John D. Rateliff's Blog, page 45

So, how many copies of THE LORD OF THE RINGS does one m...

 So,  how many copies of THE LORD OF THE RINGS does one man need?

The answer: apparently, one more:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/mar/25/jrr-tolkiens-own-illustrations-appear-in-lord-of-the-rings-for-the-first-time

--John R. 

So, I've been reading some Kipling and was reminded of W....

So, I've been reading some Kipling and was reminded of W. H. Auden's belief  that history will forgive an author his or her personal failings so long as the work is good.  That seems to run counter to the current milieu. 

--JDR

 Time  . . .

Worships language and forgives

Everyone by whom it lives . . .

 

Time with this strange excuse

Pardoned Kipling and his views

And will pardon Paul Claudel

Pardons him for writing well.

            —W. H. Auden, 1939

Old TSR Boardgames (DUNGEON)

So, perhaps the most successful TSR boardgames of them all was DUNGEON, the creation of Dave Megarry,*  which went through at least six editions, the earliest as far back as 1975 (the year after D&D itself debuted) and the most recent almost forty years later in 2014. Part of its longevity was no doubt due to its conveying the feel of a dungeon crawl. This must have made DUNGEON a godsend to those who wanted to play D&D but cdn't find a DM or reliably put together enough people to form a PC party. 

Once again my cache of this particular TSR boardgame turn out to be a misc collection of incomplete copies which fortunately can be combined to make a playable game.

FIRST EDITION.  1975  

--Patch Press, Beloit  (no sku#).

Like a few of the other early bookshelf boardgames from TSR, this one has a horizontal orientation, changed to the standard vertical orientation in the next edition (cf the same shift between the 5th and 6th editions of Fight In The Sky). Most of those box bottoms are blank but this one is an exception, with a paragraph of text pumping the game.

My copy has the game board, which someone has carefully  marked up, apparently to show production what color goes with each space. Also in the box are the cards,  pawns, and dice. There's no rulebook, but there is the following intriguing note in with the other components:

Steve Winter's note to Frank Mentzer.

When I showed this to some of the TSR alumni I game with, they not only confirmed that 'Frank' wd have been Frank Mentzer, Gygax's right-hand man, but to all our surprise Steve Winter recognized the handwriting of this note to be his own. 

 SECOND EDITION.  date unknown; poss. also 1975.  (sku#1002)

This box may just be a reprint or variant of the above rather than an 'edition', but in any case combining this with the first edition fortunately enables me to fill out a complete playable set. The box lacks the board and playing pieces (pawns) but contains what seems to be a full set of cards (unpunched), the rulebook, and two copies of the double-sided 'Introductory Game' rules. This version of the rules gives the following credits:

Game Design: David R. Meggary.  [sic]  

Consultation and Game Development: E. Gary Gygax. 

Cover Artwork: Larry Kessling

Board Artwork: Keith Hill and Richard Hill

Monster and Treasure Card Artwork: Tracy Lesch
Printing: Patch Press, Inc.
NOTE: also in this box is a copy of the rules for the next (third) edition of the game. I'll defer discussion of that till I get to the next section, other than to note that these artists' names are unfamiliar to me; I suspect they were part of the Minnesota gaming contingent rather than belonging to the TSR stable. 

THIRD EDITION.   1980 or 81? (sku#1010).  ROSLOF COVER. (bottom damaged)

Here we have an almost playable game: the board (an actual board this time, replacing the earlier postermap), two copies of the rules (each including the 'Introductory Game' rules sheet), cards, two unpunched sheet of chits, pawns, dice, and a 'Gateway to Adventure' 1981 TSR catalogue.

This box looks much more like a mainstream boardgame, like Monopoly, and less like a hobby game.

The credits here are a good deal different, and more closely resemble The Usual Suspects:

Design:  David R. Megarry

Development: Gary Gygax

Revised by: Harold Johnson

Revision Assistance: Gary Gygax, Allen Hammack, Evan Robinson, Lawrence Schich

Box Cover: Jim Roslof

Gameboard Revision: Jim Roslof

Card Art: David S. LaForce, Jim Roslof

FOURTH EDITION. 'THE CLASSIC DUNGEON'.  1992 (Cover damaged). (sku#1045)

The thing that most stands out for this edition is the great Keith Parkinson's  cover. That, and the fact that my copy is water-damaged so that artwork is almost entirely obscured.** In fact my copy of the Third Edition's bottom is stuck to the top of my copy of the Fourth Edition's top. 

