"A few small formalities" reminds me lot of the "House of Madness" from The 12 tasks of Asterix, that's just bureaucratic hell. It's even referenced in The Witcher 3.
Side note, but "Twelve Tasks of Asterix" (and animated/live-action Asterix movies in general) is a cult classic for Polish millennials (and maybe some older zoomers, depending on where you draw the millennial-Gen Z line), so no wonder it made its way to The Witcher games ;)
My parents are from the Suffolk coast and we used to visit Walberswick around the time this was written. It was a pretty tiny place with a load of wooden bridges across little streams in the marshy but where the River Dunwich meets the Blyth and the sea. You could tie a bit of bacon fat to a string and dip it in the water and catch crabs (snerk). Nowadays it's a massively fashionable place where a lean-to shed goes for six figures as an "artist's studio", nobody actually lives there because it's entirely second homes, and they have to set up a contraflow queuing system on the main road just to get in.
I got into tabletop gaming in the late '80s, a few years after this was published, and the whole "chainmail cheesecake" thing was a massive, quite intense debate in the fandom and beyond. I once had an issue of Dragon Magazine (#106 for reference) confiscated at school because of the cover art; the teacher only agreed to return it when I pointed out it was a library copy. Could we also please acknowledge the fortitude of Snipe and Wib for getting this out? I don't know when it was made but I'm aware Snipe's health issues haven't been resolved yet and I salute both of them for offering content this good at what must be a trying time for them both. Also I'd be keen to look at every 50th issue of White Dwarf in this context - though I don't believe they've done the 40K Compendium or Ere We Go yet.
I was wondering if this was the same Garth Nix, absolutely love his work! Edit: Ah, i hadnt seen the minute or so further forward in the video where this is mentioned xD
Actually I know nothing abt traveler, a video (maybe not a full video but, part "more weird stuff advertised by White Dwarf back in the day) would be appreciated
Yeah, the real town of Dunwich - now a small village itself and ex-capital of East Anglia - is the village next door to Walberswich as well. Sigmund Freud actually died there and Southwold is a sort of holiday destination now too.
Nice to see both of you back in the saddle. The idea of White Dwarf retrospective every 50 issues is great. I was always interested in the backstage of the Warhammer creation. Well, mostly Tyranids but knowing the rest of the setting and what came before helps too.
Loving these old WD vids. Thanks! I'd recommend taking a look at issue 97 (and 98) because that was the ish' they jettisoned all other games save Games Workshops stuff. They did an editorial explaining the rationale that, as I recall, got a lot of letters in issue 98. But even the letters page was soon to disappear. GW was getting all professional and the communal vibe of old dwarf was on its way out.
Looking at the cover now I realise it was probably inspired by William Hope Hodgson's 1908 novel The House On The Borderland, which has pig men and, well, a house.
OMG that was a big bath of nostalgia! Still remember a bunch of those features (we immediately used the Assassin stuff!). My first WD was 44, so this was absolutely at the peak of my "dorky teenager getting massively into TTRPGs". Loved seeing the old ad for Gameskeeper on Cowley Rd, Oxford (the "We have something for everyone'" one) - that was our local (and only) game shop, and spent most Saturday mornings making the trip into town for it. Run by a lovely, slightly eccentric American couple IIRC, who remained running it for decades.
Take it from a person who's actually visited the village of Dunwich, not far from Southwold in Suffolk, an actual tiny village that's falling into the sea and has numerous sunken churches dating back centuries as a result of erosion... I'm not sure what got named first the village or the village.... The UK is fucking weird lol (hell in the tiny local museum they even draw the comparison to Lovecraft's work and their little sinking town)
Its sort of spooky in a sense how many villages in the area have fallen in the sea. The tales of hearing the church bells ringing from under the sea, in time with the waves must be something that could be a bit unnerving.
@@thomasdale5807 Oh absolutely. It's one of those places that has those exact stories about it. I imagine being there at night would be spooky but during the day it's right by a public beach so it's children laughing not church bells you hear.
