Top Shelf: Different Worlds

Forget your White Dwarf and your Dragon, for me the only role-playing magazine during the 1980s was Different Worlds (originally published by Chaosium, the Call of Cthulhu people).

For me, Different Worlds was the first gaming magazine that really understood the fun of the hobby, emphasising wild ideas and story over the technical details - sure, it ran its fair share of house rules, character class suggestions, magical variants etc, although nothing that compared to, say, White Dwarf's Monster Mark grading system (does anyone else remember that? It was some scientific formula to grade and compare monsters, based on their statistics, that would have make Stephen Hawkin's head spin!)

Of course, White Dwarf has survived as the monthly catalogue of Games Workshop - ditching its roleplaying content - and The Dragon survives as the organ of Wizards of The Coast's Third Edition/d20 empire, packed to the gills with power combos and winning strategies like a video game magazine; so I guess there's an object lesson there...

Different Worlds wasn't about the crunch, it was about the story - and if needs be the rules needed to add a little narrative sparkle to your game: for instance the latest issue I picked up some weeks ago from eBay has an article on using HP Lovecraft as a character in your Call of Cthulhu game!

Early issues ran a semi-regular feature called My Life And Role-Playing where industry folk (gentleman hobbyists all, not number crunchers) in those young days would recount how they had gotten into the business, often with interesting insights and stories from their own games and campaigns.

As well as Runequest and Cthulhu - Chaosium's own systems - the magazine ran articles on games which are now quite obscure, but still fondly remembered by us "old timers", such as Arduin, Tunnels & Trolls, Villains & Vigilantes and Bunnies & Burrows.

Looking back at my modest collection, there is an innocence and enthusiasm about Different Worlds that made it stand out from the crowd. The only magazine I can recall that came close to capturing the same spirit was Arcane, the short-lived British publication which vanished from the shelves an issue after I finally decided to subscribe to it!