A pity, really, since here I've got the whole game: playing board, cards, dice, plastic miniatures (replacing the pawns of old), and digest-sized rulebook. Once again the credits have changed quite a bit:

Original Design: David R. Megarry

Development and Additional Design: Jeff Grubb, Steve Winter, Michael Gray, Gary Gygax

Editing and Rulebook: Scott Haring

Typesetting: Angelika Lokotz

FIFTH EDITION. 2012.  WotC.

I bought this one at the Barnes & Noble at SouthCenter on Monday April 29th 2013 --i.e., a good while after I'd left TSR/WotC/Hasbro for the last time. I played it with Steve Winter and Luis that same night. I liked it, but since it's since sat on my shelf undisturbed for eight years maybe it's time to let someone else enjoy it. Of them all this one is obviously in the best shape and includes all the components: board, rules, cards, tokens, paper stand-up figures, dice.

The credits once again reflect a generational turn-over of creative staff. 

Original Design: David R. Magarry

Development: Chris Dupuis, Jeff Grubb, Steve Winter, Michael Gray, Gary Gygax

Editing: Jennifer Clarke Wilkes

D&D R&D Senior Group Manager: Mike Mearls

--plus another two dozen or so who affected the product in some way (management, art, playtesting)

[SIXTH EDITION. 2014]

-- I don't have this edition, but I'm told it's pretty much the same as 5th edition except with different art, more cartoony in style, no doubt in hopes of attracting a younger audience.

And there it is. If I've left out any editions, let me know.

--John R.

--current reading: Ordway, Kipling (REWARDS & FAIRIES), light novel

*TSR seems to have been unsure how to spell Megarry's name. It's given as Megary on the sides of the first edition box, Meggary on the title page of the second edition rules and in this edition's credits, while the third edition title page and credits give Megarry, which seems to be the actual name.  Meggary was part of one of the two great pools of talent TSR drew on in its inception: he belonged to the Minnesota games who came to be associated with Arneson (the other being the Lake Geneva area games who came to be associated with Gygax).

**To cut a long story short: when we moved to the house in Delavan I thought the storage shed's roof didn't leak and stored a lot of games in there.  It did. 

Old TSR Boardgames

So, just one more post to complete this series about early TSR bookshelf format boardgames. 

The one I've saved for last is the most successful of the lot; David Magary's DUNGEON! (1975)

I'll try to get up this weekend. 

--John R.

--current reading: TOLKIEN'S MODERN READING by Ordway; APPENDIX N, ed. Bebergal; PUCK OF POOK'S HILL. 

--current music: old cassettes from the long ago.

I Make Coke Salad

So, a few days back Janice asked if there were any desert we hadn't had in a long time that I'd been hankering for. I suggested either oatmeal cookies or coke salad -- at which she opted out, saying that if I wanted coke salad (a dish of which she is not fond) I'd have to make it myself. 

For those of you who've never had it, coke salad is not a salad in the lettuce and dressing sense but a jello desert with fruit mixed in. And, of course, coca-cola. I suspect it's a Southern thing.

I haven't made it in a long time, partly because it's inimical to a low-carb diet. I do still have the recipe but in the fashion of old recipes it has a list of ingredients but little more. So I called up my mother, who remembered some of the details, and my sister, who remembered the most between the three of us. Janice got me the ingredients and night before last I gave it a go, and by yesterday I had coke salad.

For those of you who might want to give it a try, here's how it goes:

Dissolve two packets of Black Cherry Jello in hot water, as per directions on the box. But instead of cold water, you next add Coke. This recipe dates back before the time of 'New Coke', which might explain why it tasted off the last few times I made it, back when New Coke was a new thing. 

