The return of @dailydwarf with an article about Good, the Bad and downright Odd covers of White Dwarf from 1 – 106 (when they stopped doing RPGs). Join us as we go into a time capsule and review some of our favourites.
If you’d like to play along and let us know your favourite White Dwarf cover, then head to Daily Dwarf’s site where he has helpfully put together a catalogue of the covers.
Dirk and Judge Blythy join in the fun as well as answering listener questions. There’s more to come (sorry about that).
There’s an advert for Orlanth Rex’s Gaming Vexes Podcast, where Dirk recently appeared talking about ‘Why we RPG’.
If you would like to know more about the symposium Dirk attended, then follow the substack.
Support the podcast by giving 5 star reviews at your favourite podbox and joining the Patreon.
If anything takes you back on a nostalgia trip, its the art. You might not remember the articles, but the cover sticks with you. You see it again and suddenly find yourself pulling out an old rulebook or boxed set. I’ve been looking at RQ 2nd edition again. Looking on ebay to fill those gaps in the collection. Ah Nostalgia. Its catnip for old roleplayers.
When I joined Games Workshop in Spring 1984, my prime job was to expand Rick Priestley’s core game system into a fully realised Judge Dredd rpg. However, it was obvious I was also a much-needed extra pair of hands that could be turned to a variety of other jobs. One day Ian Livingstone swung by the WD office where I was camped in the corner next to fellow DragonLords alumni Ian Marsh, and asked if I fancied a road trip. In no time we were strapped into his new red Porsche headed for Islington and dropped off at the offices of Young Artists, the notable illustration agency. Under the expert guidance of Val (sorry, forget her surname, but she became Val Edwards when she married artist Les Edwards), I then spent a happy hour or so leafing through swathes of transparencies of awesome fantasy art, with the express need of licensing them for re-use as White Dwarf covers.
Some had been used on Dwarf already, of course, and others were just too well known, usually as famous SF novel covers too strongly associated with their original use. Many others were unsuitable because of layout, subject matter, or the sheer amount of naked flesh, but soon enough I’d gathered thirty or so potential pieces. These were carefully boxed up and taken back to GW HQ in North Acton, for WD designer Mary Common to review so she could make the final selection.
Across the next couple of years, we would gather to firm up the likely contents of each issue, and agree on a suitable cover – a big Traveller article called for a dynamic spaceship picture, something more cadaverous for an undead in D&D article, etc. Sometimes nothing that we had access to really suited, so we just picked from what we had, with mixed results. We never had much in the Cthulhu mould, but around the same time a suitably eldritch submission out of the blue from a talented (and cheap) newcomer called Lee Gibbons sorted that. Variety was important, and even if the covers didn’t always match the content exactly, the overall intention was to summon up the feeling of fantastical possibility that RPGs brought.
Have to say, I never noticed how sexual the cover of #76 looked back in the day…
Looking forward to listening to the episode!