#RPGaDay2023 Favourite CONVENTION purchase

 There have been a few to be honest. But my most memorable was the purchase of the Mage Knight Apocalypse Dragon back at Gen Con 2011.

Shown here after I got it home with the Aspect of Tiamat and Orcus.  AoT takes up 3x3 squares, Orcus 4x4. The Apocalypse Dragon takes up 7x7.

This beast was originally going to be Tiamat in my games.  But later on WotC would release their own monstrous Tiamat. 

Tiâmat and Leviathan

What about that Apocalypse Dragon?  I still want to get my money's worth out of him.  So he has been redubbed as Leviathan.  Fitting, given the history my games have had with him.  I will need to revisit my stats for him, though. 

This gives me a chance to use both dragons.

Gen Con 2011 was also the same year I picked up all of the Mayfair Demons sets for AD&D 2nd Edition. I might need to go back to those and see if they had a Leviathan write-up. Might be fun.

I also should adopt as much as possible from the Mage Knight rules.

#RPGaDay2023 Most memorable character DEMISE

I tell this story a lot, but it is a great story.

I have played exactly 1 ninja my entire gaming life.  His name was (horrible I know) Oko-nishi.  My lame attempts at a Japanese-sounding name.  In my defense at what I knew was bad I made him a half-orc.  It must have been around this time I made him using the AD&D 1st Ed Oriental Adventure rules.  

My then DM and I had worked up a D&D combat simulator (we called it BARD), and we plugged him in with 9 other characters.  He was attacked by a Black Dragon (or Red, I can't recall) and killed. The dragon kept attacking him and only him.  We had not worked out all the errors. In the end, he had been reduced to something like -70 hp.  My DM offered to let him be ok or keep him dead. 

We enjoyed watching it so much and getting the mental image of this stupid dragon jumping up and down on my dead ninja that I felt it was a waste to say it never happened.

I never played a ninja or a half-orc again.

#RPGaDay2023 First RPG GAMEMASTER

 Another one that has been on my mine a bit lately.

My first Gamemaster was myself really. We all kind of taught ourselves how to play back then and I didn't have older brothers or friends that played.  But that changed when I got to Jr. High.

My first real DM was Jon Cook and we played this hybrid version of Basic (B/X) D&D and 1st Edition Advanced D&D. 

In a lot of ways I guess I am still chasing that high.

This Old Dragon: Issue #87

I mentioned the collection I got from my old DM and a few Dragons in it. As it turns out, this is the only one I had not done a "This Old Dragon" for. So. Let's go back nearly 40 years ago this month to a very different time. "When Doves Cry" by Prince dominated the airwaves, But I am sure I was listening to a lot of "Piece of Mind" by Iron Maiden. I was going through Module A1, mixed with a lot of Grimtooth's Traps. I had seen Ghostbusters about a dozen times by this point and wanted more and more horror in my D&D games. On the shelf was Issue #87 of This Old Dragon!

I am very certain that when this issue was new I was at my DM's house for his birthday (which is today by the way!) playing some D&D.  This might have even been the rather infamous session where I was carrying my D&D books in one hand, a large chocolate shake in the other and I tripped falling face first into and through their storm door. Made a huge mess. Thankfully (or maybe this was a sign), I did not have glasses yet.

On to the magazine at hand.

I will freely admit this is not one of my favorite covers. After seeing so many great covers from this time period, this one felt too "Cartoony" to me. Granted, it works with the article inside quite well, that is not something that can always be said about Dragon.

Kim Mohan's Editorial is up first. It covers the very dangerous ground of TSR's/Dragon Magazine's relationship with Tolkien Enterprises.  Basically saying there isn't one and they can't really say much more than that.

Letters section covers PBM and DragonQuest questions.  One of the great things about these older Dragons was how willing they were to cover other games. 

Nice big ad for the James Bond 007 RPG. Still, one I have never played. Another ad for Lords of Creation later on. I also never played that one but wanted too.

Forum asks questions about the Elemental Planes and Monty Haul campaigns.

