| |  | | | Magazine Madness Returns! | | |
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|  | | | A new member joins the AU! | | |
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In this newsletter | Arcane Sword Press | Ham & Egg Publishing | Solarian Games | Stillfleet Studio |
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Magazine Madness returns! This week: early White Dwarf Magazine! |
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 | I’ve been collecting these for awhile, but they are hard to come by at a reasonable price! | Of all of the official magazines published that I’ve been flipping through from the early 1980s and prior, White Dwarf is truly in a league of its own. It is also the only one still in print! But that’s because it is currently a publication that focuses solely on supporting Games Workshop content. But that wasn’t always the case! |  |
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Long before Warhammer’s release, White Dwarf was a goldmine of content for RPGs. Not only that, the art and layout feels extremely professional with each page I’ve flipped through being a real treat with unique layouts on different pages. The sheer amount of work that went into this is astounding! AND it was bi-monthly! Right out of the gate, White Dwarf already had some interesting articles and cool reviews in its first issue along with great original art! Its wild thinking that issue 1 came out in the summer of 1977 (the summer of Star Wars AND Traveller!) and it already looks better than its contemporaries. To be fair, the minds (Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson) behind White Dwarf already were publishing their own independent zine of Owl & Weasel for a couple of years before jumping into White Dwarf so they already had some experience. |  | The title and Russ Nicholson art is enough to get me fired up | Beyond the basic content one would expect in a gaming magazine from the late 1970s, there’s a few things I would like to point out about White Dwarf: The Fiend Factory: Its contribution to the Fiend Folio, or rather its series of articles called the Fiend Factory featuring unique AD&D monsters! The Fiend Folio is my favorite monster book for any RPG, in part to the wild monsters in it and the illustrations provided. Turns out, the Fiend Folio only has a portion of the monsters featured. What a treat for me to see new Russ Nicholson art applied to new, unique monsters!
Traveller Articles: For me, the real treasures beyond the artwork and fiend factory, it is the Traveller articles. All of them are excellent (so far from what i’ve read) and well above the quality of the ones found in The Dragon.
The Art & Comics: White Dwarf also has some of that lovely UK-comic book energy found in 2000AD with comic strips like Thud The Barbarian and Travellers by Mark Harrison; a Traveller RPG comic by a known 2000AD artist! They’re no Wormy, but it is all pretty fantastic, or at least fun to look at!
The Vibe: Games Workshop has always had its own energy that it brings to gaming, something that rides the line between being both professional while also having counter-cultural grit. The alternative energy White dwarf displays feels reflective of the punk energy in the UK at the time, but channelled into a gaming mag. If the guys in The Young Ones played D&D, this would be their go-to magazine.
White Dwarf found a niche supporting content for AD&D, Traveller, and Runescape until Games Workshop pivoted to primarily supporting their own products by issue 100, beginning a new era for the magazine with the release of Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader. |  | | |
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If you’re curious to explore the wonderful world of White Dwarf, look no further than the Internet Archive, an essential Website that makes this series of articles possible! So what’s next? Well there are a lot of magazines I’d like to get to such as Imagine, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Adventurers, and more. Unfortunately, I have no familiarity with nor do I own any copies so I’ll have to hunt them down. In the meantime, I will cover one of my favorite Gaming publications next week: The Journal for the Traveller’s Aid Society! Until next time! |
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| | The Fellowship of Friends |  | The cast of the Friends reboot. No apartments, the best we can do is Shark. | PAGE 3 was a solid hang.
I was attending as a publisher and vendor, and the thing that got me most excited for time away from home was seeing my pals. While I may have achieved a lot in this hobby, the thing that means the most to me is the friends I have made because of it. |  | Dark Guide Jay, Tiger Wizard, Jay Solarian, and I try our best to beat Halo. | There were arcade hangs, after-hours games, the best-rated cheesesteak in Philly, and I even met an Owlbear. |  | | | The best game of the weekend was Tiger Wizard’s new game called ———-* I anticipate it being a game changer when it finally hits tables.
*Name redacted until it is formally announced. |  | Tiger Wizard, Jay Solarian, Dark Guide Jay, and Sally Cantirino are having a blast. | My heart and spirit tanks are full, Dear Reader. So if I can make one recommendation for this week, call your friends and set aside some time to play games. It’s good for what ails ya. -JHM
P.S. These pictures were taken with the Camp Snap* I mentioned last week. Below is the moment when I killed off one of my favorite creators, J. Yamil, in a 1E Dungeons and Dragons game. Pure joy.
*Still not sponsored. Ha. |  | | | | | A free game from Top Secret |  | Scott Robinson, co-creator of Bunnies & Burrows, and Merle Rasmussen, creator of Top Secret | Philadelphia Area Game Expo was incredible this year. We had a great hang with all our friends, met some excellent new friends, and played Top Secret with a lot of people. One of the highlights was meeting Scott Robinson, co-creator of Bunnies & Burrows, the role-playing game published in 1976, just two years after Dungeons & Dragons. He was so gracious and nice. We’ll be having him as a guest on Tabletop Weekly soon. Merle Rasmussen, creator of the original Top Secret and my co-author on the latest edition of Top Secret, brought him by the booth. |  | To celebrate the fun we all had, I’d like to point you to a way to play Top Secret for free. We have a quickstart guide with all you need to get started, some pre-generated characters, and a mission to play through. Click the links below to download each of them for free! | | |  | | |  | | | | | | | Welcome Stillfleet to the AU! |  | The Analog Union is stoked to welcome Stillfleet Studio and Wythe Marschall to the team. |  | Wythe Marschallhe/him, founder, Stillfleet Studio) is a writer, game designer, and anthropologist. He created the sci-fi TTRPG Stillfleet, the underlying Grit System, and the Stillfleet Studio to blend Leftist politics and games. He is the co-developer of Blister Critters by Anthony Grasso, the lead editor of and a writer for Danse Macabre: Medieval Horror Roleplaying by Christopher Pickett, and the cohost of the game-design podcast Why We Roll (with Pickett). Wythe’s latest books are the new version of the early modern fantasy game PICARO! (published by Plus One Exp) and Danse Macabre‘s dungeon setting, Unsunken: Paris Below.
About Stillfleet Studio:
The Stillfleet Studio creates high-quality, innovative, replayable story-driven games from a Leftist perspective. With a focus on roleplaying and player agency, and expertise in biological sci-fi (biopunk), historical settings, and body horror, Stillfleet Studio’s games are perfect for those seeking mind-expanding adventures in unforgettable settings. We publish revolutionary tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) built on the flexible, player-empowering Grit System, which enables truly unique narrative experiences.
Our TTRPGs include Stillfleet by Wythe Marschall (far-future cosmic fantasy at its most curious—as heard on the hit podcast Fun City), Blister Critters by Anthony Grasso (cartoon eco-horror at its zaniest), Danse Macabre: Medieval Horror Roleplaying by Christopher Pickett (medieval horror at its most beautifully brutal), and The Sometimes Kingdom RPG by Ethan Gould (portal fantasy at its most magical). | | | | |
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Your editor this week has been John Hambone McGuire of Ham & Egg Publishing.
Keep on emailing us at hello@analogunion.com to let us know what you’d like to see more of, less of, or just ideas you’ve got. If you like the Analog Union newsletter, please tell your friends to sign up at AnalogUnion.com. See you next week! -JHM |
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