Magia i Miecz
Entry updated 21 July 2025. Tagged: Game, Publication.
["Sword and Sorcery"] Poland's first long-running commercial Role Playing Game magazine; title often abbreviated as MiM. Published from March 1993 to August 2002, and briefly revived 2014-2018, it introduced a generation of Polish gamers not only to Fantasy RPGs but also to the wider possibilities of sf-themed gaming.
Although the title evokes classic sword-and-sorcery tropes and echoes the Polish edition of the Games Workshop Board Game Talisman (1983), MiM's masthead initially proclaimed it a "magazyn gier SF i fantasy" ("magazine of SF and fantasy games"). The subtitle soon changed, going through a dozen iterations, but sf content steadily gained space even when the strapline did not mention it. The two longest-lived mottos were "Magazine for RPGs and Strategy Games" (1994-1996) and "Magazine for Fantastika Games" (1996-1999).
As the name implied, the magazine coverage, at least initially, was heavily skewed towards Fantasy; this was not due to the fame of Dungeons & Dragons but a reflection of the wider dominance of fantasy themes in RPG games in general (D&D was amateurishly published in Poland in 1995, while Warhammer Fantasy was more professionally published a year earlier; as a consequence, for more than a decade it was Warhammer and not D&D which was the most popular RPG system in Poland).
The magazine was founded by Polish Fandom activists and writers Jacek Rodek and Darosław J. Toruń, both of whom were also previously involved in editing the leading Polish Fantastika monthly, Fantastyka magazine. Toruń, with significant help from Rodek, was also MiM's first editor, while the Polish Comic book artist Jarosław Musiał supervised its visual presentation. Later editors included Tomasz Kołodziejczak (June-November 1995), Artur Marciniak (December 1995 to September 1997), Andrzej Miszkurka (October 1997 to September 1998), Rafał Nowocień (October 1998 to August 1999) and Tomasz Kreczmar (September 1999 to the end).
The first issue of Magia i Miecz was published in March 1993 and the last in July-August of 2002 (issue 103-104); its final issue clearly announced the end of the magazine, featuring a black ribbon with Polish text for "Farewell". MiM aimed for monthly publication, yet early issues slipped and most summers merged into double numbers, averaging eleven issues per year. It debuted in A4 format (36 pages) and shifted to B5 with #71, eventually peaking at 128 pages for the single issue #89 (or 208pp for the double issue #90-#91). The companion supplement Labirynt appeared sporadically (1994-1999, six issues). Throughout its history it was published by the Polish publishing house Mag (also founded by Rodek), specializing, as the name implies, in fantasy literature (Mag also held a near monopoly in the Polish RPG publishing market in the 1990s). Following a crowdfunding campaign in the early 2010s, the magazine was briefly reactivated in 2014 as a quarterly published by Michał Stachyra's Kuźnia Gier publishing house and edited by Tomasz Chmielik, publishing six out of eight planned issues by 2018 before folding once more.
Magia i Miecz, despite its focus on RPGs, also published articles about Board Games and related matters including Wargames, Collectible Card Games, LARPs, musings on history, news from Polish RPG fandom, and some fiction (short stories and comics). It also published occasional work of direct sf interest. This could be seen in its very first issue, which, in addition to extensive coverage of one of the first Polish RPG systems Kryształy Czasu ["The Crystals of Time"], a classic fantasy universe, also contained reviews of recently published sf-themed board games such as W cieniu Saturna – an unlicensed Polish edition of Titan Strike! Battle for the Moon of Saturn (SPI, 1979) – and Kosmiczna Wojna, a likewise unlicensed edition of WarpWar (Metagaming, 1977).
At first, the magazine was heavily skewed towards typical RPG and fantasy tropes, primarily dungeon crawls with traps, Monsters and treasure; its first year can be seen as dedicated de facto to the Kryształy Czasu system. This, however, changed quickly. The May 1994 Horror-themed issue introduced the H P Lovecraft-inspired Call of Cthulhu, signalling a pivot from dungeon crawls to broader speculative themes.
1995 saw important sf-related developments in Magia i Miecz, breaking fantasy's grip on the magazine. January 1995 delivered a Cyberpunk-themed issue, launching Tomasz Kołodziejczak's Strefa Śmierci ["Death Zone"] – Poland's first home-grown sf RPG, set in the Military SF-cyberpunk-Hard SF-Space Opera universe of his Dominium Solarne ["Solar Dominion"], and developed in subsequent MiM issues in following months. June saw another sf-themed issue, featuring articles on the newly translated Cyberpunk 2020 (a variant of the game Cyberpunk) and introducing Warhammer 40,000. In August 1995 MiM inaugurated a Collectible Card Game section; thanks to a Polish translation, Doomtrooper (set in the Swedish Mutant Chronicles universe) briefly eclipsed the never-localized Magic: The Gathering. September's issue featured a short story from Mutant Chronicles, the first content in MiM to be printed in colour. October that year saw the Polish debut of Call of Cthulhu, and Cthulhu Mythos texts became a common feature in MiM, alongside more traditional fantasy staples.
As for Poland's own contributions to the RPG Fantastika scene, June 1996 issue saw the debut of Jacek Kumuda's Dzikie Pola ["Wild Fields"] universe, set in the seventeenth-century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which at first was purely historical, but in time evolved to contain elements of both fantasy (magic and supernatural) as well as Alternate History. That year also saw the emergence of Science and Sorcery-themed content, first related to White Wolf's World of Darkness dark fantasy systems, as Vampire: the Masquerade and Werewolf: the Apocalypse received Polish translations in 1996 and 1997, respectively. In 1997, the genre-straddling Shadowrun received a Polish translation, followed by Fading Suns in 2000; the Steampunk- and Alternate History-themed Deadlands system was published in Poland in 2001. All of these resulted in a steady expansion of sf content in MiM.
Game-related fiction surfaced early: Kołodziejczak's "Bardzo cenny pierścień" ["A Very Valuable Ring"] set in the Kryształy Czasu universe ran in May 1993, likely the first Polish story set in a locally designed RPG world and published outside Fanzines. Another landmark came in October 1998 when Anna Brzezińska's "Kochał ją, że strach" ["He Loved Her Like Crazy"] won the Janusz A Zajdel Award – the first time a gaming magazine scooped Poland's top speculative-fiction prize.
MiM's November 1997 issue, once again dedicated to Cyberpunk, featured an interview with Bruce Sterling and his short story "Twenty Evocations". Likewise, the third issue of the relaunched MiM (February 2015) was dedicated to sf-related RPGs.
Regarding foreign RPG systems, Magia i Miecz published not only translations from foreign (usually English) magazines, but also articles by Polish fans and writers, which, while non-canon, offered Polish-themed settings and adventures for the Western systems (which generally tend to forget Central and Eastern Europe exists). For example, the November 1997 issue contained, among others, Polish-based settings and adventures for World of Darkness, Cyberpunk 2020 and Shadowrun. From 1999 MiM published a series of articles introducing a Polish communist-era setting for Call of Cthulhu, Tomasz Z Majkowski's "Wydział X".
While MiM lasted less than a decade, ceasing publication after a hundred or so issues, a victim of the growing internet culture, shifting market dynamics, and some unlucky business decisions, and its crowdfunded revival brought only six more issues, the magazine's cultural legacy remains significant for its role in shaping the Polish RPG and Board Game scenes, including their sf dimension. It championed domestic systems and introduced global ones, within a few years broadening Polish Fantastika gamers' horizons from fantasy dungeons to alternative histories and deep space. [PKo]
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