Best of... 2015 Gongfarmer’s Almanac

Before the advent of the internet, the magazine was the focus of the hobby’s attention, a platform in whose pages could be news, reviews, and content for the roleplaying game of each reader’s choice, as well as a classified section and a letters page where the issues of day—or at least month—could be raised and discussed in chronically lengthy manner. In this way, such magazines as White Dwarf, Imagine, Dragon, and many others since, came to be our community’s focal point and sounding board, especially a magazine that was long running. Yet depending upon when you entered the hobby and picked up your first issue of a roleplaying magazine, you could have missed a mere handful of issues or many. Which would have left you wondering what was in those prior issues. Today, tracking down back issues to find out and complete a magazine’s run is much easier than it was then, but many publishers offered another solution—the ‘Best of…’ magazine. This was a compilation of curated articles and support, containing the best content to have appeared in the magazine’s pages.

1980 got the format off to a good start with both The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios and The Best of White Dwarf Articles from Games Workshop as well as the Best of Dragon from TSR, Inc. Both publishers would release further volumes of all three series, and TSR, Inc. would also reprint its volumes. Other publishers have published similar volumes and in more recent times, creators in the Old School Renaissance have begun to collate and collect content despite the relative youth of that movement. This includes The Gongfarmer’s Almanac which has collected community content for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game since 2015 and Populated Hexes Monthly Year One which collected the content from the Populated Hexes Monthly fanzine. The ‘Best of…’ series of reviews will look at these and many of the curated and compiled titles from the last four decades of roleplaying.

—oOo—

The 2015 Gongfarmer’s Almanac was published in 2016. It is the first of several annual compilations of the fanzine, the Gongfarmer’s Almanac, created by dedicated fans of Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game (and later Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic, the spiritual successor to Gamma World) published by Gongfarmer’s Local #282. Both the creation of the individual issues and the compilations of Gongfarmer’s Almanac are volunteer-led and both the individual issues and the compilations are available in different formats. This includes being available for free as PDFs and then as inexpensive softbacks and paperbacks. So, in the case of the 2015 Gongfarmer’s Almanac, which was created and compiled by the members of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Google+ Community, that is over three hundred pages of content that the Judge can pick and choose from for her campaign. This includes new Classes, spells and rituals, monsters, treasure, Patrons, adventures, campaign material, and more. All of it optional, but all of it worth looking at given its obvious value for money.

However, the volunteer-led nature of the 2015 Gongfarmer’s Almanac is not without its consequences. Although the layout of the compilation is decent enough, the organisation is not as straightforward as it could be. The compilation is organised and numbered as individual issues, rather than as a whole, and the individual entries vary in length. The individual issues though, are organised thematically, so the first issue is dedicated to Classes and spells, the second to monsters, treasures, and Patrons, the third to scenarios, and so on. This, plus the repeated inclusion of the table of the contents does help the reader navigate her way around the compilation. It should also be noted that the physical quality of the compilations are not of the highest quality, which in part, is due to the low cost. Lastly, the 2015 Gongfarmer’s Almanac contains not five issues as stated in the initial individual sections, but a total of six.

The ‘PC Classes’ opens with Julian Bernick’s ‘Assassin’, which mixes the Thief’s stealth skills and backstab ability with the ‘Gift of Venom’, which forces the defendant to save versus Poison, but if failed, can have various effects, including being weakened, inflicting extra damage, and even death. In addition, the Assassin can also assassinate a totally surprised opponent! The ‘Dervish’ by Edgar Johnson is a holy warrior, Neutral by alignment, but highly religious, specialises in the use of one weapon, and mixes in a lot of different abilities taken from the Paladin, Ranger, and Thief Classes. This quite a focused and strong Class. ‘Gold and Glory Beyond the Grave Un-dead PC’s in DCC RPG’ by Taylor Frank gives options for playing undead characters such Ghost, Skeleton Warrior, and even a Vampire. These cross over in the Chaotic Alignment, even evil, and so are suited to some campaigns more than others. Reid ‘Reidzilla’ San Filippo’s ‘The Luchador’ is drawn from the author’s Umerica setting, blessed by the Bueno-god El Santo, patron of monster slaying wrestlers, channelling the hope Luchadores channel of their peoples and their indomitable will through outlandish mystical masks to empower their ancient, unarmed fighting techniques. They have Mighty Deeds of Wrestling including for acrobatic strikes, blinding attacks, choke out, demoralising taunts, and more. It is a fun all-action, brawling Class. Lastly, David Baity’s ‘The Sword Monger A DCC Optional Class’ is very clearly inspired by the film, Highlander, presenting sword-wielding warriors who can be killed by decapitation and when they kill one of their own, they gain a portion of his Hit Points and kill enough of them will improve stats. This makes them quite powerful. Overall, this is interesting mix of new Classes, some of which may well be too powerful or radical for some campaigns.

‘Rituals & Spells’ gives several spells such as Blood Splash, a First Level Wizard spell by Reece Carter, in which the caster cuts himself and sprays at opponents to inflict damage, whilst Terry Olson’s Temporary Creation is a First Level Cleric in which the caster draws upon his deity’s power to temporarily create semi-divine, though ordinary items. Vacuity by Chris Fassano is a Third Level Wizard spell which draws all of the air out of the target’s lungs and at its most powerful creates a black hole which leads to a different world. This is an interesting mix and spellcasters can have some fun with them.

The first of the items of treasure is ‘Items to Die For’ by Kyle Turner. These are a trio of interesting magical items, all nice and easy to use, like the Harrow, a bow of gnarled, polished bone that does no damage, but renders a particular body part broken and useless on a hit, but on a critical miss does the same to an ally, whilst Yi’ao, the Flame is a burning iron sword that never goes out, requires a marble scabbard(!), and burns its wielder. Jordan Smith’ ‘Objects of Wonder from the Ruins of Glittergus’ offers a handful of items like the Eye of Occultation and the Crown of the Ape King, whose background in the Swamp Kingdoms of Jersey and the scattered lands of Brokendyn, all suggest a post-apocalyptic origin, but they all still feel magical rather than technologically derived, but all are engaging described, whilst ‘Pelagian Equipment’ by Bruce Clark, describes two items that part of the domain of Pelagia, the Sea Goddess. One is Pelagia’s Holy Vestments, robes that grant faster swimming and an entanglement—in seaweed, of course—power that needs to be rolled for, the other a Portable Jellyfish which can be thrown like a grenade for electricity damage! ‘The Wall of Kovacs’ is a transient wall of various materials which can appear anywhere, again and again. Created by bygrinstow and inspired by the work of Goodman Games regular artist, Doug Kovacs, it causes Chaotic transformations in those who touch it, so the players and their characters are likely to come to fear and curse its presence.

The Patrons are all fully written up with spells patron gifts. Randall D. Bailey Jr.’s ‘Ghrelin’ is “The Demon Lord of Hunger and Starvation…” who “cares about nothing but consuming.”; bygrinstow’s ‘The Great Ebony Hand’ details as inscrutable a Patron as you could imagine, since you can talk to and invoke the Great Ebony Hand, but it never talks back. It can though provide a protective, ghostly hand, spells that allow communication via sign language, poke doom at a target, and so on; and ‘Patron: Hecate’ by Doyle Wayne Ramos-Tavener describes a patron of witches who sends nightmares, can raise the dead, and so on. This is a dark version of Hecate and witch-type characters, and highly suitable for NPCs and grimdark campaigns, but unfortunately feels incomplete with the inclusion of the one spell.

‘Volume 3: Adventures’ contains fives adventures of varying quality. They begin with Clint Bohaty’s First Level adventure, ‘Hemlock Bones Mystery Adventure #1: The Coal Snoot’. Inspired by the works of Sherlock Holmes, the Player Characters are hired by the brilliant and annoying wizard, Hemlock Bones, to help him solve a locked room murder. In other words, they do the work and he takes the credit. It is all set-up—quite detailed set-up—which the Player Characters have to solve. This is very much left open and so will take a fair bit of work for the Judge to run as is. The format, with a Sherlock Holmes-style NPC present, has the potential to overbear the efforts of the Player Characters, but the advice on handling him is decent, mostly keeping him offstage. Peter Mullen’s ‘The Marvelous Myriad Myconid Caverns’ is for Third and Fourth Level Player Characters is actually marvellous, a series of caves and tunnels off the River Yimmer in the Endless Dungeons of Acererak. There are touches of whimsy and strangeness to the encounters with Morse Trolls who tap out messages across the dungeon, gremlin dungeon punks, Sergeant Luggbodduggo, a Nail-head Hobgoblin on a fishing trip, a monstrous troglodyte chief armed with the Gorgosaurus Sword—a dinosaur in weapon form! Accompanying the scenario is a lovely map and this really is a charming dungeon which creates a world of its own, not only the best of the five dungeons in the 2015 Gongfarmer’s Almanac, but amongst the best of the content in the compilation.

