Transcript
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Hello, my name is Dirt the Dice, and this is the Grognard Files podcast, where we talk bobbins about tabletop RPGs from back in the day and today. This is the second part of episode 75, which is all about 1984. It's not a supplement as such. It's like, you know, when you're looking for a television program late on a Friday night, perhaps something enriching like Mary Beard talking about Romans, and you stumble across one of those clip shows, you know, one of those that's showing things from the past with talking heads chatting about them. You feel like you might watch one of them and before you know it, you're there for an hour and you're watching Anthea Turner fall out the back of a van. You know, it's a bit like that. Well, I've been working hard getting ready for Grog Meet, which takes place in January 2025, a few weeks after this podcast is released. And this part of the episode, hot on the heels of the previous one. It's not all beer and hobnobs here in the den. It only really makes sense, this episode, if you listen to the first one. First. Yes, it's us reminiscing about 1984 and some of the games that we played and coming to the realization that we had a very narrow palette to draw from. Indeed, in this episode, we issue a challenge to you, the listener. What were your enthusiasms back in 1984 and would you want to introduce them to us? Anyway, more about that later. Also, in this part of the episode, we have the triumphant return of the Daily Dwarf, who has written an overview of how 1984 looked in the great magazine White Dwarf. Because everything comes back to White Dwarf. It's an essay that he's written that I'll read. I'll be back at the end with some shout outs for new patrons. Until then, ramblers, let's get rumbling. The white dwarf, 1984 and all that. 1984, the year of Big Brother. War is peace and the clock's striking 13. Not to mention the tensions and fears we all felt at the height of the Cold War. But never mind Orwell's warnings of totalitarian dystopia or the threat of imminent nuclear annihilation war. More importantly, what was happening on the pages of White Dwarf magazine? Well, it had exited the previous year on a bit of a roll with Khazad Dum, Irillion and dealing with Demons, all having been published. Could Gaines Workshop maintain this level of excellence and continue the Golden Era into another year? The issues with 1984 cover dates run from 49 to number 60. If you want to play along at home, from Shuttle Scuttle to the Bleeding Stone of Iptar from Character classes in Runequest, what much heresy, very anger to an introduction to superhero gaming. This run included the landmark 50th issue as well as the launch of the magazine into High Street Newsagents Project. John Menzies, as I've no doubt no one in Games Workshop called it, an attempt to consolidate White Dwarf's position in expanding the RPG market and to take advantage of the interest generated from the fighting fantasy juggernaut. Departments still ruled the roost in the pages of the magazine alongside the long running stalwarts like Fiend Factory, Starbase and Rune Rights. New departments appeared Crash Course for Car Wars, Lose Views for The good old Dr. Pulsifer's ruminations on all things ad and D and tabletop heroes. Everything you wanted to know about lead figures from Mesa's Dever & Chalk. The book review column Critical Mass was joined by Counterpoint for board games and Micro View for those new fangled microcomputers. Whatever they were departments everywhere you looked. But with more and more games appearing on the market, was the magazine becoming hidebound by the this rigid structure? Was the room to Innovate limited? Was the Golden Era coming to an end? Well, delving back into these 12 issues I found that there is still a good deal of gaming goodness for the discerning role player. Now I have covered several scenarios and articles from this run in previous bits of the podcast and not wanting to repeat myself, I've decided to steal Dirk's 1D6 format from his blog and look at five highlights and one fumble. So here we go. Trouble brewing Everyone remember the hashtag scenarioslam back in 2016? Anyone? No? Well, check out that era defining contest on the Daily Dwarf blog, sports fans. While Curse of the Bone was the winner, the runner up was the Black Brew of Dieskund from issue 51. Reading it again, it's an absolute belter from the pen of Rockstar Games designer Ken Rolston. It was described as a Runequest cavern crawl and delivered exactly what it said on the tin. For me, what I want from a game of RuneQuest. I don't care who the God of kite flying is or who the play character's grandparents are. I just want the PCs to pit their wits and their fighting skills against the worst creatures that Glorian Panther can throw at them. This scenario wasn't just a zoo Dungeon, though. The PCs had to deal with both a formidable nest of chaos cultists, including, of course, the obligatory brew, as well as the environment itself. This was a particularly clever touch from Ken Rolson, I think. He introduced the concept of squeezes areas around the caverns where passages were so small and restricted that the PCs could become trapped. A simple enough idea, but one that brought an extra level of threat to the characters as they delved deeper into the complex. After all, no one wants to get stuck fast in a tight squeeze when there's a scorpion man bearing down on them. The cavern map itself, though, was pretty complicated. Armchair adventurer Eddie described it on Twitter as looking like a mad woman's knitting, and he wasn't wrong. Hell, it's the pigs ah yes, Mark Harrison's comic strip the Travellers divided the crowd back in 1984, and I think it still does today. It didn't have the same immediate appeal as the knockabout slapstick of Thrud, but really, how could you not love a strip that featured the Atari Death Squadron? Mark Harrison was clearly a player of the Traveller rpg, peppering the strip with terms from the game mixed in with references and jokes inspired by Star Wars, Alien, Dune and the like. Admit it, that's what all our Traveller campaigns were like in 1984. Yes, well, not every gag landed. They came in thick and fast, and I enjoyed reading the strip all over again. If there's a particular strip of note, it'd be the one from issue 58, a collaboration with Nick Weeks, who provides many outstanding scenarios maps in