I recently acquired a few White Dwarfs from EBay. The earliest of these was White Dwarf 26, from Aug/September 1981, when I was just turned three years old, and yet to really get into roleplaying or tabletop wargaming. WD26 was a bi-monthly magazine selling for 75 pence.
I thought you guys might enjoy a summary/review of the magzine.
The cover is by Ian McCaig. If it were appear on the cover of today's magazine, I think reactions would be quite negative. By the standards of
AD&D books, even back then, it is nothing special, but for a niche magazone, only a few years old at the time, it is not badly drawn. Composition looks okay to me. It is not, however, very inspiring or interesting, and there were far more visually appealing pieces in the years to follow.
Page 2 is a full page colour advert, combining an advert for the complete
GW catalogue
fo £1 (or$2), along with a FREE copy of Attack of the Mutants. Alternatively, you could get the catalogue free with a range of games, including Swashbuckler, Asteroid Pirates and Shooting Stars.
Page 3 is a full page advert for Games Workshop LTD, based at London and Manchester (not Nottingham?!) listing dozens of available products.
Page 4, and we are still on adverts. External this time, and including one for Games Centre at 22 Oxford Street. I
know that is not there anymore!
Page 5, more adverts. This time for Games Day '81, which was hosted at the Royal Horticultural Society in London! Adult tickets came at a whopping £1.25 for one day, or £2 for two days! Er? Games
Day? Two days? What madness is this?
Page 6, and we have, you guessed it - Adverts! This time it is an advert for Citadel Miniatures, with one poor quality image and a list of (not very many) available models, from Dark Ages, through Fantasy to Starcruisers.
Page 7 is something new. A contents page! The editor (still the esteemed Ian Livingsone) reports that a survey has firmly concluded a monhtly magazine rather than bi-monthly would be a good thing.
if they can find some worthy contributors.
Page 8-9. Well, well, well. That looks like content. A pre-Spelljammer article on Space Travel in AD&D by Marcus L Rowland. It is actually quite an interesting little article, theorizing about an existence that follows an inverse-cube relationship with distance, instead of inverse-square, as we experience. I can't imagine today's magazine getting quite so technical. Not in the Grimdark, Land Raider-Deepstriking, Physics-Defying W40K universe. Entertaining, and pertinent to many gaming systems, but rather a niche in terms of groups it would actually appeal to, and some of the physics leaves something to be desired. Still, it harks back to pre-WoW days when RPGs had a bit of intellect behind them. 7/10
Page 10-11 features a rather surprising review of Apocalypse. Surprising insofar as this is 1981. Seems GW have a few versions of Apocalypse... Strangely this game is set in an unusual land called "Europe" in some period of history where civilisation is in chaos. Stranegly, they spell Chaos without the capital C. I think they may just mean this "Europe" place is a bit disorganised, rather than inundated with dangerous creatures from the Warp. Strange what folks come up with. Anyway, this version gt 9/10 from John Olsen, who'd have given it 10/10 if it didn't take so long to finish. Some things never change. 6/10 for this overly-descriptive review.
Page 12-13 has a non-specific article on dungeon architecture by Roger Musson. For any DM still wanting to incorporate dungeons into his RP campaign, I'd imagine this would still be a rather useful article. Having found it, I'd refer to it myself if planning a dungeon-romp. Much of it would even be useful for Rogue Trader or Dark Heresy DMs designing Sace Hulks or Underhives. 10/10 for this article.
Page 14 is a few short articles on Traveller. It is actually part of a regular series from readers. It is on the subject of problems with the Jump Drive. Never having played Traveller, I can't comment too much, but the items don't seem great to me. They are, however, Reader Content, which I have to applaud. These days, I dare say it would be more likely to appear on Dakka or someplace similar than a published magazine, or even an in-house website from GW or WotC.
Page 15 is a letters page. Some letters are all technical questions about the logic behind game mechanics, or comments on previous articles, mostly positive, but with some reasonable and constructive criticism. Someone praises the first installment on the Roger Musson article that I praised the second part of, above.
Page 16 has an article on Lizardmen AD&D PCs by Roger E Moore and Michael Brown. They are extremely limited, both in terms of characteristics, and the fact their greated possible achievement is to become a level 6 fighter. I have to say, that one improvement in D&D is the fact you have so many more options these days, rather than artficial and illogical restrictions like this one. Still, at the time, it did open up a new option and went against prevailing ideas at the time, which was that you should NEVER have a Lizardman character.
