On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed how another Dungeon Master and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.
Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. As new fanzines have appeared, there has been an interest in the fanzines of the past, and as that interest has grown, they have become highly collectible, and consequently more difficult to obtain and write about. However, in writing about them, the reader should be aware that these fanzines were written and published between thirty and forty years ago, typically by roleplayers in their teens and twenties. What this means is that sometimes the language and terminology used reflects this and though the language and terminology is not socially acceptable today, that use should not be held against the authors and publishers unduly.
The Beholder was a British fanzine first published in April, 1979. Dedicated to Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, it ran to twenty-seven issues, the last being published in July, 1981. It was popular and would be awarded ‘Best Games Fanzine’ at the Games Day convention in 1980. After the final issue of The Beholder, the editors would go on to release a number of anthologies which collected content from the complete run of the fanzine such as Beholder Supplement Glossary of Magic, which collected many of the magical items which appeared in the fanzine and collated them into a series of tables for easy use by the Dungeon Master, and Fantasie Scenarios – The Fanzine Supplement No. 2, the first of several scenario anthologies.
The Beholder Issue 4 opens with ‘Wishes’, a short look at one of the perennial bugbears of high-level play in Dungeons & Dragons—the power of the wish. Whether from the Magic-User spell or the Ring of Three Wishes, the wish is open to abuse, both by players and the Dungeon Master. The players by demanding too much of it and the Dungeon Master by simply negating its effects and thus impeding the players’ enjoyment of the game. The solution is that powerful sources of wishes be guarded by, or in the possession of, suitably powerful monsters and that the Dungeon Master play the roll of the gods who do not want the heroes to overstep their bounds, such as using a wish to render themselves immortal, for example. There is discussion too, of the application and limitations of the Limited Wish and Altered Reality spells and overall, the advice is solid and useful.
‘Magical Weapons’ provides a new set of tables for rolling random magical weapons to account for the number of new weapon types presented in The Player’s Handbook for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and the lack of magical weapons available for certain Character Classes, such as the Druid, the Monk, and the Magic-user. Thus, there is a sub-table for the weird weapons at the end, such as the bo stick and the pick, plus of course, all of the polearms, like the bec de corbin and the guisarme-voulge. The tables are followed by a handful of new magical weapons, such as Flaming Arrows; the Chaotic Evil Pirate’s Cutlass, which is +1, +2 versus Good, +3 versus sea monsters, and detects hidden treasure within 25”; and the Illusion Quarterstaff, +1, which can appear as any weapon and inflict its damage as long as the defendant believes it to be a weapon of that type. These are nicely inventive and could easily find their place in a Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying game today.
The first of several contributions to the fanzine by Martin Stollery is ‘Competition Chronicles: An account of an adventure in the Pyrus Complex (TB 1)’. This is a recounting of his play through or running of ‘Pyrus Complex’, the competition dungeon in The Beholder Issue One. The Player Characters are fractious and selfish, and barely co-operate throughout. The ‘every man for himself’ style of play—though exacerbated by the competition nature of the dungeon—looks dated and immature now, but it was common enough at the time and beyond.
The issue’s monsters are presented in a new style for the regular ‘Monster Summoning’ department—a style that is reminiscent of the Fiend Factory department of White Dwarf magazine at the time, even down to the inventive founts used for the monster names. There are eight monsters in total, three of which, the Leech Plant, the Vart, and the Bonwack, are the contribution of Andrew Whitcombe, editor of another fanzine of the time, Droll Drivel. There is some inventiveness here, but several also serve little function other than to confuse the players and their characters because they are new and will not have been encountered before. The Quazzle is inventive because it is harmless, but it looks too much like a Roper, so that adventurers keep attacking it, but it protects itself by teleporting away weapons used to attack it! The Dralt is a puffball-like and non-psionic variant of the Intellect Devourer which uses darkness magic to hide and charms its victims to attack each other. The Leech Plant is a bloodsucking plant which attaches itself to the calves of unwitting walkers and sucks their blood, increasing its Hit Points in doing so. The silliest creature is the Bonwack, blind balls of fur with large pincers on stalks and single legs on which they hop about the dungeon hunting for food. It should be noted that all of the creatures have a Monstermark System as devised by Don Turnbull and presented in the first three issues of White Dwarf and also The Best of White Dwarf Articles Vol. I.
