At long last - much longer than I anticipated - my re-read is complete, having caught back up to November 1978. Here are my final notes before we finally get to move on to new items:
Tomb of Horrors
In my original post I didn't touch on the illustration booklet for the module, but I must say I really like it. TSR would do it again for some future modules, but sadly it never became a standard for them. I'm sure cost reasons played a factor - not only are you increasing page count, but you're also having to pay more for artwork. Now not every module would benefit from one as much as an ultra-atmospheric adventure like Tomb of Horrors of course, but in the appropriate circumstance it's a huge aid for players in both communicating information as well as setting the tone. The Daves (Dave Sutherland and Dave Trampier) do the art for this one, and they do an excellent job of it. Take this gargoyle for instance:
These guys having come a long way quickly, and product artwork in general has taken leaps and bounds from the ultra-amateur offerings of the original boxed set. I have no doubt that production values like played a part in helping the brand grow so quickly.
Dragon #16
This is a minor non-D&D note, but if I described to you a game of galactic conquest where each player took on a different faction, and one of those factions was described as "Hordes of extra-galactic, insect-like warriors insidiously working into the fabric of the galaxy. Totally incompatible with native life forms, they seek only to increase the swarm, using anyone they run into as a new food source," what would you say I was describing? If you said the Tyranids from Warhammer 40K, you'd be wrong! The correct answer is the Zente from a PBM game named Pellic Quest, advertised in this issue.
Google searches revealed no connection or discussion of possible connection between the two, but it's one of those things that make you wonder if someone from Games Workshop cribbed the idea from a relatively obscure game a decade earlier (Tyranids were introduced in 1987), or if it was truly a case of coincidental independent creation. That sentence above, taken straight from the ad, is pretty on the nose, however, so if I was a betting man I'd go with the former. This sort of thing is more common than you think, and as Mr. Plinkett says, the line between paying homage and ripping off starts to blur sometimes. I still remember reading a cheap sci-fi paperback in college that I swear Blizzard later ripped off for the design of Starcraft. It had it all - space marines, psychic human operatives, a psychic alien race associated with crystals, and a biotech alien race that absorbed other species. I'm convinced one day I'll track it down and blow the lid on Blizzard's plagiarism 🤣.
Dragon #20
Okay so this one is off-topic as well, but in re-reading Dragon #20 I noticed this ad for an upcoming convention:
I knew I had seen that illustrated figure before on an album cover, and a little help from ChatGPT reminded me that it's the cover to Collective Soul's Hints, Allegations, and Things Left Unsaid:
What ChatGPT wasn't helpful with was uncovering the origin of this illustration. Fortunately a little old fashioned Googling did the job. Some sources (including ChatGPT's hallucinations) will say that it comes from the playbill for the Sweeney Todd musical:
However, that musical came out in 1979, whereas this issue is from 1978. I wasn't able to confirm if this was truly the original (my curiosity was not commensurate with the effort that would be required to pursue this further), but I did find an example where it was used as advertising on an envelope from the 19th century, which you can view here.
So that's it for the re-read. Where do we go from here? Well, we're going to start by actually going back in time a little bit. You see, the novel Quag Keep came out in 1978, which was the very first D&D novel, being set in Greyhawk. Six years ago when I was first doing this blog all I had on my collection spreadsheet for a publishing date for it was the year, and so I was saving it for when I got to the end of 1978. Since then, however, I managed to discover that it was actually published in July of 1978. So I'm going to go back and read it now, do a post, and then once it's done I'll move on to module B1, which was published in November where we currently are in the timeline. If you've been sticking with me I appreciate your patience as I've been laboring to get this project moving again, and I'll hope you'll join me as we at long, long last get into new material.