‘May Flowers’ is a Zero Level Funnel by Daniel J. Bishop. The uncovering of an icon of the ancient Chaos goddess, Flos Tenebrarum, the Flower of Darkness, unleashes the sudden flowering of strange predatory plants. Essentially, it turns a farmer’s field into a garden-themed dungeon, a deadly one at that, and if it feels somewhat one-note in that theme, much of the joy of the adventure is going to come from Zero Level Player Characters live and die in the course of dealing with the newly grown problem. Just as with other Zero Level Funnels. Jon Hook’s ‘Tomb of the Thrice-Damned War Witch’ is a deadly, tomb-raiding adventure for Fourth Level Player Characters, built to contain the spirit of a powerful war witch in ages past. Relatively short, it is full of puzzles and traps and the sort of adventure in which things are best well left alone. The war witch’s treasures are powerful, especially if a Player Character is a Warrior of Chaotic alignment, but if not, there is a wand capable of creating portals large to transport soldiery and siege engines across vast distances which could be useful. Otherwise, even the author describes entering into the tomb as a fool’s errand.

Lastly, ‘The Worm Cult of Laserskull Mountain’ by Noah Stevens mixes a range of genres—Science Fiction, the post-apocalyptic, and fantasy—to create an adventure site ready to be scaled and adapted to the Player Characters. Laserskull Mountain is where the people of sector bring their dead to be interred by the Embalmers and eulogised by their dirge-singing Crystaloid Computer, but it has been recently invaded by Worm Cultists who are digging down in search of the Humming Egg and then occupied by the Android Enchantress as a forward operating base in her war against the Cyberlich, whose attack is imminent… It will require a fair degree of effort upon the part of the Judge to prepare, since she will need to provide all of the stats. Otherwise, this is nicely detailed and awaits the right spot in the Judge’s campaign to be placed.

The fourth, fifth, and subsequently, sixth part of the 2015 Gongfarmer’s Almanac all fall under the label of ‘Rules & Campaign Miscellany’. This consists of content that does not fit under any of the other categories given in the earlier volumes, which include setting content, general articles, and more. Roy Snyder’s ‘Black Blood Pass – A Mini-Gazetteer’ describes a nearly impassable pass through mountains, fallen to ruin since the Demi-Lich Rj’nimajneb~Yor’s forces to occupy the Fang, the fortress dominating the pass. The Demi-Lich is fully detailed, including its abilities and magical items, alongside location descriptions and hooks. It is a pity that it is a ‘Mini-Gazetteer’, since there is plenty of scope for expansion and more detailing. A map perhaps would have been useful to help the Judge develop the lengthy location further. ‘Chirumancy’ by James MacGeorge offers an alternative to healing magic of the Cleric, Chirurgeons, who as the masters of the arts of dark surgery, seal wounds with carcinomas, replace lost limbs with those taken from corpses, and worse. There are side effects though, beginning with a persistent cough or chronic incontinence and going all the way to seizures and tumours! Another problem is that the newly attached body parts may not match those lost, due to either Species or gender! This is delightfully grim, a bloody, inconsistent counterpart to the sterility of divine healing magic.

There is a set of tables by Tim Callahan to create non-traditional haunted and doomed locations with ‘Crawling Castle of Grumblethorn and Other Architectural Horrors’; an actual ‘The Gongfarmer’s Almanac’, a calendar by Doyle Wayne Ramos-Tavener to add omens, events, and Wizard and Cleric spell check modifiers day-by-day to a campaign or serve as a model for the Judge’s own; a table of events and encounters by Kane Cathainm ‘Tales of Travels, Trials, & Chance Meetings’, to role on between adventures to make the Player Characters’ lives interesting; and ‘The Virtual Funnel: Making Higher Level DCC RPG Characters with Real Class’, Paul Wolfe’s solution for creating the backstory to Player Characters created at higher Level. This starts with the Zero Level Character Funnel and takes them up Level by Level to the Player Character’s starting point. A very useful set of tables which could easily have found itself in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Companion if there were such a thing for the roleplaying game. There is even another scenario, ‘The Demon’s Conscripts’, a mid-Level affair in which the Player Characters encounter foreign soldiers who have been partially possessed by demons. Again by Paul Wolfe, these are Samurai, and includes stats for various Japanese monsters and martial weapons, alongside an interesting situation.

And then, the ‘Master Zine Index’ lists every adventure, gadget or gear, magical item, monster, NPC, Patron, ritual or spell, rules, rumours, and campaign seeds, and anything else to have appeared in the nine or so fanzines then in print! It was an amazing undertaking in 2015. It would be a daunting task almost a decade on in 2024!

Physically, the 2015 Gongfarmer’s Almanac is rough around the edges and has cheap, pulp quality to it. There is very much the feel of the fanzine to its pages, both in terms of presentation and quality of content. There is though, nothing wrong in this, for there is a wide variety of content and none of it is presented in a less than readable fashion. Rather that anyone expecting something more polished will be disappointed.

The likelihood is that the Judge is never going to use all of the content of the 2015 Gongfarmer’s Almanac, but there is very likely going to be something its pages that she will find useful or she can adapt or incorporate into her campaign. It is a medley of ideas, monsters, adventures, options, treasures, gods, and much more. The 2015 Gongfarmer’s Almanac was an impressive collation in 2016 and if it has been outclassed by the volumes in the series that followed, it was still an incredible, fan-driven undertaking that captured the imaginations of Dungeon Crawl Classics fans at the time.

Best of... White Dwarf Scenarios

Before the advent of the internet, the magazine was the focus of the hobby’s attention, a platform in whose pages could be news, reviews, and content for the roleplaying game of each reader’s choice, as well as a classified section and a letters page where the issues of day—or at least month—could be raised and discussed in chronically lengthy manner. In this way, such magazines as White Dwarf, Imagine, Dragon, and many others since, came to be our community’s focal point and sounding board, especially a magazine that was long running. Yet depending upon when you entered the hobby and picked up your first issue of a roleplaying magazine, you could have missed a mere handful of issues or many. Which would have left you wondering what was in those prior issues. Today, tracking down back issues to find out and complete a magazine’s run is much easier than it was then, but many publishers offered another solution—the ‘Best of…’ magazine. This was a compilation of curated articles and support, containing the best content to have appeared in the magazine’s pages.

1980 got the format off to a good start with both The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios and The Best of White Dwarf Articles from Games Workshop as well as the Best of Dragon from TSR, Inc. Both publishers would release further volumes of all three series, and TSR, Inc. would also reprint its volumes. Other publishers have published similar volumes and in more recent times, creators in the Old School Renaissance have begun to collate and collect content despite the relative youth of that movement. This includes The Gongfarmer’s Almanac which has collected community content for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game since 2015 and Populated Hexes Monthly Year One which collected the content from the Populated Hexes Monthly fanzine. The ‘Best of…’ series of reviews will look at these and many of the curated and compiled titles from the last four decades of roleplaying.

—oOo—

The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios was published in 1980. Unlike its counterpart, The Best of White Dwarf Articles, it did not have the benefit of containing “Selected material from the first 3 years of White Dwarf”. Where The Best of White Dwarf Articles could draw from White Dwarf Issue No. 1 to White Dwarf Issue No. 20, the first scenario its pages only appeared in White Dwarf Issue No. 9 with ‘The Lichway’. Prior to that, the dungeon encounter, ‘Lair of the Demon Queen’ whish appeared in White Dwarf Issue No. 7 and ‘A Place in the Wilderness’ in White Dwarf Issue No. 11, and although both are included in this anthology, neither are scenarios in the strict roleplaying definition. However, within a few issues of ‘The Lichway’ being published, scenarios would become a regular feature of White Dwarf and grow in both detail and sophistication. Further, unlike The Best of White Dwarf Articles, the range of roleplaying games supported by The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios is not limited to just Dungeons & Dragons and Traveller. There are scenarios for RuneQuest, Gamma World, and Chivalry & Socerery, and like Ian Livingstone pointed out in his editorial, “Readers should also bear in mind that with a little thought, these adventures can be used in games systems other than the others for they were designed; the Pool of the Standing Stones, for example has been successfully converted to C&S.” Indeed, many of the scenarios in The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios are not just playable to today, they can still be converted and updated to more modern roleplaying games or updated iterations of older roleplaying games. Consequently, the contents of The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios are far more applicable and useable today than the contents of The Best of White Dwarf Articles.