So we used two bottles of Mexican Coke, the kind with cane sugar rather than corn syrup.*

Then add in all the rest of the ingredients: a small can of crushed pineapple (sans juice), a cup of pecans, a jar of maraschino cherries (also sans juice). Pour into a large flat Pyrex dish. Sprinkle mini marshmellows on top. Chill overnight (or a few hours, if you're impatient). Enjoy. 

Be warned: Makes a lot. Especially if you're the only member of the household who eats it.

  --John R

*The people in my family who drank Coke (that is, everyone but me) favored the small glass bottles, so we got smaller rather than larger bottles.

Friday Midday in Cats

So, only two cats in the adoption room today, down from six this time last week.  

I knew Sonona and Panoma had found new homes, but hadn’t heard that Ruby and Timmy had been adopted as well.

That just left JILL and JACK, who enjoyed being out the whole two hours. They spent most of their time in the front room, playing games (with me, with each other, and sometimes by themselves), enjoying being petted and the occasional roll on the floor combined with a good belly rub. Each had a half-hour walk and showed themselves v. sociable, walking up to people to make themselves available for being petted.  Jack has an Opinion about dogs, which is that they’re okay so long as he doesn’t see or hear them. So I think we can add ’no dogs’ to his profile.
When I got home I gave one of our own cats a double walk so they don’t feel left out. He is after all a Purrfect Pals alumni in his own right.

Here’s a picture of Jill (or Jack).
—John R.

Oxfordshire's Lost Dragon

So, I just finished rereading a favorite of mine, HOBBERDY DICK by K. M. Briggs (1955).* This novel by the great folklorist incorporates a great deal of authentic local folklore in a story set in Oxfordshire just after the end of England's Civil War. The iconoclast Puritans, newly come to power, destroyed a great many relics of the past and put an end to many traditional practices in the belief they were either heathenish or Catholic. My eye was caught by a paragraph in which a country girl tells her new city girl friend about some of the recent changes in the area:

" 'Tis not long to May Day now," said Marion,

 "and so flowery a May Day as us could wish,

  though 'twon't be like the old days. My grannie

says how when her was a girl, aye and when my

mammie was a girl too, they had a great old dragon

carried through Burford streets, all painted gold

and red, and there was guisers and morris men

dancing behind it, all in green and yellow and

white, and they set up the maypole on Church

Green, and danced round it like David in front

of the Ark.:"

(page 126; emphasis mine)

We are later told the fate of this processional figure:

Whitsuntide came and went almost unnoticed.

In the old days it had been a great time of rejoicing

round Burford, too conspicuous to escape suppression. 

It was years now since the procession had formed

to fetch the Whitsun buck from the forest lodge,

and the great dragon had been burned in '41**

(page 141, ibid)

At first I wondered if Tolkien had known about this great red and gold dragon figure once carried through village streets in Oxfordshire, and whether it helped inspire that little masterwork FARMER GILES. On the whole I'm inclined to doubt it --Burford is on the west side of Oxfordshire whereas Giles' Thame and Worminghall are in east Oxfordshire. There too a quick dip into Wikipedia shows that the Burford dragon was quite real (as I'd expect from Briggs), but it celebrated a battle between Wessex and Mercia in which Mercia (whom Tolkien tended to identify with) suffered a major defeat.

Still, with Tolkien you never know what little bit of story might get stowed away in his mind, ready to pop forth when needed. For example, there's this bit of lore about barrows:

It was now nearly certain that Martha had been caught 

near the barrow, and in all probability she was still beneath it. 

The barrow was one of the hollow places that had long lost

its proper occupant, and when a gentle spirit deserts a place

an evil one is almost certain to possess it.

(page 157; emphasis mine)

--it wd be tempting to suggest that Tolkien influenced Briggs, but the chronology doesn't really work out: Tolkien's barrow scene appears in THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, published in 1954, whereas Brigg's book was published in 1955 --making it unlikely she wd have time to borrow from Tolkien's newly published book.

So, the Briggs-Tolkien connection is valuable mainly in that it shows us how two contemporary authors drawing on the same source can produce two such different books.

--John R.