Page 17-19 is a reader contribution, this time a competition winner for a Traveller scenario. Not knowing enough about the game system, I can't really offer any score, but it looks like a competent article, and again, it is reader content.
Page 20-21 is An Introduction to Dungeons & Dragons, Part IV: Fighters and Thieves, byt Lewis Pulsipher. It has some fairly intelligent observations on the role of fighters in a party, but is pretty basic. These days, it is the kind of thing you can find anywhere on a website or even on a message board. Decent, but nothing special. Back then, I'd imagine it would have been seen as a good article. 6/10
Page 22-23 is more reader content. This time it is reader ideas for magic items for D&D. Some of the items are pretty uninspiring and uninteresting, and even a bit 1337. Some, such as the Lunar Globe, which has the same effect on Lycanthropes as the moon, show a bit more though and restraint.
Page 24-25 is the Fiend Folio, featuring reader contributions of monsters for D&D. Anyone notice a trend towards reader-contributions? It seems almost as if early WD had more in common DakkaDakka than with modern D&D.
One little bit worthy repeating here is a competition to suggest collective nouns for some D&D monsters:
A Confusion of Umber Hulks
A Duplicity of Doppelgangers
A Clot of Vampires
A Garden of Gnomes
A Quiver of Manticora
A Heard of Ear Seekers
A Shock of Volts
A Load of Bull
A Fraction of Halflings
A (Re)assembly of Trolls
An Annoyance of Kobolds (Any number being annoying)
(Those last two were submitted by Roger Moore, by the way. I wonder...)
And the winner: An Overkill of Arch-Devils (presumably this applies to any more than 1 Arch-Devil?)
The article itself includes a sumbission from Roger E Moore. Is that our man? Sadly, IMDB suggests Roger Moore's middle name is George)
Page 26 gives feedback on the previous issue's reader questionnaire. What a quick turnaround! Roger Musson's article was the most popular of the previous month, showing what excellent judgement I showed earlier in giving him 10/10! Issue 23 was the most popular issue up to that point. People complained that WD was too short, has too many adverts, and concentrates too much on AD&D and Traveller. The more things change the more they stay the same! In the next question, lots of people wanted more AD&D and Traveller! They also felt th magazine should be more serious in content. A cartoon was requested,which is probably why we were fortunate enough to get Thrud only several years later, and Gobbledigook, before that. The average age of respondants was 19.7 years, from 11 to 40 years of age.
Page 27. Would you look at that? Adverts in the guise of news. New releases page called the Midgardian. Actually, some of this
is industry news, but it is broadly a new releases page.
Page 28 - Small Ads. These days, this all happens on EBay and the Dakka Swapshop, or similar. Funny to think how the world has changed.
Page 29 - An advert for
GW's new Birmingham Store. It is not in the same place anymore, I know that much!
Page 30 - A full page Ad for
The Gamer magazine.
Page 31 - Four external adverts, including one for Dragonmeet IV.
Page 32 - Full page avert/catalogue for Esdevium Games.
Page 33 - Adverts for
GW, GDW and Forever People.
Page 34 - Advert/catalogue for Games of Liverpool. Spotting a trend?
Page 35 - Another advert, noteworthy for the tagline, which I'd heard applied to games, computer games, comics and cartoons...
Back Cover - Full page advert for
AD&D figures.
So, overall, a lot of adverts, including on three of the four colour pages, people complaining about it. a little advertising disguised as comment. A hell of a lot of reader-contrbutions, some genuinely excellent content.
A very different magazine from what we have today. To me it seems to be a labour of love by dedicated amateurs who wanted to get something out there and share their ideas and enthusiasm rather than by a corporation wanting to advertise products. Dessite that, there are a lot of adverts, but it feels like they'd have had little choice back then. There is far less hyperbole and exaggeration, and not everything is automatically amazing. There are FAR fewer adjectives!!!
Overall, I prefer it, but I have to concede it is a relic of a bygone era, and that to get anything similar these days I am best off looking online at places like Dakka.
Hope you enjoyed this summary/review.
