Adventurer Magazine #1 Review

 

So

My current rpg collecting is now in its final form, which is as follows;

1 - D&D stuff (mainly Forgotten Realms but a little bit fluid).

2 - Traveller stuff - as much as I want.

3 - OD&D - good luck with that on my budget!

4 - UK RPG magazines.

So (4) is where we are at here. UK magazines are generally cheapish and readily available, in fact  generally can be more than the item itself.

I will subsequently list what I have and where I'm at but for now here is a new acquisition, Adventurer #1.

Brief review, it's ok.

90p in 1986 seems about right and it has a reasonable amount of content.

The fantasy adventurer, of which this is part one of 2 is formulaic but solid, nothing new in heaven and earth but ok.

The CoC adventure is actually quite decent but again, nothing much is new. The maps though are quite decent , but seem a bit overproduced for what is required (1986 was a bit like this though).

Miniatures stuff is again of its time, standard issue figures by decentish painters.

The reviews shine, seem well balanced and well thought out, good stuff.

Adverts if course are a joy, we can never get back to the halcyon years where all these products were on, and remained on, shelves in the high street. I know that times have changed but......

Little snippet on the news page, true that but whatever.

Great advice

See what I mean, a bit overdone.

You should go to this, and maybe try and buy some D&D stuff.

White Dwarf 40 - A classic of our time?

White Dwarf 40 was the first issue I brought back in the day. It was released in April 1983 so I would have been 13. (I honestly thought it was earlier than this, I must have been in secondary school when I got this, much to my surprise.)

I have recently decided to rebuy my collection of White Dwarfs (Dwarves?) and make a dedicated effort to read through them all and understand what I saw in them back in the day. So what follows is a review of a 35 year old magazine based on my 2018 eyes.

 

First things first, the cover. I’m not an art guy so pictures pretty much pass me buy, so whilst this cover is very familiar to me, I have never really looked at it. So it’s pretty dull really; 2 long headed alien type figures, looks like one male and one female. Fairly basic stuff, an inauspicious start.

 

Inside we’ll look at the layout. At this time all of the articles were sandwiched between pages of ads at the back and front. So we have a full page ad for the Judge Dredd boardgame – dull but having something of a renaissance at the moment. Then we have a page of ads featuring Games Workshop Mail order and Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks. The FF books are only up to number 3 and the GW ad has special prices on a couple of items – Scorpion Hall  for £4.95 and Tomb of the Lizard King for £3.95. (This will not be the last time I wish I had a time machine!).

Next up, ads for a couple of game stores (One of which was my LGS, Not Just Stamps – see a previous blog post) – both long gone I’m afraid.

Followed by a full page Car Wars advert – includes both Sunday Drivers and Truck Stop. Next 2 pages are more ads – for the new magazine from TSR called Imagine as well as Otherworld Artefacts and for a Mail Order Site, Poison Dwarf Games. For completeness I should say that I had all of the CW stuff and played a little, I bought Imagine up to about number 10 back in the day (I have subsequently had 2 full sets and sold them on – I’m thinking that after my WD phase I might have to go back to Imagine again!). Poison Dwarf games was actually a company I used a bit – their prices were very competitive indeed. Don’t know if Otherworld is still going but there are, oddly,  a few of their sets on ebay as we speak

Then a full page advert for a Citadel Miniatures Catalogue – no glossy photos back then.

 

Then to the real content. Ian Livingstone does the brief editorial, a brief comment over Fantasy or Science Fiction as inspiration for books and games. ( I prefer fantasy games and Sci-Fi movies fwiw).

Dave Morris writes a 2 page Runequest article Zen and the Art of adventure Gaming. Not very interesting to me but lots of nuts and bolts stuff mainly about weapons and combat. Doesn’t really add a lot to the game but I think this was when Ninjas etc were getting more frequent in popular culture.

3 page article on The Dungeon Master General – Mass combat in D&D – sort of a rules system but frankly you would be better going freeform on it – food for thought but not much else.

 

Critical Mass by Dave Langford – typical book review column which I always really liked. Langford has a very dry writing style and gave me a few pointers over the years for reading matter. (DL is still going strong – https://ansible.uk/ – well worth following). Foremost review is for White Gold Wielder the 6^th Thomas Covenant book from Stephen Donaldson (Could never read them.) I did read the Myth series from Robert Asprin following this column though, yes I agree the Pervect joke was overused but good fun  nonetheless.

Next up, Open Box, a 2 Page reviews column  – good stuff here. Scorpion Hall – awesome, bought it!

C1/C2/S2/I1 – a review of 4 classic AD&D modules – had them all too. Scores of 8 all round except for I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City which got a 5 – Jim Bambra does give reason for this low score – I would personally have given it a 7 but maybe that’s a lot of nostalgia coming to bear.

Illuminati from Steve Jackson – no idea about a lot of these pocket games but they always seemed to sell well.

Last, but by no means least, with an overall score of 9 we have Starstone by Paul Vernon, enough said – if you can get hold of one do so, I simply cannot recommend it highly enough – though why the map was oversized to the book was always a mystery to me!

Letters page – Quite dull today – sorry not much in the way of meat here. (Over the years some of the ongoing debates in these pages was quite caustic – possibly some thoughtful editing coming in to play but interesting al the same).

 6 Page scenario from Marcus Rowland – Eagle Hunt. This is a classic – I really don’t know how so much information is squeezed into such a short space. MR wrote any number of solid adventures but this really is good stuff – the Detective aspect of it is a little forced but a great scenario.

Runerites – all about trading – nothing new here but a very workable system – It could get abused by an Issaries guy though just out to make Lunar if this was the way your campaign was going.