Our first real article is from Dragon mainstay Katharine Kerr. Here we get Part 1 of her series Beyond the Dungeon, covering everything outside. She largely focuses on movement here for AD&D. But also what the characters should expect to find and what they are not expected to know.

Shaun Wilson is up with one of my favorite Ecology of articles, The Ecology of the Dryad. I do admit that after reading this article, I considered what it would take to have a Dryad PC race option. It lacks some of the style and personality of the Ed Greenwood articles, but it is still quite good. In fact when I had my own copy of this magazine, I cut this article out and stuck it into my AD&D Monstrous Compendium.

Len Lakofka is back with the next installment of Gods of the Suel Pantheon. This time we get Kord and Phaulkon.

The Legacy of Hortus is our cover story. The author is the same as the cover artist, Jack Crane. This covers a wide variety of fantastic plants that honestly should be used in any addition of the game. Some are whimsical, like Beebalm (a plant we have in our garden), but this one grows its own bees and cowslip with the face and heads of cows. Others are bit on the nose, like Foxglove and Dandelion. But all are rather fun. 

In Reviews, we get Jerry Epperson's opinion on the Tri Tac Stalking the Night Fantastic. Personally, I rather liked the game, but I am a fan of the source material. We both agree that the game's list of encounters is great. 

We get two centerfold sections here. The first is Whiteout, a Top Secret game adventure by none other than Merle Rasmussen himself. Like the James Bond RPG, I never played, or really even read over, Top Secret. I am no judge of this adventure but it does look fun. It is quite detailed and I could use it for other games. It is part three of a three-part series of adventures. Anyone who played it should let me know how it was/is.

Our other center section is the games listing for Gen Con 17. Lots of AD&D games listed but I am also seeing a lot of Car Wars. Some Chill, James Bond, Star Frontiers, and even some D&D.  Crazy that is all used to fit inside of Dragon.

John E. Stith has our fiction section, Simon Sidekick. Interestingly enough, it is a science fiction story about a personal AI assistant. Wow! Have you ever heard of anything so advanced Siri? How about you Alexa or Cortana?

This Dragon is early enough that we still get a proper Ares section.

Kim Eastland has Freeze! Star Law! for law enforcement officers in Star Frontiers.  Pretty good article to be honest.

Luna: A Traveller's Guide is another part of the "Luna" series Ares had been running. This one is naturally from Marc Miller. I think I need to go back sometime and collect all of these and do a special on them for Sci-Fi month. That could be fun. 

Jim Ward shows he is not be outdone and has A Field guide to Lunar Mutants for Gamma World.

Roger Moore answers some StarQuestions about the Universe game.

Nice big ad spread for the FASA Star Trek line. It is also old ads like this that make me realize how lucky I was. Illinois had, and still has some great hobby shops. They have 29 listed here. That is over 4.5 times what California had, and twice what all the neighboring states had combined. 

Gamer's Guide covers the small ads. Always a treat to look at.

Couple of pages of Wormy. Dragonmirth has the short-lived Tal an Alan comic. A three pages of Elmore's Snarf Quest.

So a good issue, but more memorable for the time period rather than all the content. 

AD&D Haul from the Jon Cook Collection

 This past weekend I went down to my old hometown to see my family for my mom's 80th birthday. She is honestly doing great, and it was a pleasure to see all my family.  I even got the chance to run into an old friend, Jon Cook.

Jon and I met in Jr. High, we both played saxophone in the school band. But it was D&D that got us to be friends. I had been playing around with my very rudimentary knowledge of D&D at that point, Jon had some AD&D books and, like me, the B/X books. So we spent our time in band class when she should have been practicing rolling up characters.

We decided to meet up because he wanted to sell me his collection!

How could I say no?

Not a huge collection, but a really great one to be honest.  It shows our strange, eclectic blend of AD&D 1st Ed and Basic/Expert D&D in a way that only 1981-1983 could produce. 

