Monday, March 7, 2011

They Don't Write 'em Like that Anymore

Back when I was in college I got a call from my mom, she was at a yard sale and someone was selling all their old Dragon magazines.  It was a box just full of stuff from like issue #35 on to #140 or so. Most were there, but a couple were missing, all in all about 100 issues.  Asking price, 10 bucks.
A while later I was able to get my hands on some old White Dwarf magazines, issues #1 through #50.  Most of them were there as well but not all of them were in great shape.
But beyond the quality of the magazines and how much (or rather how little) I paid for them, reading them was pure joy.  Even if I was not actually playing the versions of the games they were talking about (this was during the 2nd Ed era and into the 3rd Ed one) they were still fantastic.  Some stuff was good, some was bad, but all of it was earnest and just plain fun to read.

I get that same feeling while reading Oubliette.

I just picked up Issue #5 and I have others, but this issue really gave me the same feeling as reading a newly discovered fan magazine from the late 70s. There is nothing that stands out as special to me in this issue, it is just the whole package that I enjoy.  It was interesting to see the Monstermark system again, having seen it in my collected issues of White Dwarf and still not getting it. I liked the "advanced" vampires too.

The art is very evocative of the old school style seen in Dragon, White Dwarf and The Dungeoneer magazines.

I hope we can see more from The Oubliette!

4 comments:

BlUsKrEEm said...

Oubliette is an amazing fanzine.

The Happy Whisk said...

I love blogging. It's stuff like this that is so fun to blog about.

Peter Regan said...

Thanks very much for the review Tim. Until I did the article, I must confess that I never understood Monstermark Ratings either.

Greg Gorgonmilk said...

Yeah, I agree. This ish was all-around entertaining and utilitarian. Along with Fight On! the Oubliette zine is one of my favorite OSR products.