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.

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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... 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.

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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.

[Fanzine Focus XXVI] The Grognard Files – Annual 2019

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 showed another Dungeon Master 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 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.

The Grognard Files is a fanzine born of The Grognard Files, a North of England-based podcast dedicated to the games of the late seventies and early eighties, in particular, RuneQuest. It is available only to patrons of the podcast—or alternatively to attendees of Grogmeet a one-day convention in Manchester, again in the North of England. It is also put out just once a year. Published by The Armchair Adventurers, the first issue, The Grognard Files – Annual 2017, is available as a ‘Pay What You Want’ PDF available to download with the proceeds of the sale of the fanzine being donated to continue the running of Yog-sothoth.com, the best site dedicated to Lovecraft and Lovecraftian investigative horror. More recent issues, The Grognard Files – Annual 2018 and The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 have sadly not followed suit, but for members of the ‘Grog Squad’ and attendees of Grogmeet, both issues continue to serve up thick, syrupy wodges of nostalgia and gaming inspired by their youths in the nineteen eighties.

It would seem remiss to be reviewing The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 in the summer of 2021 rather than more recent issue, but in truth, circumstances mean that there was no Grog Meet in 2020 and no The Grognard Files – Annual 2020 either. So The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 it is then. Previous issues have taken their design cue from gaming magazines of the nineteen eighties, White Dwarf being the most obvious. With The Grognard Files – Annual 2019, the design cue is taken from DragonLords, the British role-playing game fanzine published between 1980 and 1983. It thus moves The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 to a digest format rather than the magazine size of White Dwarf or Imagine and it comes crammed full of the type of content that middle-aged men that will shut themselves away with a cup of tea and wallow in the gaming years of their yesteryear before being asked to put the bins out/do the washing up/take one of their offspring to football, music lessons, and the like.

Opening with an editorial which highlights the role of fanzines in providing a community for gamers—they were the Internet before the Internet—The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 gets down to gaming goodness. It opens Neil Benson’s ‘OSR this, OSR that, but what is it?’, which provides an explanation of what the Old School Renaissance is and what it sets out to do. It points to the source for the Old School Renaissance, that is, early Dungeons & Dragons, and explains the key points of creating and playing in the movement. So simple, quick Player Character generation; freedom of play in terms of hexcrawls and sandcrawls, and the like; emphasises player agency in solving problems rather than relying on skill rolls, and so on. There are eight of these points, but Benson does not simply list them, but sets them out as a quest undertaken by an adventuring party to learn what the OSR. This makes the piece much more entertaining than a simple explanation of what the Old School Renaissance would otherwise have been. It includes a short list of sample retroclones and is accompanied by a thumbnail review of Chris Gonnerman’s Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game, written by Shannon Ferguson.

A similar convention is used to explain what one of the oldest roleplaying games is. ‘A Bluffer’s Guide to Tékumel’ is actually written by me (and in truth, I had forgotten I had written the piece) and is presented as an in-game monologue delivered by a minor bureaucrat to a barbarian who knows nothing of the setting for Professor M.A.R. Barker’s Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne. It is all a bit knowing and po-faced, but provides a simple enough introduction.

The nostalgia in The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 begins in earnest with Cris Watkins’ ‘Games Master Immortality’. It is about bad, but funny memories of Player Character deaths brought about by the Game Master simply getting it wrong. Part-Game Master advice, part-hoary old war stories, such as over the course of a campaign driving the Player Characters so paranoid that when a new player turns up with a new character, their first reaction is to not trust the character and then turn on him when his player seems to confirm their suspicions. Yes, it is cruel, but at the same time funny, though ultimately best not necessarily implemented in a Game Master’s campaign as not every player may see the funny side.

