, with entertainingly hysterical explanations on why they would suit Cthulhu investigators.SF-wise, Traveller is ignored. Ron Currie gives a few rules tweaks and comments on running Star Trek, the rest being divided between Judge Dredd and Paranoia. Best of these is probably Carl Sargent’s article on playing perps in Dredd which gives some suggestions for rules changes and campaign outlines. Carl’s article entitled Narks by some enthusiastic sub-editor is actually about informers, defined as specifically distinct from narks (which require a special ability to acquire). Marcus L Rowland’s article on time travel in Judge Dredd covers ground that not only Marcus himself has covered back in issue 29 but also recently covered in issue 81 by Steve Palmer. I guess it is designed to tie-ion with Marcus’ campaign coming up in the next batch of issues.The lengthy debate on sexism in the letters pages, which by this point has mostly blown over, has evidently sparked a couple of articles from women on the female character. Erica Lidman’s The Difference is a breakdown of different types of female archetype and, whilst interesting,  has a bit of an air of a gender politics essay. Alison Brooks’ A Monstrous Regiment is a fascinating article looking at real examples of female warriors and soldiers in history.That Terry Pratchett fella generates some interest. Not only is a section of The Light Fantastic printed in the magazine, but Ashley Shepherd writes A Stroll Across Discworld, attempting to convert aspects of Discworld to AD&D. I think he (she?) is only partly successful in this, mainly because 1ed AD&D is a pretty poor engine for anything other than AD&D. Light Fantastic and Equal Rites are reviewed in Critical Mass, which reaches its 50th column in Issue 88, and it’s around this time that Iain M Banks makes his official SF debut with Consider Phlebas. Almost lastly, there are a range of rules add-ons for some GW boardgames such as Blood Bowl and Chainsaw Warrior. Finally Ian Livingstone returns in Issue 90 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of White Dwarf with a column looking back at the start of Games Workshop and White Dwarf, when he and Steve Jackson were living in a van and thought selling thirty copies of D&D was a lot. Definitely worth a look.<a href="http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=7072" target="_blank"><img src="http://index.rpg.net/pictures/show-thumbnail.phtml?picid=7803" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></a> <a href="http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=6327" target="_blank"><img src="http://index.rpg.net/pictures/show-thumbnail.phtml?picid=7151" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></a>General ThoughtsThis period more than any other heralds the shift from Old White Dwarf to New White Dwarf, towards an almost entirely GW house magazine and a shift away from RPGs towards wargames, boardgames and miniatures. The change isn’t complete yet, and the transition continues to happen gradually over the next batch of issues as well, but the seeds are evident with hindsight. That isn’t to say that the quality goes down; there are some excellent articles, but the overall feel you get reading this batch of issues is that the writers are bored with the older games and turning to something new and shiny. I can’t say I blame them for this, I was experiencing the same thing at the same time – new games with new concepts made D&D seem unwieldy and complex (at around this time I was playing mainly RQ3 and WHFRP, and we occasionally threw in a game of Dredd or Paranoia as a palate cleanser). The decision to openly become a house magazine makes sense to me too, shame though it is to lose the cosmopolitan feel of the earlier years. At this point there are so many games to keep track of, to try to do justice to them all would mean slim pickings for many rather than quality for a few. As it is, there is still a pretty solid range of games covered over this period, and still a lot of widely usable material, despite the creeping influx of chainsaws and chaos spikey bits and the letters page degenerating into a discussion of how many miniatures can be balanced on top of the Thrud the Barbarian figure.</blockquote>

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