It was a slow day at work, and I got thinking on technomagic in the old World of Darkness, which reminded me of the World of Future Darkness, an article in the old White Wolf Magazine. Then I remembered that I had a couple copies of those things lying around, and found them in a box next to some rather tired issues of Shadis and a very confused early Earthdawn leaflet. Anyway, we haven't done an OSSR on these before and they are of some historical interest, so I picked the top one off the lot and we'll take a look at WWM #30.
Before that, though, you have to understand something important about White Wolf Magazine: it came first. Before the World of Darkness was a thing, White Wolf Magazine was a B-grade roleplaying game rag carried on in the wake of proper magazines like Dragon and Dungeon, but semi-professional and thus a step ahead of amateur press associations and other 'zines assembled at Kinko's.
The apostrophe is the source of it's power.
Anyway, in 1991 (around issue 25), White Wolf Magazine merged Lion Rampant, the Rein*Hagen/Johnathan Tweet creators of Ars Magica to become White Wolf Game Studios, and the World of Darkness was born.
White Wolf Magazine, amazingly, continued on as a RPG-zine, in no way a one-company rag like Dragon and InQuest became, although with issue 50 they changed their name to White Wolf Inphobia and expanded their journalistic remit to CCGs like Jyhad.
Hey, it was better than Rage.
But that was the future. This is issue 30, February 1992. Magic: the Gathering is not a thing yet, AD&D is in full blossom - Rome before the fall.
The front cover is a couple anachronistic Native Americans decked out in buckskins and improbable white hair, armed with radios and what I assume are assault rifles with ludicrous scopes on 'em, a mist-shrouded modern city in the background. This might seem strange until you remember that Shadowrun's Native American Nations, Vol. 1 had recently released, and this was the "Near Future Issue."
The inside front cover (cardstock!) is a full-color, full-page ad for "The Player's Guide." That's right, WW was subtle about the vampire thing back in the day.
Barnabus?
The credits show this is a semi-professional 'zine, with a lineup that looks about like what you'd get for a White Wolf product at the end of the day, with the addition of a Staff Writer, Line Reviewers, and an Advertising Director.
Yes, advertisers. We'll get to that.Licensed to Kill: Mark Rein*Hagen
The first section is Runes, where editor Stewart Wieck meditates on the future of White Wolf...by which he means, White Wolf Magazine.
Translation: they're going glossy.Well, that's it. We're closing up shop. Just for a while, that is. You're holding the last issue of WHITE WOLF Magazine that will appear in this current format. By "current format" I mean this rather plain, functional format that the magazine has maintained over the last couple of years.
From the Pack is the letters column. The highlight is a long rant from Kevin Siembienda (and Wieck's rebuttal), apparently not the first one he's written and seen published, about the magazine's policies - apparently he thinks it unfair that West End, GDW, ICE, Steve Jackson Games, Chaosium, and White Wolf get more space in the reviews column than Palladium, and is accusing WWM of playing favorites.
Raiko is a Torg adventure by Nigel D. Findley. I couldn't give two shits about Torg in '92, and I care even less about it now. However, one part of the scenario is entitled "Behind the Green Door," and I refuse to believe that's inadvertent.
Our first ad is on page 15 - a small quarter-pager for "Medievalists/Sword Collectors/SI FI ENTHUSIASTS" offering an "exciting new catalog" of fantasy weapons made by SteelCraft.
Curse is a short story by Richard Worzel, set in the RPG setting Time and Time Again by Timeline Ltd., from Ypsilanti, Michigan. (They bought a half-paid ad at the end of the story.)
Bat also requires a Shaman to undergo a gruelling ritual death and rebirth. As a result of this, all Bat Shamans begin as level 0 Initiates. Subtract 1 from Body and Willpower. These attributes can be regained by using Karma to raise them (see Shadowrun, page 150).
Horse is considered an Urban Totem only in those cities where Mounted Police and horse-drawn carriages are still in use.
[imghttp://woodtalkonline.com/uploads/monthly_10_2013/post-2926-0-65201600-1381419901.jpg[/img]Skunk's reputation may be for great preventative medicine, but it can also be a bad rap in certain situations. he only sprays that odoriferous musk when threatened. Skunk Shamans are actually quite clean and tidy, go for tres chich clothes, and are reputed to be very skillful when dealing with members of the opposite sex. Shamans subtract 2 dice from Charisma when first dealing with someone who knows their Totem.
Feature Review: Dark Sun by Berin Kinsman is exactly what is says on the tin. Kinsman gives it a rating of 4 out of ???.
Pulling No Punches by Greg Porter is a martial arts system for CORPS, a game which I was surprised to hear only stopped being published formally in 2003 - some of these obscure games are fairly long-lived, and according to Wikipedia may even be seeing a small comeback through print-on-demand.
In the middle of the CORPS article is a glossy, multi-page color insert for Talislanta - I guess this would be pimping 3rd edition - and The Primal Order, a religious-based RPG from a little-known company called Wizards of the Coast (man, I miss the old logo).
The Silicon Dungeon is the computer gaming column, by Jim Trunzo, and pretty much a direct riff off of Dragon Magazine's version...which I think was Silicon Sorcery? Don't remember, too lazy to look up. Anyway, reviews of Wing Commander II (rating: 5), Might and Magic III (rating 4), Space Quest IV (rating: 4) and Rise of the Dragon "a hidden gem that was grossly overlooked amid the glut of highly publicized software released last year" (rating 4), and Conan, the Cimmerian (rating 5).