Assignment:Survey has a new ship for Traveller by Andy Slack – a nice thing this – a bit of a step up from the usual Type S Scout – well laid out and  very usable. (There is a scenario in issue 41 featuring this ship  - Off topic but the Snow Bird Mystery is another top drawer scenario for a magazine – frankly better than most of the Traveller LBB range.)

Inhuman Gods part 2 – Dull – all you need to know about the gods of Firenewts, Flinds, Flymen and Frog Folk – as pointless as you might imagine it to be.

Wowser – 2 pages of a computer program in BASIC to enable you to generate Runequest characters – how times have changed! I really don’t think many of us would sit at a keyboard and input this now. At least it’s for an Apple though – lord knows it could have been for a ZX81.

Magic Items – Standard fare – I can’t think of anything pithy to say here – I feel though, that back then I should have sent in magic item suggestions – I couldn’t write adventures but I think I could have got my name in print for an enchanted item – sadly a missed opportunity.

News page – Some Chronicle Hobgoblins – like these sculpts along with a set of treasure items from Torchlight.

Also is the news that Citadel Miniatures will be releasing a product that “marks a completely new direction for the company” – Warhammer!!! (Nuff said).

The news page - Truckstop is coming as is Scorpion Hall, Battlecars and yet more Fighting Fantasy books – the humanity, where will it end?

Small ads – I would buy all of the second hand stuff and would also be up for the fanzines; Quasits & Quasars, Journal of the Senseless Carnage Society, Wyrms Claw anybody? I tried the number of the guy selling WD 1-20 but it doesn’t seem to work!!

That’s the real content over with, the rest of the mag is filled up with  more adverts – anybody know anything about the PBM Vorcon Wars?

Ads for Salute at the Kensington Town Hall, Starstone as well as a game shop in Wales and the PBM Crasimoff’s World(Think this was one of the longest running PBMs).

There are full page ads for Star Fleet Battles, RQ and Traveller and miniature companys Chronicle and Denizen.

Game shops – 1/8 page crap ad for the Gameskeeper Oxford – still going and Esdevium, now trading as Asmodee as a game distributor.

Oh and Games Workshop only had 5 branches!!

 

So that’s it, in all its ancient glory. I really enjoyed re-reading this and it brought back some fine memories. I brought this months WD recently – side by side the 2 don’t really compare, though I have enjoyed both, for very different reasons – Warhammer really did catch on didn’t it?

 

Back soon

 

Carl

Games Shops - FLGS or LGS?

A brief post as I'm back from some time off work and haven't given it much thought.
I buy most of my stuff, like many others, from the internet - it's convenient and I get stuff at a price I am happy with - it also avoids the necessity of going into an actual games store!


Growing up, when I was buying what seemed like a lot of games my local games shop was called Not Just Stamps - a small shop in High Wycombe. I have fond but very blurry memories of it back in the early days. They had a (vast? probably not) figures cabinet, with all of their range lined up in sections. As I recall it was predominantly Citadel with some Ral Partha and a few historicals as well. You decided on what you wanted and gave the person at the counter the details and they would retrieve it from a set of small drawers behind the counter; or sometimes the drawer was empty and you had to start again. I think that this system was used a lot back then, before slotta bases and blister packs when they all came in little plastic bags stapled to a cardboard header.
Not Just Stamps sold a whole mass of stuff from Stamps to chess to board games to RPGS - they must have finally given up the ghost about 14 or 15 years ago - a great shame that I cannot seem to find much about them online. I remember that the lady in there seemed a bit scary.  We would have never dared to shoplift but I feel that she thought we might, so watched us like hawks. There was never any actual gaming in store, at least when I was a customer, and we never had much reason to stay once our paper round money was spent so our trips were generally short and to the point - it certainly wasn't encouraged that it be a hangout for feckless kids.


Which brings me on to the here and now.
I don't often go into a GW store, as I don't really have a reason to but I genuinely think they have got it right. Haters are going to hate of course (see Warseer for more) but their staff are friendly, the stores are light and airy and their product is excellent (if you like GW!). It's a fine place for a newbie to learn the ropes and be indoctrinated into the grimdark world. Their financials are widely known to have had some issues over the years but their star is definitely in the ascendency now - who knew that if you give people what they want then your business will be a success?


So good luck to GW, but what of my FLGS? A store opened in the high street of my village a while ago (3 years the internet tells me) and frankly I don't know if it's F or not. Why? Because I'm sort of scared to go in. It's only small and they have tables down the middle for playing Magic and other games which means it's decidedly cramped, especially as there are normally at least 2 or 3 people in there, I guess staff, but possibly hangers on. It seems to have fairly regular games nights and what looks like a thriving community so why do I not go in? Because I probably wouldn't buy anything and, if I'm brutally honest, I am concerned that I will hate the type of people that hang around in games stores; I fear that they will be everything that I consider bad about geek culture, that they will be "comic book guys", alpha nerds and social misfits. I'm scared that they won't be mature, well adjusted, right-thinking family guys like I am and that they will destroy the joy that I get from games just by being different to me. So I stay on the outside looking in, embracing my love of the hobby without getting involved in it, telling myself that one day, when things are different (I don't know how!) I will jump in and embrace my fellow gamers, gamers of all types, of all creeds and colours and fully and finally immerse myself in the culture that I love, but am afraid will disappoint me.


I am wholly aware of how cynical and sad this makes me seem - don't judge me, I can't help it. I often walk the dog past the store of an evening and look wistfully through the window. 48 year old me cannot go in, but 14 year old me wishes the shop had been there when I went to school around the corner.


I have intentionally not named the store - when I do go finally go in I'll report back here with my findings, with perhaps some comments about other shops, both current and in the distant past.
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