The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios opens with the magnificent ‘The Halls of Tizun Thane’ for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition, from White Dwarf Issue No. 18. Written by Albie Fiore, its title is inspired by Robert E. Howard’s ‘The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune’ and there are references too to other stories by Howard throughout the scenario. Yet, the Swords & Sorcery influences are trumped by the Vancian tone, this scenario feeling as if comes from the pages of Jack Vance’s Dying Earth novels. There are nods too, to other content from White Dwarf, such as the lamented Houri Class from White Dwarf Issue No. 13 (republished in The Best of White Dwarf Articles) and the Necromancer Class, which would not be published until White Dwarf Issue No. 35! The adventure itself sees a village in peril from strange shadowy figures that hunt and kill at night and the villagers are sure come from the nearby mansion of Tizun Thane, a wizard who lives with his two brothers. The mansion itself is located in the middle of a lake in the caldera of a volcano, a palace of exotic delights full of secret doors and mysteries alongside the mundane areas where his servants worked. However, the Player Characters will quickly learn that he is dead and consequently, the household has descended into rivalry and factionalism as the brothers feud with each other, whilst the murderer lurks, lamenting his actions. There are new monsters, like the chimpanzee-like Nandie-Bear, run riot over the mansion’s rooftops; Carbuncle, an armadillo-like creature which will foretell the future of the Player Characters again and again for the fun of it and the chaos it will cause; the death-worm-like Necrophidius; the brain-eating, Wendigo-like, Gu’en-deeko.

However, it is the map of the mansion that so clearly stands out, richly detailed and interesting. Combine it with the description and what the Dungeon Master has, is a building which before it began to go to seed, was lived and worked in, so lacks the artifice that a dungeon adventure would have by comparison. It is a tough adventure for First and Second Level Player Characters, especially given that the threat endangering the villagers are not ones that the Player Characters can really affect. Even if they do manage to find magic weapons capable of inflicting damage, they are incredibly tough. ‘The Halls of Tizun Thane’ is a great scenario, a superb mix of rich detail, lovely cartography, and roleplaying potential with its factionalism and decent NPCs. There is even scope to expand the scenario via the previous owner’s set of magic mirrors which the Player Characters could learn to use and travel back and forth on various adventures. They would, of course, have to claim the house and make it their own. To effectively run the scenario, the Dungeon Master will need to unpack it as part of her preparation, but ‘The Halls of Tizun Thane’ is almost worth the price of admission in The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios.

Unfortunately, John Bethell’s ‘Lair of the White Wyrm’ is not. Originally published in White Dwarf Issue No. 14 for use with RuneQuest, it details a former two-level Dragonewt colony which is rumoured to have harboured a young Wyrm. The problem is that the dungeon is zoo-like in its design, with a mixture of traps and differing creatures present without making any real sense. There are Dwarves, Dark Trolls and Trollkin, Scorpionmen (oddly chained up in a five-foot wide corridor, whilst still leaving for the Player Characters to get past), Broo, and a Duck played for silliness. It is mishmash of elements which really do not fit the setting and really lack motivation.

First published in White Dwarf Issue No. 16, ‘Paths of the Lil’ is the sole entry for use with Gamma World. Written by James M. Ward, designer of Metamorphosis Alpha and co-designer of Gamma World, this details the lair of diminutive Lil, an almost fae-like species known for their beauty, the toughness of their wings, and their willingness to defend their lairs, which consist of dense thickets of brambles covered in surprisingly sharp thorns. Assaulting the ‘Paths of the Lil’ would be a tough challenge and the Player Characters would really need a good reason to do so. The encounter is decently detailed though and could easily be added to a Game Master’s Gamma World campaign, perhaps adding the ‘Paths of the Lil’ and its occupants as a faction rather than an enemy straight off.

The second of the scenarios in the anthology for RuneQuest is also the first of two scenarios taken from the pages of White Dwarf Issue No. 19. ‘Jorthan’s Rescue’ by John T. Sapienza Jr. and Stephen R. Marsh is a raid or rescue style scenario in which the Player Characters are hired by a merchant to rescue her noble husband, who has been kidnapped by a gang of Trollkin and is holding him to ransom. The Player Characters simply have to sneak up on the abandoned hunting lodge where the Trollkin are holding Jorthan and bust him out. The gang consists in the main of Trollkin, but they are led by a Dark Troll bruiser and secretly, his mate of choice. The emphasis is upon combat as the Player Characters fight their way through the lodge, and whilst the Trollkin are not dangerous individually, there are quite a few of them. The scenario packs not just a lot of stats—this being a scenario for RuneQuest 2 and so every monster gets full stats—into its pages, but quite a bit of detail and humour too. For example, the Trollkin guarding the front door is called Sleepy and he will be woken up when the spear he has leaning against the door is knocked over. The scenario also comes with an alternative layout for a different set-up. Overall, the scenario feels slightly too compact for all of the information it has to present, but again, it is easy to use and easy to adapt, especially for the RuneQuest Game Master who wants to move it from the suggested location of between Boldhome and the Pavis Rubble. (Indeed, this is exactly what I did with the version updated for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha). Overall, a very playable and exciting little scenario.

Lew Pulsipher—a regular contributor to White Dwarf who already had articles published in The Best of White Dwarf Articles—contributes two scenarios to The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios. The first is ‘A Bar-Room Brawl: D&D Style’ from White Dwarf Issue No. 11. This opens with a nice bit of background to the scenario ion that it was originally run at DragonMeet 1 all the way back in August 1978, as a convention scenario. Combine the map with some miniatures for both the brawlers and the fixtures and fittings of the tavern, and this would, indeed, look like quite impressive on the table at a convention. Stated for use with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition, it packs everything that the Dungeon Master needs into three pages. This includes—in the centrespread of The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios—the open floorplan of the tavern, furniture and fixtures to cut out and use on the floorplan, and details and tokens for some fifteen would-be brawlers. This includes a wererat, a Female Assassin, Gnoll bouncer, Anticleric, and Bar-Keeper, as well as a mix of adventurer types, plus the rest of the NPC staff. All of the Player Characters have motivations, such as the Wererat wanting to kill all clerics, the Ranger on the track of a Wererat, a Female Fighter with a hatred of non-humans, the Gnoll is a bouncer—only armed with a two-handed sword, and so on. The scenario also incudes some play results, but unfortunately it is also let down by the motivation for the Anticleric. This is, “You want a woman, either voluntarily or by rape. (Time required for the act is at least two rounds, not including time necessary to remove your armour.)” This reprehensibly unpleasant, more so than the inclusion of the Houri Class in The Best of White Dwarf Articles. These days such a thing would not be allowed and rightly so, but its inclusion here and in White Dwarf Issue No. 11 was a sign that the editors did not get everything right at the time.

Fortunately, the second entry from Lew Pulsipher is not as unpleasant, but is not really a scenario. ‘A Place in the Wilderness’ appeared in White Dwarf Issue No. 6 and what it details are the species of Dragons from the Jack Vance novel, The Dragon Masters, and a very little of the setting. It does not include the full Science Fiction elements of the setting, such as spaceships or beam or pellet weapons, but just the Dragons. Even at a page long, it feels out of place in the anthology, more article than scenario.

There is a certain sense of loss to Don Turnbull’s contribution to The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios, of what would be, had we had had access to his Greenlands dungeon. ‘Lair of the Demon Queen’ from White Dwarf Issue No. 7 details a single encounter for use with Dungeons & Dragons and Player Characters of roughly Seventh Level—a rare occurrence of a scenario not designed for low-level Player Characters. It is a puzzle encounter with the Player Characters trapped in a room with a number of puzzles the clues to which are given out by a series of magic mouths in verse form. It only does this three times, so that players had better pay attention. By deciphering the verse, the Player Characters can solve the puzzle, or at least set off the various traps without suffering any damage, revealing a number of hidden areas as they progress. Most of these contain a mix of treasure and undead—often quite nasty undead, ultimately leading to the release of the ‘Demon Queen’ herself. Turnbull does give as so much suggest monsters and populate the encounter, and for the ‘Demon Queen’ he suggests a Banshee and a much nastier one than would appear in Dungeons & Dragons. This one cannot die unless someone dies first, that is, one of the Player Characters. The rewards he suggests are rich indeed, but are they worth the loss of a Player Character (or if the players are amoral, of a hireling)? The encounter is written in an engaging and chatty style and provides a big challenge for both characters and players.

