I know that the spell "Stone to Flesh" featured in the Alchemists' skillset is supposed to be basically just an antidote to PCs who have been petrified, but I can't help thinking of some Cronenberg-style body horror with a character using "Stone To Flesh" to soften up the walls of some sealed cave to make it easier to dig their way out of... messy but effective!
I ran a game where that is EXACTLY what the characters did, even preparing some of the ... er ... rubble as jerky to bolster their rations. Protein AND minerals.
Thanks for the video! The lineage of the magazine(s) is quite interesting. I was only slightly familiar with these White Dwarf classes. With the Alchemist, failure is largely and option! The WD24 cover has a One Million Years B.C. vibe, too. The face and hair are eerily similar. Can't be a coincidence. A fair amount of what populates the 1E AD&D DMG Appendix N is more strictly speaking Science Fantasy rather than straight up fantasy, Tolkien (Fantasy), Conan / Howard (S&S) and Cthulhu / Lovecraft (Horror) aside, as well as some others, of course. It seems the Detective class allows a player to sidestep some RPing by leaning on mechanics, something that became more and more prevalent as D&D continued to evolve. The WD68 cover is sweet, particularly because of the source lighting. The Artificer restrictions seem a bit arbitrary (no plate armor, why? Why no Halflings given half the class leans into the thief and seems to be fairly pacifistic). The proofing process is a struggle, indeed. Our groups played some Boot Hill, Metamorphosis Alpha, and Gamma world back in the day but it was more of a brief diversion then straight back to D&D for us. Harvest Moon is one of my favorite Neil Young songs, and that's saying a lot. He's had a long career. That seems like a great album with all that extra material. Great performers!
after I watch; all three classes could also be used as patrons (direct and indirect) linking one to the next e.g. players are hired by the alchemist to go and fetch something he needs, while they are away he suffers a lab 'accident' (or was it?), the services of a detective are reguired (who keeps the players close for muscle or protection, resulting in the need for some contraption to made by the artificer to corner the villain.... Early white dwarf issues (the first 90, after this their focus was purely on GW products only) are a mine of information for many games systems, many other character classes are also in the pages. As always great content, thought provoking and historical.
White Dwarf did some Excellent Character classes which I used Barbarian,Berserker,Summoner,Necromancer,Merchant,Warsmith,Houri,Elementalist and Black Priest my favourite was The Demonist especially the Half Elf multi class option of Demonist/Assassin And I agree some Early contributers to White Dwarf really did 'kick start' the Hobby Andy Slack,Bob McWilliams and David Collerton(Irilian)
Finally had time to watch this one. Eberron for 3.5 had both an Artificer class and an Inquisitive (detective) prestige class/role. (Role meaning any character could do the job even if they didn't take the class.) bonus content joke: Ron Carter : Jazzman of Mars !
4:04 British Humor "The editor does not necessarily share the views of contributors as expressed in letters or articles; indeed, it has been said the editor holds no views at all on anything whatsoever. His comments can thus be safely ignored, or read with a mixture of incredulity, alarm, and (please) pity." 😂
cool video. Of these classes, and really all classes, the detective seems particularly tied to a style of adventure: the mystery. Unlike most other classes they would be pretty lost in many other styles of adventures.
If you want a fantasy detective series try Glen Cook's Garrett P.I. books Sweet Silver Blues was the first. Detective noir fantasy at it's best. A former soldier (a recon marine actually) who is a private investigator in a city with magic etc. Great books.
I was introduced to D&D while living the UK, so White Dwarf was my goto magazine. Most of these classes I used as NPCs. Look forward to maybe a show on WD modules, and maybe Fiend Factory... just please, no monstermark!
White Dwarf has a lot of other stuff as well. A few good and not so good comics. Material for general gaming, Cthulhu and Traveller etc. A fun article about the first British LARP club. And of course a lot of D&D nonsense.