@@Daggers2002 Oh yes, it one of those lonely types of places. I remember holidaying in Southwold many times and wandering the beaches was a sort of desolate affair. I can fully understand how M R James was so inspired by the area to base his stories there.
Perhaps you should also cover Red Giant as a curious follow up, or perhaps Fantasy Warlord overall. Red Giant was published as a protest against White Dwarf becoming GW products only magazine.
The cover looks like an interpretation of Wiliam Hope Hodgson's weird fiction tale The House on the Borderland from 1908. Just thought I'd mention that. Also, props for using music from the 90s game Shadow of the Horned Rat. I noticed.
Always enjoy these White Dwarf deep dives- makes me nostalgic for an era I only ever saw in tattered old piles of magazines in the corner of the school library
I love these White Dwarf videos. They're like little cross sections of nerd life from the time. Also, a video specifically about Thrud the Barbarian sounds like an absolute delight.
The characters of Griselda & Wolfhead, were both featured in a series of short stories written by Oliver dickinson, that White Dwarf featured on a semi-regular basis. They were eventually given stats in Chaosium's 'Big Rubble' scenario pack. Chaosium allowed White Dwarf to showcase their statistics, as Oliver Dickinson was the original author of those characters, even though his stories were set in Chaosium's 'Pavis' & 'Big Rubble' locations within the world of Glorantha. (Oliver Dickinson used to teach Bronze-Age History at Durham University.)
For those wondering what the cover from is, it's the cover for the book House on the borderlands a book HP Lovercraft wrote positive reviews of and is one of the favourite books of Sir Terry Pratchett. was this a book review or a tabletop adaptation? It's just we know Sir Terry was a reader at this time and even was tapped to do a Warhammer novel later and we recently discovered he would write and submit to magazines under a pen name so I was wondering if you think it is worth scanning white dwarf for any potential lost content as this year an entire series of stories was found.
New Snipe & Wib! 🤩 The Citadel Minis for the White Dwarf Characters collection were pretty neat; especially the baseball bat welding Ian Livingston. The artwork on the Key of Tirandor is excellent.
I love these videos! I got into Warhammer during 8th Edition, so I enjoy seeing how the game arrived at what it is today. Thank you for these looks into the game's past.
I lived just up the road from Walberswick. sadly its massively overshadowed by its upmarket neighbour, Southwold. Home of the most expensive Sausage rolls in the world. (probably)
Awesome thank you! I started playing around this time, total nostalgia trip for me. Just love the way you guys present these vids and that you delve back into the mists of GW time and recognise the way WD changed as GW did from those days to become a Warhammer brochure. The analysis at the end is priceless. Oh and totally onboard with more reviews like this !! Thanks again 🕸️🏕️🦅🏞️
Fun fact: 105 Cowley road Oxford is still a DnD and boardgame shop today, operating under the same name of "The Gameskeeper." I don't know if they have "something for everyone" but they do have dice and are opposite a really good pizza place, which is nice.
I just had to stop and take a wee look, because I noticed the Killing Cup's alternate name: "Surma's Chalice". Surma is the Finnish word for killing a person, somewhere between manslaughter and murder is how I'd interpret it. And sure enough, it's stated to be from Finnish legend originally. Was not expecting that from a British magazine in the early 80s. Edit: Surma is also a being in Finnish Mythology, a monster that guards the gates of the underworld, or Tuonela. Think of it as the Finnish Cerberos, just less a good boy.
I was 12 in 1984 and can confirm that typing in lengthy software programs from magazines was something we occasionally did! but it was mostly the same kind of nerds that would buy an issue of White Dwarf in 1984. and that BASIC stuff was easy, the real fun was when the program was in assembly language and you had to type in 1000 lines of hexadecimal codes without error or any way to check errors.
The traveler article reminds me a lot of Paranoia, which I know was published in 1984 and featured a lot of the same deadly bureaucracy. Don't know if it had any influence on this article. Also props for highlighting that letter. It is refreshing that people were upset with how woman were portrayed in fantasy art back then, even it the problems remain today. And finally I'm glad to see you all are still making videos and I hope Wib is doing well.
