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Thursday, September 12, 2013

Zenopus Archives - Year Two

 
Candlelit Treasure, by Tom Wham from M&TA Set Two, 1977

Another year has passed here at the Archives!

Some notable events from the second year of the blog:

Thanks to Playing at the World, we now have evidence of when the Basic Set was first publicly available (July 1977, at Origins). See:  When Was the Basic Set first available?

Last Fall, Wizards started selling retro D&D T-shirts, several with Holmes Basic art, including the box set cover. These are still available for $20 + shipping at dndmerch.com.
See: New Holmes Basic T-shirt and Holmes Basic T-Shirts

In December I started a Holmes Basic Community on G+ which now has 161 members.

In January, Wizards began selling D&D pdfs again at dndclassics.com. No Holmes yet, but plenty of highly compatible B/X and BECMI material, with new additions weekly. 

In February Steve Winter reported that David Sutherland's original artwork for the Holmes Basic Set had been re-discovered in a crate at the Wizards headquarters.
 
The manuscript for the Basic rulebook surfaced as part of the J. Eric Holmes collection. Still waiting for more information on this amazing find.

In August, my short article, Lesser Magic Items, was published in Dungeon Crawl #3.

My work on the "Perilous Mazes" project for Delving Deeper morphed into Holmes Ref, which remains in progress. My free time has limited the amount of completed work for this. The reference sheets I've finished so far can be found here. Next up is a set of Wandering Monster tables for dungeon levels 1-9.

10 comments:

  1. Love your blog! Looking forward to more Holmes Ref.

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  2. Thank you for the first two years Zach, it's been thoroughly enjoyable. I look forward to your future insights into the ever fascinating world of Holmes D&D.

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    1. Thanks as always for the kind words, David. You were one of the first to support my blog with a link in your sidebar.

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  3. It's only been two years?! I thought you were one of the elder statesmen. Here's hoping you stick around for a long time.

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    1. Thank, Timrod. I have been posting in forums for longer. I just realized my Acaeum account was created in 2003...!

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  4. I still hope you find that article for that old magazine in which Holmes explains if D&D is bad for one's health. That will be a good day for many long-time gamers and will undoubtedly show us if any health issues might have occurred over time due to play. I'd like to see the figures, if any: I'm quite sure that those who only played his (and other) basic sets would only have some basic complaints, whereas it is just possible that those who played advanced may have something more complex to fret about. But we will not know if we don't see that magazine one day. I hope you find it--I'll keep reading at least till you do.

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  5. Congrats on 2 great years - looking forward to more in the months to come!

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  6. Congrats! I'm still peering into your archives trying to catch up. The more I peer, the more I wish I had some peeps to play Holmes Basic with....

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  7. Congrats and thanks for all of the incredible work that you do.

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