*CSL said of this book

“And have you read Mary Norton’s The Borrowers and The Borrowers Afield? And K. M. Brigg’s Hobberdy Dick? — the latter good, but either Kipling or De la Mare, if they had had the idea, wd. have made a heavenly book of it, and hers is not quite good enough. "

--Just an example of how wrong he cd be sometimes. See CSL COLLECTED LETTERS Vol III page 700

**That is, 1641

FIGHT IN THE SKY / DAWN PATROL

 

So, now having had a chance to sort through what I have of the various editions of DAWN PATROL (a.k.a. FIGHT IN THE SKY), the results are more chaotic than I expected and far more interesting. 

First, here's a listing of all the editions of the game, as redacted from game designer Mike Carr's account on  the F.I.T.S. fan club's website:

1st edition (1968). 25 copies

2nd edition. 50 copies

3rd edition. 100 copies

These first three editions (which may have been less 'editions' and more revised printings) consisted as "photocopied rules, a handful of playing charts, and some crudely printed maneuver cards. Players were required to make their own playing pieces and to create their own square grid, but no one seemed to mind too much in those days"

4th edition (1972). Guidon Games. 1,000 copies. professionally printed. came in a box and included "cardboard-mounted aircraft playing pieces". Later reprinted, "without the box, packaged in a large envelope".

5th edition (1975). TSR. blue box, blank bottom. boxtop printed by Patch Press in Beloit. "new and expanded". print run: unknown, but mention is made of "the first 1000 copies".  no sku# on boxtop.

6th edition (1979). TSR. red box. no mention of print run. sku#7003

7th edition (1982). RENAMED 'DAWN PATROL'. TSR. an 'upgrade . . . with more of a role-playing emphasis' 'expanded rules'. "sales peaked at over 20,000 copies sold in 1983"**. 'Several years later . . . went out of print', though still available through the Mail Order Hobby Shop 'for several years' thereafter. sku#7008. This is the version of the game most people know.

8th edition: announced as forthcoming in 2018 (reverting to original title) but so far as I can tell this "new, expanded and deluxe 8th Edition" it has yet to appear.

*       *        *        *        *        *          *         *

Now, with that for background, my bits and pieces make a lot more sense.

First off I have the 40-page 7th edition (DAWN PATROL) rulebook with its accompanying uncut card sheets. I got this from my friend Slade on Wend. November 1993.

Second I have the complete boxed set of this edition, again from Slade, this time on June 7th 1994. This includes the boxtop and bottom, rulebook and cardsheets, two copies of the attractive poster-sized mapsheet, two sets of colorful airplane counters (one German, one Allied) [four sheets in all, unpunched], and my character sheet from the one and only time I played the game. 

My memory says that this was at a GenCon about mid-way through my '91-'96 stint at TSR, but the evidence of the character sheet says otherwise: it was on Friday January 7th 1994. I was playing Gustav Von Dine, a rank novice flying his Albatros D III that April 1917 morning. The game lasted just five rounds before my character went into a dive and escaped whatever his team encountered that day, exiting the game with an experience total of Missions: 1; Kills: 0. I guess this was a case of 'quit while you're ahead'

Third I have a copy of the red box 6th edition still in the original shrinkwrap. I admit I'm curious but since I'm looking at these old games preparatory to getting rid of them it seems a bad idea to open it up after all these years. Both this and the next item I got in the big giveaway at WotC (hence sometime between late 1997 and mid-2001) when the company decided to dump multiple copies of long out of print games, said to have been stored at Moses Lake, kept all those years by the legal team in case they might need to place a copy in evidence for one of TSR's endemic lawsuits. 

Fourth I have the blue box 5th edition -- except that its contents don't seem to fit what little I know about F.I.T.S. 5th edition. 

--two copies of the 15 page photocopy rules (both the same, so far as I can tell on a quick skim).

--a handful of photocopy 'FIGHT IN THE SKY AIRCRAFT REFERENCE SHEETS'.

--a mailer containing a deck of maneuver cards (blank on one side) held together with old rubber bands.

--a photocopy sheet of advice  about playing the game from Mike Carr,  the designer.