The only scenario for Traveller in The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios is ‘The Sable Rose Affair’. Bob McWilliams’ scenario originally appeared in White Dwarf Issue No. 17 and primarily takes place on the Alell, a high-law world in the Regina subsector of the Spinward Marches. There has been an outbreak of piracy across the subsector and the Imperial Galactic Survey’s Planetary Rescue Systems Inspectorate (or PRSI) have identified a man on Alell who is a front for the local government, which is a communist-style impersonal bureaucracy, which is ultimately behind the piracy. He owns a club, the Sable Rose, in the Journeyman’s Quarter of the planetary capital, Naness. The Player Characters, as members of a PRSI Task Force—several pre-generated Player Characters, all ex-army or ex-marine, are given—are tasked with infiltrating the club, locating the target, and extracting him from both club and off-world without arousing local suspicion. Besides the pre-generated Player Characters, the scenario includes a good set of maps and floorplans, and is notably, broken up into a series of short modules, graphically presented as a series of files strewn over a table. These are literally designed to be modular, so that there are some for the players’ eyes and some only for the Game Master. There are suggestions on how the scenario can be played out with two sets of Player Characters, one the PRSI Task Force and one the staff and head of the club. Either way, this a very nicely detailed one-shot, but also easy to fit into a more-military-focused campaign, a type which Traveller readily supported with Book 4: Mercenary.

‘Grakt’s Crag’ by Will Stephenson appeared in appeared in White Dwarf Issue No. 20 and is a scenario for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition for Third Level Player Characters. It details the tomb of a long dead king and his queen, and until recently, no one had managed to break into it. The Player Characters will discover as they explore the tomb, either through the original entrance or the entrances dug by the intruder. He has also hired guards to keep others, like the Player Characters, out. As a tomb, the scenario is linear and filled with traps—many of which are deadly—and puzzles, including a series weighted and unweighted elevator plates, different each time, that the Player Characters must overcome. Overall, it is a serviceable enough dungeon that will test the players and their characters.

‘Ogre Hunt’ by Tom Keenes is the single scenario for Chivalry & Sorcery. The second scenario to appear in White Dwarf Issue No. 19, this is designed for four to seven low-level Player Characters and is set in the forest and valley near of the quiet village of Harlow, on the southern border of Arden in the Southmarch region. Conflict between the Empire of Archaeron and Arden means that the local lord and his men are away, leaving the village defenceless and open to the predations of an ogre. The Player Characters are hired to track the threat down and deal with it. ‘Ogre Hunt’ is short and simple, a one-session affair that essentially points the Player Characters in the right direction after encounters with a couple of NPCs. Here there are opportunities for roleplaying before the confrontation with the ogre, but the overall simplicity, along with the scenario being just two pages, makes it easy to run and easy to adapt to the setting or system of the Game Master’s choice. The only issue is that the maps are too dark in places to be able to find certain locations, but otherwise, ‘Ogre Hunt’ is still very playable and very adaptable.

If ‘The Halls of Tizun Thane’ is almost worth the price of admission in The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios, then ‘The Lichway’ caps that and together, both are worth the price of admission alone. Originally appearing in White Dwarf Issue No. 9, this is another scenario by Albie Fiore and again it is another classic. Designed for a party of First level Player Characters for Dungeons & Dragons, it describes a large burial complex where an ancient people entombed their dead. The complex has long since been abandoned and its builders long since disappeared, but it contains promise of treasure and bounty on a wizard of ill repute. At its heart is one big trap. Set the trap off and the Player Characters will unleash a problem not just for themselves, but the surrounding area, much like Death Frost Doom did for Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying in 2009. Surrounding this central trap, which the Player Characters really have to be proactive in order to set off, are the halls of the Lichway and its surrounding rooms. Here the Player Characters will find a variety of dangers, including several NPCs, all simply and easily presented and very easy for the Dungeon Master to bring into play. A favourite NPC is a would-be wizard who is absolutely useless at everything, but still under the effects of a Charm spell. So, he will be incredibly helpful, just not any good at it! However, there is the strong inference that one of the NPCs has been raping another whom he is holding prisoner. Now this is not quite as bad having to roleplay a character who is prepared to commit rape as in the earlier ‘A Bar-Room Brawl: D&D Style’, but that in no way makes it any good as a story element. Again, it is proof that times and attitudes have changed, ‘The Lichway’ originally having been published forty-five years ago, and that the editors of White Dwarf did not always get it right. That said, adjust or change this aspect of the interaction between the NPCs, and ‘The Lichway’ is still a very good adventure. In fact, like ‘The Halls of Tizun Thane’, it is a great adventure with an eerie feel to it as sound whistles around the halls of the complex and NPCs plot and plan from its side rooms.

Lastly, ‘Pool of the Standing Stones’ is an adventure for Dungeons & Dragons for Player Characters of Fifth and Sixth Level. Written by Bill Howard and published in White Dwarf Issue No. 12., it begins in odd fashion, with the Player Characters coming to the aid of a law-abiding village who had several of its young women abducted by a druid. This is because he believed the village to be too Lawful, so introduced some balancing Chaos with the abduction. Deal with him and potentially, they will find something else, a complex dedicated to evil. The resulting dungeon is a nicely detailed complex, home to some vile characters and elements. However, one of the NPCs does wear armour adapted for the molestation of women. Again, not as bad having to roleplay a character who is prepared to commit rape as in the earlier ‘A Bar-Room Brawl: D&D Style’, but that in no way makes it any good as a story element, even though in this case, it is not quite as explicit.

As with The Best of White Dwarf Articles, there is one last aspect of The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios to enjoy and that is the adverts. There is a sense of nostalgia and wonder in examining these adverts from the past, for shops that have long since closed down such as Dungeons & Starships or Forever People and for products long out of print, Ral Patha’s board games—Witch’s Cauldron, Final Frontier, Galactic Grenadiers, and Caverns Deep, and then Metagaming’s The Fantasy Trip.

Physically, The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios is cleanly, tidily presented. The Conan-esque, Frazetta-style cover by Steve Brown is great and whilst there is less artwork in the anthology than in The Best of White Dwarf Articles, there is more cartography and this is almost all uniformly great.

The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios is undoubtedly a great anthology of scenarios. It is not perfect, some entries are not really scenarios and some are merely fine, but the best, ‘The Halls of Tizun Thane’ and ‘The Lichway’ standout as great pieces of both scenario and adventure design. Together, they are worth the price of a copy of The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios—both in 1980 at time of publication and now. What spoils the adventures slightly are the prurient, unfortunate, and unnecessary references to the poor treatment of women in even some of the great scenarios in the anthology. And only ‘slightly’ because such references can be removed and something else placed in their stead with only minor adjustments when it comes to updating the scenarios, and because times and attitudes do change. Of course, there is also the element of nostalgia in returning to these scenarios and reading and playing through them again, but in so many cases, that nostalgia is warranted. The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios was an excellent anthology of scenarios in 1980, showcasing how quickly White Dwarf had matured and developed in terms of adventure design and sophistication within just fifteen issues, and even putting nostalgia aside, it is still a great anthology of scenarios. For the British roleplayer of a certain age, there can be no doubt that The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios was and remains the definitive anthology of the best content from either White Dwarf or any roleplaying magazine compilation. 

Best of... Bernpyle YEAR ONE

Before the advent of the internet, the magazine was the focus of the hobby’s attention, a platform in whose pages could be news, reviews, and content for the roleplaying game of each reader’s choice, as well as a classified section and a letters page where the issues of day—or at least month—could be raised and discussed in chronically lengthy manner. In this way, such magazines as White Dwarf, Imagine, Dragon, and many others since, came to be our community’s focal point and sounding board, especially a magazine that was long running. Yet depending upon when you entered the hobby and picked up your first issue of a roleplaying magazine, you could have missed a mere handful of issues or many. Which would have left you wondering what was in those prior issues. Today, tracking down back issues to find out and complete a magazine’s run is much easier than it was then, but many publishers offered another solution—the ‘Best of…’ magazine. This was a compilation of curated articles and support, containing the best content to have appeared in the magazine’s pages.