The nostalgia continues with both Nick Edwards and Alan Gairey taking a look back at Judges Guild. First with Nick Edwards’ ‘The Guilded Age – Thoughts on Judges Guild’ which examines the delights of City State of the Invincible Overlord which forced him to create his own content, in the main a thief and crime-based campaign much like the Lankhmar setting of Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and Gray Mouser novels. Although the author would make further purchases of Judges Guild titles, and praises those that he likes, he has since returned to the City State of the Invincible Overlord for other campaigns and City State of the Invincible Overlord would also influence his preference in gaming for cities rather than dungeons! Alan Gairey also focuses on the one title from Judges Guild with ‘An Ode to Inferno: Abandon hope all ye that enter…’, which is the 1980 module, Inferno. This presented the first four circles of Hell as a challenging dungeon and the author ran it several times, each time nearly ending in the death of the whole party. The article comes to rather droll end, but is accompanied by a list of some of the other better titles published by the prolific Judges Guild, all of which in their way, would be worthy of articles such as these two. 

The feature piece in The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 is ‘Steel Hearts & Straight Razors’. Written by Roger Coe, this is a scenario for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, but not the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay of the nineteen eighties. Rather it is for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Fourth Edition published by Cubicle 7 Entertainment. Almost thirty pages in length and thus almost half of the fanzine, ‘Steel Hearts & Straight Razors’ is a convoluted murder mystery and conspiracy thriller, involving guild rivalries, hair stylists, cultists, and ecumenical matters, all specifically designed to be set in the city or large town of the Game Master’s choice. It opens with a dangerous encounter chanced upon by the Player Characters between a blue glowing demon-man-thing and a poorly victim. The scene ends with both demon and victim dead, which leaves the Player Characters with a problem or two. The demon was once a man, so who was he? Who was the victim and what was the meaning of his dying words? Investigation will reveal more and more, perhaps initially with the Player Characters attempting to avoid the City Watch—especially if they happen to be carrying either of the corpses with them, then finding employment from a surprising quarter, and more. There is a fair bit going on in this scenario and the Player Characters will really need to dig deep to discover some the city’s secrets, but in true Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay fashion, their investigation will take them from lows of society to the heights and back again, revealing perfidious goings on. Although it does feel a bit crammed in, ‘Steel Hearts & Straight Razors’ is a gem of a scenario, offering lots of opportunity for combat, investigation, and roleplaying, adeptly hitting all of the signature notes you would want in a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay scenario, but without being location specific.

Sean Hillman gets systems specific with ‘A Short History of the Long Dice – The story of percentage based games’. It is more of an overview than anything else, too brief to provide any real insight. A better article might have explored more of the nuances between the various roleplaying games to have used percentile dice. Newt Newport details the history of his own company with ’10 Years of D101 Games’, the article sadly missing some text in true fanzine fashion, but nevertheless an enjoyable and informative piece. Perhaps it could have done with a bibliography, though that would have made it less personal.

The nostalgia continues with the memories of Niall Hunt and others of their gaming youth with ‘Gaming in the Shire’ and the founding and running of Evesham Roleplaying Association. There is a certain pleasure to be had here in reading reminiscences similar to your own—and of course those of The Grognard Files podcast files hosts—and of course, having them in print. Back in The Grognard Files – Annual 2018, ‘Keharr’ presented ‘Pendragon: City of Legions’, a fascinating exploration of his Pendragon PBEM set in the northwest of England. For this issue he provides not so much an update, but a sort of guide to running such a thing with ‘How to Fry your Fish-Fingers – Lessons learnt from running a Cheshire Pendragon Play By Email’. The advice is both applicable to Pendragon PBEM games and non- Pendragon PBEM games, such as taking disagreements offline, be clear about the rules, listen to your players, and much more. There are still some personal touches and it is clear from the article that the author and his players continue to enjoy running and playing the PBEM.

Lastly, ‘All That Glitters…’ by Jerry Nuckolls, compares and contrasts the two versions of the classic superhero roleplaying game, Golden Heroes, by Simon Burley and Peter Haines. One is their self-published version from 1982, the other the Games Workshop version from 1984. The review as such, does lack illustrations, barring a suitably fanzine-ish cartoon that has a sly dig at Games Workshop, but is a fascinating read because it is often forgotten that there even was a self-published version. What the article highlights is that the differences between the two are relatively minor. Which only goes to show how good the self-published version was that the authors and Games Workshop did not have to do a great deal to bring the version we know to print.