What version of the Alchemist did you like the most? I noticed there've been several attempts at the class throughout the years. The only one I actually played was from Dragon #130 (Better Living Through Alchemy). [edit] Oh. Hehe. I didn't know you made a version yourself! That's awesome. I'll take a look at Drive Thru RPG.
One of my favorite characters was one of these Artificers. It was in a science-fantasy setting. I found that the character was better at breaking things than at making them, and in the setting was a major pain for the DM. I loved the concept of the Detective. The Escapology spells were worthless; this should have been a class ability. The game-breaking things were the spells that granted a a vision of past events in the location occupied by the spellcaster. 5E has gotten away from powerful divinations for precisely this reason. The modern game has a tendency to reduce a really interesting character concept to a set of mundane combat modifiers. That makes life much easier for the DM. These classes illustrate the learning curve rules developers went through decades ago.
While we were in that game my DM got to speak to the writer of the Artificer at a con. He admitted that the article was pretty thrown together, and certainly never play tested.
You are in luck! * Boot Hill: ua-cam.com/video/mUzvpXBJELA/v-deo.htmlsi=Z7dOQ3bzd8OrnjA0 * Top Secret: ua-cam.com/video/b5Us9vS1qvI/v-deo.htmlsi=lRhIOJdvKq7hxdM0 I hope you enjoy them! And, thanks for your support of the channel. Cheers!
The detective sounds a lot like Sherlock Holmes, Watson often describes Holmes as terribly hard to deal with so a lower charisma. Mycroft is Sherlock's older and smarter brother so Holmes can not be the master detective. Probably the written that way since Rowland was fan of Victorian England.
I'd use "Alchemist" as a kind of sub-domain to magic users and illusionists. Anything dealing with hermeticism, alchemy, and occult knowledge should just be part of the MU's general interest and study in a well fleshed out world.
I would love to see a video about the history of the Warhammer RPG. I know you used to play it and it might help you get some subs. Warhammer is a very popular subject in the UA-cam sphere.
Thank you so much for your generous support of the channel! I truly appreciate it! I did make one video on Warhammer a little while ago that you watched: ua-cam.com/video/rdPjjuW6B0w/v-deo.html I can certainly do a follow-up. Let me know what kinds of additional things you'd like to see me cover in the video. Thanks!
@@daddyrolleda1 hehe my old man brain let me down again. The nice thing about forgetting is that you can watch old content again as if it was the first time. Lol
question, how does the publishing print on demmand with drivethru works exactly? I tried to learn about it but there is barely any info on how the process work. Do you have to pre-pay the X copies as a publisher and as people buy their own copies you get money back? Or do you simply submit the files (do all the revision process and pay for the "trial copies") and then you recieve a payment per each copy sold?
On Detectives in D&D As a DM one thing I HATE is when spells replace brains in deduction/investigative adventures. I find that D&D magic is too binary in terms of something like a criminal investigation situation. You tend to either get all the information, or you get nothing. "Detect Evil!" "Yes, he's Evil..." "Did you kill the archduke?" "Errr.. no." "Detect Lie" "Yep... that was a lie..." "We did it!" Investigation games, by their nature, are puzzles that test the players' soft skills as much as their characters Hard skills. I think D&D has far too many ways to skip past the part where the players interpret the clues and form patterns to follow. I run a lot of Call of Cthulhu, (these days its way more than D&D) and the hard interpersonal skills generally serve as levers to open clues a bit wider rather than give you "facts" so rather than Detect Lie, the Psychology Skill allows you to get an insight into the way the NPC is feeling when they answer a question, "When he said that he wasn't involved in the murder, there was a nervousness about the answer... he couldn't keep eye contact and his body language becamevery defensive. Maybe he's lying, or maybe he knows who DID do it and is scared of telling you. Or maybe he's just scared of you!" Over the years when I've had a chance to play rather than DM, I inevitably play a Bard, mainly because in AD&D/2E they were really versatile and NOT oversexed rock stars. Generally historians and linguists, and a couple of times Detectives... imagine Cadfael or Shardlake... and the DM was happy to accomodate that and gave us a couple of mysteries to solve. Sadly before I could apply my deductive skills, the mainline spell casters had communed, detected, and identified everything and basically solved it without even rolling dice. In regard to the giveaway... just be careful you comply with all of UA-cam's bullshit. I've seen people get far more grief than they ever needed or deserved, just for trying to do something nice for their audience... You should be OK considering the type of person who views this channel, but it only takes ONE dickhead...
