Imagine Magazine Issue 3

This issue starts rather oddly, with an editorial about censorship in magazines, or more accurately, reassuring us that there is none in Imagine. This reads rather oddly, - were they really getting letters condemning the lack of sex and violence in Imagine, compared to what was depicted in unspecified "other publications"? While 1983 was certainly the heyday of the "video nastie", I can't remember that being a feature of White Dwarf, Imagine's only real competitor at that time.

The high percentage of content for new games is still continuing - "The adventures of Nic Novice" still using exactly the same example of how a gaming session works as in the last two issues, though at least the cartoon strip has moved on to explaining how your character can hit someone in combat

Stirge Corner continues to expand on its theme of the distinguishing feature of RPGs being that there are being no limits on player actions, and gives GMs advice on how to deal with unexpected player actions, all sensible if not especially world-shaking

We then get three pages discussing the thorny question of "Basic or Advanced D&D". Frankly, it always seemed very odd to me that TSR kept two very similar but still incompatible gaming systems running for the entire period, rather than moving to a single system with the best features of both, but to be fair, that wasn't the oddest thing they did in the 80s. As I didn't actually play either, I cheerfully cannibalised modules and articles for both for my homebrew game, without really distinguishing.

This "basic v advanced" question continues into the scenario (or "mini-module" as Imagine described it) "A Box for the Margrave", which is intended for 4-7 1st and 2nd level characters and explicitly intended as an introduction to AD&D for players familiar with D&D. Whatever the merits of the two games, I'm not actually that keen on it as a scenario. It starts by railroading the players into working for the Margrave to make up for being hired by a merchant who was conspiring against him, which happens offstage before the start of the adventure. This is going to annoy some players, and is just plain unnecessary. Once the adventure starts, the players have to carry a valuable box of of town by a secret tunnel (essentially a short five-room dungeon) and then a short cross country journey with a couple of programmed encounters (neither of which actually contribute to the mission) while avoiding hostile troops. It's not bad, but nothing to write home about, either. There is an amusing sting in the tail - after the PCs deliver the box to the Margrave's heir, he simply sells it to the guy whose troops the PCs have been avoiding all scenario to bring it safely to him, though how the PCs would know this (and therefore that everything they've done in the scenario was pointless) is unclear.

The reviews page covers a number of modules for D&D / AD&D (I3 Pharaoh, U2 Danger at Dunwater, N1 Against the cult of the Reptile God and X3 Curse of Xanathon) plus SF2 Starspawn of Volturnus,the first separate module for Star Frontiers. It also covers Cavern Floors, effectively a cheap knock-off of GW's "Dungeon Floor Plans" plus the 15mm official figures for Space Opera, which mostly sank without trace along with their parent game, though I did pick up a couple to use with Traveller.
We get another short story, "Too good to be" by Dave Langford, who by that point was mostly writing for the opposition as he was doing the regular book reviews in WD. It's decent enough but no more than that.

As we also get "The Encounter", a poem annoyingly bulked up from half page to full page by indifferent art, that means we get seven pages of fiction and four pages of comics (one page of Rubic and three of the Sword of Alabron), which is a significant chunk of the non-advert content - probably more than I would have wanted, certainly in those days when I figured (not unreasonably) that I bought gaming magazines for gaming content, not fiction.

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The PA news gives a tournament roundup plus the Dispel Confusion Q&A, Illuminations looks at forthcoming products (including computer games) and the Tavern Talk gossip page again seems likely to appeal only to "Hobby insiders" - I don't remember finding it relevant when I was actually buying these issues.

We also get "Turnbull Talking", which focuses on a pub-spotting game to play on car journeys with colleagues. Aside from the bewildering question of why they couldn't find anything more interesting to talk about, the piece does actually serve (as it is intended to) as an illustration of how to deal with the interpretation of inevitable rule ambiguities.

This issue gains "The Imagination Machine", the first installment of a computer column by the apparently inevitable Mike Costello', who seemed to write all of these columns whereverthey appeared.

The book review (covering Heinlein's "Friday" ad Michael Scott Rohan's "Run to the Stars" amongst others) is adequate, and the magazine maintains its coverage of the fanzine scene, though mostly these seem to relate to Diplomacy and other postal games, rather than RPGs