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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr Simon" data-source="post: 5989730" data-attributes="member: 21938">Part Ten: Warhammer Takes Over (Issues 91-100)<a href="http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=7052" target="_blank"><img src="http://index.rpg.net/pictures/show-thumbnail.phtml?picid=7745" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></a> <a href="http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=6754" target="_blank"><img src="http://index.rpg.net/pictures/show-thumbnail.phtml?picid=7485" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></a>GeneralI should come clean at the beginning and state that, although I used to own them, I’ve been unable to consult issues 91 and 92 for this discussion. Looking at the table of contents on RPGNet didn’t help and since none of them rung any bells it may be safe to assume that none were that memorable.That said, this is the period where White Dwarf becomes almost entirely given over to wargaming and miniatures, mostly after Sean Masterson takes over as editor. Not quite, but by the end of this batch only Warhammer FRP remains as the RPG content. Look at the covers, you’ll note the “Games Workshop Presents” logo which becomes steadily more prominent. Those covers, in my opinion, lack the beauty of the earlier issues and lose something by being about something in the magazine, rather than a simple flight of imagination. The magazine itself is perfect bound (I think, my knowledge in such things is hazy) and costs £1.25. Issue 94 comes with a flexidisk by the band Sabbat, which I don’t think I ever played (I’ve got a feeling the dog chewed it!). Was it any good?<a href="http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=6840" target="_blank"><img src="http://index.rpg.net/pictures/show-thumbnail.phtml?picid=7548" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></a> <a href="http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=6980" target="_blank"><img src="http://index.rpg.net/pictures/show-thumbnail.phtml?picid=7649" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></a>GamesIn-house, GW continue to support some of their roleplaying products, releasing the Land of Ninja and Griffin Island hardbacks for RuneQuest (although the content was good, the binding quality, at least of the copies that I had, was poor with pages tending to come out easily). They also release the 2nd Edition of Paranoia and further episodes of the Enemy Within campaign – Death on the Reik, Power Behind the Throne (and its companion volume Warhammer City), with Ken Rolston handing in the manuscript for Something Rotten in Kislev. However, it feels like the biggest events for the magazine are the release of Warhammer 40K and Warhammer Fantasy Battles 3rd Edition. The magazine gives little coverage for other games, even in the news sections (known variously as Awesome Lies, Stop Press and Culture Shock) only looks at matters occurring in Games Workshop/Citadel. We have to look at adverts for GW mail order and the long-running Esdevium Games to discover that WEG has released the Star Wars RPG. Other games with ongoing support material include MERP, Battletech, Twilight 2000 and Star Trek.There is an intriguing mention in the news in issue 94 of Mournblade, an Elric-related supplement for WHFRP. Anyone know if this ever came to light?<a href="http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=6336" target="_blank"><img src="http://index.rpg.net/pictures/show-thumbnail.phtml?picid=7165" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></a> <a href="http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=6386" target="_blank"><img src="http://index.rpg.net/pictures/show-thumbnail.phtml?picid=7190" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></a>ScenariosAs you might expect, most of the scenarios are for WHFRP, but there are a couple of multi-part adventures for other GW systems too. Marcus L Rowland gives us To Live and Die in Megacity One, as far as I can tell his swansong for WD. This is an epic three-parter and is sort of a love letter to the Dredd comics in the way that the Age of Worms campaign is a love letter to Greyhawk. It involves the time paradox centred on Owen Krysler, the Judge Child/Mutant and the possible return of this powerful evil being, but involves Judge Anderson and elements like the killdozer, a trip into rad-blasted MC-1 South, free robots and over-zealous Citi-Def members, recalling elements from Dredd epics like The Cursed Earth, Judge Child, Apocalypse War and City of the Damned. It’s good, but as is typical with this kind of adventure the ending is a bit of a disappointment. Surprisingly there’s also a lengthy adventure series for Stormbringer, The Madcap Laughs by Matt Williams. This is also a three-parter, but spread over four issues with an introductory section. It’s good at evoking Moorcock’s writing, with lots of exotic locales, larger-than-life NPCs and a bit of dimension-hopping. There’s nothing in it that’s really unusual when stripped of the chrome, but it’s a solid adventure nonetheless. Again, though, it has a disappointing set-piece