I am pleased to get all the Monster books, and it has given me an idea for some edits to Basic Bestiary. Getting his copies of B4 and A1 really took me back too. Especially his weird blend of A1 with his idea of a worldwide assassin's guild. It was also the scene of one of my first character deaths!

I think I might be most thrilled with these dice.  Those orange dice came with MY Expert set. Jon and I traded since his set came with blue, and I wanted blue. Now I have them back. They are going to go into my "Halloween" set.

Those armory dice markers are a rare treat.

Some art books that my youngest brother is going to hold on too till I see them next. He called these "Elmore Porn."

The Lejendary Adventures are like new, and I can't wait to try them out!

Another DM's screen!

Some more Dragons for This Old Dragon.  ETA: Looks like the only one I have not done here is #87.

And the infamous Grimtooth's Traps. Gods I hated it when he would pull out this book.

I can add all of these to his minis he sold me a couple years back.

Those are the real deal lead minis.  The last one was the mini I had used for my cleric Johan Werper, but back then he had a blue robe and white hair. He also had a hand. No, I did not paint him myself.

This is all rather fantastic to have.

I have already added some of these to my collection, others have gone into my "extras" pile for when people come over to play (an extra Player's Handbook is always welcome), and some others have been claimed by my youngest.  He already called dibs on the B/X books and adventures along with the Traps book. Pity his poor players.

Tomorrow is his birthday, and I know he will use the cash to buy some more train gear. This was his previous hobby before D&D and the one he and his son are really enjoying together now. 

So Happy Birthday, Jon! 

Thank you for all these books, the memories of going through the A Series with your crazy ass traps, and our own blend of Advanced and Basic/Expert rules. Your books have a loving home where they will get used all the time!

Mail Call Tuesday: ReAction D&D Figures

A little over 3.5 months later, I finally received my ReAction D&D Figures in the mail, just in time for Father's Day.

They are pretty cool. As you can see, these are the ones from Super 7.

Of the three the Sorceress (as she is properly known) is my favorite.

She is roughly the same size/scale as the classic Kenner Star Wars figures (this is by design of course). She even has holes in the bottom of her feet to put into action scenes.

She is a little taller than the other D&D Figures out last year. 

Maybe Skylla has a bit of elf in her.

She does not come with the green fireball though.

All the figures look pretty cool to be honest.

The font on the cards is closer to the Mentzer Basic books than the AD&D or Moldvay books. 

Yes, I took them off of their cards. 

Now the Efreeti actually will see some use in games I am sure. He is a good size to be an efreeti amir or pasha or something similar.

Compared to the mini from the Classic Monster Manual line maybe he is the long-lost "Greater" Efreeti.

All three of these figures have also, in one form or another, have had premium statues made of them. The Efreeti and the Githyanki from Wizkids and the Sorceress, in her modern guise of Seoni, from Dynamite.

The figures are fun, and I am glad I grabbed them.

I do have another Sorceress on the way that I am hoping to do a little modding on. 

Kickstart Your Weekend: Old-School Adventure Style!

 It's the first Friday of June! Growing up that meant it was time for some D&D.  What better way to do that than some old-school adventures? Thankfully we have some great ones to choose from.

Maximum Mayhem Dungeons #0: Village on the Borderlands

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/marktaormino/maximum-mayhem-dungeons-0-village-on-the-borderlands?ref=theotherside

Mark Taormino is a long-time friend of the Other Side and I have all of his Kickstarters. This one looks great as well and I can't wait to try it out. If it is half as fun as his other adventures then it will still be twice as fun as most of the adventures out there.

Tomb of the Dundel Chief - A D&D adventure, 5e, 1e and C&C

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gaxland/tomb-of-the-dundel-chief-a-dandd-adventure-5e-1e-and-candc?ref=theotherside

Ah, now this one comes from D&D royalty! Heidi Gygax-Garland and her husband Erik have already created some adventures. But this one looks rather epic in scope. Plus it has a Castles & Crusades version, the game that Gary himself felt was the spiritual successor to AD&D. 

It also looks quite fun.

