Imagine Magazine Issue 2

I noted last time how much the first issue of Imagine focused on beginning players, and that's still true of this one. Leaving aside the usual editorials, the same beginner's guide is reproduced verbatim from issue 1, while second installment of "Nic Novice" moves on to actually rolling up a character. Did people honestly have that much difficulty with this stuff?

"Stirge Corner" is still pre-occupied with trying to explain the point of a game with no way to win, following the trusty analogy of a fantasy novel you get to write for yourself and emphasing fun and interest along the way over gaining entirely imaginary gold pieces.

The tentpole article of the issue, however, is the new "Barbarian" class. This always seemed a little unbalanced to me, giving quite a lot of advantages such as climbing and hiding skills (presumably to allow you to simulate Conan, who is actually probably best treated as a thief anyway) plus extras such as improved AC, chance to avoid backstabs and disbelieve illusions etc in return for only a few disadvantages, notably an inability to use magic gear...which is promptly mitigated by allowing barbarians to hit creatures only normally affected by magic weapons with normal ones. It's repeated verbatim from Dragon magazine of the previous year, but while that must have been irritating for people who'd already seen the Dragon version, in those old pre-internet days, getting hold of a back issue with an important addendeum like an official new class could be a challenge

It's backed up by "For the honour of the Tribe", a module for 4-6 1st level characters specifically written for an all-barbarian party to showcase the new class. It involves a raid on a wizard's tower, defended by a mid-level magician, two charmed human lieutenants and a small group of goblins; I note that last issue's scenario also involved exploring a small wizard's tower occupied by a group of orcs.

"Illusionary script" delivers more puzzles for those who like them (ie not me) while "Horror Scope" is a rather cute mock horoscope with advice for the 12 fictional star signs. While I liked it as a piece of neat ephemera, it didn't justify the double page it took due to a space-lavish layout.

Game reviews cover "Star explorer" (an SF boardgame) "Operation Morpheus" for Aftermath (...amazingly without mentioning that this is the notorious campaign starter where players awake naked in cryo tubes, with no idea what has happened since they were frozen), plus "Wilderness hex sheets" and "Dungeon Mapping Sheets", which were basically specialised graph paper at twice the price; I never knew anyone who bought the latter, at least. It finishes up with a full-page review of the Morrow project plus the first two modules; the review describes it as difficult, confusing and requiring a lot of work by the referee (all fair, having played it) but is overall very positive about it.

There's a review of Gamesfair 83 (TSR's equivalent of Games day), concentrating on the AD&D open tournament, plus the usual "Dispel Confusion" Q&A and "Tavern Talk", which tries to be gossipy but I suspect was only of interest to a small "in crowd" of hobby insiders.

PAN pipings talks about the new character class being "official" - this was something that seemed to occupy AD&D (...or at least, TSR) rather a lot, with E Gary Gygax taking the line that there was only one proper way to play AD&D, while most games other games (at least, in the UK circles I was moving in) were actively expecting players to modify or add to the rules to suit themselves; I think the cultural difference may explain (along with the much larger number of AD&D players) why there were tournments for AD&D but not generally for other games.

Cartoon strip wise, "Rubic of Moggedon" makes little sense - its one-page-per-issue format makes the author's attempt to tell an on-going story rather than a self-contained episode very difficult. The three-page "Sword of Alabron" works better, but neither feel like a good use of the number of pages.

The usual book review page (....if you can have "usual" in something that's only on its second issue) had to be cancelled due to sickness, and was replaced by a film review page, which rather eccentrically (given the decent movies appearing in 1983) reviewed the 1973 film "The Island at the Top of the World", which the reviewer is thoroughly unimpressed by.

Finally, there's another three-pager on figure painting by Mike Brunton - a common thing at the time, but not something that interested me, especially in retrospect.