I make it no secret that I am a big Dragon Magazine fan. The print run of this magazine is just an absolute treasure trove for any gamer. I have a thread on this forum going through what I think are the best articles in this magazine here:
But there were, in the RPG heyday, many magazines which had great content and lore for the Greyhawker. I subscribed to Dragon, but would often buy the odd issue of other titles as I went to my game/hobby stores. Frankly, I got more magazines as back issues in the "buy one get seventeen free" bin at the hobby shop or at gaming conventions.
These titles deserve a little look back as well. So I will write up a little something as the mood hits me on some of the other magazines which have shaped our hobby and our world. Hopefully it can inspire some discussion and/or look backs into the early years of D&D,
The first magazine I will look at is the sister publication of Dragon - Dungeon.
It was created in the mid 80's by TSR Inc. It started off as an offering every other month. Intended to be a pure vehicle for publishing adventure modules, by Issue 68 some other content began to appear - maps of mystery, campaign workbooks, background articles that expanded on modules, and Dragon Magazine addendums found their way into these later issues.
The adventures themselves were often a mixed bag - some were great, others are a matter of taste. There is a great index of Dungeon here on Canonfire that is a perfect resource to get started in finding some classics.
Most adventures were generic settings, but easily adapted to Greyhawk. The best specifically Greyhawk adventures I covered in my reviews of the Adventure Paths here:
The best stand alone Greyhawk adventures, IMO, were from Issue 70 "The Kingdom of the Ghouls" which expanded on the Underdark begun in the D1-3 modules. "Ex Keraptis Cum Amore" from Issue 77 is also a good one. There were a few gazetteers detailing Greyhawk locations such as Alhaster, Hardby, Exag, and Scuttlecove that were always welcome.
In short, Dungeon had a body of lore for the Greyhawk sage that is well worth a deep dive today. Check them out!
Has anyone integrated Shrine of Ilsidahur into the Flanaess?
Thanks to Rob Bastard's annotated bibliography, I see that Iquander incorporated Ilsidahur into Fiend Codex I - Hordes of the Abyss as the Howling King, patron of the bar-lgura and demon lord of the ninetieth layer of the Abyss, the Guttering Grove, but I'm particularly interested in whether anyone has situated the town of Gorbalin and the Harshil River and/or elaborated on the cultural backgrounds of the heroes Alkumo and Tselibor or the villain Daharsta?
The Scarlet Brotherhood sourcebook (page 71) mentions bar-lgura summoned long ago by a tribe of Suel; the bar-lgura now dwell southeast of Matreyus Lake. That sounds a lot like the plot of "The Shrine of Ilsidahur" in Dungeon #10.
Anna Meyer's map has Sea Prince forts all along the northern Amedio coast. Fort Bodal, Fort Easthook, and Fort Haveklha are all at the mouths of rivers (as is Sasserine if you'd rather use that).
The Heveklha River (called the Havekihu River in The Scarlet Brotherhood) has a fork in it much like the Harshil River in Dungeon #10, so that's probably the closest match. You could force the party to travel further and put the Shrine of Ilsidahur near where the Bodal and Haveklha Rivers join, in which case either Fort Bodal or Fort Haveklha would be reasonable places for the party to begin their journey (but Fort Bodal is closer to the Hold of the Sea Princes and Sasserine). The point where the Bodal and Havekihu Rivers meet is reasonably close to Lake Matreyus and could conceivably be the source of the bar-lgura mentioned in The Scarlet Brotherhood.
If The Scarlet Brotherhood's bar-lgura infestation is connected to the summoning of Ilsidahur, then Daharsta was a member, perhaps the leader, of a Suel (Amedi) tribe. He might have summoned Ilsidahur with lore wrested from the ruins of Elatalhuihle on the north shore of the lake, and some of the bar-lgura he unleashed might have migrated to the southeast later on.