Physically, The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 has a rough quality to it, by design as much as by accident. It needs an edit here and there and feels alternatively cramped and overly spacious in places. It is lightly illustrated, but they are generally well handled, and the cartography for the scenario, ‘Steel Hearts & Straight Razors’, is excellent. Similarly, the wraparound cover from Russ Nicholson is superb.

As with previous issues, The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 delivers a good mix of nostalgia, opinion, and a little bit of gaming content. Indeed, pride of place goes to that gaming content, the scenario, ‘Steel Hearts & Straight Razors’, which is worth the price of the fanzine alone. It is a formula which The Armchair Adventurers have followed before—and it works. It would be fantastic to see this issue made available to the wider gaming hobby, perhaps for a decent cause much like The Grognard Files – Annual 2017, but in the meantime, The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 and further issues are bonus for supporting The Grognard Files podcast.

Miskatonic Monday #15: The Saltwater Inheritance

Between October 2003 and October 2013, Chaosium, Inc. published a series of books for Call of Cthulhu under the Miskatonic University Library Association brand. Whether a sourcebook, scenario, anthology, or campaign, each was a showcase for their authors—amateur rather than professional, but fans of Call of Cthulhu nonetheless—to put forward their ideas and share them with others. The programme was notable for having launched the writing careers of several authors, but for every Cthulhu Invictus, The Pastores, Primal State, Ripples from Carcosa, and Halloween Horror, there was a Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...

The Miskatonic University Library Association brand is no more, alas, but what we have in its stead is the Miskatonic Repository, based on the same format as the DM’s Guild for Dungeons & Dragons. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition content including scenarios, settings, spells and more...” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the far reaches of the Miskatonic Repository.

—oOo—

Between June 1983 and March 1988, the British roleplaying magazine White Dwarf  supported Call of Cthulhu, Chaosium, Inc.’s roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror with almost thirty-five articles and scenarios, beginning with the first part of Marcus L. Rowland’s ‘Cthulhu Now!’ in White Dwarf #42 and ending with the scenario ‘Spirit of the Mountain’ by Graeme Davis in White Dwarf #99. But there should have been one more.

Treasure Trap was regular department in White Dwarf which included content based on readers’ idea. In January 1985, in White Dwarf #61, the department instead offered a scenario design competition in which the winning submission would garner the winner £150 and three runners up a year’s subscription to White Dwarf. The adventure was to be based around a map showing Saltwater Village and nearby Saltwater Bay as well as d’Estrier Manor on a headland. The winning entry was ‘Plague from the Past’, an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons adventure which would appear in September 1985 in White Dwarf 69, but devotees of Call of Cthulhu, the entry by one of the runners up, Mark Morrison, was far more interesting.

Except the competition entry by the co-designer of Horror on the Orient Express was never published—until now that is. Instead of being published in White Dwarf—and of course that would never happen today—the scenario has been published as part of the Miskatonic Repository and is available as a fifteen-page, 8.45 MB, full colour PDF. It has been updated for use with Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, presented with new artwork, and given a new map that is almost, but not quite the same as the one that appeared in Treasure Trap in White Dwarf #61. This is, of course, for copyright reasons.

The Saltwater Inheritance takes place in 1925, probably on England’s East Coast. The investigators—presumed to be academics at some university or other—are given a paid holiday in the village of Saltwater in return for conducting some research at the nearby D’Estrier Manor. In particular, the English History Department is interested in the family library as it may contain further information about William D’Estrier, a supposed sorcerer of no little skill and power in the medieval period. Thus they might be historians, parapsychologists, researchers, librarians, philosophers, cataloguers, and so on. Whatever their exact occupation, their host, Simon D’Estrier is welcoming and takes an interest in their researches in the family library

Arriving in early October, the players will actually have very little to do at first. In fact, the first half of the scenario is rather mundane, really only turning up one or two oddities amongst all of the research and a rash of recent drownings—including their host’s late father. Beyond that, their host is welcoming and most of the villagers are friendly, and really, there is very little going on. Even unearthing hints that William D’Estrier might actually have been a sorcerer—hints that will be accompanied by knowing nods round the table from experienced Call of Cthulhu players as will the fact that someone named Baskerville owns an isolated farm outside the village—will not get the investigators very far. In fact, there is very little for the players and their characters to react to or against in the scenario’s opening scenes.

