PhilB

Rick, thanks for the light of reason. For my own part, I finally concluded that seeing content from these old Wyrm's Footnotes that related to WB&RM is something of a fool's errand. The more I look at the rulebook from Dragon Pass, and at the Vassal mod for Dragon Pass (which has all the counters, not to mention the random events), the more I am convinced that all (or nearly all) of the extra content that was announced in 1975 is in fact available through the Dragon Pass game. As far as reprints are concerned, I think it would be far less interesting to reprint those old games than to publish a new game on these old concepts, using techniques that have been pioneered for other board games in the over 40 years since 1975.

Thanks for all the replies, and the fascinating information. I have already DLed the Vassal mod, and am looking forward to playing online with my friend from Iowa as soon as we have a weekend to kill. It looks like most if not all of the supplementary WBRM material from the Wyrm's Footnotes was included in the later Dragon Pass edition, so I may just try to incorporate those critters in future games of WBRM, taking their info from Dragon Pass. All things considered, the later edition appears to be a superior product in terms of handling exotic abilities and combat itself, though using its combat tables and detailed turn sequence will take some getting used to. A remake would be very welcome. I'm curious whether we'll see some more recent board game innovations like card-driven games which seem to be all the rage. WBRM and Dragon Pass have a *lot* of counters in the full game, so any innovations will need to take that level of complexity into account. I read an interview where someone (either Greg himself, or someone on the Chaosium staff) mentioned that producing and selling RPG material was a lot more profitable than producing and selling boardgames, but I bet there are enough hardcore RQ folks out there that a remake of Dragon Pass would still be viable. Cheers, --- Phil

Good to see some interest in the topic. I do not (yet) have a copy of Dragon Pass, or of the French edition by Oriflam, La Guerre des Héros. What I do have is the 1976 edition of White Bear and Red Moon and the 1977 edition of Nomad Gods (which we never liked as much, since it's designed as a five-player game). So last week an old friend from Iowa City, with whom I had played many games of WBRM back in the day, stopped in and we played two rounds of the complete game. Of course we used the original combat resolution rules which are very "swingy". You have an AE (attacker eliminated) result on a one until you reach 4-to-1 odds, so combat is really hit or miss. and with all of the... well, we call them "nuke" attacks, from Cragspider, the Earth Shakers, the Stormwalkers, the Dragons, the Hound and the Sylphs, it doesn't really feel much like a tactical combat game. Back in the day, we cobbled together two triangular map pieces so we could link the Nomad Gods map and the WBRM map over a wider front (IIRC they overlap some 10-12 hexes in one corner) but the games never felt like they really went together. Prax was about survival on the unforgiving wastelands, while WBRM was a vengeance-driven rivalry between two bitter enemies that was usually decided by who got lucky on key diplomacy rolls. Joerg, you say that there "shouldn't" be pdfs of any of the early Wyrm's Footnotes. Does that mean Greg has aggressively searched out and eliminated any such files long ago? Or something else that I'm not catching on to? I'm not a hard-core collector myself, but it does seem a shame not to be able to dig up some of those early gems and put them to good use in actual games. Back in the day, not all of us were completely obsessed with the euro-centric tolkienesque worlds that seemed to be projected by early D&D, Judges Guild and other spinoff editors, and we found fascinating the wierd and original worlds like MAR Barker's Petal Throne and Greg's Glorantha. Those worlds, as much as Greyhawk and Blackmoor, were at the heart of the earliest stages of our hobby, and White Bear and Red Moon was at the heart of Runequest and Glorantha. I'll try to take some pics a little later. Sadly, when we were playing, we didn't think about documenting our game, so I'll have to re-create a bit of it. Cheers, --- Phil (formerly of the Iowa City Wargaming Confederation).

This seemed like a good place to post about my recent games of White Bear and Red Moon, the 1975 classic that started it all. A friend from Iowa City dropped by my house here in France, and we pulled out WBRM, dusted off the counters and played two rousing games. Since then, I have been trolling the web, in vain, for pdfs of the old Wyrm's Footnotes (especially #1 through 4) in an effort to find the articles, rules and counters supplied in them. Best bet seems to be in finding a used copy of Dragon Pass, which seems to take over the counters from WBRM with a few added details like Hydra, the ducks, Sun Dome templars and so on. I did manage to find a Vassal recreation of the Dragon Pass game, with the map and all the counters in electronic format. Looks intriguing. Has anyone been playing this old classic? Any clues or hints to obtaining the long out-of-print supplemental material from Wyrm's Footnotes? Cheers, --- PhilB