Alkumo and Tselibor don't sound like Olman names to me (although you could change them to Olman-sounding names if you wanted). A quick googling suggests that Alkumo might be Somali or Nigerian; it's not unreasonable for a pair of Touv heroes to travel to the Amedio to vanquish a demon lord. You could also consider making one or both of them a dakon or tabaxi, or they could be members of the same Suel tribe as Daharsta, turning against the evil conjurer who terrorized the tribe.
I agree that either Fort Bodal or Fort Haveklha (or Havekihu) look like solid sites. Reviewing Anna's map, really one could place "the free town of Gorbalin" at the mouth of any river or stream from one of the unnamed rivers west of Sasserine, to the Tiger River delta at Blood Bay, or the river east of Fort Bodal where the Hook Peninsula juts north.
Further, in comparing Anna's map with the relevant one in The Scarlet Brotherhood, it looks like Anna made Lake Matreyus significantly smaller and different in shape too. (For that matter, the shape of the lake in The Scarlet Brotherhood map also differs from the original Darlene map.)
I really like the idea of making Alkumo d'kana, but as written, Shrine of Ilsidahur is too recent: it states that the warrior-hero Alkumo and the magician Tselibor banished the demon lord 180 years ago.
If we use the Dungeon Magazine #10's 1988 publication to add five years to the CY 576 baseline of the boxed World of Greyhawk set, then the adventure might occur in CY 581, which would put the banishment around CY 400, or amidst the regency of Luschan IV and about fourteen years before the crowning of Tavish III.
I'm unsure when I'd want to set the banishing, but I like your idea to link Daharsta's knowledge to Elatalhuihle.
What's the relationship between Elatalhuihle and Kuluth-Mar?
I really like the idea of making Alkumo d'kana, but as written, Shrine of Ilsidahur is too recent: it states that the warrior-hero Alkumo and the magician Tselibor banished the demon lord 180 years ago.
Dakons still exist, even if their ancient civilization has fallen.
Quote:
What's the relationship between Elatalhuihle and Kuluth-Mar?
I was trying to figure that out the other day. Dungeon #130, which detailed Kuluth-Mar, doesn't mention Elatalhuihle at all. The Scarlet Brotherhood says only that Kyuss is said to have spent time in Elatalhuihle.
Some possibilities:
1. Kyuss, from his base in Kuluth-Mar, raided Elatalhuihle for slaves or other resources.
2. Kyuss, from his base in Kuluth-Mar, destroyed Elatalhuihle, seeing it as a rival or threat to his power.
3. Kyuss visited Elatalhuihle, learning dark secrets there before moving on to found his own city of Kuluth-Mar. Perhaps it was already ruined when he came there, or perhaps he allied with the sages and priests of the city.
4. Some of Kyuss' followers, after Kyuss' apotheosis, went on to found the city of Elatalhuihle.
5. Elatalhuihle was the home of the "powerful tribe of wild elves" allied with ghale eladrins who attacked Kuluth-Mar, sacrificing themselves to seal the undead in the Ziggurat of Kyuss, though not before their own city had become infected.
6. Elatalhuihle has no connection to Kyuss (the rumors simply have it confused with Kuluth-Mar), and the spawn of Kyuss who haunt it today are pure coincidence.
...Dungeon #130, which detailed Kuluth-Mar, doesn't mention Elatalhuihle at all. The Scarlet Brotherhood says only that Kyuss is said to have spent time in Elatalhuihle.
Some possibilities:
1. Kyuss, from his base in Kuluth-Mar, raided Elatalhuihle for slaves or other resources.
2. Kyuss, from his base in Kuluth-Mar, destroyed Elatalhuihle, seeing it as a rival or threat to his power.
3. Kyuss visited Elatalhuihle, learning dark secrets there before moving on to found his own city of Kuluth-Mar. Perhaps it was already ruined when he came there, or perhaps he allied with the sages and priests of the city.
4. Some of Kyuss' followers, after Kyuss' apotheosis, went on to found the city of Elatalhuihle.
5. Elatalhuihle was the home of the "powerful tribe of wild elves" allied with ghale eladrins who attacked Kuluth-Mar, sacrificing themselves to seal the undead in the Ziggurat of Kyuss, though not before their own city had become infected.