One possibility to make this more interesting might be to focus on the finds at the D’Estrier Manor and increase the number of them. These should not necessarily be tomes or artefacts of actual Mythos nature, at best they should hint at it as several of the handouts do in The Saltwater Inheritance. One useful supplement to that end would be the Keeper’s Compendium, which includes an extensive list of non-Mythos tomes. (As an aside, the emphasis on the library in The Saltwater Inheritance along with this extra focus on old books would make the scenario suitable for play using the Bookhounds of London campaign framework for Pelgrane Press’ Trail of Cthulhu.)

All that changes though come the end of the month. One of the villagers approaches the investigators and warns them that whatever they have uncovered in their researches is real and he fears that it is returning to the village of Saltwater. This marks an abrupt change in tone and content in The Saltwater Inheritance. Previously, it was mundane and bucolic—even boring—now weird events come crashing down again and again upon the investigators and villagers, driving both player characters and plot to the scenario’s denouement.

Had The Saltwater Inheritance been published in 1985 or 1986, it would be remembered as one of several scenarios published in White Dwarf magazine during its first incarnation. It would not have been remembered as a great scenario or a classic scenario—look to ‘The Curse of the Bone’ and ‘Draw the Blinds on Yesterday’, both by Marcus L. Rowland, for that—for the truth is, The Saltwater Inheritance is the author’s second Call of Cthulhu scenario and it is rough around the edges. As stated at the start of the scenario, “At first, there is no scenario as such…” and until such times as the villager approaches the investigators three weeks almost nothing happens and there is almost nothing for the players and their investigators to do. Once the villager does approach them, the scenario is a pell mell race to the climax.

Now where The Saltwater Inheritance is interesting is not in the scenario itself, but in its afterword. Here the author explains the scenario’s history, how it came to be submitted to White Dwarf magazine back in 1985, and how it came to be published as part of the Miskatonic Repository some thirty years later. Here he highlights in hindsight how impressed he was with the sandbox nature of the initial part of the scenario—and yes, despite very little of interesting going on—this is decently done. Likewise, he highlights and is annoyed by his “...[U]tterly lazy Mythos Monster Manual approach.” to his choice of antagonists in the scenario—a mix of Deep Ones and the Crawling Chaos. Whilst there is an element of truth to this, it is unfair, if you take into account the then experience of the author, the amateurish nature of the scenario, and the fact that professionally published scenarios have actually taken what he calls his “Mythos Monster Manual” approach and applied it to its utmost. Plus, given the scenario’s east coast of England location, one does have wonder about the influence of ‘The Watchers of Walberswick’, the first scenario for Call of Cthulhu to appear in the pages of White Dwarf in its fiftieth issue and which also involved Deep Ones.

Physically, The Saltwater Inheritance is decently presented, it is an easy read, and it is nicely illustrated. A good job has been done of representing the map from White Dwarf #61. As to the scenario itself, The Saltwater Inheritance is not unplayable—at worst it is amateurish, at best, a rough and ready affair. That though just reflects its origins and its provenance which are more interesting than the scenario itself. 

