Russian Women Want Gaming Partners!

Ah, the mid-90's.  The music sucked, the fashion was horrendous, but the gaming was pretty decent.  It was also the swan song of the gaming magazine. 

Yes, yes, there are still print copies of White Dwarf, Wargames Illustrated, Kobold Quarterly, and a few others kicking around, but the mid 90s were the last time somebody could start up a 'zine, put it next to Dragon on the shelf,  and have a chance of breaking even.

If half my purchases were ill-advised back then, the magazines more than made up for them.  Dragon, White Wolf, and Challenge still had non-house material.  Dragon continued to devolve from TSR-centric to TSR-only, White Wolf went into a trendier "Inphobia" line, although there still was a Line Reviewer covering TWERPS in the back *waves*.  Challenge most considered a third rate publication, and in hindsight, I have no idea why so many people thought so.  Ninety percent of the mag was usefull material, even if it had to be tweaked from Dark Conspiracy or Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, and the there were so many many adventures.  Star Wars, Chill, Cthulhu, and the bevy of GDW products graced the pages.

Of course, Steve Jackson had a paper copy of Pyramid Magazine for awhile and that had a mixture of house material, other industry submissions, and a good dose of comedy (Ah Hampire, the Masked Ace Raid for Toon, good times.)

The greatest gaming magazine of the era was Shadis, initially produced by Jolly Blackburn and later on by AEG.  It was an all-encompassing magazine with lots of regular features and columns.  I still have piles of articles overflowing my archives:  The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (NPCs, usually interconnected), Hook, Link, and Sinker (side treks/stories, some more elaborate than fully printed modules), and, of course, Knights of the Dinner Table in the back of the issue. 

There was a time when role-players were an entirely oversensitive lot who couldn't take.  Heck, who am I kidding, I know too many gamers who are still oversensitive and can't find the humor in KoDT.  I still run into people who claim that KoDT pokes fun at gamers that don't exist, yet go to there Wednesday night game with a max-out character created from 3+ books and proceeds to take advantage of one piece of errata that they abuse in-game, while ignoring all the revisions that could hinder them.

(And let's not even get into wargamers.  Half of those guys couldn't take a joke if you mailed one to them certified mail.  We're passionate about playing pretend, with or without toy soldiers.)

Short, short story, Jolly and AEG had a falling out and Jolly left to self-publish a standalone KoDT comic book.  Ultimately he and Kenzer & Company joined forces to not only publish the comic and develop Hackmaster.

Standard disclaimer I always give.  For the longest time I was a homer for Kenzer & Company. From their early issues of KoDT until Aces & Eights.  I purchased everything short of their Final Days miniature game.  It was grand while it lasted.

I've waxing nostalgic way too long here and completely avoiding the whole purpose of this post.

In one of the early-ish issues of KoDT this appeared:

I believe that this is the greatest piece of gamer parody ever.  Nowadays it would be turned into a meme and have a life of about 48 hours, if that .  Back in the day, this lasted months, and like your Mom on Facebook, people kept believing it was true.. because another friend mentioned it was in KoDT.

I'll be leaving for my cruise to the Bahamas on Sunday, so I doubt anything else will be posted between now and then.  If I find any gaming related stuff, it shall be posted, but until then, enjoy!