Things Better Left Alone

https://pacesettergames.com/collections/bx-rpg-1/products/things-better-left-alone

Ok. So not a Kickstarter, but on sale now. And it looks really cool and would jive well with all of these adventures.

So get out your circa 1983 rulebooks, color in your dice, and get these adventures. It's summer and time to play!

This Old Dragon: Issue #128

Time to reach down into the dusty old box under my desk and pull out another Dragon magazine.  Today's gem comes to us from December 1987. I was wrapping up my first semester at University, George Michael had the number #1 song in the land with Faith, and Three Men and a Baby was the number 1 movie. And no, there was no ghost on set.  TSR has seen some shake ups, so has Dragon, and soon we will begin talking about AD&D 2nd Edtion.  All of this and more in Issue #128 of This Old Dragon.

Once again, my Dragon is missing some pages. I have the theory that the collector I bought them all from was a HUGE Marvel Super Heroes fan since that is what seems to be missing from them all. Well, that and the collection also had a lot of MSH books, all in pretty terrible condition. So when I get to that section, I'll mention it, but as per my own rules, I won't review it much.

As typical, my cover is missing, so here it is from my Dragon CD-ROM.  I don't remember this one to be honest. College life was hitting me pretty hard at this point and I don't think I ever owned this one when it was new.

Not exactly sure when it happened, but Roger Moore is now our Editor in Chief replacing (the now late) Kim Mohan. I knew 1987 was a huge shake-up year for TSR; this is just one of many.

Letters cover Gygax's Dragon Chess with shopping guides on which minis to buy to build your own. My previous DM (at the time) had built his own and it was fun, but overly complicated for my desires at the time.

Forum covers the Mystic College from Dragon #123. It has made me want to go back and reread those. 

Nice big ad for the AD&D Dragonlance Hardcover.  Mine got attacked by rabbits (seriously) and I recently purchased a POD version from DriveThru and a copy from Heidi Gygax, so I guess I am OK really.

Dragon MVP Ed Greenwood is up with our first article, Welcome to Waterdeep. Doing these "This Old Dragons" has really given me a greater appreciation for the Forgotten Realms and Ed's writing in general. This five-page article is great introduction, especially for people like me that know there is giant meal out of the Forgotten Realms and have no idea where to take our first bite. I am reading this and thinking "Oh I could put the Keep on the Borderlands there and B5 here..." and that I think is the exact thought Ed wanted me to have while reading. Well done.

A review from John C. Bunnell on Gary Gygaz's Role-Playing Mastery book in Matters of Mastery. He is not 100% sold on the book, and having read it myself years ago I get this. The book lacks a clear direction. There good ideas in it, but thematically it doesn't hold together. 

W. Todo Todorsky has nice system of disbelieving Illusions in To Believe or Not to Believe. Very typical of the times in there are charts and percentages. Today we would have a modified DC, but hidden in these numbers are the bases for doing these, ie every 5% change is a +1 on d20 roll. It is neat, and it is fun and very, very 80s AD&D. 

Roleplaying Reviews is up next with books taken from today's headlines. Ken Rolston covers both Empire of Petal Throne (which has fallen from grace) and Jorune (which I have seen more about recently). Rolston calls EPT a modern classic and must-have; and yes this is all true, but the shine for me at least is gone and the stain is too deep. He also loves Jorune, which I have always wanted to play but never found anyone that was playing it. He goes into quite a bit of detail on both games. 

Through out those pages we get ads for the Judge Dredd RPG, the brand new Forgotten Realms boxed set and Might & Magic, software for your Apple II.

James Ward is up with The Game Wizards with a look ahead to 1988 from TSR. A note that if you want to get published contact Bruce Heard. Wonder if he still is taking mail for this? Castle Greyhawk is up in January with what looks like a "little bit" of humor sprinkled in. To this day I can't help that this product was done to directly tarnish the Greyhawk and Gygax legacy, but maybe I am over reacting. Some Marvel books, some Top Secret books. OH and the Bullwinkle & Rocky game along with more Buck Rogers!