A Pavis Palaver

For many a British roleplayer their first introduction to RuneQuest and thus Glorantha, was not through roleplaying, but through fiction. Short, one or two-page pieces of fiction that appeared in the pages of White Dwarf magazine between 1982 and 1984, which told some of the stories and capers of Griselda, adventurer, thief, troll-friend, and sometime ‘hero’, but always a thorn in the side of the authority in and about the city of Pavis and the adjacent ruins of the Big Rubble. Starting with ‘Lucky Eddi’ in White Dwarf #29 and ending with ‘All in the Family’ White Dwarf #51 in 1984, readers got to hear the exploits of the notorious redhead as told by Olaf Dickin’s-son, known around Pavis as a small-time bookie, teller of tales, and occasional professional prayer. In the years since, further stories have appeared in the pages of other RuneQuest and Glorantha-related titles, including game supplements like Chaosium, Inc.’s Pavis and Big Rubble and magazines such as Different Worlds, Tales of the Reaching Moon, and Trade Talk. A great many of these tales were brought together with a little background in 1993 by the Reaching Moon Megacorp as The Collected Griselda. Then almost a decade later, in 2001, this was reprinted as The Complete Griselda which collected all of the original tales—and more.

The anthology opens with ‘Lucky Eddi’ and ‘Griselda Gets Her Man’, which tell of how and why Griselda comes to Pavis and settles the first of a score or two before making a good deal with a Dark Troll in ‘A Tasty Morsel’. We get to see her run a scam or three or four or more, such as in ‘The Great Chart Caper’; protect her reputation much like a Wild West gunfighter as many a potential rival, such as ‘Red Hot’, attempts to take her down; have to deal with too many family issues—not always her own, like ‘The Trouble With Nephews’; all before getting a glimpse of Griselda’s future reputation in ‘The Cradlesnatchers’. There are almost thirty stories in The Complete Griselda, roughly covering the period between 1613 and 1621, the years running up to the Hero Wars when Pavis was under Lunar occupation. 

In addition, the anthology adds more to Griselda’s world than just the tales themselves. There are points of view from the good, the bad, and the Uz around the city of Pavis, which sets the scene for the tales to come, as does the map of Pavis itself. As well as a biography of Griselda there is even a Griselda songbook, containing four songs. These are nicely done and quite amusing.

As much fun and entertaining as the stories are in The Complete Griselda—and there should be no doubt about that—they do not necessarily reflect RuneQuest and Glorantha as they are roleplayed. Certainly not in 2018. Exceptions abound, of course, but the focus for both RuneQuest in 1982 and the more recent RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha is typically on adventures that take place in the centre of Dragon Pass and a rural environment and on the conflict between Sartar and the Lunar Empire. The adventures of Griselda take place in an urban environment and concern her criminal and semi-criminal adventures. This reflects the style of the tales told in this anthology, which is as a Damon Runyon pastiche.

Runyon, a noted New York news and sports journalist during the nineteen thirties and forties, wrote two collections of stories, On Broadway and From First to Last, set in and round the bars and joints of the city’s Broadway. Notably, the stories a lot of vernacular and slang and they are strictly written in the present tense, all narrated by the same, unnamed raconteur with a gentle humour and sense of irony. The author of The Complete Griselda adopts the same style, the stories being regaled in the present tense and accompanied no little slang. Unlike Runyon though, the author names his narrator. This is the aforementioned Olaf Dickin’s-son, not so much the nom de plume of the anthology’s author, Doctor Oliver Dickinson, but his alter ego. Dickinson is an English academic specialising in late Bronze Age Greece, who also edited the ‘Rune Rites’, the RuneQuest column which ran from White Dwarf #30 to White Dwarf #73. If Griselda is the star of the anthology, then it is the words of Olaf Dickin’s-son that make her so.

One side of effect of being a Runyon pastiche is that the stories in The Complete Griselda need an audience. Just as those in On Broadway and From First to Last, these stories demand to be read aloud, preferably with a drink in hand—though probably not a troll drink. New York accent optional, of course.

Of course, The Complete Griselda is not actually complete. It was after all, published in 2001 and there have been new stories since. A handful—‘Ogre Hunt’, ‘Meet the Parents’, ‘No Way for a Lady to Behave’, ‘A Day at the Races’, and others have been published as chapbooks by Tentacles Press as fundraisers for the Kraken convention in Germany. These are longer tales than those original White Dwarf appearances of Griselda and are also available as PDFs from Chaosium, Inc. Originally published by Issaries, Inc., The Complete Griselda is also available from Chaosium, Inc. as a PDF.