White Dwarf maybe it's just me by thinking it's two page layout, I detected a homage to the venerable White Dwarf Traveller scenario, the Sable Rose Affair. A lovely touch. Mark's art style was occasionally frenetic, with little sight gags, sometimes lost in the maelstrom. This also made the strip a little hard to follow at times, leaving me to wonder how the dialogue flowed and which panel came next. Mark has of course gone on to bigger things in the intervening years, and now a regular artist for 2000 AD, but I still describe his art as being a bit fuzzy at the edges. What really comes into its own is when he's depicting alien worlds and cultures. Check out his recent work with writer Dan Abner for the strip the out in the galaxy's greatest comic, while with some artists, alien worlds just look like a Buzz Depot in Basingstoke, with a bit of extra chrome and a few banks of flashing lights tacked on the beautiful vistas painted by Mark in the out look genuinely alien. Time rich, cash poor. Remember that time before the Internet when surprises were still possible? When you could turn to Openbox and read a review of a game that you'd never heard of before? There were a whole host of desirable Items reviewed in 1984. Reading through all the columns again, it felt like a giant wants list with some tasty supplements and scenarios for established games like Call of Cthulhu and Traveller, plus a few new RPGs like daredevils and Espionage. Marcus Rowlands particularly sold me on espionage. Fast, easy to learn rules for playing CIA agents engaged in covert shenanigans. Sounds great. Anyone play this Back in the day, Marcus only complaint was the lack of rules for silencers. We also saw the dawn of the Dragonlance module series for AD&D. Graham Staplehurst, finding similarities between DL1, Dragons of Despair and a chunky book by a certain Professor Tolkien. Nowhere was the expansion of the RPG market more evident than the run up to Christmas. In the final four issues of 1984, OpenBox reviewed the James Bond 007 RPG Middle Earth, role playing, Fassa's version of Star Trek, and both Ringworld and Elfquest from Chaoseum. The only problem back in 84 was that while I had plenty of time to play RPGs, all level revision. What's that? I was not at home to Mr. Disposable Cash and now of course that ratio is reversed. While I might have a bit more money to spend time for gaming, feels like sand running through my fingers. Ah well, it's still fun to dream. I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality through not dying. Dying during character creation. Pah. With Andy Slack's Traveller article To Live Forever from issue 52, your characters could achieve immortality. This was a great thought provoking article. As you'd expect from the pen of Andy Slack, he looked not just at the means to achieve immortality at various tech levels. Drugs, surgery, bionics, clones and more were all examined, but also the impact of characters living forever, both on an individual level and on societies at large. It asked some really interesting existential questions for player characters to explore, and provided plenty of ideas for Traveller adventures away from the usual amoral piracy fare that my group typically indulged in back in the day. The scenario outline at the end of the article left me scratching my head a bit though, even after reading the referee's information, but still recommended. What did Fish Head just say? I've always been a bit of a sucker for a good trap, particularly if it's an elaborate construction with an accompanying cross sectional diagram. In issue 58, it's a trap, though Stephen Dudley eschewed the Heath Robinson style excess, preferring to focus on the practicalities of traps, why they were there, who sets them, how long they can be circumvented, etc. I enjoyed reading this article over again in just a couple of pages. Stephen gave Games Masters a lot of useful advice on designing and locating traps. His comment that a trap should not leave too much mince made me chuckle. Nothing alerts player characters to a trap like suspicious lumps of viscera strewn about the dungeon corridor. The emphasis of the article was very much on avoiding Tomb of Horror style instant death traps, giving players agency in avoiding disarming traps instead while still allowing foolish and unwary characters to get their comeuppance. Great advice then, great advice now. And if you can't lay your hands on a copy of White Dwarf 58, check out Chris McDowell's excellent Electric Bastion Land instead for more quality trap talk. A personal fumble okay, confession time. By the time 1984 rolled around, I'd been playing RPGs for several years solidly, mainly AD&D, with some travel and gamma world, plus a sprinkling of runequests for good measure. Too much of a good thing. Well, with all that non stop gaming, I'd become a little, well, jaded with my group and role playing games in general. So much so that I can barely bring myself to say it. When White Dwarf 56 was published, I decided. I decided, I decided not to buy it. I know, I know. I can only hang my head in shame. When issue 57 hit the shops a month later, I had a rush of remorse and started buying the magazine again, and managed to buy a copy of that missing issue from a mate at school. I'd learned my lesson and my loyalty remained steadfast. From then on, nobody tell Ian Livingstone. Yeah, so that was 1984 in the Dwarf. If I'm honest, I don't think it hit the heights of the previous two years. Maybe that accounted for my wobble, but there's still some gems to be found and the magazine remained an absolute cornerstone of the UK RPG scene and nothing else. We knew we could all rely on Games Workshop, right? Little did we know what was to come in the years ahead. But always do not forget this, Winston. The wars be the intoxication of miniature figures constantly increasing in number and constantly needing painting. Always, at every moment there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a space marine's boot stamping on your wallet. Forever the Groggies, 1984 Part 2. Right, let's do the awards. I hope that you've got your nominees. As I get the categories, I've got the envelopes here. They're not gold envelopes. These. These are DL envelopes. So the first up is the Messianic Megalomaniac Award. This is our Games Master Award that we present each year to Games master. So in 1984, play there. Who are you going to give your Games Master Award to?