The Spirit Way is our fiction piece from Leigh Anne Hussey.

Something interesting up next. Dale Oldfield and Mark Foster give us King's Table, their implementation of the ancient chess-like Hnefatafl game. Lots of variations and options of board set up are given. It is very interesting and I have always wanted to play. In 1987 this looked new to me, but now you can get these from Amazon and many game stores.

Jeff Grubb is next with Plane Speaking The Negative Quasi Elementals. This covers the Ash, Vacuum, Dust, and Salt Elementals.

Moving on to modern games, Dennis McLaughlin talks helicopters for Top Secret in Chopper Power! At this time my roommate, and Air Force ROTC guy, would have been all over this and likely found some sort of issue with it. But he had a lot of issues with things.

Gamma World players get a new naming systems for mutants in Kim Eastland's A Mutant by Any Other Name.

The Island in Your Computer by Cheryl Peterson is an interesting slice of time. The nascent Internet as we know it was growing here in the form of CompuServe.  While CompuServe itself did not contribute much technology-wise to the Internet we know of today, the experiences people had did. The article is the victim of the previous owner's desire to keep all the Marvel Phile articles.

So this is missing the Marvel Phile and the Role of Computers articles. 

Next is a quiz from Lawrence R. Raimonda. U 2 Kan Ern Big Bux! I am not sure what the point of this one is. Humor? Sure, maybe, but not enough to justify the page count in my mind. 

The small ads of Gamers' Guide follow. Seeing a lot more ads for computer aids for GMs and players. Also seeing a drop off of Play by Mail ads.  

Convention Calendar has what is hot for Winter 1987-88. Of those listed, I actually went to the Egyptian Campaign on a cold February Saturday. I hate talking bad about gaming experiences or my alma mater, but I found them to be particularly unwelcoming to new players. Today I'd call them stereotypical Grogs who had no interest in showing a bunch of Freshmen the ropes. It actually soured me on going to Cons for a very long time.

Sadly I have heard since then that my experiences were not particularly unique. Sad really, I would like to have gone to one of the longest on going conventions in the state. 

Snarf Quest #52 is next. I'll admit I have no idea what is going on here. One of the story arcs where they go to the future from D&D to Star Frontiers. 

Dragonmirth is next. The "No Pain, No Gain" joke is good for the times but the Laurel and Hardy one was even getting really old then.

Wormy is up. It is one of the last ones before Tramp ended up in the same town I was in.

So a good, but not great, issue. I can't tell if I am seeing something not there because I know or if there is something, but this feels like a magazine in transition. We have left the Golden and Silver Ages of Dragon and are now into something a little different. What kind of different? Well most of the old guard is gone. The magazine has pivoted away from Gygax and Greyhawk to Greenwood and the Realms.  Mohan is out, Moore is in. Soon the world will see the first details of the Second Edition of AD&D.

Oh. checking my CD-ROM I see there is a Hnefatafl board inside.

Oh. I am looking for Dragons from the 2nd Ed era, #160 to #274.

Do not tell me I can get issues online. I don't condone piracy of any sort. Besides, I have the Dragon Magazine CD-ROM that goes all the way to issue #250. 

Thanks!

This Old Dragon: Issue #91

I thought I would turn back to pages of one of my musty old Dragons. Today's topic comes to us from October of 1984. Gygax is still at TSR. Prince and the Revolution still dominate the airwaves with "Let's Go Crazy" hitting number 1 following the success of "When Doves Cry" and preceding the success of the single "Purple Rain."  Nick Nolte and JoBeth Williams star in the number #1 box office "Teachers." All I remember from that movie was Crispin Glover was really insane in it. On the shelves in the local Waldenbooks is Issue #91 of This Old Dragon.

I did not own this one back in the day. My High School DM and I had an agreement to pick up every other issue. This was the one he got.  I found the cover to be really cool and thought that it would make for a great concept. Something we would try about four years later. 

I did finally get an issue. The one I have is beat up and missing a cover and some pages.  This image is from my Dragon Magazine CD-ROM.

