Comments on: The original golden age of fantasy role playing games.

The original golden age of fantasy role playing games.

Pope Guilty — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 02:47:06 -0800

Old School FRP is a tumblr blog with a ton of illustrations and art from the golden age of Dungeons and Dragons and games that were totally not Dungeons and Dragons.

By: jeribus

jeribus — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 03:25:25 -0800

These are fantastic! So many of them beg for a Gary Larson Farside style comic notation below them. Also, Donjons & Dragons, from the ad for French language version

By: Literaryhero

Literaryhero — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 03:28:57 -0800

These are great. Archer on pteranodon is not impressed with your castle. This one made me do a double take, and then I realized that I just watch too much TV.

By: fearfulsymmetry

fearfulsymmetry — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 03:54:31 -0800

The nostalgia it burns! (Lose 3d6 HP)

By: Elementary Penguin

Elementary Penguin — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 04:06:59 -0800

So there's thirty feet of nostalgia?

By: graymouser

graymouser — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 05:20:11 -0800

Some of my favorite early RPG art is from the UK edition of the 1977 D&D Basic Set. Games Workshop redrew every picture in the book, to interesting effect.

By: 256

256 — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 05:47:49 -0800

Sorry, it appears that I am fresh out of fucks to give, having smoked them all.

By: Mezentian

Mezentian — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 06:20:56 -0800

You know what is best in life? This sort of thing. (Also Lamingtons made by Women)

By: ersatz

ersatz — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 06:33:10 -0800

To roll for damage greater than your enemies' HP, see them fail their morale checks, and to hear the lamentation of their women (for extra 'roleplaying' XP)?

By: selfnoise

selfnoise — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 06:43:54 -0800

I always wanted to be a Rakshasha when I grew up. Based mainly on that picture.

By: Mezentian

Mezentian — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 06:50:34 -0800

I always wanted to be a Rakshasha when I grew up. Based mainly on that picture. The Tumblr is crushing my browser, but please tell me it is the Tiger in the smoking jacket from the MM. Or tell me that my memory is not faulty, and that was the Monster Manual image.

By: Nanukthedog

Nanukthedog — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 06:51:59 -0800

What I'd really like to find the advertisement that depicted a koala bear in ... probably a mechanic's uniform holding two uzis... and work boots... big work boots.... I thought it would be a Rifts thing, but Rifts Australia was 1999 - which was way after this advertisement... think '86-'90' is when I'm betting I saw it. So maybe a Steve Jackson Games thing, or maybe it was it's own rule system... All I remember thinking was post apocalyptic Australia with marsupial mutants? Awesome! I spent years drawing versions of the picture myself wishing my parents would let me send money in to order the rules for it...Anything I could find at Mr. Paperback in Elsworth or The Wizard in Bangor was find by them, but no putting myself on some strange dude's personal mailing list.

By: Mezentian

Mezentian — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 06:55:18 -0800

probably a mechanic's uniform holding two uzis... and work boots... big work boots.... I thought it would be a Rifts thing, but Rifts Australia was 1999 Mutants Down Under. Palladium's TMNT line if I recall.

By: ThatFuzzyBastard

ThatFuzzyBastard — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 07:09:52 -0800

Foglio art is always so fun. But D&D was for metalheads! Paranoia / Call of Cthulhu FTW!

By: Mezentian

Mezentian — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 07:42:39 -0800

I am just going to leave this here. Yes, that is Jamie "Lost Boys" Gertz and Alan "Captain Cameron" Ruck, in the most awesome D&D group ever.

By: Ironmouth

Ironmouth — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 07:59:04 -0800

Emrikol the Chaotic

By: KingEdRa

KingEdRa — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 08:56:05 -0800

Damn you, Pope Guilty! I have spent the past 2 hours going through this tumblr! So much awesome. I keep finding stuff that I actually owned. Thanks for this!

By: mephron

mephron — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 09:02:53 -0800

Mezentian: that picture, yes.

