Last week, I began looking at the ads from issue 41 of The Dragon magazine.  This week I take a look at the ads I didn’t get to last week.

After looking at the in house ads places by TSR, ads for local gaming stories, miniatures, and a variety of accessories, it seems like a good time to turn my attention to some of the games being offered in the issue.  I’ll start, not with table top or board games, but rather play-by-mail games, which I attempted to play once, but could never really figure out how to interact with them.  For me, they were more an intriguing concept than a recreational outlet. I may not have been alone in that.  I only see four other articles on Black Gate that even mention play-by-mail games.

Two play-by-mail games were advertised in the issue.  The first, World Campaigns IV was a military campaign set following World War III as the players attempt to rebuild civilization. Rather than a massive player game, players set up in groups of 35 (and if you sent in your application with friends would be grouped together). The rules and first move cost $8, with subsequent moves costing $5 and a maximum of 8 moves per year. World Campaigns IV was based out of Dover, New Hampshire. Playtesting for the game began in 1977 with the game launching in 1980. In 1988 the game relaunched as World Campaigns V, which allowed for longer games. A computer moderated version was also launched in 1988.

The other PBM was Lords of Valetia, which had been around since 1977 and boasted “thousands of players.” A subscription to the game cost $25 and included a rulebook, twelve turns, a subscription to the game’s quarterly magazine, maps, and supplements. I believe Lords of Valetia was my only attempt to try a play-by-mail game, but I was unable to fully figure out the mechanics of the game and game up on it relatively quickly. Writing about it in Gaming Universal in 1984, Steve Jackson described it as the most spectacular PBM fiasco in history.”  Rick Loomis explained that the game’s original moderator was attempting to process the moves in between attending college classes. The game was picked up by a company called Designed Operations and a review of it in issue 15 of Space Gamer (1978) by Brian Esterson stated the fame “shows thought and imagination.” In a generally positive review.

There is one computer game advertised: Datestones of Rym, from Automated Simulations and using their Dunjonquest game engines. Automated Simulations was founded in 1978. The game was a prequel to the company’s first game Temple of Apshai and was written in BASIC and provided on cassette. The game places Brian Hammerhand into a single-level dungeon with a twenty minute time limit to complete his quest to recover the datestones. Automated Simulations eventually changed its name to Epyx and filed for bankruptcy in 1989. They emerged from bankruptcy, but sold their assets to Bridgestone Media Group in 1993.

There were two traditional boardgames advertised, one of which was published by TSR. Knights of Camelot has the players taking on the roles of Arthurian Knights and trying to collect Chivalry and Virtue Points. The game was designed by Glenn and Kenneth Rahman with a map designed by Darlene. The game generally garnered good reviews and the next year, Rahman published an article in The Dragon outlining how to adapt the game to allow the players to play as dark knights. The game had a strong role-playing feel to it, even if it was a board game and was designed for 2–6 players, taking 2–4 hours to play.

The other boardgame was Asteroid, published by GDW, the publisher of Traveller. This is a two-player game in which one player is an evil computer that is trying to crash an asteroid mining station into the Earth while the other player runs the team of adventures trying to avoid that outcome. The game included eight maps and 120 tile counters, with games lasting between 2 and 3 hours. Both Asteroid and Knights of Camelot were nominees for the Charles S. Roberts Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Board Game in 1980.

There were also ads for four role playing games: Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE), High Fantasy, Runequest, and The Fantasy Trip.

At this time, the two products advertised by ICE were seen as AD&D supplements rather than a stand alone game, although they would eventually lead to Rolemaster. The first is Arms Law, which were a series of complex tables, one for each weapon, to expand the simpler and more generic attack and damage tables included in AD&D. The other item advertised was Iron Wind, a system neutral campaign set on an island. Just as Arms Law was the beginning of Rolemaster, Iron Wind was the beginning of Loremaster. In 1980, ICE was a new company and had a good deal of success, publishing their own games, the Middle Earth RPG, Spacemaster, Cyberspace and a Middle Earth collectible card game, but by 2000, they were facing bankruptcy and the following year their assets were purchased by Aurigas Aldebaron who licensed the properties to Mjolnir LLC and later Guild Companion Publications, with whom they merged in 2016. The following year, the merged entity renamed itself Ice Crown Enterprises Ltd.

High Fantasy was developed by Jeffrey C. Dillow while a student at Indiana University. Finding he was unsatisfied with the rules of D&D, he created the fame in 1978 and formed Fantasy Productions to produce a run of 100 copies of the game, using the profits to release a send printing. The first adventure for the game was Fortress Ellendar, and both are offered through Twinn-K, a slot car manufacturer who worked with Dillow as a distributor. The rules were generally seen as a simplified version of F&F, although some of the adventures released between 1979 and 1982 received very positive reviews.

Aside from Dungeons and Dragons, RuneQuest may be the most well known fantasy role playing game. Introduced by Chaosium in 1978, it has a long history with various publishers and since 2016 has been published by Chaosium again. The version advertised in this issue was the second edition, which was retailing for $11.95 and noted that there were more than 20 titles in print, clearly to demonstrate that they were established rather than a start-up or fly-by-night company, despite being only two years old. Runequest differed from AD&D in numerous ways, including gaming mechanics, character creation, and an integrated setting.

Finally, Metagaming’s The Fantasy Trip was released as two sets of basic rules, one called Melee, the other Wizard, both designed by Steve Jackson. Melee was a basic combat game of arena combat. Wizard expanded on Melee to add magic and an additional character attribute to the mix. The third book, In the Labyrinth added more fantasy role playing elements to the mechanics introduced in Melee and Wizard. Metagaming also released a series of MicroQuests that used Melee and Wizard, the first three of which are included in the ad. Metagaming closed down in 1983 and its IPs were left in Limbo, although in 2017, Steve Jackson announced he had finally reacquired the rights to The Fantasy Trip, including nearly all the products listed in this ad.

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Steven H Silver is a twenty-two-time Hugo Award nominee and was the publisher of the Hugo-nominated fanzine Argentus as well as the editor and publisher of ISFiC Press for eight years. He has also edited books for DAW, NESFA Press, and ZNB. His most recent anthology is Alternate Peace and his novel After Hastings was published in 2020. Steven has chaired the first Midwest Construction, Windycon three times, and the SFWA Nebula Conference numerous times. He was programming chair for Chicon 2000 and Vice Chair of Chicon 7.