6. Elatalhuihle has no connection to Kyuss (the rumors simply have it confused with Kuluth-Mar), and the spawn of Kyuss who haunt it today are pure coincidence.
7. Kuluth-Mar is Elatalhuihle.
Awesome, Rasgon! This sounds like a great list of 'rumors' to give adventuring PCs to get them to do some investigation into the truth of the matter.
If Dragon and Dungeon were sister publications, then Polyhedron is their cousin.
This magazine began as part of the subscription to RPGA (Role Playing Gamers Association). It really was more of a newsletter for RPGA, and it kept that kind of style throughout most of its publication. Compared to Dragon and Dungeon, there was more of a low key feel with this one.
As far as content goes, It was mostly catering towards D&D, but did have articles for other games (Star Wars, Top Secret, Marvel Superheros, even some more obscure bits for games like Dawn Patrol, Gangbusters, and Boot Hill). A lot of articles were done regarding the "Living" RPGs. There was a long running series of a "Living City" set in the Forgotten Realms along with some Living Greyhawk articles and a Living Jungle series.
With the RPGA connection there was a lot of discussion on running tournaments, gaming clubs news, bulletin board type references, and convention tips.
Ultimately, this is a neat addition to what you subscribed to in Dragon and Dungeon. Generally, the issues were smaller than Dragon, but it adds up when you consider there were over 170 issues over its print run.
This was a British periodical published by Games Workshop in the early years of RPG's - 1977. This was first made in the days before Games Workshop even had a shop of their own. But GW was the importer of Dungeons and Dragons products, so the early years of this magazine had quite a bit of D&D material as well as other games of all sorts. It was not until about issue 102 when it became a magazine dedicated to supporting GW products exclusively.
So the D&D content was limited to those first 100 issues or so, but it was a glorious run! I always thought there was something different about this magazine, the cover art always seems a little more edgy to me when compared to Dragon. The contents were very much like early Dragon - reviews, new items and monsters (some of which eventually made it to the 1st edition Fiend Folio), some modules, and articles on every aspect of fantasy RPGs. And there were many articles on other games as well: Traveller, Rune Quest, Star Trek and many others. But perhaps because there were different sensibilities with an English audience, reading through a White Dwarf just seemed a little darker in tone than with Dragon.
A fan did an in depth review of these early issues far above my meager efforts to do so here. Check out the forum thread here:
There was a compilation of these early magazines on CD ROM out there. But probably for the same reasons the Dragon CD Archives stopped selling, this did as well. But this was one of the good ones. The articles now are obviously dated, but a fun look into the early years of the hobby. Since White Dwarf switched away from other games to focus just on GW ones, it is like their association with D&D is frozen in amber. A true time capsule for hobbyists.
One final tidbit, this magazine was specifically mentioned by Gary Gygax himself in the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide in the "Aids to Playing AD&D" section. Knowing Mr Gygax's usual self promoting efforts, to have him mention a periodical outside of TSR publishing in the DMG itself is high praise indeed.
Since I am on the topic of British magazines, let's talk about Imagine.
The aforementioned magnanimity by Mr Gygax towards White Dwarf evidently came to an end around about 1983, when TSR Hobbies UK went into publishing a magazine to compete with White Dwarf, called Imagine.
Visually, it looked a lot like Dragon at that time, both by the covers and the interior type style, with (of course) english spellings and adverts. But it also looked a lot like White Dwarf, and that I think, was the problem. By 1983 White Dwarf and Games Workshop were getting pretty entrenched in the English market, and Imagine couldn't catch up. Eventually, only 30 issues were published, with a special edition issue. When the magazine folded, a few of its staff published five issues of Game Master as a last hoorah.
So what did it have in it? A series of articles on a beginner's guide to RPGs, essays on styles of play, explanations of spells, mini modules, and the like. One especially long running series was a campaign setting called Pelinore that focused on a city-state and grew from there.
