Imagine Magazine Issue 6 - September 1983




I found this issue rather flat, especially after the previous one, starting with the rather "cartooney" cover, which I didn't find as good as previous ones.

The Beginners Guide moves on to thieves, while the cartoon strip "explains" Boot Hill and Bushido, though frankly all it really does is show how to roll up a character, which doesn't really bring out the virtues of the two games.

It also features the first advert I can recall seeing for Gangbusters, a game which never really took off since frankly everything it did was already being done by Call of Cthulhu and diligent initial support from TSR wasn't enough to make a difference.

Stirge Corner gives advice to adventurers this issue, rather than GMs. It's all sensible enough (Don't split the party etc) and probably more useful at the time than it seems now.

There's a little bit of a thief theme going on, though not an especially strong one. The main instalment of this is the new (and official) Thief-acrobat class, which had been previously published in Dragon. The Thief-acrobat always seemed a slightly odd concept to me, but not a problem, since it seemed much less unbalanced than the Barbarian class published a few issues previously.

The "Jack of All Trades" scenario is for a group of 5-8 inexperienced D&D / AD&D or Dragonquest adventurers, which is a nice idea though the multiple stat-blocks do bulk it out. I have to say I'm not big on the adventure, which has The Knave (a bandit leader) trick the PCs into eliminating a vigilante group and then his own men, leaving him with all the loot and nobody after him, except possibly vengeful PCs. It has a characterful bandit hideout in a grounded old hulk, but I have real doubts that any player group would go along with being sealed into barrels to smuggle them into the vigilante's hideout, and even if they did, there's nothing to ensure they will double down as the plot requires by following the clue to attack the bandits. Overall, it felt like the author had fallen in love with his own NPC and written the scenario to show off his cleverness as he fools the players then gives them the slip.

"Dome of Whispers" is a short story by Ian Watson, decent enough if unlikely to set the world on fire, and there is a page of new cards for Steve Jackson Games' "Illuminati", which had just come out, introducing a more "British" flavour to the game.

The reviews cover the "Thieves World" sourcepack, which it was unsurprisingly impressed with, the first RQ soloquest pack (impressed, but with reservations) and two boardgames, Dragonghunt(poor) and Legend of Robin Hood (OK). It also reviews miniature ranges from Essex and Chronicle, plus the resin dungeon floors from Torchlight.

The movie reviews the low-budget "Android", the Disney version of Bradbury's "Something wicked this way comes" and "Return of the Jedi", all three of which get good marks.

There's the usual PA news and Q&A, along with coverage of fanzines that I can best describe as "mutually self-indulgent" and "chainmail", a new PBM column that essentially explains how Diplomacy works. I commented previously that these were areas that Imgine put far more effort into covering than WD did, and while that's still true, six issues in I'm not seeing that as necessarily being a mistake from WD if they were aiming at the broader market. As always, I'm still unconvinced of the need for the "Rubic" and "Sword of Alabron" comic strips.


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