Obscure Art Friday: "Chainmail" by Gary Gygax

Today is Gary Gygax Day (his birthday), so here's an extremely obscure artwork by the Dungeon Master himself. It's his (signed) version of the cover of Chainmail (first published in 1971), which was illustrated by Don Lowry. Gygax's art is from his Diplomacy variant "Crusadomacy"; a link to this was recently posted on the Acaeum by Lurker Below. The date of this article is not clear. The document is a scan of a photocopy, and is annotated as being from "PZFST 5.7" (Panzerfaust). The text of article indicates it was originally published in Domesday Book #5 (~July 1970), which is confirmed by the Acaeum's description of its contents. The map in the Crusdomacy scan is also drawn by Gygax and is dated 1970. 

10/24/12 Update: Per the Jon at Playing at the World, "The original appeared on page 114 of Jack Coggins's self-illustrated The Fighting Man (1966), at the start of the chapter "Crescent and Cross" about the Crusades."

Bonus Gygax: Wizards still has available a page to download a four-page pdf of Gygax's Appendix A: Random Dungeon Generation from the reprint of the original Dungeon Master's Guide. This is essentially a stand-alone section that could be used with any version of D&D. The reprints were released last week, and purchase supports the Gygax Memorial Fund. I haven't purchased them since I have 2+ copies of each of the originals, but at least two members of my gaming group have each bought the full set. Since Wizards spent so much time retyping the entire the text, I'm hoping they will make the full pdfs of each book available for purchase in the future.

UK "Deep Dish" Holmes Basic Set

"Move over bacon, now there's something meatier"

Acaeum member Gnat the Beggar posted the above picture today in the Recent Fun Finds thread. It nicely shows off the height difference between the US (left) and UK (right) versions of Holmes Basic Set (produced by Games Workshop). As you can see, the UK version is much taller (more room to store modules!) and is missing the overlapped artwork on the box edges. Gnat also posted a photo of the contents of box:

In addition to the rulebook, the module B1 and a set of standard Holmes dice, there are two loose sheets: (1) an advertisement for White Dwarf magazine (which began its run in mid-77, just before the Holmes Set was published in the US), and (2) a sheet replicating pages 31 and 32 of the module (player's background material), something which has been found before with UK copies of B1.

The printing history of Holmes Basic in the UK is convoluted. The first two known printings of the rulebook were sold alone (without a box) and had different artwork on the cover by John Blanche of Games Workshop fame, and throughout the interior by Fangorn (Christopher Baker). I believe the text of these are the same as one of the earlier US printings (1st-3rd printings). 

After this, the UK version appeared as a boxed set with a rulebook that restored the original cover and interior art (as pictured above). The interior of this rulebook appears to match the 2nd edition (Nov 1978) of the US version. Strangely, however, this UK version retains the Lizard Logo and F116-R code on the front cover instead of using the new Wizard Logo and 2001 code.

The various printings are described on the Acaeum Basic Set Foreign Editions page, which has at least one error (the 3rd UK printing refers to Halflings, not Hobbits) and is missing a putative 5th printing with prices missing on the back cover.

See also the Zenopus Archives website Foreign Editions page.

The Travelers Inn by paleologos (1981)

The Green Lilac Travelers Inn (1981) - click link below for a larger version

The above piece is great, back-in-the-day game art illustrating part of B2:

"I was going through some papers over the weekend, and I found this sketch I made in Grade 8 of a group of adventurers entering the Inn in the Outer Bailey of the Keep"

"I haven't seen this picture in over 20 years, but it immediately brought back some of my first memories playing D&D...good times."

     -paleologos, writing on Dragonsfoot

The layout of the Tavern (Area 15) and Inn (Area 16) match the map in B2, with the wall to the Inner Bailey to the north.

Viriconium Fragment

The Avon edition (1974), which I read last year. Cover art by Gray Morrow.

For those familiar with Viriconium, author M. John Harrison today posted a bit of a new story on his blog. I believe (but don't really know) that this is the first new visit to Viriconium since 1985.

Last week he posted links to the articles "Covering Viriconium" and "Recovering Viriconium" on the blog feuilleton, the first a fascinating look at the cover art of the Viriconium books over the years, the second a presentation of ideas for new versions.