Overall, not a bad product. Too bad it did not last longer, with White Dwarf eventually getting away from non GW materials, there could have been a niche for Imagine. As an additional note, there is a video of the Imagine Magazine covers here: Check it out!
Now we have Chaosium entering in the magazine business with "Different Worlds". The premiere issue was from 1979 and it was run as a general purpose RPG magazine throughout most of its run to 1985.
But being published by a gaming company, the tendency is always to emphasize your own products. I hate the term 'house organ' for those magazines that focus on their own products, as it is more of a marketing issue than a slam on other games. The fact is that if you like a company's products, you would want to see articles supporting those products in the magazine published by that company. Anyway, considering the publisher, there were a lot of Call of Cthulhu and Runequest materials, as well as generic RPGs to include D&D.
One interesting unique thing this magazine had was a gossip column. Written by a "Gigi D'Arn" (a pen name lending to speculation as to the author's true identity) this little column created its own controversies and raised many discussions in its run. Makes for a neat read now after the passage of years as to what was important in the hobby back then.
Maybe not magazines per se, but a lot of the 1970's Diplomacy and general wargaming zines had articles from Gygax that directly reference things from the Greyhawk campaign.
More recently, I loved AFS and & Magazine (both RIP). And of course Footprints and Oerth Journal are still going.
Gygax Magazine was too heavy on the nostalgia for my taste and Fight On! was a free-for-all that spanned good to bad.
An unfortunate effect of influencer culture in recent years is that highly productive people tend to go solo on Youtube, Twitch, Patreon, Lulu, etc. and there's less need for fans to pool their creative and financial resources in the form of zines, anthologies, forums, and shared websites. Adding to the problem is the fact that it's easier to commodity ideas in the form of rambling eight-minute YouTube videos with mid-roll ads than it is to glean anything from posting a two-page written essay.
Another magazine that was often featured in the advertisements of Dragon was The Space Gamer. Now, from the title, you would think that its focus was not on D&D and you would be right. The magazine did a lot of articles on game designing and reviews of games. That is really what Space Gamer promoted in its early days.
But there were general articles as well, some of which were made for early D&D or role playing in general. There was also a lot of articles about OGRE, Traveller, Car Wars, and other sci-fi/superhero/espionage role playing games. Not a lot of room in this magazine for a lot of artwork, which gives this magazine a kind of low budget feel, but for what it was promoting it lasted a good long run. So it clearly had its supporters.
Currently, you can buy digital copies of this magazine at Steve Jackson games. Some of the D&D articles I still like are from Issues 47, 48, and 85. If you still enjoy going through old rules, variants, and articles from the early days, you may find that these issues may be worth reading again.
As I was rooting about on the internet, I came across a magazine that I did not know about before - Australian Realms. There are issues on the internet archive website and I checked them out.
Turns out to be a good time. The magazine ran from the late 1980's to the 90s. The biggest thing they offer is another perspective on RPGs from the time. There are a lot of D&D articles, but the best parts are when the articles discuss modern or future games set in Australia. There are a lot of Shadowrun and Warhammer, but if you want to set Gamma World, Vampire, or other cyberpunk games in the land down under, check out copies of this magazine.
The magazine even boasts their own campaign setting for the D&D system. So I suggest that you check them out the next time you are web surfing, it gives another place to base ideas and can be used to jump start a new campaign of your own.
I just got my last issue of Gygax Magazine from the mail order, and am taking some time to write up my thoughts about it. This was a short lived magazine, so comparing it to some of the others, that have years of issues to their names, is a little unfair. It was released in 2013, and even at that time, print magazines were becoming more and more rare as many titles shifted to electronic only versions, e-zines, or basically printed advertising catalogs for products.
But what this magazine offered was a big dose of nostalgia for old school D&D. The appearance and layout was mimicking classic Dragon Magazine, cover art was done by the masters (Daniel Horne, Jeff Easley, Clyde Caldwell, Den Beauvais, Jim Holloway), articles were written by greats in the field (Len Lakofka, James Ward, Tim Kask, Ken St Andre, Ed Greenwood, and of course, Luke and Ernest Gygax).