ending.Before I get to the WHFRP adventures there are a few more for other systems. Issue 93 sees Getting Away From Most Of It by James Wallis (later of Hogshead?) which is a tremendously silly AD&D adventure with lots of spoofs of English seaside holidays and surreal humour (the central artefact, the Rock of Aegis, is a pink peppermint-flavoured stick, and is guarded by a were-gannet armed with a loaded herring, for example). If you like Python, The Goons or Mighty Boosh, you’ll appreciate this. Although silly, it’s not as annoying as the early nonsense like the Stair Stalker! I think it may be the last AD&D adventure published in White Dwarf.The Beast of Kozamura (by Graeme Davis) is a RuneQuest adventure using Land of Ninja. It revolves around a mysterious monster menacing a small village, and the Lady Macbeth-esque machinations of a kitsune. A simple plot, but atmospheric and for once it is a bit more open-ended and flexible than most adventures of this time.Graeme also provides A Trilogy of Terror for Call of Cthulhu, three mini-scenarios entitled The Book, The Seance and A Capital Offence. The first two are pretty standard CoC fare, the last contains a good adventure seed, whereby a murderous cultist escapes execution by transferring his consciousness to a hapless prison warder. A nice twist. The Spirit of the Mountain, from Jon Sutherland, is classic CoC fare, set in an archaeological dig in Arizona. Graham Staplehurst’s Letters From A Foreign Land is an unusual multi-system adventure that can be used for MERP, CoC or WHFRP, involving monks and cultists. It’s a bold move, but by trying to be too many things at once it loses a bit of focus, and like most adventures of this time it is very storyboarded.The WHFRP scenarios are a mixed bunch. Largest is The Grapes of Wrath by Carl Sargent, intended as a linker between Death on the Reik and Power Behind the Throne. It’s a mash-up of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow with A Cask of Amontillado, and good fun. It is, however, very detailed compared to older scenarios. In some ways it’s nice to have a bit of depth to, for example, NPCs, but it is a feature of this era for the level of detail to become almost stifling. Just as much character is imparted to Dark Odo, the evil sorceress of issue 9’s The Lichway in a couple of sentences as to most of the NPCs in Grapes of Wrath in a couple of paragraphs, and the GM is left with a bit more leeway to interpret – the old adage “To suggest is to create, to define is to destroy” holds true in this case, I think. Does it work as an adventure though? Yes it does, although at this stage in The Enemy Within campaign it may feel like an unnecessary side-step for the players.The Ritual, by Philip Wells, is an alternative opening to the Enemy Within (or, indeed, any) campaign, involving skaven and necromancy. It’s quite straightforward, with one encounter area leading on to the next. Okay, but nothing earth-shattering. A Rough Night At The Three Feathers (Graeme Davis) occurs in one night in an inn with about ten separate plotlines running at the same time, giving the feel of a farce going on. A good idea, although I think it needs more hooks to get the PCs directly involved; I can see many groups not wanting to get mixed up in what seem to be mostly petty issues. Eureka is another location-based adventure, by Paul Hargreaves; reminiscent of the old RuneQuest adventure Gringle’s Pawnshop (from Apple Lane), the PCs must protect the home/laboratory of an eccentric DaVinci-esque inventor. Silly German names abound (the inventor is Herr Kugelschreiber - that's a ballpoint pen for those of you who don't know any German), and for some reason the author suggests that Kugelschreiber be portrayed with an exaggerated German accent – but surely all PCs from the Empire will have the same accent, so why make him stand out?In issue 100 is a lengthy adventure from Games Day ’87, The Floating Gardens of Bab-Ehlonn by Basil Barrett. Set in Lustria (the South America of WHFRP) it uses a set of pregenerated pygmy PCs (with silly names - Banga Gong, Billa Bong etc.) sent to investigate the eponymous phenomenon, an ancient Slann artefact now occupied by an evil wizard. Some good ideas to be mined, even if the adventure itself is mostly really just a dungeon crawl.<a href="http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=6658" target="_blank"><img src="http://index.rpg.net/pictures/show-thumbnail.phtml?picid=7368" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></a> <a href="http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=6986" target="_blank"><img src="http://index.rpg.net/pictures/show-thumbnail.phtml?picid=7655" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></a>ArticlesIssue 93 sees the last articles for AD&D, although they are both largely systemless and could be used for other fantasy games. Simon Nicholson’s excellent Vance’s Evocation of Arcane Delight considers the magic of the Dying Earth series (largely Rhialto the Marvellous). His thesis is that although AD&D magic is frequently referred to as Vancian, it doesn’t really capture the baroque oddity of Vance’s work, and he gives ways in which this can be brought