Magazine Madness 11: Parallel Worlds #02

The gaming magazine is dead. After all, when was the last time that you were able to purchase a gaming magazine at your nearest newsagent? Games Workshop’s White Dwarf is of course the exception, but it has been over a decade since Dragon appeared in print. However, in more recent times, the hobby has found other means to bring the magazine format to the market. Digitally, of course, but publishers have also created their own in-house titles and sold them direct or through distribution. Another vehicle has been Kickstarter.com, which has allowed amateurs to write, create, fund, and publish titles of their own, much like the fanzines of Kickstarter’s ZineQuest. The resulting titles are not fanzines though, being longer, tackling broader subject matters, and more professional in terms of their layout and design.

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The second issue of Parallel Worlds magazine was published in September 202o. Like the inaugural issue, Parallel Worlds #01, published the year previously, it contains no gaming content as such, but rather discusses and aspects of not just the hobby, but different hobbies—board games, roleplaying games, computer games, and more. Unlike later issues, for example, Parallel Worlds #21 and Parallel Worlds #22, this second issue is very much about games, and that is not necessarily a bad thing if something interesting is said about them. Where that was not always achieved in Parallel Worlds #01, the second issue is more balanced, which when combined with its selection of interesting articles and brevity serves to make it overall an engaging, even sometimes thoughtful read. Of course, Parallel Worlds #02 is readily available in print, but all of the issues of Parallel Worlds, published by Parallel Publishing can also be purchased in digital format, because it is very much not back in the day of classic White Dwarf, but here and now. 

Parallel Worlds #02 opens with an interview with Adrian Tchaikovsky, the author of the Shadows of the Apt fantasy series and the award-winning science fiction novel, Children of Time. It touches upon his choice of publishers and how alien spiders are, but it also explores his love of roleplaying, mentioning that he is the Dungeon Master for a Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition campaign and also that Shadows of the Apt fantasy series arose from a roleplaying campaign of his own. It is a fairly light piece to start the issue with and although a couple of years old, is intriguing to persuade the reader to check out Adrian Tchaikovsky’s fiction.

Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition is the subject of the first ‘Tabletop Games’ article in Parallel Worlds #02. ‘Box Half Full: Why D&D is so revered and popular’ by Ben Potts is the counterpart to Connor Eddles’ ‘Box Full of Knives: Why Dungeons & Dragons needs to step away from its wargaming roots’ in Parallel Worlds #01, and by far, very much the superior article. In his article, Eddles made the point that Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition is a ‘box full of knives’, that its mechanics are too focused on delivered the means to kill things and take their loot and not enough on providing the tools to provide stories. Yet whilst the points in his article are not without merit, Eddles completely failed to do anything to counter them. Fortunately, whilst Ben Potts both acknowledges Eddles’ points and accepts that many of them are valid, he points out the value of the shared history and storytelling to be found in Dungeons & Dragons, how that can be passed from one generation to another, how Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition has moved in terms of representation and diversity (but remember this article was written in 2020, so the roleplaying game is still on that path), how the sexism of fantasy artwork has been ditched, and how the rules have been streamlined. The article also acknowledges that the origins of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition do lie in wargaming and medieval history. Overall, this article is everything that ‘Box Full of Knives: Why Dungeons & Dragons needs to step away from its wargaming roots’ is not—balanced, interesting, and informative. ‘Box Half Full: Why D&D is so revered and popular’ does not shy away from the issues with Dungeons & Dragons, but it explores and explains them as well as highlighting the changes made to make Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition a better game.