We are introduced to the new Table of Contents page. It is easier to read than the older one with the gray background and will be the standard for a while.  

Letters praise the recent Katherine Kerr articles and have a few helpful suggestions. The recent Rust Monster ecology didn't fare as well. 

Nice ad for Milton Bradley's Broadsides & Boarding Pirates. Back when gaming magazines would run ads for their competitors. The ships from that game would make great props in a sea-faring adventure. 

The Forum is less praise-filled on Katherine Kerr's stance on playing evil characters. while I have played evil characters in the past I find playing them these days a bit tedious. Playing a good character was always more fun for me. 

Gary is up with From the Sorcerer's Scroll.  This one deals with some of the new demon information (and one demon) we will see in the upcoming Monster Manual II.

Long-time contributor Stephen Inniss is back with Realistic Vital Statistics. This is a new guide and system for how much a particular humanoid-like creature, from pixie size to titans, should weigh based on height.  The system certainly works and has a lot of internal consistency which is what you need in a game system. He points out some inconsistencies with the data provided in DMG and attempts to make it better. He does give practical and magical adaptations to the Square-Cube Law (though he does call his observations this, that is what it is) and it plainly sets out why giants could never have existed like described in D&D. I do like his notion there is some sort of magic at work here, maybe a low-level sort of levitation spell going on.  It is a very useful article.

Dragon Magazine MVP (certainly of this issue) Ed Greenwood is up with The Ecology of the Leucrotta. I will fully admit when I first saw this my first thought was "Why? There are so many other interesting creatures out there." Which I think is the whole point. This article and the one on the Slithering Tracker (the first Ecology of article I ever read) pointed out that even so-called "pointless" or even "useless" monsters can be interesting. It also helped shift my focus of D&D/AD&D as "character-centric" to "normal human-centric" and realizing that even a "pointless" monster can be a huge threat. This also reminds me I should do a retrospective at one point on all of these Ecology of articles. 

More Devils. More Hell. And more Ed Greenwood! Nine Hells Revisited gives us some details about the devils and hells they live in. We get some new devils, some of which I have not seen repeated since. There are even a couple that share their names with others like the Greater Devil Dagon (formerly Jaqon), the Greater Devil Azazel, and the Arch Devil Gargoth (formerly Astaroth).  This is every bit as useful as the series from Dragons #75 and #76. 

Ed follows this up with Eight Devilish Questions. This is the article than also originally clued me it to how to figure out the HD of various higher level demons and devils. I say clued me, but in reality it was more along the line of "duh, why didn't I think of that!" 

Nice ad for White Dwarf.  Bigger ad for the 10th Anniversary set of D&D books. Really, really wish I had grabbed those then. Of course, if I had they would have gotten lost with all my other AD&D books from that time.

A big overview slash big advertisement is next the first Dragonlance novel, Dragons of Autumn Twilight in Chronicles: A Novel Idea. I know a lot of gamers around my age and older complain about Dragonlance, but frankly I don't get it. It did change the game, but in all ways for the better. 

Ad for Bard Games' The Compleat Fantasy Series and The Atlantean Trilogy follows.

My entire middle section is gone here. It was The Treasure Trove. I am not sure if I took this out or if it was like that when I bought this box of old Dragons.  While by the rules I invented for myself saying I could not review what I don't have, I do want to make one minor breach of that.

As I mentioned, this particular issue was bought by my DM at the time. He took all the magic items here, and a few more of his own, that rewrote all the magic item tables in the DMG. Impressive or ADHD? You decide. Anyway, we were running a small side quest for my paladin, Johan Werper II, and decided that he was on a quest (something that I later would call a "Secret Journey" that all member of his holy order had to do.  On this quest, to make a long story short, he found the sword Demonbane. It fit so well with his quest that I made it and even the Citadel of Conjurers a part of my world mythos. MY Demonbane and Citadel of Conjurers took on a different life than the ones that eventually were published in the Forgotten Realms but history was made on that cold rainy afternoon in October.