By: fings

fings — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 09:10:43 -0800

[About Jack Vance] "an anagram of his name became the legendary D&D character Vecna, whose preserved eye and hand were first introduced as powerful artifacts in D&D Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry in 1976." Wow, all these years and I never knew about the Vecna/Vance connection. Is it bad that I own about half of these, and recognize another quarter as things I was familiar with back in the day?

By: Celsius1414

Celsius1414 — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 09:16:35 -0800

It's amazing how you don't see certain pictures or illustrations for 25-30+ years and suddenly BAM there you are.

By: jiawen

jiawen — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 09:24:32 -0800

"I usually don't think of gelatinous cubes having pseudopodia, but I do love this illustration. (Jim Holloway from D&D module B5: Horror on the Hill, TSR, 1983.) "Unless there is a more specific story recorded out there, I'll always assume that the first gelatinous cube was inspired by a player rolling a clear D6 with round pips and accidentally knocking over a miniature." The actual story is this: in the early days, people were using various kinds of real-world beasties as inspirations for D&D monsters. Michael Mornard created a monster based (if I recall right) an amoeba. It ended up being a cube because that's the shape it would need to be to fill a dungeon corridor.

By: dragstroke

dragstroke — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 09:51:16 -0800

Normal Saturday morning, then POW - hey there pre-adolescence, good to see you again... Astonished at how many of these I remember vividly. Thanks!

By: nubs

nubs — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 09:56:11 -0800

*rolls saving throw versus nostalgia critical failure! Lose 1d4 hours remembering the past.

By: Flunkie

Flunkie — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 11:59:30 -0800

I was looking through them and thinking how weird it is that I can see a picture that I haven't seen in like 25 or 30 years, yet instantly and correctly think "That's from the Monster Manual" or "... the Fiend Folio" or "... Dragon Magazine" or even "... White Plume Mountain". But then on page two, it went even farther. One glance, and: "That's from that article in Dragon that suggested all sorts of things that you should be carrying around to be prepared for strange situations, like silver manacles in case you need to keep a werewolf prisoner."

By: JHarris

JHarris — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 12:10:26 -0800

Michael Mornard created a monster based (if I recall right) an amoeba. It ended up being a cube because that's the shape it would need to be to fill a dungeon corridor. Lore Sjoberg's comment was that it was "evolutionarily adapted for graph paper." I'd link to it, but a good portion of Lore's writing is succumbing to bitrot -- I can't find it on the Brunching Shuttlecocks site, and the Book of Ratings site seems to have been taken over by a squatter.

By: seventyfour

seventyfour — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 12:40:09 -0800

Something Awful has a long running and often very funny series that also scratches this itch: WTF AD&D

By: edheil

edheil — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 13:04:28 -0800

Good times, good times.

By: XMLicious

XMLicious — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 13:30:31 -0800

No pets or Dralasites allowed!

By: Chuckles

Chuckles — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 14:20:01 -0800

Ball Buster

By: JHarris

JHarris — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 14:45:14 -0800

The thing about Ball Buster is, it actually has an interesting gimmick that is unfortunately overshadowed by the name.

By: porpoise

porpoise — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 21:15:34 -0800

Oh my - seeing those pictures again brought back intense memories of the smell of those old rulebooks.

By: Mezentian

Mezentian — Sun, 01 Sep 2013 00:40:29 -0800

I know what you mean. I just went and sniffed my Monster Manual, and my 2E PHB. I can report that the Monster Manual (it is the '78 version) smells much, much nicer.

By: Pope Guilty

Pope Guilty — Sun, 01 Sep 2013 13:24:01 -0800

When I worked as a library page I got really good at identifying the decade a book was from based on its smell. ...what?

By: fings

fings — Mon, 02 Sep 2013 21:41:53 -0800

Wow, thanks to this thread, I started talking about Dave Trampier's art with a friend, and from there discovered a few things, like the fact that the fighter on the DM's screen is a self-portrait (compare to the later photo of Mr. Trampier the taxi driver). Also, the location for Emirikol The Chaotic's ride? The Street of the Knight in Rhodes. (via the Facebook David A. Trampier Fan Club).