Physically, The Complete Griselda is decently presented. The black and white cover artwork, which is supposed to depict Griselda, feels rather generic, but the maps inside—one of Pavis and one of the adjacent Big Rubble—are well done. The text is presented in a sans serif font, so is not quite as easy to read as if it were a serif font.

As much as the stories in The Complete Griselda do not necessarily reflect the way in which RuneQuest is played, that may change with the planned publication of updated versions of Big Rubble in 2019 and Pavis in 2020, both to be written by Robin D. Laws. These are the locations where Griselda’s stories take place and so hopefully the two supplements together will provide a stage where the players and their characters can carry out similar capers and have similar adventures. Of course, these stories are the perfect inspiration for such adventures. Until then, these stories are not necessarily a good introduction in general to the world of Glorantha.

Nevertheless, the twenty-nine stories in The Complete Griselda are most enjoyable, and they do bring the exploits and tales of the ne’er-do-wells and miscreants who frequent Loud Lilina’s and—occasionally Rowdy Djoh Lo’s—to life in a highly entertaining and singular fashion. The Complete Griselda is rife with great characters, fun plots, and the type of situations in which player characters all too find themselves, but most all it is full of damned good stories.

Fanzine Focus XIII: The Grognard Files – Annual 2018

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 showed another Dungeon Master 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 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.

The Grognard Files is a fanzine born of a podcast,  The Grognard Files, a North of England podcast dedicated to the games of the late seventies and early eighties, in particular, RuneQuest. It is available only to patrons of the podcast—or alternatively to attendees of Grogmeet a one-day convention in Manchester, again in the North of England. It is also put out just once a year. Published by The Armchair Warriors, the The first issue, The Grognard Files – Annual 2017, is available as a ‘Pay What You Want’ PDF available to download with the proceeds of the sale of the fanzine will donated to continue the running of Yog-sothoth.com, the best site dedicated to Lovecraft and Lovecraftian investigative horror. Hopefully, The Armchair Warriors will do the same with The Grognard Files – Annual 2018, because it is a cracker of an issue—and not just because I have a review in its pages—with some good articles and a really fun scenario or two.

As with The Grognard Files – Annual 2017, British gamers of a certain age will very much recognise the style and layout of White Dwarf from the mid-eighties which is used The Grognard Files – Annual 2018. It is applied to the adverts too, with those from Otherworld Miniatures, All Rolled Up, and The Shop on the Borderlands all echoing the adverts of the 1980s. All this is behind a great cover by Russ Nicholson, whose art graced the pages of many a Fighting Fantasy title and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay supplement. So just from the look—as with The Grognard Files – Annual 2017—we are all ready for a heavy dose or two of nostalgia with The Grognard Files – Annual 2018.

Like White Dwarf, the fanzine is divided into features and departments. The first of the departments is Open Box—named for the reviews department in White Dwarf—which presents four lengthy reviews, but opens them up from straight reviews to remembrances too. The four games are West End Games’ Paranoia, SkyRealms Publishing’s SkyRealms of Jorune (by guess who?), Yaquinto’s Man, Myth, & Magic, and The World of Darkness. So the reviewers recall their experiences playing these games as much as they review them. Of the four, that of The World of Darkness feels slightly too broad and slightly out of kilter with the nostalgia with the rest of the fanzine. Overall, these are some nice look backs to both well remembered and little remembered roleplaying games.

The nostalgia continues with the ‘Dissecting Worlds’ department. Here ‘Keharr’ presents ‘Pendragon: City of Legions’, which describes how he ran a Pendragon campaign not in its default setting of Salisbury and Logres, but in his home region—the Wirral. Little more than half a page long, this is a fascinating piece, shifting the game not just geographically away from the south of England, but also politically away from the support of Arthur. The result is a grimmer and more desperate campaign, played as a PBEM, and it would certainly be fascinating to read more about it. Perhaps some campaign notes will appear in a future issue of The Grognard Files.