But the tragedy was that it really did not deliver on what it promised - that is, the articles were a hodge podge of different games, historical looks at the origins of RPGs, personal notes and campaigns, and generic advice that never really hooked me in. I think that if the focus was stronger on D&D, there could have been more meat to the issues. As it was, my favorite articles were the ones by Len Lakofka, those both harkened back to the old Sorcerer's Scroll columns in Dragon and gave some new spins that I thought were interesting.
Ultimately, the endeavor was doomed to be litigated, and the run ended after only six issues. I can't help but wonder if it might have lasted had the name been something else, but then again, maybe the only reason I sought it out was the name. Too bad, it could have been a long lasting title and a source of good news and information. Check it out if you ever get the opportunity.
So the D&D content was limited to those first 100 issues or so, but it was a glorious run!
I thought the D&D focus really started to tail off in the 60s, but I've not done a systematic inde or analysis (my WD collection is spotty at best!). . And speaking of which, the good indexes have gone offline, and only this one still seems available via the Internet Archive:
- The Critical Hit White Dwarf Database; this site indexes issues 100 (April 1988) through the present: https://web.archive.org/web/20010607000604/http://www.role-play.co.uk/whitedwarf/
Osmund-Davizid wrote:
I always thought there was something different about this magazine, the cover art always seems a little more edgy to me when compared to Dragon. The contents were very much like early Dragon - reviews, new items and monsters (some of which eventually made it to the 1st edition Fiend Folio), some modules, and articles on every aspect of fantasy RPGs. And there were many articles on other games as well: Traveller, Rune Quest, Star Trek and many others. But perhaps because there were different sensibilities with an English audience, reading through a White Dwarf just seemed a little darker in tone than with Dragon.
What always struck me about WD BITD was how little content vs. ads there were in each issue—far more noise vs. signal than Dragon (or at least so I thought as a kid—I appreciate a lot of the WD content more than I once did).
Osmund-Davizid wrote:
There was a compilation of these early magazines on CD ROM out there. But probably for the same reasons the Dragon CD Archives stopped selling, this did as well.
Yes, it was available in DVD and CDR (or BluRay?) formats, as I recall, and contained the first 90 issues. It was an unsanctioned project out of GW .au, which is why it was never made available publicly. The scans are good, but not OCR’d, alas.
The next best thing is the Best of White Dwarf Articles and …Scenarios compilations (three of each, as I recall).
vestcoat wrote:
Fight On! was a free-for-all that spanned good to bad.
Fight On! is back from the mostly-dead, and issue #15 (dedicated to John Eric Holmes) is in the works.
Also back from semi-retirement, _The Twisting Stair_ (the mega-dungeon design zine I founded with Tony Rosten) issue #4 is one works, with a tentative summer release scheduled. I’ve continued my “From Kuroth’s Quill” column from Knockspell Magazine in TTS.
Allan. _________________ Allan Grohe<br />https://www.greyhawkonline.com/grodog/greyhawk.html<br />https://grodog.blogspot.com/
After Dragon Magazine finished its print run in 2007, there was a void in the RPG magazine world. From 2007 to 2012, Kobold Quarterly was the magazine for Kobold Press, Wolfgang Baur's publication and it worked to fill that void. It mostly had Pathfinder and D&D 3.5 and 4th edition materials, and had enough generic game master advice that was setting neutral.
What I liked about it is that there was a lot of the old style flavor present in the layout, article choices, and format that harkened back to the best of the Dragon issues. That can be attributed to a healthy contribution from former Dragon and D&D personnel that lent their talents to this magazine.
My favorite articles was a series of profiles on archdevils that appeared over about six issues that harkened back to the great series in Dragon issues 75, 76, and 91. There were also a lot of monster ecology type articles that put different spins on some classic beasties that are worth reading through today.
Sadly, the print run did not last, ending after 23 issues. Now this magazine is available at drivethrurpg, Noble Knight Games and other online sources, so check it out if you want some more of that old style magazine to complement your collection. It was a great run.
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