1980 got the format off to a good start with both The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios and The Best of White Dwarf Articles from Games Workshop as well as the Best of Dragon from TSR, Inc. Both publishers would release further volumes of all three series, and TSR, Inc. would also reprint its volumes. Other publishers have published similar volumes and in more recent times, creators in the Old School Renaissance have begun to collate and collect content despite the relative youth of that movement. This includes The Gongfarmer’s Almanac which has collected community content for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game since 2015 and Populated Hexes Monthly Year One which collected the content from the Populated Hexes Monthly fanzine. The ‘Best of…’ series of reviews will look at these and many of the curated and compiled titles from the last four decades of roleplaying.

—oOo—

Bernpyle is a fanzine dedicated to Mausritter – Sword-and-Whiskers roleplaying, the rules-light fantasy adventure microclone in which the very big and very dangerous world is explored from a mouse eye’s point of view. This is our world, but one in which the mice are anthropomorphic and can talk, as can other species. Beyond the walls of their home, the world is one of opportunity and adventure, fraught with hazards natural and unnatural, those untouched by mankind and those imposed by mankind. Using the base mechanics from Into the Odd, mice in Mausritter need to be brave, resourceful and clever, as well as lucky if they are to survive. Funded via a Kickstarter campaign, Bernpyle YEAR ONE collects the most interesting, the most popular, and the best content from first six issues. This includes a regional hexcrawl complete with eight adventure sites and locations, a selection of alternative mechanics inspired by a range of Old School Renaissance adjacent roleplaying games and even a non-Old School Renaissance, new weapons, spells and magic items, two playable species, and more.

Bernpyle: Year One opens with ‘The Earldom of Bernpyle’, a hexcrawl of nineteen sub-hexes. At its heart is the large settlement of Bernpyle, once home to rats, but now home to twelve hundred mice and a minor kingdom where mice reside in some safety and trade is booming. To the west, the woods of the Feylands are home to the Faerie Queen and her people, once at war with the earldom, but now there is a tentative peace between them. To the east is the road that humans built through Cobblefence Park and The Great Spine mountain range. The earl hopes to find a way through the mountains to expand his economic reach into the grasslands on the other side. ‘The Earldom of Bernpyle’ includes a map of the region; a description, but no map of Bernpyle itself; a list of the factions present—including their resources and goals; and stats for all factions, notably The Six, the cavalier mice and their bird mounts, who aid the earl. This though, is only the start, as Bernpyle: Year One expands greatly upon the simple hexcrawl.

The major content starts with two big adventures. ‘A Grizzly Revelation at Badger Burrow’ is set in a series of caves and human-dug mine beneath The Great Spine mountains. A renowned wizard and teacher, a star-faced mole named Suetonius, known to live there, as is a tribe of shrews. However, when the mice venture into the caves, they discover not one tribe of shrews, but two—and they are at war. A religious schism has divided them and the tribes meet daily to battle each other in the caves. The scenario is one of exploration and diplomacy more than combat, with mice choosing the latter option likely to find themselves dead quite quickly. Various outcomes are covered, but to get to the best of them, the mice will need to solve difficult situation. If ‘A Grizzly Revelation at Badger Burrow’ is classic dungeon adventure, then ‘Murky Mysteries of Mice in Marshes’ is traditional hexcrawl—or rather diamond crawl, since it consists of a single hex divided into twelve equal, diamond-shaped segments. The hamlet/town (the fanzine is not quite sure) of Coypu sits on the edge of the Froschsumpf Marshes in the Feylands. The mayor is known for his extensive whisky collection, but has not been heard from recently. Could the swamp’s frogs under their tyrant Mudlord Swelcheeks have something to do with this? The resulting scenario is a boggy bayou horror-tinged affair with some revolting villains.

In addition to the stats for the monsters, NPCs, and treasures to be found in both scenarios, Bernpyle: Year One includes a description of ‘The Missing Wand of Suetonius the Wise’, whom the mice will probably have met in the first scenario. The wand is given quite a good list of its abilities, but an even longer list of magical maladies that can befall the user if he miscasts. There are descriptions, illustrations, and floorplans of the border towers surrounding Bernpyle, each previously used by humans to play something called ‘disc golf’. In ‘Traversing the Feylands’, the author takes inspiration from The Gardens of Ynn to turn the region into layers that the mice will in effect descend as they delve deeper into the forest. This is complicated by the fact that locations within the forest can move, so if the mice may not necessarily being going up or down but both during their delve. The idea is supported by a number of tables which the Game Master will use as prompts.

Separate to the ‘The Earldom of Bernpyle’, ‘A Not So Stille Nacht’ is included as one of the fanzine’s more popular pieces. It is a one-shot, in which the mice are celebrating Christmas at the North Pole when Belsnickel the barn cat and his Pixie allies invade Santa’s polar home. It is as twee as you would expect it to be and if your playing group is partial to that sort of thing, is a passable Christmas one-shot. ‘MausTrap’ is more interesting in that it takes the concept of the Character Funnel from the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game and applies it to Mausritter, only with a crueller touch. The mice are ordinary mice in debt, and to clear that debt they are being sent down a dungeon to return with enough pips’ worth of treasure to repay said debt. Each player has four mice and if any survive, they become First level and can begin play as normal. Tables are provided of occupations and occupational possessions, and the possible nature of their debts. ‘Rodents and Recreations’ adds a set of classic Dungeons & Dragons-style alternative backgrounds, such as wizard, assassin, and barbarian. They are primarily designed for creating mice on the go for one-shots, being ready-to-play packages that can be applied to a player’s mouse.

Other rules cover ‘Foraging Whilst in Human settlements’, whilst ‘Mouserules of Combat’ adds a ‘to hit’ roll where there is none in Mausritter with the intention of keeping players coming to Mausritter from Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, and mounted combat and movement is added with ‘Mauspanzer – A ‘tacti-cool’ brief for Warband Scale Mounts’. The rules cover finding or buying them, and using them in combat, which is only becomes possible after a mount has acquired a Prestige Level or two. ‘Scars’ gives a table of injuries and effects for whenever a mouse is reduced to zero hit points. They include ‘Battle Worn’, ‘Shaken’, ‘Jostled’, ‘Haunted’, and more. ‘Time and Resource tracking in the Veins’ is inspired by Veins of the Earth and adds rules to make Mausritter even harder when delving into deep into the underground. This does run counter to the light nature of Mausritter, but if the Game Master and her group are happy with that, their dungeon delves are going to be tough indeed. Alongside this, there are new spells in ‘Magic from Mayfield’ with a botanical theme, such as Petal Strike and Thorn Bramble, thistles turned into weapons, and even #’A Weapon from Maukbörg’, a big crossbow.

‘Songvogel – A Maus’ Field Guide to Songbirds and other perching avian’ introduces the Songbird as a playable race, all small, and all hailing from Harmony Glade. There are just three Backgrounds—Soldier, Porter, and Companion. The Soldier gets armour, the Porter can carry more with his Traveller’s Duffle, and the Companion has a Saddle and Bridle, enabling a mouse to ride on his back. Songbirds do not have hands, so cannot use weapons. Instead, they use their beak attack and talon strikes. ‘Make a Fienkrieger’ provides another playable race, Fae Warriors whose love of Mauskind have led them to become Faerie Outcasts. The creation involves rolling for Former Occupation, Physical Look, Wing Type, Colour, and Weapon of Choice. Instead of spell tablets, the Fae have Tattoos, for example, Blood Dart, which lets a mouse or fae shoot a projectile out of his skin and Maus’ Paw, which grants the user a spectral paw with which manipulate objects at a distance. Rounding out Bernpyle YEAR ONE is ‘For Mouse, for Home, for Bernpyle!’, which lists all of the releases for Mausritter and even though Bernpyle YEAR ONE was published in 2022, there are a lot!

Physically, Bernpyle YEAR ONE is well presented. The artwork is excellent and the maps clear and easy to use. One issue is that the book does refer to other locations and content from other issues of Bernpyle, so in places the Game Master will need to locate other issues.

Bernpyle YEAR ONE is a lovely little book. It is really divided into the two halves—one devoted to Bernpyle as a location and the other a Mausritter miscellany. In truth, ‘The Earldom of Bernpyle’ content is better than the rest, being more focused and useable, and thus easier to bring to the table. It is a pity that more of Bernpyle as a location was not included. Bernpyle YEAR ONE has something for every Mausritter Game Master, something to play, something to try, and all nicely packaged.