Penny Perricord is up with Spies' Advice, some questions and answers for Top Secret. Normally this particular column was written by Top Secret Head Administrator Merle Rasmussen. Not sure why he wasn't here. Maybe out watching the Top Secret! movie?

Coming Attractions lets us know what is getting published soon by TSR. An Indiana Jones adventure  Crystal Death. Some Dragonlance metal minis. The second Conan adventure. The odd one, 2001: A Space Odyssey for Star Frontiers. I never grabbed this, but I wondered with a universe like Star Frontiers with lasers and robots and faster-than-light travel, we would get one about a ship that only made it to Jupiter.  Well that is the nature of licenses boys and girls. Indian Jones, Conan, and Dave Bowman here were all part of TSR's big license push. I am pretty sure they lost money on these.

Speaking of Sci-Fi the Ares section is up next.

"Does Anyone Here Speak Aslan?" from Joseph Benedetto, Jr. covers language skills in Traveller.  It is a pretty good guide and one I would adopt for other sci-fi games like Star Frontiers. 

Sadly I am missing the next pages of Day of the Juggernaut a Star Frontiers scenario by William Tracy. I am also missing the Marvel Phile of Cloak and Dagger, two of my favorite Marvel characters to be honest.

Alex Curylo is up with Careers in Star Law. This is a follow-up to Kim Eastland's article in Dragon #87. Not about lawyers, but law enforcement. 

Not to be forgotten but we do get some new Gamma World material in Don't Leave Home Without 'em! from Scott Hutcheon. This covers new gear for Gamma World.

Our short fiction piece, The Rune and the Dragon, is by Lawernce Watt-Evans.

Paul Smith reviews the Shōgun card game. Ken Rolston is back with full reviews of Mercenaries, Spies, & Private Eyes, Death at Dunwich from Theatre of the Mind Enterprises for Call of Cthulhu (I always like the cover of this one), and The Vanishing Investigator for Gangbusters. He has capsule reviews of Dragons of Despair (he didn't care for it), Marvel Super Heroes, and Bree and the Barrow Downs from ICE for MERP.

Gamers' Guide covers all the small ads. Including an ad for Texas Instruments TI-99 programs to create characters. So yeah computer character generators are at least 40 years old. The rather infamous "Who sez dragons don't fly" t-shirt is featured twice. Lots of other t-shirts too. 

Ad for the Indian Jones RPG.  Wormy, Dragon Mirth, and Snarf Quest wrap up this issue.

All in all a really great issue. Lots of great articles, including many that can still be used today. Did Malarea ever see her diabolic plans come to light? I must know!

Not a Mail Call Tuesday (But Just as Good!)

I was recently at my FLGS, and I decided to pick up some old friends.

Like many gamers my age, I started with a wide variety of D&D books. A Basic book here, an OD&D book here, and an AD&D book here. In my case, I started with a lot of D&D Basic (B/X) books. I picked up my AD&D books later on.  So my first AD&D books were Deities & Demigods and the Fiend Folio. I only later grabbed the PHB, DMG, and MM and when I did, they were "newer" Easley/Orange spine covers.  I wanted mine to be different from my then DMs. 

Also, like many gamers my age, I lost them in one of the many, many moves during my university days. This was sad, but I had my 2nd Ed books so I could still at least play.

When I got to a point where I could settle down and get them back, I bought back the original covers. But I always missed the "Trinity" of the orange spine ones.  Well, I decided it was well past time to fix that.

I now have the original covers, picked up around 2000 or so. The WotC reprints. And now the Orange Spine ones.

All are in really good condition. I have others, like my softcover Monster Manual and Players Handbook from England and my first-printing PHB and DMG. But those are all safely tucked away from light. 

And I had the mini versions of these covers, so that was one of the reasons I was not rushing to get new copies of these. But I figured I really should get them.

They were not cheap, much more expensive than when I re-bought the original covers in the early 2000s, but honestly, they are really worth it to me.

I have to say, it does put me in the mood for some AD&D 1st Ed! I think I even have some goldenrod character sheets around here as well.