Michael Cule laments why as an aging gamer he cannot get excited about gaming any more in his column, ‘Cule’s Corner’. He also gets to reminisce how it has happened to him before, and just as before, appears to be mostly our fault given that we are not producing enough exciting games. The awful truth though, is that we might just end up like Mister Cule, so we need to get producing those games fast. ‘Fanscence’ gives Rob Knott room to reminisce about the gaming scene of the 1980s and his own fanzine, The Lankhmar Star Daily. As yet, there is no history of the gaming fanzine, but this adds a little towards such a history as well as a personal story that many readers of The Grognard Files – Annual 2018 will find familiar.

The issue’s features begin with Justin Hill’s ‘At the Sign of the Dragon’s Tail’, a short story about aging adventurers coming to realise that discretion being the better part of valor. The issue’s biggest feature is undoubtedly ‘Better Living Through Chemistry’, a scenario written by Alan Gairey for the Judge Dredd: The Role-Playing Game published by Games Workshop in 1985. Set in the wake of the Apocalypse War, it sends the Judges—six pre-generated Judges are included—out on patrol before throwing them into a mystery involving illegal eating contests, the mob, chemistry, and more. As befits a scenario for Judge Dredd: The Role-Playing Game, it is thick with puns and jokes, plus of course, a good criminal mystery and lots of action. This is huge fun and hopefully the author will get to write more.

The other scenario in The Grognard Files – Annual 2018 is Roger Coe’s ‘Diversion’. This is written for use versions of Call of Cthulhu written prior to Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition and explores what might happen if the investigators have to use a Gate or Gatebox and something goes wrong. In this instance, they find themselves all but naked and trapped in a strange alien technological complex. It is a nicely detailed ‘get out of that’ scenario, something very different for Call of Cthulhu, which presents an interesting situation that offers a change from the usual investigative fare.

The Grognard Files – Annual 2018 takes on an international flavour with a contribution from Ken St. Andre, the designer of Tunnels & Trolls. In ‘On The Monster Races in RPGs’ he gives a history of the concept of playing monsters and the original roleplaying game to allow the playing of monsters, Monsters! Monsters! It is another slice of history, one that the author makes very clear predates the publication of Vampire: the Masquerade by some eleven years. It gets a bit silly with ‘The Grognard: a character class’ by Phil the Dice Mechanic. Designed for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, characters of this Class are permanently middle-aged, use Rules Mastery to give others the Advantage, get Rules Mastery back with a nice cup of tea and a hobnob, and with Drone of Protection help others withstand the effects of fear or charm. This is a daft satire which the readers of The Grognard Files – Annual 2018 will probably recognise of themselves in.

Lastly, The Grognard Files – Annual 2018 makes an odd switch from White Dwarf to Imagine, the magazine published by TSR, UK in the same period as the fanzine draws from, for a new and updated installment of Nic Novice. This cartoon strip ran in the pages of Imagine and from issue to issue it introduced the character of Nic to  roleplaying and various different roleplaying games. In ‘Whatever Happened to Nic Novice’, Paul Cockburn and Wayne Peters relates how Nic has got old and stopped gaming when his granddaughter discovers his roleplaying books under the bed. It is as much a commentary on the differences between old gamer and young gamers, but it does highlight how there are young players coming into the hobby and that they are a diverse lot.

Physically, The Grognard Files – Annual 2018 is well presented, well written, and comes with some excellent illustrations. Some of the other illustrations could have been better handled as they are somewhat fuzzy. Another issue is that a lot of the text is quite small and in places difficult to read. Especially that printed on darker backgrounds. This is probably an issue that affects a lot of the fanzine’s intended readership.

Lots of nostalgia, a bit of silliness here and there, and a couple of good scenarios make for an entertaining and memory-provoking read. Hopefully, The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 will be just good, but in the meantime, one can only hope that The Armchair Warriors make The Grognard Files – Annual 2018 available to purchase because it is worth it for ‘Better Living Through Chemistry’ alone and everything else is icing on the cake.