Top Shelf: White Dwarf

With the recent news of the death of Dragon magazine - a long-time bastion of the roleplaying industry - and its transformation into "online" content for Wizards of The Coast, got me to thinking about the golden days of roleplaying, when there were quite a few really top quality magazines devoted to this hobby.

The ones that spring to mind, besides Dragon, are Different Worlds (originally from Chaosium) and White Dwarf (from Games Workshop).

Yes, younglings, there was a time when White Dwarf was more than a monthly catalogue for Games Workshop. At one time it stood proud as a leader in the field of roleplaying magazines, but as the roleplaying market has contracted, so the support magazines have disappeared.

In fact, I can't think of any dead tree publications now that deal solely with this 'ancient' hobby (except specialist publications like Worlds of Cthulhu, but then again, that's more like a semi-regular supplement for Call of Cthulhu than a magazine).

That being said, even though I don't play any Games Workshop systems, I'm still a subscriber to White Dwarf ... for the "pretty pictures". This stuff is porn for the hobby gamer, their photospreads are works of art, layouts and dioramas that mere mortals such as I can only droll over and aspire to imitate in our works. Not that I paint miniatures - there are professionals for that (and now more and more companies are selling figures already painted) - but the scenery is breathtaking and genuinely conjures up alien planets or fantasy environments.

Yes, it's nice to look over the price lists and think how much I'm saving by not being a Warhammer addict, but the main purpose of the magazine for me is mental fuel and inspiration.

Sure, I could get it from the Internet, but having the pictures to hand (and, sometimes, the step-by-step guides on how they built this or painted that) is a very useful tool. Like all things Games Workshop, it's not cheap (£4 an issue to non-subscribers), but you get what you pay for and, like all porn, you're not buying it to read the stories anyway!