If you like post-apocalyptic science fantasy (Starman's Son, Hiero's Journey, Hothouse, Hawkmoon), you can hardly go wrong with the first book The Pastel City. And then things get much stranger. I am currently reading Viriconium (Fantasy Masterworks, 2000), a compilation of all four of the Viriconium books.

Update: This fragment was later re-written by Harrison into a non-Viriconium story, The Crisis, per the comments here. However, another new Viriconium story, Jack of Mercy's appeared in the 2017 collection, You Should Come With Me Now.

Father's Tees

"Loch Ness Imposter"

One Father's Day present I received was a T-shirt from Threadless with the above image.

Shirts (no longer available) that I've been given before:

"Dungeon Crawlers"

"Middle Earth Tube Map"

"In the Belly of a Beast"

"Periodic Table of Monsters"

Every Day is free RPG day

...on the internet. How about a single-page reference table of all of the Bluebook monsters?

But today is FREE RPG DAY 2012 in a participating store near you: Store Locator.

Is this a depiction of Azathoth?

And here's the loot list.

Goodman Games has a new DCC product for this year. Here's the Preview Page. 

And I received an email from them with more info on this:

It includes two new adventures, plus details on the Mystery Map Adventure Design Competition. The first adventure is The Undulating Corruption, by Michael Curtis, which is a level 5 expedition to cure a wizard of corruption. The second adventure is The Jeweler that Dealt in Stardust, by Harley Stroh, a level 3 heist where a clever thieves can excel.

The Mystery Map Adventure Design Competition is an exciting chance for aspiring game designers to earn $1,000 and see their adventure in print. You'll find the Mystery Map within our Free RPG Day module. Finish the map, pitch us on the adventure you would write around it, and see if you have what it takes to write DCC RPG adventures! The winning adventure pitch will land a $1,000 contract.

Wizards of the Coast also has a preview page up for their offering (for 4th edition).

Here are rpg.net reviews of all of the items (thanks to Reviews from R'lyeh for posting this).

Noble Knight Games is also offering each of the items on-line for 1 cent each (min purchase of $15 per item). See their blog post.

Warlocks & Warriors Wilderness Map

The Warlocks & Warriors map board, drawn by David Sutherland. Source: Board Game Geek.

Reading Hill Cantons' Pointcrawl post, Bruno's Demise's Wild Campaign (where he used maps from Dungeon!, Outdoor Survival and Boot Hill among others), and then Save Vs. Dragon's Hex Crawl Week (1953 Peter Pan board game) got me thinking that David Sutherland's map for the Warlocks & Warriors (above) would make a great wilderness map for a Holmes Basic campaign, particularly for beginners/kids.

Warlocks & Warriors has several things going for it when viewed through a Holmes lens (as we always view things here). The game came out the same year (1977) as Holmes Basic, in the same size box, and with the same cover artist (Sutherland). It was designed by comic book/fantasy writer Gardner Fox, mentioned by name on page 40 of the Blue Book (this was not in Holmes' original manuscript, but was a later edit by Gygax/TSR). Fox published a series of Conan-esque fantasies from the late 60s to early 80s, including the Kothar series, the Kyrik series and the Niall stories in Dragon. The first volume of the Kyrik series is actually called "Warlock Warrior" (1975), which I still need to read to see if it's connected in any way to the game (so far, I've only read the Niall stories).

I'll need to think on this some more, but obviously the Sea Port in the lower right hand corner would be Portown, and the Castle in the upper left hand corner would be the Keep on the Borderlands...perhaps the "Borderlands" is all of the area between. Skull Mountain would be in the Mystery Mountains. The Dragon's Lair would be home to an ancient red dragon - the same one shown on the cover of the Basic set. Other Basic Level modules could be placed in various locations; B4 would fit in the Parched Desert, B1 might be the Lost Dungeon, etc.

Each circle would represent one "hex" of x miles (size to be determined later) that has a path through it. Characters might move off the path with some kind of penalty. The stars would represent special areas; IIRC, in the game they are the spots where wizard characters can cast spells, so they might be areas of increased magic and/or enchanted monsters. Arrows would represent difficult terrain (in the game they send you back two circles). The random tables printed on the map might be worked into the encounter areas.