I truly hate what Games Workshop did to White Dwarf… I will never play the abomination that is War Hammer because of this, I pity its fans that GW continuously mine for money, their business practices are not very nice to the people that use their products…..they are evil.
I know that the spell "Stone to Flesh" featured in the Alchemists' skillset is supposed to be basically just an antidote to PCs who have been petrified, but I can't help thinking of some Cronenberg-style body horror with a character using "Stone To Flesh" to soften up the walls of some sealed cave to make it easier to dig their way out of... messy but effective!
I ran a game where that is EXACTLY what the characters did, even preparing some of the ... er ... rubble as jerky to bolster their rations. Protein AND minerals.
Thanks for the video! The lineage of the magazine(s) is quite interesting. I was only slightly familiar with these White Dwarf classes. With the Alchemist, failure is largely and option! The WD24 cover has a One Million Years B.C. vibe, too. The face and hair are eerily similar. Can't be a coincidence. A fair amount of what populates the 1E AD&D DMG Appendix N is more strictly speaking Science Fantasy rather than straight up fantasy, Tolkien (Fantasy), Conan / Howard (S&S) and Cthulhu / Lovecraft (Horror) aside, as well as some others, of course. It seems the Detective class allows a player to sidestep some RPing by leaning on mechanics, something that became more and more prevalent as D&D continued to evolve. The WD68 cover is sweet, particularly because of the source lighting. The Artificer restrictions seem a bit arbitrary (no plate armor, why? Why no Halflings given half the class leans into the thief and seems to be fairly pacifistic). The proofing process is a struggle, indeed. Our groups played some Boot Hill, Metamorphosis Alpha, and Gamma world back in the day but it was more of a brief diversion then straight back to D&D for us. Harvest Moon is one of my favorite Neil Young songs, and that's saying a lot. He's had a long career. That seems like a great album with all that extra material. Great performers!
I still can't believe we're rapidly approaching the 100th episode of DRa1.
Hail, fellow Virginian
26:14 oh please tell me Princess Diana also has a 1980s era boombox with several mixtapes of classic thrash and heavy metal 😀😃.
minimum Charisma of 7 for a detective? This was 1981 so just a few years after Columbo. That fits.
It’s always a good day when you upload 😊
Thank you! I hope you enjoy the video. Cheers!
@@daddyrolleda1 I certainly enjoyed it.
after I watch; all three classes could also be used as patrons (direct and indirect) linking one to the next e.g. players are hired by the alchemist to go and fetch something he needs, while they are away he suffers a lab 'accident' (or was it?), the services of a detective are reguired (who keeps the players close for muscle or protection, resulting in the need for some contraption to made by the artificer to corner the villain....
Early white dwarf issues (the first 90, after this their focus was purely on GW products only) are a mine of information for many games systems, many other character classes are also in the pages.
As always great content, thought provoking and historical.
White Dwarf did some Excellent Character classes which I used Barbarian,Berserker,Summoner,Necromancer,Merchant,Warsmith,Houri,Elementalist and Black Priest my favourite was The Demonist especially the Half Elf multi class option of Demonist/Assassin
And I agree some Early contributers to White Dwarf really did 'kick start' the Hobby Andy Slack,Bob McWilliams and David Collerton(Irilian)
Warsmith! I had fun with that one. I also tried to talk a friend into playing a Houri but he declined, saying he just didn't have the figure for it.
At least he could have worked from home.
I wonder if they are still around. Halfway through the video.
Thanks for the Shout out!
