White Dwarf Wednesday Issue 8

Back at it!  Sorry for that.

White Dwarf #8 came out Aug/Sept of 1978.  The cover art for this is really cool.  I am not sure what is going on here, but it is cool and very evocative of what I feel was D&D at the time.
The editorial laments that there are so few gaming companies overseas, especially in England and Europe.
There is a neat article on making your own monsters.  Not stats, but making models of monsters.  They skew heavy on recent additions from the Fiend Factory, but the Carrion Crawler is rather cool.  I personally never had the skills for these "arts and crafts" sort of articles.

The Fiend Factory introduces to future Fiend Folio entries such as the Tween and the Coffer Corpse.

Lew Pulsipher gives us a simple critical hit system.

The Man-Beast is a new class/race of half-human/half-animal characters.  It is very reminiscent of the Wolf Man or Jekyll and Hyde.   It is an interesting class, and one that as far as I know never had any traction.

In Open Box we have a rare treat.  A review of the first AD&D book ever, the AD&D Monster Manual.  It is described as hard cover, but with the option of getting a soft cover in the UK.  Had anyone else ever heard this before?  Don Turnbull gives it the highest praise.  This was the game changer.  The review is joined by "Space Marines" by Fan Tac Games, "Starships & Spacemen" by Fantasy Games Unlimited and "War of Wizards" by TSR.

Kalgar is down to half a page, while the letters are now a full page.
Rowland Flynn gives us our first bit of fiction in the form of "Valley of the Four Winds".  It is par for the time.  Fiction in White Dwarf and even Dragon was never my thing really.  A few pages later we get a line of miniatures based on the story.  There is more here than I know obviously.

We are given a couple of pages of classified ads and more ads.

All in all this a larger issue, but like issue 7 most of the new space is given over to ads.  Again, this is not a bad thing.  Then as now, I like to look at the ads.  The ads of Dragon have been loving detailed by James at Grognardia.  Someone really should do the same for the ads of WD.

For example have you seen this one before in Dragon?

Maybe you have, I haven't.  It looks awesome!
I think that is what enjoy the most going through these old White Dwarfs.  Everything was so new, so exciting.

Posted in: reviews,white dwarf