Best of... White Dwarf Articles

Before the advent of the internet, the magazine was the focus of the hobby’s attention, a platform in whose pages could be news, reviews, and content for the roleplaying game of each reader’s choice, as well as a classified section and a letters page where the issues of day—or at least month—could be raised and discussed in chronically lengthy manner. In this way, such magazines as White Dwarf, Imagine, Dragon, and many others since, came to be our community’s focal point and sounding board, especially a magazine that was long running. Yet depending upon when you entered the hobby and picked up your first issue of a roleplaying magazine, you could have missed a mere handful of issues or many. Which would have left you wondering what was in those prior issues. Today, tracking down back issues to find out and complete a magazine’s run is much easier than it was then, but many publishers offered another solution—the ‘Best of…’ magazine. This was a compilation of curated articles and support, containing the best content to have appeared in the magazine’s pages.

1980 got the format off to a good start with both The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios and The Best of White Dwarf Articles from Games Workshop as well as the Best of Dragon from TSR, Inc. Both publishers would release further volumes of all three series, and TSR, Inc. would also reprint its volumes. Other publishers have published similar volumes and in more recent times, creators in the Old School Renaissance have begun to collate and collect content despite the relative youth of that movement. This includes The Gongfarmer’s Almanac which has collected community content for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game since 2015 and Populated Hexes Monthly Year One which collected the content from the Populated Hexes Monthly fanzine. The ‘Best of…’ series of reviews will look at these and many of the curated and compiled titles from the last four decades of roleplaying.

—oOo—

The Best of White Dwarf Articles was published in 1980. Containing “Selected material from the first 3 years of White Dwarf”, from White Dwarf Issue No. 1 to White Dwarf Issue No. 20, its focus is Dungeons & Dragons and Traveller. This is no surprise given the popularity of the world’s first roleplaying game and the world’s leading Science Fiction roleplaying game. It is also no surprise that the versions of Dungeons & Dragons supported within the pages of The Best of White Dwarf Articles were the original version published in 1974 and the J. Eric Holmes designed Basic Dungeons & Dragons. By 1980, the three-core books for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons had only just been published, and consequently the content of the compilation predates them. This is not to say that The Best of White Dwarf Articles lacks sophisticated content, either for 1980 or now. However, gaming needs and tastes have greatly changed in the last forty years and not everything in the pages of The Best of White Dwarf Articles would find its way into Dungeons & Dragons today.

The Best of White Dwarf Articles opens with the majestic ‘The Monstermark System’ by Don Turnbull. Appearing in the first three issues of White Dwarf, this is a system of rating monsters in Dungeons & Dragons for their lethality versus the ability of base Player Characters to defeat them. It first rates them for their Defence and Aggressive values to provide a Monstermark value which could be further modified by their abilities and special powers—paralysation, poison, regeneration, and others. Turnbull first works through fairly standard monsters such as Kobolds and Manticores before moving on through undead, fire-breathing monsters, demons, and more. Throughout he compares the completed Monstermark Level for each monster versus their Greyhawk Level, the latter more often than, not quite providing an accurate measurement of their lethality versus the Player Characters in his estimation. Turnbull also uses his Monstermark System as a means to more fairly award Experience Points, but avoids extending it as a means to measure treasure.

‘The Monstermark System’ was much lauded in its day. It is still a good example of a writer dissatisfied with a mechanical aspect of a roleplaying game and devising and working through an alternative system. There is no doubt that at the time, some groups would have adopted this over the Greyhawk system, but of course, it would have remained a house rule. These days it is a hard read, feeling outdated and outmoded, and it would have probably felt the same fairly quickly as new versions of Dungeons & Dragons were taken up. There are points of interest in the article though, Turnbull often referring to his ‘Greenlands’ dungeon. These sadly, are only in passing, the only existing details being here and other mentions in the pages of White Dwarf magazine.

‘The Magic Brush – Fantasy Figure Painting As An Art’ by Shaun Fuller is another three-part series. It ran from White Dwarf Issue No. 17 to White Dwarf Issue No. 20 and provided a comprehensive guide to figure painting. With the roleplaying hobby only being six years by this time and having strong roots in miniatures wargaming, it is no surprise that miniatures would feature in the early issues of White Dwarf. Coverage of them would lessen during the early eighties, but would make a resurgence as the importance of Citadel Miniatures to Games Workshop grew and grew. Nevertheless, painting guides always proved popular and it is subject that White Dwarf would return to again in subsequent issues. Even if the paints and styles have changed over the years, this is a solid article on the subject whose advice could still be followed today.

The compilation includes two new Classes, one familiar, one unfamiliar, for Dungeons & Dragons by Brian Asbury, another regular contributor to White Dwarf. ‘The Barbarian’ is from White Dwarf Issue No. 4. There are similarities between it and the Barbarian Class which E. Gary Gygax would design and include in Unearthed Arcana and thus the Class we have today in Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. It combines features of the other Classes with those new to it. Thus, the Class can track like the Ranger and hear noise, climb, and hide in the shadows like the Thief, and catch missiles like the Monk, but cannot wear armour until later Levels, possesses a Fearlessness which can send them berserk any time it is subject to fear effects, and has a First-Attack Ferocity which grants a bonus to hit and damage if the Class attacks on the first round and has the initiative. Notably, this version of the Class is allowed to use magical items. There is an option to treat the Barbarian Class as a Race as per Basic Dungeons & Dragons. This version of the Barbarian Class is more constructed than built from the ground up, and with elements such as First-Attack Ferocity is fiddly in places.

The second Class is ‘The HOURI character class’, published in White Dwarf Issue No. 13. The Houri is an alternate magic-using Class whose primary abilities focus is on the seduction of members of the opposite sex and a combination of Charm-related spells and spells whose somatic component involves kissing the target. There is even a seduction mechanic in which Paladins, Rangers, and Monks are very hard to seduce, whereas Barbarians and Half-Orcs and Orcs are relatively easy. Primarily intended to be a female only Class—the option to play a Gigolo rather than a Houri, and a thus a male version of the Class, is suggested, the description includes new spells, such as Impotence and Ecstasy, and entertaining new magic items like the Manual of Advanced Lovemaking and Lipstick of Irresistibility. Subtle the Houri Class is not and it feels very much out of place in a magazine which had a primarily male readership. The salaciousness of the Class borders on the tasteless if not the offensive—and yet… The Houri Class is not unplayable. It would be unsuitable for most campaigns, especially any focused-on dungeon adventures as much of her magic and certainly her abilities would have little application down there, unless as suggested, she also has Levels in the Thief Class as well. Instead, use the Class in an urban campaign with pulp or noir sensibilities and plenty of roleplaying and it would really work. It would take a mature audience. Ultimately, the Houri is too specialised a Class and as a subject for inclusion in the pages of White Dwarf, best regarded as a misstep.

The barbarian theme is continued with ‘The Barbarian’ a two-player board game designed by Ian Livingstone for White Dwarf Issue No. 15. One player takes the role of Vaarn, a barbarian seeking to restore civilisation and withstand the onslaught of mutated beasts and the undead. He can only do this by locating the magical sword and shield of the Old Fathers. The other player controls the werewolves, wild hill men, wraiths, zombies, goblins, and giants arrayed against him. Vaarn’s player wins by locating both sword and shield and leaving the play area, whilst the creature player wins by killing him. Vaarn must explore six types of terrain to locate the magical items, although there are decoys and cursed items to be found too. It is a serviceable hex and counter, fantasy-themed game, not dissimilar to the highly regarded solo board from Heritage, Barbarian Prince, but simpler and more straightforward. Enjoyable for a playthrough or two.

‘Chronicle Monsters’ is the first of two contributions from designer Lewis Pulsipher. Published in White Dwarf Issue No. 15, this presents the various monsters from Stephen Donaldson’s ‘The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever’ for Dungeons & Dragons. The novels were very popular at the time and these adaptations would have been welcomed by the magazine’s readership. However, the novels have not been fully adapted in their own right and this is likely one of the few times where material from them has received such a treatment. Including such creatures as the Raver, the Ur-Vile, Cavewrights, and Seareach Giants they look to be well done and made all the better by being illustrated by Russ Nicholson.

Andy Slack’s ‘Expanding Universe’ ran for four issues from White Dwarf Issue No. 13 to White Dwarf Issue No. 16. Written for use with Game Designers’ Workshop’s Traveller roleplaying game—and thus the only non-Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying content in The Best of White Dwarf Articles—this greatly expanded upon the core rules with additions for skills, poisons and chemical warfare, ship weaponry, artillery, and explosives, campaign locations, alien life, and robots, and social status and psionics. In many cases, they supplement the often-sparse rules in Traveller—the ‘Classic Little Black Books’ original edition still available today, such as handling skill rolls by Player Characters without a relevant skill and suggesting an Experience and improvement mechanic, something that Traveller lacked. In the main, the articles cover aspects of a far future setting not covered in the rules, such as those for poison gas and other weapons of mass destruction, more detailed missile design, and so on. The rules here are excellent, efficiently expanding and supplementing the core rules of Traveller in useful fashion. Slack has since expressed his unhappiness with the editing and updating of the contents of the four original articles for inclusion in The Best of White Dwarf Articles and in their original format can be found at the Citizens of the Imperium Traveller website.

