Imagine Magazine Issue 7 (October 1983)


This issue bills itself as a Dragonquest special issue. For those who don't remember it - and it really was a blink-and-you-miss-it game - DragonQuest was developed by SPI as their entry to the fantasy RPG market. TSR then acquired the game along with the assets (but not the liabilities) of SPI in a rather murky not-a-takeover-honest deal not long before this issue was published, and were therefore promoting it as a TSR game. However, it wasn't successful and TSR seem to have stopped supporting it pretty quickly, presumably realising that 95% of DQ sales would cannibalise D&D / AD&D ones, and they were thus competing against themselves.

The first DQ article is the modestly titled four-pager "A quest for the perfect game" by one of the designers of DQ. He explains that it is essentially a points build character design process, but with some rolled-up characteristics, including race and social class / birthright. It uses a system of skills anyone can learn rather than a class system. Spells are a chance-to-cast system, with possible misfire effects on a fumbled casting role, and you can try to cast them as often as you have fatigue points to pay for them, rather than the D&D automatic success on casting but then the spell is used until you re-memorise it. Even the writer admits that the system is complicated, and it isn't clear what advantage DQ had over (say) Runequest.

The issues' scenario "Beauty is but skin deep" is also for Dragonquest. Unusually, it is written for only one player character plus a GM, though since it is largely investigative and can be solved without fighting, it shouldn't be hard to run it with a larger party, It should work as a nicely creepy ghost story if run well, and it also gives a fully detailed tavern with floor plans and staff that can easily be re-used.

The usual Beginner's Guide explains clerics, while the cartoon strip adventurer Nic Novice finally gets to start an adventure after only 87 issues of preparation (1).

Stirge Corner continues its advice for PC parties, stressing the differences between recce and attack plans. However, the distinction only really makes sense if one assumes a "mega-dungeon" adventure rather than a "mission" adventure, to use the ideas developed in the last issue, and as pointed out, I've only ever really seen the latter in practice, making the advice rather moot.

The second instalment of "The Philosophers stone puzzle" takes up a page of text, plus the centre page spread and fourth page explaining answers to the first installant. As I'm not big on puzzles, this was just wasted space for me.

On the other hand, this issue's fiction - "The Gypsy" by Graeme Davis - was a nice little piece with a twist in the tail.

It was amusing to see in "The Imagination Machine" this issue that Mike Costello thinks that graphics may have become "as good as they are likely to get" in 1983 (2), but on the other hand it was genuinely interesting in retrospect to see the first reference to micronet, a very early precursor to the commercial internet.

The game reviews cover the updated D&D basic set and the new edition of Gamma World, both unsurprisingly positive. They also cover the Asgard Miniatures range, and "Titan", a fantasy boardgame which is largely abstract but was also received a positive review.

The book review covered "Helliconia Spring", the first of Brian Aldiss' "Helliconia" series - something I never read, as the synopsis made it sound much too slow for my taste - and a bunch of re-issues.


The "Rubic of Moggedon" strip appears to be slowly growing on me, which I can only assume is the comic strip equivalent of Stockholm Syndrome. I'm still not big on "Sword of Alabron" however

Pete Tamlyn's "Rules? Who needs them?" makes the interesting suggestion that AD&D tries to synthesise too many cultures and mythologies, and along with the endless addition of new monsters with no underlying logic, this results in it having no flavour of its own. It also gives his opinion on rules lawyers - unsurprisingly, he's against them

Finally, we have the usual PA news and Q&A, with Turnbull Talking about trademarks - obviously a sore spot, as people made fun of TSR a lot for their excesses in that area in those days



(1) OK, not literally, but it has felt a little like that

(2) Spoilers - he was very, very wrong about that



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