*       *        *        *        *        *          *         *

The most interesting thing about this fifth edition/blue box's contents is that they don't seem to correspond to what we would expect from the information above. The fifth edition came with a printed box and I wd assume a printed rulebook inside. Certainly the fourth edition had been professionally printed and it wd be odd to have backslided and reverted to the poor quality photocopy ruleset. Instead the photocopy ruleset seems to belong to the early (first, second, third) printings, which all three together totaled only 175 copies. 

But it's the mailer that's really interesting. Addressed to 

GARY GYGAX

330 CENTER ST.

LAKE GENEVA, WIS

53147 

with a return address of 

FIGHT IN THE SKIES

945 W. HOYT

ST. PAUL, MINN.

55117

      'FIRST CLASS'

 'RETURN REQUESTED'

The oversized envelope also has a meticulous drawing of a SPAD XIII and the back a sort of copyright statement: "ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BY / M. CARR AND WGIG "

The postmark is hard to read but seems to be April 1968. Certainly the stamps (six 6-cent Roosevelts) date from 1968, not 1975, the date of the blue box it was stuffed in.

Thus this blue box's contents seem not to be the printed rules of 5th edition nor the mailer used in reprintings of the 4th (see above) but rather date back to an earlier era of the game.  

We do know that Gygax was impressed by the game in its earliest form and that Carr made the trip from Minnesota to run it at the first GenCon -- which took place in 1968, the date of the postmarks. 

 I think this mailer once held Gygax's copy of the original F.I.T.S. But it wd take a lot more work, by someone more expert with this game than myself, to prove whether the cards and rulebooks and reference sheets found with it belong to the same earliest era.

---John R.

*       *        *        *        *        *          *         *

*shades of DOCTOR LUCKY, except that Carr seems to have beaten James Earnest by a few decades.

**I assume this means in 1983 alone. Clearly DAWN PATROL benefited from the TSR boom of the early '80s

well this is interesting

So, when looking through my rather miscellaneous grouping of copies and partial copies of the old TSR roleplaying game DAWN PATROL / FIGHT IN THE SKY, I found this mailer.

More to follow tomorrow when I've had a chance to look into this a bit more.

--John R.

 

Old TSR Boardgames (DAWN PATROL)

So, by the early eighties TSR had its flagship game (D&D) in addition to their well-known stable of secondary rpgs, all of which went through several editions: BOOT HILL, GAMMA WORLD, GANGBUSTERS, STAR FRONTIERS, and TOP SECRET, soon to be joined by the MARVEL SUPERHERO game.* TSR also published one game that straddled the line between an rpg and a combat game: DAWN PATROL (sku#7008). Like BOOT HILL, this was a shoot-'em-up with an overlay of roleplaying, as is suggested by the description on the box top: DAWN PATROL: Aerial Combat Role Playing Game. This is confirmed by the layout of the rules, which limits the "Role Playing Aspects" section to four pages and moves that out of the 32 page rulebook into the supplementary charts.

What's really interesting about DAWN PATROL is that it had an independent existence before and after TSR. In fact, the game sold by TSR as DAWN PATROL was the 7th edition of a game previously known as FIGHT IN THE SKY.  Inspired by the 1966 movie THE BLUE MAX, game designer Mike Carr** created a World War I flying combat game which has the distinction of being the only game played at every GenCon --or so I was told when I got to play the game in the early '90s, guided through the rules by Skip Williams. I thought this was at GenCon, but having just turned up my character sheet ('rank novice') from a game on Friday January 7th 1994 I think it must have been at Winter Fantasy instead. 

For much more about a game from the era of dinosaurs that managed to evolve into a bird, see the FIGHT IN THE SKIES society's website:

 http://dawnpatrol.info/introduction-t...

For more about my copies of some of the earlier versions, see the next post.

--JDR

*CONAN, INDIANA JONES, AMAZING ENGINE, BUCK ROGERS, all came later, as did WotC era rpgs like ALTERNITY, DUNE, and WHEEL OF TIME, only one of which (ALTERNITY) managed to establish itself for more than a brief run.

**Otherwise best known as the editor of the AD&D PLAYER'S HANDBOOK, perhaps the seminal book in our industry, and for designing one of the best-known early D&D adventures: B1. In Search of the Unknown.