White Dwarf #67 June 1985

Jul 21, 2025

This Mark Bromley piece is amazing. A dwarf fighter busting through a wooden door. I really should send this to Avatars of War and see if they will make a dwarf hero like this. The more I look at it, the more details I see. This is a great cover.

Hunters of the Dark - Graeme Davis

Mr. Davis details ghots for the Call of Cthulhu game. You have your standard ghost abilities. Also detailed are some of the ghostly types from British folklore, the Banshee, the Black Dog, the Poltergeist, and the Will-O-Wisp. The Bones of Albion for Silver Bayonet is coming out later this fall. I might need to find and print a couple of these for that game. I’m sure at least one or two of these will be there. You may even be able to preorder it from The Victor’s Spoils right now.

Open Box - Various

Contained within are reviews for Star Ace from Pacesetter, DL2-4 from TSR, and Monster Coliseum from Avalon Hill.

Star Ace (reviewed by Marcuse L Rowland) seems interesting as a collector of dead games. It appears to be very much in the Star Wars as it is a group of plucky rebels versus the galactic empire.
Of course we get the review (by Graham Staplehurst) of the Dragonlance adventures released already. I’m not sure they were ever worth playing, but I think they were an interesting idea.

Monster Coliseum (reviewed by Oliver Dickinson) is a Runequest 3 supplement, but at the time of release was marred by the a high price tag.

Aldiss at Sunset - Dave Langford

Dave continues his characteristic humor with his standard scale (“brilliant”, “OK'“, “mediocre”, “unreadable”, or “Hubbard”). Makes me laugh every time he makes fun of L. Ron. Helliconia Summer by Brian Aldiss, The Man in the Tree by Damon Knight (that is a great name for a sci-fi/fantasy writer, I really hope that is his real name, and not a pseudonym), Hammer’s Slammer by David Drake, The Time of the Dark by Barbra Hambly, Spellbinder by Stephen Bowkett, The Song of Middle-Earth by David Harvey.
I found a copy of Barabara Hambly’s Sun Wolf and Starhawk trilogy in my great-uncle Genoa’s house after he passed away and my grandparents moved in. I haven’t read it in years (probably 30+), so I can’t say it is good, but I did enjoy the story when I was in my early teens. I have plans to go back and reread some of her writing now that I am older. Mr. Langford does rate The Time of the Dark above average, so I should at least add it to my radar. If Dave thinks it is above average, it is probably a great book.

Loam Wolves - Barry Atkins

This is the bi-monthly RuneQuest column. This one draws on barbarian culture and adds magic to them. Seems like a reasonable article. I think the runes could be useful for any system that uses magic and barbarians.

Peking Duck - Phil Masters

This is a superhero mystery adventure for Champions and the Golden Heroes RPGs. It wouldn’t be that hard to adapt to a variety of systems. You could even use the maps for something sci-fi like Stargrave. You would need to translate the villains, of course. It gives enough information to be useful, but allows a lot of player agency.

Wordly Wiles - Anna Price

A treatise on creating unique planets for your Travellers to, well, travel to. Knowing and understanding all the customs on hundreds or thousands or worlds would be impossible. Less of this is what should happen, and more of a, this is what you could do. An evergreen article that works for any system. If you are running out of ideas for your RPG or wargame, I highly recommend reading this one.

A Murder at Flaxton - Micheal Heaton

This is the AD&D scenario for the month. It is another murder mystery. There seems to have been a lot of these, but maybe I’m just biased to not liking them. I’m not saying it’s not a cool idea, I’m not saying it is not executed well, I’m just not a fan of the genre. It is well thought out, and as usual, could be adopted to any number of genres, with a little work.

Parlour Game - Stephen Dudley

Another thought article on using various types of spiders in your RPG. I would be remiss to not mention how Mr. Mollison showed us an a wargame with some spiders and how he gave them different objectives to the main party.

I found the article very informative, aka, I liked the ideas presented within it.

The Vivimancer - Steve Palmer

Subtitled Spiritual Helpers for AD&D. This is an interesting idea, but I don’t really see much use for it. Your mileage may vary of course. Fiend Factory gave us some great monsters like the gitnyanki, but it also gave us a lot of duds.

The Magic Frame - Joe Dever

An entire article on equimpment for photographing miniatures. A lot of the ideas are still being touted today, even if the actual equipment has changes in 40 years. It is a nice view of the art at the time, and the history of miniature painting and photographing.

These Lord of the Rings figures really spoke to me. I would love to find some of these for sale one day.

Another photo from the time using the technigues described. I can’t tell what all is going on here, it is tiny. But it looks like great fun. Some spiders, a wyvern, some knights, possibly an early beastmen in the middle? That hand painted banner looks great. Yeah, I’m just waffling on right now.

Travelling Light - Various

Author Russell may brings us a couple of new magic backpacks. I particularly like the Messenger Pack. Send items and messages back and forth to however holds the opposite pack. When I was in junior high, I carried on a very sordid affair with a girl who would write messages on our desk. I had the class before her, and we would “pass notes” by writing on the desktop. I never did meet that girl. I was much more personable in writing than I was in person. We had a great time. I could imagine all sorts of hijinks that you could get your party involved in with these backpacks.

Stephen Bland brings us a starting equipment list for newcomers to the AD&D game. In Pouchbelt A, you need 2 buds of garlic, 2 sprigs of belladonna, a bag of flour, 1/4 lb of salt, 2 holy wafers, and various worthless but gaudy gems and trinkets to bribe low intelligence monsters.

They are some interesting lists, with some useful ideas.