SoloQuest 3: The Snow King’s Bride (1982) stinks. It’s full of corny jokes, the layout still makes my eyes wander and it’s a single-use scenario that lacks the interesting mechanical experiments that allowed the previous volumes to engage me beyond their faults. This one does have interior illustrations, but they’re very low effort pieces from Luise Perrene. The cover character, also by Perrene, lacks the charm of Becker’s little guys.

It also isn’t Glorantha! It’s Vikings. Which is fine. But I understand the frustration players must have felt when they saw Gateway products on the shelves in the early ’80s, and then later with the Avalon Hill third edition. I want to explore Glorantha with RuneQuest!

One curious thing: the credits list Gigi D’Arn as a consultant. D’Arn wrote a very entertaining industry gossip column in Different Worlds magazine, but it isn’t clear that she actually existed (I generally assume the name was a pseudonym of editor Tadashi Ehara, who was credited for layout in the previous SoloQuest books), so it is amusing to see her get a credit here. I wonder if she has any other Chaosium credits?