Owl and Weasel - Content

Content

The first few issues covered mostly traditional games and wargaming as well as running postal games, attempting to create a games club and providing an alternative source for games news with a scope set deliberately as wide as possible. Later issues provided coverage of fantasy and roleplaying games in general.

In the beginning, promotion of Games Workshop's own hand-crafted games boards was supplemented by reselling of wargames and small press games. Marketing of fantasy and science fiction games was expanded first by an exclusive deal with TSR in mid-1975 and further following the return of Livingstone and Jackson from GenCon IX in August 1976. There they had signed-up additional exclusive European distribution rights for many American publishers which were still at an early stage of their development—in part owing to the apparent lack of any other European companies at that convention. Traditional boardgames such as Monopoly and Scrabble, whilst continuing to be covered in news items even after this expansion, were never sold through the pages of the magazine.

Although D&D, as the first modern-day commercial roleplaying game, had been introduced to Britain no later than Autumn 1974, such playing groups and societies as existed within the country were still on a local basis by 1975 or early 1976, sometimes co-existing with traditional wargaming societies. The aforementioned exclusive deal with TSR thus gave Games Workshop increased impetus to promote their flagship product by the creation of a nationwide D&D society which was carried out through the pages of Owl and Weasel. The society was first proposed in issue #9, but did not commence until issue #12. This further increased the roleplaying content of the publication which had previously included variant rules and short essays on rules and gameplay. Although D&D society members provided tournaments for conventions such as Games Day, this arrangement was not run in as formal a manner as carried out, much later, by TSR's RPGA.

In addition to promoting early postal D&D gaming, other postal fantasy games were co-ordinated by veteran Diplomacy aficionado Don Turnbull, later of TSR (UK), who had recently been the inaugural inductee to the Origins Hall of Fame (for his work on postal gaming, having started the first British postal diplomacy magazine in 1969). Further articles on game mechanics by Turnbull were accompanied by contributions from other well-known hobbyists such as Hartley Patterson and American, Lew Pulsipher, as well as introducing new names whose works continued to be printed in Games Workshop's subsequent publication, White Dwarf.