This followed by a second ‘Tabletop Games’ article, this time a review by Christopher Jarvis of Star Wars: Outer Rim. Published by Fantasy Flight Games, this is the board game of scoundrels engaged in smuggling, bounty hunting, scams, and more as they attempt to turn themselves in legends. This is a decent review which clearly captures just how much the reviewer had playing the game. The third of the ‘Tabletop Games’ articles is the second entry in the ‘Miniature Of The Month’ series, here ‘Miniature Of The Month: Uthred Steelmantle’. Written by Connor Eddles, this looks at a more modern figure, this time a Stormcast Vanguard for Warhammer 40,000. Accompanied by a piece of short fiction, this still feels like page filler rather than being anything interesting. Connor Eddles’ other contribution is ‘Beneath the Waystation’, a piece of ‘Original Fiction’. It is a decent enough short slice of Science Fiction horror. The other review in the issue is ‘Review: Dragonslayer’ by Allen Stroud. This is of Duncan M. Hamilton’s Dragonslayer, and is not wholly positive. 

Tom Grundy’s ‘Thinkpiece’ is titled ‘Ruling the World 20 – The sci-fi assumption of ‘Government Earth’’, which examines the notion of the ‘global’ or civilisation-wide government—including star spanning governments, how the world might get there, and the difficulties associated with doing so, primarily with how a country identifies itself. Numerous options are discussed, such as colonies pushing for independence from home governments, governments existing across multiple worlds, having a ‘mega-United Nations’ across multiple star systems and worlds, and more. The article does suffer from a lot of blank space and it would have benefited from a bibliography listing the various works of fiction, films, television series, and games where the various forms of government appear. Certainly some application and some pointers for the reader would have helped.

In Parallel Worlds #01, with ‘Events’, Allen Stroud took the reader on a guided tour of the United Kingdom’s biggest gaming convention with ‘UK Games Expo 2019’. In Parallel Worlds #02, he takes us to another convention, very different in nature to UK Games Expo—the 77th annual World Convention of Science Fiction. Attended by many of the biggest names in science fiction, fantasy, and horror, this is an even bigger event with its emphasis on Science Fiction and fantasy and fiction all culminating in the Hugo Awards. Stroud does point out that the event was not with its issues, but again captures the scale of the event, highlighting the number of attendees, the breadth of stalls and exhibitors present, and the array of events staged across the weekend. Supported by numerous photographs, ‘Dublin 2019: an Irish worldcon’ brings the event to life and really makes the reader want to attend, which again, post-COVID in 2022 will be a whole lot easier.

The other ‘Video Games’ article is Thomas Turnbull-Ross’ ‘Beyond the Screen: Are games becoming less immersive?’ which examines both whether games are becoming easier to play at a cost of immersion and whether their sense of escapism is being lost with the shift to social-focused gameplay. It is a lengthy piece which examines numerous online games and their communities, pointing to plenty of examples, before concluding that both issues are true, but not totally.

Lastly, Lastly, ‘TV & Film’ launches a two-part article dedicated to Star Trek. The first part of ‘Keeping Trek’ by Ben Potts looks at the origins and history of the franchise, all the way up the earliest films, with Star Trek: The Next Generation saved for the second part. The article is definitely for the casual or uninitiated would be fan of Star Trek as there is nothing here that the dedicated fan will not already know. For the casual or would be fan this is a solid introduction to the series from the sixties and to an extent, the films of the late seventies and early eighties, which whilst not ignoring the era poor portrayal of its female characters or some of the sillier plots, does highlight how the series was socially and inspirationally ground-breaking, as was the technology, and there were some great stories too.

Physically, Parallel Worlds #02 is printed in full colour, on very sturdy paper, which gives it a high-quality feel. As with the first issue, it does suffer from a lot of white space and one or two of the articles do feel stretched out.

Parallel Worlds #02 is better than Parallel Worlds #01—and that is how it should be. The issue has a better mix of articles, even if roleplaying does come off a poor third in comparison to other types of gaming. It does feel as if there should be more to it though. For example, one board game review or one book review or one miniature review just does not feel enough, especially given how much space is devoted to them, whilst other articles could have been improved with bibliographies all of their very own. Overall, Parallel Worlds #02 is a light, perhaps just a little too slight in places, enjoyable read.