Imagine Magazine Issue 1

TSR launched Imagine in April 1983. It was a slightly odd decision in retrospect, since it meant they had to produce a complete new magazine's worth of content each month, which would obviously have cost significantly more than just producing a British version of TSR's existing US Dragon magazine, with local advertising but essentially the same content.

I only saw Imagine with issue 13, more than a year after launch - things took a while to work their way into the Welsh valleys in those days. This meant my first impression of the magazine was formed after it had hit its stride, and I only picked up these very early issues on e-bay decades later. (By comparison, my subscription to White Dwarf started with issue 38, two months before the first Imagine appeared)

The overall impression of the first issue is that it is very much geared at newcomers to the hobby. Indeed, the introduction from Don Turnbull notes that "The gaming hobby in the UK is growing at a spectacular rate", which matches my memory of those days.

This flows through the magazine in its first article "The Adventures of Nic Novice", which give a very simplistic introduction to the concept of RPGs complete with a cartoon strip that explains (literally) how to go to a shop and buy a D&D boxed set.

Similarly, "Stirge corner" sells itself as "a page for the not-so-experienced adventurer" and also tries to explain RPGs. Interestingly, it defines the key quality of RPGs not as the players taking on another persona (or playing Miss Scarlet in Cluedo would make it an RPG) but by the unlimited scope of actions you can take, without being limited to options set out in the rules.

Next up is a short story "QB-1610-01 Antares" by John E Black, itself set within a game (in this case, a dream-cube) which parallels the action outside it. It's not a bad piece, but not really memorable, either.

I didn't find the page of book reviews (by John Pringle) very helpful, as it didn't really give me strong positive or negative impressions of any of the books it covered, and was notably less amusing than Dave Langford's equivalent column in WD.

"Illusionary script" is a riddle / puzzle page; I appreciate that some people like puzzle elements in dungeons, but personally I'm no fan of these, and thus not big on this page.

"The Beacon at Enon Tor" is (no surprise) an introductory D&D module for 4-7 1st level characters, and so determinedly beginner-friendly that it even incorporates a glossary defining hard terms such as "wizard" and "crenellated". The adventure is very straightforward, sending the PCs to explore a small tower belonging to a high level wizard who has disappeared. In fact, he's knocked himself out with a backfiring feeblemind spell, and his tower has been taken over by an oppourtunist band of orks. The defences of the tower seem a little light for a high level wizard (basically a half-dozen zombies who double as servants) but that's only a meta-gaming problem, easily resolved by assuming the unconscious wizard just did the mystical equivalent of exagerating his CV, and is actually a much lower level than advertised.

The old TSR players association newsletter was folded into Imagine when the latter was set up, and includes some players association material, including "Dispel Confusion" (mostly rules queries, but also more general questions about release dates and so forth) plus "Turnbull talking" (basically a grumble about why gaming isn't more highly regarded) and Pete Tamlyn's "Tavern Talk", which promises to look at the amateur side of the hobby (fanzines etc) in future issues, but spends all of this one explaining what it intends to do.

The PA section also includes a page of clubs and fanzine news, which does seem to be an area where TSR really did seem to try harder than (say) WD.

It reviews two games. The first is Star Frontiers, TSR's SFRPG, which never seemed to catch on over here. The review is very positive, but given it is a TSR game, it's essentially marking your own homework. The second is the Judge Dredd boardgame, which having actually played the game, seems a pretty fair review.

We get two cartoon strips - the one-page "Rubic of Moggedon" which fails the basic test of not being funny enough, and the three page "Sword of Alabron", which is better but still doesn't come close to justifying its page count.

Finally, we get a four page article from Mike Brunton about painting miniatures - very common at the time, but all of these articles say pretty much the same thing, and this one lacks the nice color photos of painted miniatures equivalent articles had - all we get is a B&W of Mike Brunton, of no use except as an ego boost for him.

Oddly, the first thing I was struck by was how thin it felt, at only 48 pages but in fairness, even the final issues were only 56 pages - it obviously seemed more substantial in my memory. However, between quite a lot of advertising and the very high proportion of "only for absolute beginners" items, I'm struck by how little generally useful material this first issue includes, especially compared to the equivalent issue of WD (Issue 40, for those who want to compare)