in without actually changing the rules of the game in any way. Sounds Familiar? by Alison Brooks and David Flin, takes a look at the reputed properties of “real” familiars, in this case, cat, crow, owl, weasel, toad and hawk, with some suggestions on how these could be emulated in AD&D. Worth reading.Simon Nicholson reappears with another excellent article, Scenes From Courtly Life. Although nominally for WHFRP it’s really systemless, a followup to his Friends in High Places article with more details on how to survive politicking at court. Well written, with lots of entertaining examples.There are a few articles for RuneQuest. The Coliseum part of Avalon Hill’s Monster Coliseum is published here (the Monster part having been included in GW’s RuneQuest Monsters book). Rules for gladiators and chariot racing, quite useful. In Iron Warriors, Jon Quaife provides some more NPCs for use with Griffin Island (although they could be used in any campaign); an interesting party of dwarf agents. Finally in Issue 99 there is an article on martial arts in RuneQuest by some idiot hack and his dyslexic friend. Yes, that was me and my friend Tim with an expansion for the Martial Arts skill, plus a martial artist profession. I have a few comments – first, we had nothing to do with the title (Eeeyaargh!) and in fact didn’t intend for it to be published. We sent it in as a taster for a martial-arts themed scenario we were working on (Enter the Dragonewt) and only discovered it had been published when we looked at the magazine in the newsagents. The cheque came a week later. Second, John Pitts of Glasgow in the letters in Issue 101 points out that we gave the Martial Artist profession too many percentiles. I can only hold my hands up for this – we did count how many the other professions get; I guess an error crept in there somewhere. I like his suggestions for different styles, a good addition.And so, the rest is Warhammer in its various forms, or miniatures.The new column On The Boil covers miscellany for Warhammer, both Roleplay and Wargames. The first edition includes rules for giants in WHFB3, by Rick Priestley, Jim Bambra and Graeme Davis) which are a call-back to the 40s, and the following edition features a Bar-Room Brawl for WHFRP, a call-back to the very early years. None of the characters want to rape anyone in this one, though, thankfully. Other items include Otto’s Printworks which not only gives a location and some NPCs but a few scenario ideas as well, a trio of artifacts for WHFRP, rules for elven wardancers and slann for WHFB and a lengthy extract from Realms of Chaos with hundreds of chaos mutations.Warhammer 40K spawns the column Chapter Approved which has a range of additions to the game, both crunch and fluff, from rules for Dreadnoughts to the origins of the Space Marines. This column then gives rise to Index Astartes which goes into merciless detail on different chapters of the Space Marines, and by issue 100 the WH40K material has spread again into individual articles, mostly giving the rules to go with new miniatures.‘Eavy Metal gives rise to Blanchitsu, which is more of a hints and tips column for painting and modelling whereas ‘Eavy Metal remains a showcase for pretty painting. Miniatures too engender their own individual articles, notably Fantastic Immigery which highlights the work of Michael Immig in Issue 100. Other articles are also quite introspective, covering the first Golden Demon awards for painting, the WHFB championships and the new range of plastic miniatures as well as expansions for various GW-produced boardgames like Blood Bowl and Block Mania. Thrud, Illuminations and Critical Mass continue but Gobbledigook, after a spell in the 40K universe, is reduced to a marginalia character, stealing page numbers and the like (which is actually quite a good use for him)<a href="http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=6899" target="_blank"><img src="http://index.rpg.net/pictures/show-thumbnail.phtml?picid=7609" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></a> <a href="http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=6335" target="_blank"><img src="http://index.rpg.net/pictures/show-thumbnail.phtml?picid=7160" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></a>OverallThe standard of scenarios remains high, despite a tendency to over-detail everything, but elsewhere the general utility of material in the magazine diminishes. The imagination of Rick Priestley begins to inform a lot of the content of the magazine with his many articles discussing the WH40K universe in exhaustive detail, but there is a steady trend towards supplements for the miniatures wargames at the exclusion of all else, and the rise in features where articles on new mechanics for Warhammer and adverts for figures begin to bleed into one another. It’s probably not a coincidence either that the cover for Issue 100 features photos of miniatures. Whereas Issue 50 had the stats for White Dwarf personalities and Issue 90 had a retrospective article by Ian Livingstone, Issue 100 has nothing to mark the milestone, and no call backs to earlier issues.</blockquote>

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