...I am old, that doesn't look that bad. I mean, it's ass, but not ass ass, y'know what I mean?
There's an advert for a play-by-mail game of gladiatorial combat called Blood Pit "where you play the manager of a team of five warriors who fight, live and perhaps die according to your skill."
...fuck, how did we go from this to Fantasy Football?
Deadly Legacy by Clay Gibson is an adventure for Age of Ruin, a post-apocalyptic game that didn't get much in the way of legs. Your mission (for some reason) is to go through a trapped bayou inhabited by deranged hillbillies to claim an inheritance.
Robert Wilson (THAT one? Probably not, but maybe.) writes Items for any Realm, which is literally a group of statless generic magic items for any game. Points go to the tome of literacy. The book basically takes dictation and reads it back to the user. Like a secretary. For people that can make magic books but can't be fucking bothered to learn how to read.
There's a two-page splat on some pewter figures from Mithral Miniatures featuring characters from the fucking Simarillion. I think that's just taking the fucking piss when Turin, Thingol of Dortiath, and the fucking Petty-Dwarves have a place of honor among your minis.
The Scope of Magic by Christopher Earley is a couple of minor magic spells for NightLife.
The rest of the book is taken up by capsule reviews and ads, and we're finally given an explanation for the rating system - scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is shit and 5 is blowjob (I'm paraphrasing).
It's kind of amazing to see the same kind of complaints and fan-glee as you might expect with new products. The Arms and Equipment Guide by AD&D gets a 2, Nigel D. Findley's Draconomicon earns a 4, Maztica and The Ruins of Undermountain get 3s, Tome of Magic is 4 (and wow are there some familiar names on that book), Ars Magica gets a couple products no one cares about, Call of Cthulhu has a few suplements and the epic adventure Horror on the Orient Express (5 - people today are actually making novels and podcast playthroughs of it; CoC fans are weird), Champions...eh, fuck Champions; R. Talsorian's Night City gets a 3 with the reviewer bitching about no clear separation of crunch and fluff, there are games called Fifth Cycle and Ironhedge I've never heard of, but apparently the latter's books include Ganghedge, Starhedge, and Westhedge; Rifts Vampire Kingdoms gets a 4 (would have earned a 5, but no adventures or conversions); Rus RPG (2... "the use of tables and charts is entirely too frequent, and sometimes truly without purpose" - this in the AD&D era!); Shadowrun's London Sourcebook gets a 5, Native American Nations, Volume 2 (3), and Total Eclipse (2). West End Game's Star wars falters with Cracken's Rebel Field Guide[/i] (2), but picks up with Death Star Technical Companion (3), and the Gamemaster Kit (4). Fan-favorite Tales from the Foating Vagabond gives us Bar Wars; self-published Time Drifters earns the sole 1, and the review is a treat:
Rest assured, there is no lack of small problems either. The lesser bugs and flaws range from the merely annoying (their insistence upon calling the percentile roll a 2D10, and their incorrect definition of game time versus real time) to the genuinely confusing (a contradiction in the rules about weapon effects on black rolls, and persistently sloppy omissions of negative signs on numbers).
Twlight 2000 has Bangkok (2), and then a love-letter of reviews of the American Combat Vehicle Handbook (4), Infantry Weapons of the World (4), MERC:2000 (4), Nato Combat Vehicle Handbook (4), and the Soviet Combat Vehicle Handbook (4). Part of me thinks these have to have been the inspiration/competition for the original Rigger's Black Book for Shadowrun.
"Universal Supplements" include Citybook V: Sideshow by Flying Buffalo; Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay gets four 3-point reviews for Death's Dark Shadow, Doomstones 1: Fire in the Mountains, Doomstones 2: Blood in Darkness and Doomstones 3: Death Rock, with no indication that the series wouldn't finish for another 10-15 years. Return of the Lichemaster gets 2.
There's a half-page ad for Millenium's End "The World's First Post-Cold-War RPG." with the tagline "The Nineties Are Here."
The final page is an ad for Vampire: the Masquerade - one of the quiet ones, with blood and an ankh and two girls.
By drinking the cold blod of an elder, the Diablist can steal the vitality, the essence, the power of his Kindred. In Vampire, you are the hunter, as well as the hunted. You are the Vampire.
A Storytelling Game of Personal Horror
Inside back cover (cardstock!) is a full-color ad for "The Succubus Club" - if I didn't know better, I'd swear they had some leftover covers or something.
The back cover is an ad for Renegade Legion. And that's the 'zine.
I admit, I first picked these up - when I did, when they were in - because of the Shadowrun articles; I could really give a devil rat's hairless ass for the rest of it most of the time. Looking back through it, it's still a fairly impressive semi-pro production at 72 pages, and more diverse than Dragon. It's kind of sad to think of all the gaming 'zines that died out, one after another; changing circumstances is mostly what it was, but there was a time when lots of the bigger companies all had their house 'zines - Pyramid for GURPS I remember - and even White Wolf moved to a house 'zine style with White Wolf Quarterly if my brain hasn't congealed. Maybe that was the start of the death of the thing; you needed the spread to really get good coverage and get the word out about new games, new product, to tide people over until the next book came out. Nowadays, of course, we just have the internet.
