Not quite as surprised though as when I stumbled on this post by the esteemed Mike Sterling of the Mike Sterling’s Progressive Ruin Blog. He got his hands on a 1974 Tactical Studies Rule book by THE Gary Gygax and Brian Blume of Dungeons and Dragons fame on how to create miniature warfare on Barsoom.

I was able to find this scanned image online as well showcasing some of the artwork within the rule book.

I can honestly say I’ve never heard of this rule book but I’m going to have to try and get my hands on it now!

He is an artist I would be very happy to roll 20s with…

Thanks to Comic Art Fans for the wonderful Bill Sienkiewicz D and D promo illustration as well as to NiceSalman1 for uploading the episode over on YouTube.

Is it any good? Well…yes, actually. One of the features I enjoy greatly is the option to recruit your Facebook friends, which thankfully in my case means I can count on friends of the Retroist site, Magisterrex and Smash Hansen. This feature works if your friends happen to be online or not. If you recruit your friends into your questing party, when they log into the game a result screen will pop up, giving details on how much gold they earned and they receive a share of the precious loot you might happen to find during your quest. You can recruit other Facebook players but the higher their level the more gold it will cost you to hire them, where your friends cost nothing. What? I’m not cheap…A Dwarf knows to keep his eye on his money pouch.

There are 50 core adventures (Quests) at the time of the launch of the game, with three levels of difficulty in case you are finding yourself in need of a greater challenge. You are allowed to pick from Wizard, Fighter, Thief, and Cleric for your character classes and you can choose from Elf, Human, Halfling, or Dragonborn for race. I was slightly disappointed that I couldn’t choose a Dwarf but I figure they need to work out the bugs before they present the greatest D and D race of all time. I ended up picking a human Cleric, and messed with his appearance until he looked more like a Dwarf. ;)

While you control your friend’s characters they are allowed to join in “Spectator Mode”, helping with choices and providing buffs to their allies and increasing the XP gain as they do so. Without a doubt it has been a fun title and I if you decide to become a Hero of Neverwinter then feel free to friend me on Facebook so that we can join forces and battle the forces of Evil!

A big thanks to Magisterrex for the pic you see up top and make sure to follow the link to read his own review of the game!

The books with the orange spines are AD&D Version 2 books, printed back in the 1980s. The bottom three books are from the first printing and date back to around 1980. Except for the two duplicates, I bought all of the orange ones new. Most of them still have their price tags on the front, ranging in cost from $15-$20. The first two books I purchased (the Player’s Handbook and the Dungeon Master’s Guide) came from Toys ‘R Us.

The Player’s Handbook contained all the rules a player needed to play the game, while the Dungeon Master’s Guide contained even more rules and number needed by a Dungeon Master to run a game. Books like Unearthed Arcana and Oriental Adventures expanded the game’s boundaries by adding new races, classes, spells and items. (If you ever wanted to play as a ninja or a samurai, Oriental Adventures was a must own!) Although the Dungeon Master’s Guide came with a list of monsters to battle, Dungeon Masters could expand their worlds by purchasing the Monster Manuals and Legends & Lore, which contained hundreds of additional monsters, creatures, ghouls and goblins to attack players with.

Next to my stack of books I found my old 3-ring binder, containing all of my old D&D characters.

This picture was photocopied (in black and white) from one of the manuals. My mom made a copy of it for me at her work, and I distinctly remember coloring it with colored pencils. This was probably around 1985 or so. The picture has been inside the binder so long that the ink from the original photocopy has literally melted on to the plastic. I couldn’t remove the picture even if I wanted to … which I don’t.

Inside the binder are years of memories, characters I took on countless adventures. In my mind they are all still hanging out somewhere together, waiting for the next adventure to come along. Perhaps they are all sitting in a tavern on the outskirts of town, drinking a mug full of ale and trading old war stories.

Each character sheet, along with dozens of little lines and boxes designed to track all sorts of information, contained a big empty square in which you could draw a picture of your character. I wasn’t a great artist by any stretch of the imagination, but I can remember spending lots of time on those little drawings. Sometimes I would find a picture in a magazine or in a computer game and then work on reproducing it on those paper sheets. One of my characters, “Elric”, was a half-Orc that I used to pretend was an old crotchety grandpa. No matter what other players wanted to do, I would always make Elric argue with them until they agreed with him. And when they finally did, I’d change my mind and argue the other way!

Elric wants you … to give him your gold!

The more I pack for my impending move, the more I realize some of my most valued possessions are the things that, at least from a financial standpoint, many people would consider worthless.