It’s announced that (the artist) Tom Wham is now on the staff of TSR. An article that wouldn’t make any sense in our current world – What to do if you lose your dice and you have players coming over to play. No-one has any dice? How could that ever be possible?! Probably the most …
Author Archives: nev
Monster & Treasure Assortment Set One: Levels One-Three
It’s a list of monsters. And a list of treasure. No seriously. That’s about it. Ok, so I guess if we consider when this came out, there were no published adventure modules, so you had to come up with your own dungeons, and I guess this made it a bit easier. Apparently most of the …
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Dungeon Geomorphs Set Three: Lower Dungeons
Yet more of the same. Of note, Set One was By Gary Gygax. Set Two was by Gary and Ernie. This one is back to just Gary. As with the other sets, you can read the example encounter descriptions at Greyhawk Online. Date Information The copyright date is September 21st 1977 but that’s also the …
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Dungeon Geomorphs Set Two: Caves & Caverns
More of the same. What’s surprising to me is how much of a gap there was between the first set and this one – almost a full year! (That’s assuming the date of the first set is anywhere near correct.) As with the first set, you can read the example encounter descriptions at Greyhawk Online. …
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Character Record Sheets – 1977
I don’t have this. Here you can see a reproduction of the sheet taken from Jasper’s Rantings. he recreated it as a pdf so you can download and print it. You can see some good photos of original copies here and here. These character record sheets incorporate all the various elements that make up characters …
The Dragon #6 Vol 1.6
An article about running trading ships with exciting things such as port taxes. Some minor extra rules about determining psionic abilities. Whatever. An article with suggested morale rules, where characters get new prime attributes, Bravery and Loyalty, and then there’s a ridiculous number of pluses and minuses depending on party make up, the monsters involved, …
The Dragon #5 Vol 1.5
Editorial notes that The Dragon is expanding to 8 issues per year. There’s a very lengthy article on witches which I mostly skipped, not being official. Creature Feature – The Anhkheg! with a picture by Erol Otus. A bunch of tables for wizard researching. Lastly, there’s a fun article that goes through all the times …
The Lost Caverns of Tsojconth – Gary Gygax’s first ever published D&D module
Although Palace of the Vampire Queen can claim to be the first published D&D module (not counting Blackmoor, which is more of a scenario), Lost Caverns of Tsojconth is the first published D&D module written by someone from TSR, i.e. Gygax. It wasn’t actually published by TSR though – it was published by MDG (Metro …
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The Dragon #4 Vol 1.4
This issue is focussed heavily on Empire of the Petal Throne. The editorial predicts the milieu may become as big as Tolkien’s Middle earth – guess that didn’t happen! D&D related content: just some very lame jokey lists of monsters and spells. And a display of some figurines – I actually have some of those …
Dungeon Geomorphs Set One: Basic Dungeon
A bunch of map pieces that can be put together to form a larger map. This is a curious mix in its design. The cover is very pleasant with good use of white space and nice typography. And the maps are finally of the type we know and love from all the first modules. But …