Different Worlds #5

Different Worlds #5 Cover

Over the years I have purchased half-a-dozen issues of the magazine “Different Worlds”.  The magazine was an earlier role-playing magazine put out by Chaosium. It began in 1979 and appeared infrequently but made it all the way to 1987.  I have some later issues of the magazine and I have issue #5 from October/November 1979. Different Worlds would be a great title for a blog about world building but I unfortunately never thought of it.

It is only 40 pages long and not packed with a lot of useful material for today.  I do not see anything I would want to borrow or modify for a game today. But there is some interesting history.  There is a lengthy article for “Developing a Character’s Appearance”. These kind of articles were common in magazines in the early ‘80s. Today the push in many ways is for stripped down rules and simple systems (Lite rules).  But at the time of this magazine there was an interest in all sorts of add-on rules to make the base rules more complex and the characters more unique.

There are a number of ads for Arduin which is interesting.  By the time I got in the game in the early 80’s Arduin was already becoming less well known.  There is also an ad from Fantasy Games Unlimited for a number of sourcebooks for Chivalry & Sorcery.  I believe I have one of the C&S rulebooks somewhere but I have never played it.

An ad for Schubel & Son offers a catalog for $2 (paying for a catalog!) and offers board games, role-playing games and miniature figurines.  I never heard of Schubel & Sons outside of board games so it has me a little intrigued as a collector of obscure role-playing games. Although looking at the ad they might just be selling TSR games.  A search online reveals they did create an original game called “Tribes of Crane” but it was play by mail.

There is an ad for Tunnels & Trolls which is apparently already on its 5th edition but at $8 that is a pretty good deal. I seem to have misplaced the rules to my book set of Tunnels & Trolls. The version is the black box with the small paperback rules inside. Tunnels & Trolls appealed to me for awhile but it is a little to straight forward for me.

On the back cover are a pair of ads for Runequest as could be expected from a Chaosium house magazine. Cults of Prax and Runequest II. This is interesting as I just got my kickstarter reward of Classic Runequest a few months ago. I am not sure if this would have been the same version of Runequest as I now own.

Different Worlds #5 Back cover