That red tape scenario made it into later editions of the Traveller Rulebook, interestingly. A variation of it (without specific humourous forms) appears in the game's 4th edition. My copy is sufficiently difficult to get to that I can't check if Nix was credited for it, though.
yes I remember the 80s in Manchester England being 8 years old at this time. Some thing's never change doesn't matter what year it is. But still Great times they was.
I really appreciate the colored Travellers comic but good lord you're not kidding about chaotic energy. Man mail RPGs that's a relic of a different time for sure
I have an entire PDF collection of the old WDs, going back to issue 1 and up to issue 360 or so I think. And it truly is a wonderful little time capsule for an incredibly niche interest, feels like stepping into a time machine. Many of the articles are very good too. The Chris Felton article in #77 about female characters and archetypes in fantasy gaming and literature was an interesting read, and it also happened to be the same issue they published a Call of Cthulhu adventure called THE CARS THAT ATE SANITY. There's also issue 80 where the beginning of a time travelling adventure called Things Ancient and Modern made you and your group jump between time periods by jumping between playing Call of Cthulhu and AD&D, and that's dope.
I remember getting that as a back issue with my White Dwarf subscription in 1990. I remember thinking 'WTF is all this where's all the Warhammer gone?'
Oh yeah, pre-"Warhammer advert" white dwarf is always fun to see, would love to see more. Either in this super-early period or even after it became mostly Warhammer-focused but still more of a gaming magazine than a catalogue.
That awesome art work on the cover was also on the cover of a book called 'The House on the Board lands' by William Hope Hodgson. Very H.P Lovecraft in a way but worth a read or a Google
Apart from the adds/excerpts from the forthcoming forces of fantasy expansion, the only other articles about Warhammer during 1st edition were: -two scenarios(Thistlewood and Minas Tirith) -rules for Thief class(first edition had a crappy rpg section) -Half-Orc army list(similar to the excerpts except this one was new, as in not part of the forces of fantasy expansion) -rules for giants(the main rulebook did have giants but this article expands on them. This was actually also an excerpt from forces of fantasy although the article didn't mention that) Also, in issue 47 somebody asked in the letters section if warhammer would get a regular spot in the magazine and the answer they gave was "unlikely, given the number of departments we have at the moment". Truly different times.
Definitely down for more White Dwarf perusal at future dates - in fact, even have a suggestion: White Dwarf #72, as a christmas-themed episode, since that issue came with a cut-out wargame called Sleigh Wars.
I have Garth Nix's Abhorsen trilogy in a single volume. My mom got it for me at a random garage sale. I was somewhat too old for YA fantasy, but the blurb on the back and the cover art intrigued me. Imagine my surprise that it was a well-thought out fantasy setting that features necromancy heavily without being super grimdark gothic ( I have my share of Warhammer Fantasy novels about undead for that).
I love these vids, a nice mix of humour and deep diving into the history of GW in a way that is accessible to anyone. It's incredible to think there was a time when GW actually advertised their products on a level playing field with someone else's, how times change!
Great vid, would love to see more of this aye! Growing up in the 90s GW was already into 2nd ed 40k and 3rd ed Fantasy by the time I got into a store looking for DRAGONS, a very different company to these early days.
Oh oh oh ohhhh I used to play MERP. The shop always advertised in White Dwarf circa '96 called Leisure Games in Finchley. I used to sell my painted minis in that shop. They always had an advert in the back of WD. Happy times. Fanks for the memberberries guys.
That beauracy nightmare bit was just my intro to the Imperial Guard ttrpg. Sure the dm thought it was funny, but about after 4 sessions we were pretty desperate for the combat part
Same cover art was used on 1984 heavy metal compilation vinyl 'Hell comes to your house'. Instantly recognized it since I've listened to it as a kid (I still wonder how it got a release in communist, freshly out of martial law Poland).
Omg, Crassimoff's world! I played that (late 90s?) I also played Sorcery! and ICE's MERP... but those are a little more well known... you know... among... geeks.
I have The Forces of Fantasy box (via a car boot sale in the 1990s when it was already long obsolete, interesting seeing the pre Empire old world, it's all just : Men of the North, South, East and West and "Gnomes"
