Reading through all of TSR's D&D products
More of the same. All the instruction text is exactly the same, complete with the same example as Set 1 – ie they didn’t bother updating it with an example from Set 2. Date Information Same as Set One. Enworld has a date of February 1977. The copyright information, as Zenopus states, says February 15. …
Continue reading “Monster & Treasure Assortment Set Two: Levels Four-Six”
Dungeon Masters Kit – Number 2 Check out those dwarves! Check out that treasure! Check out that weird archway? Like Palace of the Vampire Queen, this wasn’t created by TSR but is included here because it was distributed by them. The weirdest thing about this? It uses hex maps, where every hex is 3 feet. …
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 …
Continue reading “Monster & Treasure Assortment Set One: Levels One-Three”
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 …
Continue reading “Dungeon Geomorphs Set Three: Lower Dungeons”
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 …
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 …
Continue reading “The Lost Caverns of Tsojconth – Gary Gygax’s first ever published D&D module”
I was kind of dreading this book a bit, expecting a lot of tedious miniatures rules that I’d mostly skip. However, even though there were some very dry bits, it turned out to be quite a quick read (unlike Gods, Demi-Gods and Heroes). Probably the most interesting parts of these older books are the Forewords …
What it says on the cover. Kind of like the Monster Manual but not as much info. The foreword is interesting, saying that this is the last supplement and don’t hold your breath for another. It’s like D&D is “done” and there’ll only be minor new stuff in Dragon magazine. And a funny note about …
Dungeon Masters Kit – Number 1 The first ever published D&D module! It’s here because it was distributed by TSR. This is quite an impressive adventure considering there were basically no other examples to get ideas from (apart from the minimal and weird example in the D&D rulebooks). It’s quite amazing how polished the whole …
Oh my, psionics… I never understood them. And I still don’t after reading this. I play a lot of board games and there’s an art to laying out the rules of a game. Often I find a game that seems difficult but turns out to be quite easy and comparable to other board games – …