‘The Fiend Factory’ collates some of the best monsters from the long-running department that appeared in the first fifteen or so issues of the White Dwarf. First appearing in White Dwarf Issue No. 6 and edited by Don Turnbull, the department grew out of an earlier series in the magazine called ‘Monsters Mild and Malign’, also edited by Turnbull. With White Dwarf issue No. 18, Albie Fiore would edit the reader-submitted content of ‘The Fiend Factory’, but the entries in ‘The Fiend Factory’ in The Best of White Dwarf Articles consist of the ten best creatures as voted for by the magazine’s readership. The article includes some classics, many of which would be included in the Fiend Folio, which Don Turnbull would edit for TSR UK Ltd. Here then, are the Hook Horror, created by Ian Livingstone, Cricky Hitchcock’s Svart, the Necrophidius (or Death Worm) by Simon Tilbrook, and of course, the Githyanki, by one C. Stross. Stross, of course, would go on to become a Science Fiction and horror author. These are all fun, entertaining monsters and this ‘The Fiend Factory’ collation is one of the highlights of The Best of White Dwarf Articles.

Lastly, ‘D&D Campaigns’ is Lewis Pulsipher’s second contribution to The Best of White Dwarf Articles. This ran in White Dwarf Issue No. 1, White Dwarf Issue No. 3, White Dwarf Issue No. 4, and White Dwarf Issue No. 5, but not White Dwarf Issue No. 2. In this series, Pulsipher examines what Dungeons & Dragons and how he views it can be best played, particularly as a campaign. For example, in terms of style whether as the players versus the game and its monsters, puzzles, or traps, or as a fantasy novel and thus telling or experiencing a story. It is interesting that he notes that the latter style prevails in California, which would be related and explored in more detail in Jon Peterson’s The Elusive Shift. There is advice on being a fair Referee, be logical in in the design and play of both dungeon and campaign, the dangers of a Player Character being played in more than one campaign world (an odd practice by modern standards), handling the division of treasure according to Alignment (Lawful Player Characters fairly, Chaotic Player Characters on a who grabs it first basis), regulating the learning of spells and the time to do so, and more. Some of the advice has dated because both the rules have since changed—multiple times in fact—and how Dungeons & Dragons is played differently. If many of the specifics are now obsolescent, there is nevertheless, broader advice here that still holds and would be could for the latest version of Dungeons & Dragons. For 1977 and 1978, when Dungeons & Dragons was just four years old and ‘D&D Campaigns’ was serialised, this was all good advice.

However, interspersed between all of this is content from the other long-running department in White Dwarf focusing on reader-submitted content—‘Treasure Trap’. Four themed compilations for ‘The Best Of Treasure Trap’ appear in the pages of The Best of White Dwarf Articles. These are ‘Magic Items’, ‘Potions’, ‘Tricks and Traps’, and ‘Spells’. For example, Roger Coult’s ‘The Swords of Meryn Caradeth’ presents two powerful blades and some flavoursome background to work them into a setting. Drink James Meek’s Potion of Truth and the imbiber must tell the truth; David Bell’s Potion of Ultravisibility and the imbiber shines like a torch, the colour of light depending on his Alignment; and a Dragon Breath Potion by Kathryn George—one of the few female contributors to White Dwarf—and the imbiber gains a one-shot breath weapon that varies according to the dragon’s colour. David Bradbury’s ‘Frozen Food!’ is an old trick of setting up the Player Characters to eat frozen Troll meat and then have it regenerate inside them, whilst Roger Musson’s ‘The Pit and Rope Trick’ sets up several Gelatinous Cubes as traps above and below the Player Characters. These definitely feel ‘Old School’ in their design. Phil Masters’ spell, Sword of Warning, is inspired by the sword of Damocles and can be cast by a Cleric as symbol of divine displeasure, whilst ‘Jebansalf’s Eye of Back-Seeing’ by Daniel Adler is for both Cleric and Magic-User and turns the caster’s Pineal gland into a backwards facing eye, thus preventing attacks from behind or backstab attempts. Whilst some of the traps might not make it into a modern dungeon, the content of all four parts of ‘The Best Of Treasure Trap’ are playable today as they were in the late seventies. If not for Dungeons & Dragons, then certainly for the retroclone of the group’s choice.

There is one last aspect of The Best of White Dwarf Articles which deserves mention and that is the adverts. There is a sense of nostalgia and wonder in examining these adverts from the past, for shops that have long since closed down such as Dungeons & Starships or Forever People and for products long out of print, like the Knights of Camelot board game from TSR, Inc. Ral Patha’s board games—Witch’s Cauldron, Final Frontier, Galactic Grenadiers, and Caverns Deep, and then Metagaming’s The Fantasy Trip.

Physically, The Best of White Dwarf Articles is cleanly, tidily presented. It does need an edit here and there, but what stands out is the amount of art on display. All of the monsters in ‘The Fiend Factory’, many of the traps in ‘The Best Of Treasure Trap’, and so on are illustrated, and it gives the compilation an airy feel. The Conan-esque cover by Steve Brown—complementing the one which would appear on the cover of The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios—is excellent.

The Best of White Dwarf Articles is a bit hit and miss, primarily because what might have been seen as the best content drawn from the first three years of issues of White Dwarf in 1980 do not look like the best today. The Houri Character Class deserves mention as a miss, even in 1980, unnecessarily prurient and unsuitable for much of its readership, and perhaps ‘The Monstermark System’ might be regarded as miss today, but not in 1980 when dissatisfaction with an aspect of the rules could be expressed in the pages of a leading magazine in the industry and an alternative readily suggested. The rest of The Best of White Dwarf Articles consists of hits and that is how it should be for a compilation or ‘Best of…’ volume. The Best of White Dwarf Articles highlights how even though the magazine might not yet have hit its stride—and when that was, is dependent on the reader—there was still a lot to be found within the pages of White Dwarf that was useful, playable content then and surprisingly, now. Consequently, The Best of White Dwarf Articles manages to show how the hobby has, and has not, changed since it was published in 1980. The Best of White Dwarf Articles is a snapshot of the British roleplaying hobby in the seventies, that for the most part, remains still readable and if you want, still useful.

1981: Fantasie Scenarios

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

—oOo—

On the tail of Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showcased how another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. As new fanzines have appeared, there has been an interest in the fanzines of the past, and as that interest has grown, they have become highly collectible, and consequently more difficult to obtain and write about. However, in writing about them, the reader should be aware that these fanzines were written and published between thirty and forty years ago, typically by roleplayers in their teens and twenties. What this means is that sometimes the language and terminology used reflects this and though the language and terminology is not socially acceptable today, that use should not be held against the authors and publishers.

The Beholder was a British fanzine first published in April, 1979. Dedicated to Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, it ran to twenty-seven issues, the last being published in July, 1981. It was popular and would be awarded ‘Best Games Fanzine’ at the Games Day convention in 1980. After the final issue of The Beholder, the editors would go on to release a number of anthologies which collected content from the complete run of the fanzine. A total of five were planned and at least two were published. The first was Beholder Supplement Glossary of Magic, which collected many of the magical items which appeared in the fanzine and collated them into a series of tables for easy use by the Dungeon Master. The second, third, and fourth volumes would have collected the scenarios which appeared in the fanzine, whilst the fifth would have been a bestiary of monsters.

Fantasie Scenarios – The Fanzine Supplement No. 2 is the first anthology of scenarios taken from the pages of The Beholder. It contains “4 highly detailed, exciting and original scenarios” all written for use with Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. The collection  opens with ‘The Ring of Fire’, originally published in The Beholder Issue #11 and subsequently voted by its readership as the best scenario to appear in the fanzine. Designed for four to seven Player Characters of ‘moderate adventuring experience’, ‘The Ring of Fire’ is set entirely within the crater of an extinct volcano, rumoured to be the home of a dragon below the crater’s mists and fumes. Several miles distant from the nearest settlement, once the Player Characters have ascended to the lip the crater, the adventure proper begins and they begin the descent. This is along a path which spirals around the steep sides of the crater and it is along this path that most of the scenario will play out. As they follow the path down, the Player Characters encounter obstacles and lairs and fortresses, and more. These special encounter areas start off with almost a nod to Shelbob’s lair with the lair of the Giant Spider, Castra, followed by a wooden plank bridge past the lair of Minor the Harpy, through a vanquished outpost of Hobgoblins, through a maze, and yes, even into the lair of the Red Dragon, Faughon.