The scenario in The Beholder Issue 4 is ‘The Mines of Mentorr’. Written by Martin Stollery, it is another competition dungeon and thus comes complete with pre-generated Player Characters—including a Trickster, as detailed in The Beholder Issue 1, and a scoring system. Designed for Player Characters of Fourth Level, it details a small Dwarven tin mine which was chosen by the great dwarven king Mentorr to house the tombs for himself and his descendants. Centuries later, the mad alchemist, Farjet, led a band of Gnolls, Bugbears, and evil mercenaries into the mines, slaughtered the Dwarves, and unaware of the tombs, expanded the mine into a laboratory where he could conduct his experiments far from the eyes of the lawful authorities. More recently, word has reached the outside world that he has perfected the Elixir of Life, giving him immortality. This is an affront to the gods, and whether in service of the gods of Law or Chaos, the Player Characters are sent into the complex to put an end to this blasphemy!
The adventure really has three strands to it. One is the old mine, the other is the secret tombs, and the another is the laboratory facilities, whilst the scoring system allows for various different objectives rather than just killing everything. Although the map is plain, the dungeon is decently thought out and so does not suffer from the randomness of the competition dungeons that appeared in the previous three issues. With a little updating, ‘The Mines of Mentorr’ could be run today without any difficulties and the players would be none the wiser. The adventure’s combination of decent design, theme, and background mean that it could also be added to a Dungeon Master’s campaign and again, the players would be none the wiser.
‘Tricks & Traps’ discusses the editors’ philosophy of trap design—challenge the players and their characters, rather than simply killing the latter and the use of monsters and their abilities in an intelligent manner. The article is supported by ‘Dangerous Digressions’ which presents a number of traps, all of them old of course, but some of them familiar today. ‘The Magic Mouth “Party Killer” Trap’ is a temple dedicated to demon worship. Apart from some statues, the only features of note are a candle and a statue of dragon’s head. If the candle is lit, the Magic Mouth on the dragon statue activates and says, “Demogorgon, Orcus, Juiblex” again and again until the spell expires. Even with a small chance to summon any one of these demon lords, this is simply evil… Others, like ‘The Round and Round Teleport Pit’, an infinite teleporting pit, is a very slightly less dangerous version of the classic, whilst ‘The Balanced Boulders Pit’ has a plank poking out of the wall of the pit, which when grabbed by a falling character, pivots and tips four boulders on top of him as he falls onto the single spike at the bottom of the pit, is equally familiar.
Lastly, ‘Thoughts On Ideas’ continues the discussion of Dungeon Master fiat begun in ‘Wishes’ at the beginning of the issue. It looks at the sort of ideas that players come up with in play and then repeat over and over. In addition to suggesting ways round simply banning player ideas that make game play stale or unbalanced, such as offering Experience Points to their characters or ruling it as being against the wishes of the gods, the article also gives its own good ideas. For example, having the Magic-User or Illusionist cast Invisibility several times over the course of several days so that the entire party is invisible before beginning an adventure or buying ‘padded’ belt pouches and backpacks to prevent bottles and phials of potions or holy water from breaking when a Player Character falls into a pit. These are all quite inventive and showcase the then style of play in which the players sort to gain an advantage for their characters against the Dungeon Master.
Physically, The Beholder, Issue 4 is slightly untidy in places, but readable. The layout is tight and that does make it difficult to read in places. The illustrations and the cartography are not actually that bad. Of course, every issue of the fanzine was published when personal publishing was still analogue and the possibilities of the personal computer and personal desktop publishing were yet to come. In the case of The Beholder that would never be taken advantage of.
The Beholder has a high reputation for content that is of good quality and playable. The Beholder, Issue 4 does not yet match that reputation, but the signs seen in The Beholder, Issue 3 are not only present, but getting stronger. Not everything is good in the issue, but that is offset by the fact that it does contain a number of thoughtful articles on what would have been traditional topics for Dungeons & Dragons and the adventure is the best to date. The Beholder, Issue 4 feels almost on the cusp of achieving the high quality it was renowned for.
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