Another great vid. I look forward to hearing about more WD classes: Black Priest, Necromancer, etc.
Finally had time to watch this one. Eberron for 3.5 had both an Artificer class and an Inquisitive (detective) prestige class/role. (Role meaning any character could do the job even if they didn't take the class.)
bonus content joke: Ron Carter : Jazzman of Mars !
I don’t know a whole lot about white dwarf. I’m looking forward to this one.
Great magazine in the day.
It was glorious and proves why we are not allowed nice things…..it was appropriated and stolen for us.
4:04 British Humor
"The editor does not necessarily share the views of contributors as expressed in letters or articles; indeed, it has been said the editor holds no views at all on anything whatsoever. His comments can thus be safely ignored, or read with a mixture of incredulity, alarm, and (please) pity."
😂
Excited to get the Alchemy book Martin. So sad they don't have a better proofing process.
I just rediscovered a poster of that Gamma World cover that I picked up at the Dugeon Hobby shop. I am thinking about getting it framed.
Dude great video, I’m excited about the giveaway, also rust spell from the artificer epic!
8:34 yeah it's still an hour-ten minutes 😀😄.
Love the vids, keep em coming
Thank you so much for watching and commenting, and for your support of the channel. Cheers!
cool video. Of these classes, and really all classes, the detective seems particularly tied to a style of adventure: the mystery. Unlike most other classes they would be pretty lost in many other styles of adventures.
Artificers having a clerical nature makes sense to me in that smithy deities have always been an important part of pantheons.
If you want a fantasy detective series try Glen Cook's Garrett P.I. books Sweet Silver Blues was the first. Detective noir fantasy at it's best. A former soldier (a recon marine actually) who is a private investigator in a city with magic etc. Great books.
Thrud the Barbarian rises again 😅
I was introduced to D&D while living the UK, so White Dwarf was my goto magazine. Most of these classes I used as NPCs. Look forward to maybe a show on WD modules, and maybe Fiend Factory... just please, no monstermark!
Got more vinyl records. Thanks for the recommendations!
White Dwarf has a lot of other stuff as well. A few good and not so good comics. Material for general gaming, Cthulhu and Traveller etc. A fun article about the first British LARP club. And of course a lot of D&D nonsense.
What version of the Alchemist did you like the most? I noticed there've been several attempts at the class throughout the years. The only one I actually played was from Dragon #130 (Better Living Through Alchemy).
[edit] Oh. Hehe. I didn't know you made a version yourself! That's awesome. I'll take a look at Drive Thru RPG.
WD24 cover is likely a pastiche of the One Million Years BC movie poster
Exactly what I thought.
One of my favorite characters was one of these Artificers. It was in a science-fantasy setting. I found that the character was better at breaking things than at making them, and in the setting was a major pain for the DM. I loved the concept of the Detective. The Escapology spells were worthless; this should have been a class ability. The game-breaking things were the spells that granted a a vision of past events in the location occupied by the spellcaster. 5E has gotten away from powerful divinations for precisely this reason.
The modern game has a tendency to reduce a really interesting character concept to a set of mundane combat modifiers. That makes life much easier for the DM. These classes illustrate the learning curve rules developers went through decades ago.
While we were in that game my DM got to speak to the writer of the Artificer at a con. He admitted that the article was pretty thrown together, and certainly never play tested.
I’d like to see a review of Boot Hill and top secret.
You are in luck!
* Boot Hill: ua-cam.com/video/mUzvpXBJELA/v-deo.htmlsi=Z7dOQ3bzd8OrnjA0
* Top Secret: ua-cam.com/video/b5Us9vS1qvI/v-deo.htmlsi=lRhIOJdvKq7hxdM0
I hope you enjoy them! And, thanks for your support of the channel. Cheers!
Bard Games Compleat Series of Books.
The detective sounds a lot like Sherlock Holmes, Watson often describes Holmes as terribly hard to deal with so a lower charisma. Mycroft is Sherlock's older and smarter brother so Holmes can not be the master detective. Probably the written that way since Rowland was fan of Victorian England.