All of these encounters really are special. Essentially excerpts pulled from the main map of the volcano, they are beautifully drawn in detail and supported with engaging descriptions. Any one of these encounters could be pulled from the scenario and it would stand up if added to another location, perhaps an enormous dungeon cavern. The scenario is obviously linear as the Player Characters make their descent, but opens out into a swampy area on the crater floor. This is less interesting perhaps than the earlier encounters, but there is a sense of decay here that feels all the more constrictive in the fog-shrouded crater. There are no plot hooks as such to ‘The Ring of Fire’ as such, but it would be easy for the Dungeon Master to add them. Perhaps the Player Characters want something from the Red Dragon or the ancient, evil sorcerer whose remains are buried here, or simply be after the treasure which is said to have been left there by the ancient inhabitants. Essentially, the bottom of the crater is a blank canvas upon which the Dungeon Master can write elements from her campaign and so add ‘The Ring of Fire’ to her campaign. Whatever the Player Characters might find in the base of the crater, getting there is very much the play and the fun of the scenario.

The second scenario is ‘The Gorge of the Afterlife’. Designed for three to six Player Characters of ‘low to moderate adventuring experience’, it appeared in The Beholder Issue #14 and was a close runner up to ‘The Ring of Fire’ in the poll. The Player Characters should at least possess one magical weapon between them—if not more, and there should be a Cleric amongst their number. Again the scenario has a great sense of environment and geography, being set in a long narrow gorge once the burial ground to the local dignitaries. Water drains into the gorge and flows out via a series of waterfalls, which the Player Characters will need to ascend as they venture into the gorge. The outer section of the gorge is swampy and home to a band of brigands, whilst the inner section consists of a lake surrounded by individual tombs, mausolea, and barrows. Here the authors repeat the format of ‘The Ring of Fire’ with individually mapped areas for greater detail, offering a range of different challenges to any Player Characters wanting to raid them. Some are still intact, some have been broken into, others are occupied. 

The third part of ‘The Gorge of the Afterlife’ consists of a dungeon proper, a tomb complex, which oddly, is laid out in the shape of a gargoyle, though statues of gargoyles appear at the entrance to the gorge where their prevents entry of any devils or demons. The tomb complex contains just six tombs, each of them a great leader in their time, in their way representatives of Dungeons & Dragons’ Classes. Some were good, others bad, but are now the target of a band of evil Elves (not Drow) amidst the roving undead which infests the complex. Much like ‘The Ring of Fire’, ‘The Gorge of the Afterlife’ is a not a scenario with any sense of a plot, the gorge and its tombs being there to plunder by the Player Characters and nothing more. Again though, they are open to interpretation and development upon the part of the Dungeon Master, perhaps more so because the adventure is designed to be inserted into a campaign. Again, perhaps the Player Characters are searching for something which can only be found in the tombs or perhaps they have been employed to deal with the brigands, but discover that they have a secret paymaster, that is, the evil Elves in the tomb complex? This is much more of a traditional Dungeons & Dragons-style adventure, but again, nicely detailed and potentially more flexible than ‘The Ring of Fire’.

‘UGGISH and the GRIMBNAK’ is the third scenario in Fantasie Scenarios – The Fanzine Supplement No. 2 and originally published in The Beholder Issue #19, and appears to have been part of an ongoing feature in the fanzine. Where the previous two scenarios have been quite confined in their environment, this one opens up a bi t by being set in a forest and its surrounding wilderness. Designed for a party of four to six Player Characters of moderate Level, the scenario is set in the forest surrounding the Ravine of the Oozewater where legend has it that two ancient creatures fled in ages past when disturbed by the first settlers in the region. More recently, they have been revealed to be Uggish and the Grimbnak, now said to be in league with the Orcs of the Black Hand, scimitar-wielding humanoids with ebon skin and red eyes, who have been attacking settlers, foresters, and hunters throughout the forest, forcing them to flee. The scenario is thus a strike mission—investigate the activities of the Orcs and put a stop to them.

The scenario details the forest wilderness and the paths to the cliffside stockade which the Orcs have had time to build and make a home in. Thus there is advice and a table to make it a living place with events going on despite the presence of the Player Characters and perhaps that they can take advantage of in their raid. The stockade and its inhabitants, as well as the caves built into the cliffside are as decently detailed as the other scenarios in the anthology, however, the Orcs are described as being black-skinned and resolutely evil. To be fair, this would have been typical of the time and the depiction of Orcs has always been contentious, but the language used here, though unlikely to have been intentionally so at the time, would be socially unacceptable today and even potentially, cause for offence. Whilst there is some element of story here and it would be an easy scenario to add to a campaign because of the simplicity of its set-up, of the four scenarios in the anthology, ‘UGGISH and the GRIMBNAK’ would be the most difficult to run or adapt because of the language used when describing its antagonists and their outlook. 

The last scenario in the anthology is ‘The Dripping Chasm’. Taken from The Beholder Issue #18—voted the best issue by the fanzine’s readers—it is designed for six low Level Player Characters and has a simple set-up which makes it easy to add to a campaign or run as a one-shot. That set-up is one of bandits raiding the area, frequently enough to amass no little wealth, and so there is treasure to be found and a threat to civilisation to be thwarted. The bandits are thought to operating from somewhere up the River Underpine, and when the Player Characters follow it along its course, they discover its source, the Dripping Chasm, and a series of buildings along the chasm wall and a cave network beyond them. The caverns though, are not just home to the bandits, there being older occupants who just unhappy with their presence, they are prepared to do something about it. Which is when the Player Characters turn up. 

‘The Dripping Chasm’ is a small locale and a small adventure, but it packs in a lot, including factions, nuance, and the level of detail found in the anthology’s other scenarios. There are the three factions—the bandits, a grumpy bear, a really unhappy hermit driven to recruit some unpleasant allies, and the complex of caverns is described in some detail. The factions bring in the element of a living dungeon and this is enforced by the nuance. The caverns and the Dripping Chasm are not just bases of operation where the factions work from, but homes too. So the bear and the hermit make their homes in the caverns and tunnels, and resent being invaded by the bandits, but they have made their home in some of the caverns as well as along the river, and down so with their families. The bandits have their wives and children here too, so this is not a scenario necessarily set up so that the Player Characters go in and slaughter anyone and everyone as in ‘UGGISH and the GRIMBNAK’, but do have choices to make here. Potentially, these choices—which faction to side with, what to do about the families, and discovering why they are here and why they have turned to banditry—are all good story hooks and good roleplaying hooks, though the Dungeon Master will have to develop the details herself. 

If there is an oddity to ‘The Dripping Chasm’, it is in the organisation which details the locations furthest from the starting point of the scenario first and nearest, last. Given the advice that the Dungeon Master read through the scenario thoroughly, it only enforces the need to. Otherwise, ‘The Dripping Chasm’ is a decently done scenario easily adapted to the Dungeon Master’s campaign and a really engaging piece of writing. In terms of storytelling potential, ‘The Dripping Chasm’ has the most of the quartet in Fantasie Scenarios – The Fanzine Supplement No. 2.

Physically, Fantasie Scenarios – The Fanzine Supplement No. 2 is decently done. Like any fanzine title, it has its rough edges and the layout could be cleaner. The cartography though is quite lovely, clear and detailed, giving the anthology its singular look. There are few illustrations in the supplement, but some of them are really nice. It should be noted that except where a new monster is introduced, the actual stats for Dungeons & Dragons monsters and items in the four scenarios are kept to a minimum, meaning that the Dungeon Master will ned to refer to the ruleset of her choice.

Fantasie Scenarios – The Fanzine Supplement No. 2 is a piece of history. Its writing is representative of a creative drive four decades ago, and whilst some of that writing reflects that age, there is no denying that each of the scenarios is still playable today. Whether that is using Dungeons & Dragons or Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game or The Black Hack or Old School Essentials, all four scenario could be with relatively little adjustment—at least mechanically. Tonally perhaps and in some of the language warrants adjustment, the anthology and definitely the third scenario, ‘UGGISH and the GRIMBNAK’, would certainly benefit from such attention in the unlikely event that these scenarios were republished today. Overall, Fantasie Scenarios – The Fanzine Supplement No. 2 is a lovely snapshot of yesterday’s creativity, showcasing how it was done forty years ago just as it is today.