I'd use "Alchemist" as a kind of sub-domain to magic users and illusionists. Anything dealing with hermeticism, alchemy, and occult knowledge should just be part of the MU's general interest and study in a well fleshed out world.
I would love to see a video about the history of the Warhammer RPG. I know you used to play it and it might help you get some subs. Warhammer is a very popular subject in the UA-cam sphere.
Thank you so much for your generous support of the channel! I truly appreciate it!
I did make one video on Warhammer a little while ago that you watched: ua-cam.com/video/rdPjjuW6B0w/v-deo.html
I can certainly do a follow-up. Let me know what kinds of additional things you'd like to see me cover in the video. Thanks!
@@daddyrolleda1 hehe my old man brain let me down again. The nice thing about forgetting is that you can watch old content again as if it was the first time. Lol
Hmm and it was only three months ago. Then again the last three months seemed like a year for me.
@@FatalDevotee1 I hope you enjoy watching it again! 😀
comment before I watch; white dwarf 13: who is brave enough.....
One Million Years BC. It’s close to a clone 😮
The cover art is indeed horrible, and the Houri class was bad even at the time. The only good thing about it was the Kiss mechanic.
@@bukharagunboat8466 yes until I checked I had forgotten about the cover of that issue, but the character class is like them all, personal choice.
question, how does the publishing print on demmand with drivethru works exactly? I tried to learn about it but there is barely any info on how the process work. Do you have to pre-pay the X copies as a publisher and as people buy their own copies you get money back? Or do you simply submit the files (do all the revision process and pay for the "trial copies") and then you recieve a payment per each copy sold?
On Detectives in D&D
As a DM one thing I HATE is when spells replace brains in deduction/investigative adventures. I find that D&D magic is too binary in terms of something like a criminal investigation situation. You tend to either get all the information, or you get nothing. "Detect Evil!" "Yes, he's Evil..." "Did you kill the archduke?" "Errr.. no." "Detect Lie" "Yep... that was a lie..." "We did it!" Investigation games, by their nature, are puzzles that test the players' soft skills as much as their characters Hard skills. I think D&D has far too many ways to skip past the part where the players interpret the clues and form patterns to follow.
I run a lot of Call of Cthulhu, (these days its way more than D&D) and the hard interpersonal skills generally serve as levers to open clues a bit wider rather than give you "facts" so rather than Detect Lie, the Psychology Skill allows you to get an insight into the way the NPC is feeling when they answer a question, "When he said that he wasn't involved in the murder, there was a nervousness about the answer... he couldn't keep eye contact and his body language becamevery defensive. Maybe he's lying, or maybe he knows who DID do it and is scared of telling you. Or maybe he's just scared of you!"
Over the years when I've had a chance to play rather than DM, I inevitably play a Bard, mainly because in AD&D/2E they were really versatile and NOT oversexed rock stars. Generally historians and linguists, and a couple of times Detectives... imagine Cadfael or Shardlake... and the DM was happy to accomodate that and gave us a couple of mysteries to solve. Sadly before I could apply my deductive skills, the mainline spell casters had communed, detected, and identified everything and basically solved it without even rolling dice.
In regard to the giveaway... just be careful you comply with all of UA-cam's bullshit. I've seen people get far more grief than they ever needed or deserved, just for trying to do something nice for their audience...
You should be OK considering the type of person who views this channel, but it only takes ONE dickhead...
Guess I'll read Fairlady.
This version of the artificer seems really weak, despite having some thieving skills. I like the versions from 3.5 and 5th editions more.
I truly hate what Games Workshop did to White Dwarf… I will never play the abomination that is War Hammer because of this, I pity its fans that GW continuously mine for money, their business practices are not very nice to the people that use their products…..they are evil.
Heh....First one to comment! 😁
Well done! Thank you for the support - comments like this really do help the algorithm to push my video out to more folks. Cheers!