A sequel to my first post on Milton Bradley’s Dragonmaster. Click to make big. We owe the scans to Tom Beiter, champion of pop culture posterity and author of Garage Sale Finds, a detailed profile of “garage sale treasures and sometimes trash.” (You will not believe the amazing stuff that Tom finds—and often restores.)
It’s clear that Pepper had a deep understanding of Medieval, Renaissance, and Pre-Raphaelite art, and his method—mixing charcoal and watercolors—produced some incredibly vivid colors and textures. His impeccable imagination did the rest. Each card is a work of art, and the originals, if they still exist, belong in a museum. (Is there a fantasy art museum? A commercial art museum?)
I’m betting that one or more of you can come up with a game that does Pepper’s work some justice. From what I’ve heard, the original version is not very compelling.
2 Warps to Neptune 
The closest Roger Zelazny fans ever got to a deck of Amber trumps.
http://www.rozamira-tarot.ru/tarot/a/yantarnoe-taro-tarot-ambre-amber-tarot.html
The site is in Russian, and the Designers were French or Belgian or something, but hopefully this is what you’re after.
There are individual viewing options in the right side columns.
Wow. Talk about a memory. I do believe I had these at one point in my life.
I just snagged a complete copy of the game on ebay for $20. Hopefully the cards are in good condition.
Awesome. I just found out the Dragonmaster crystals were also used in Milton Bradley’s Laser Attack (1978). I wish I had that game too.
Thanks for the shout out and the kind words. I think a commercial art museum is a great idea. I’d love to see the original art for board games, toys and Atari cartridges. I wonder how much of it was saved.
Tom, I love your site and envy your know-how. I can barely fix a toilet.
I really do like the commercial art museum idea. It would also be cool to include concept art of all sorts, from film to government agencies like NASA. Does Kickstarter do that sort of thing?
DragonMaster and Dark Tower are imo The peak of Bob Peppers fantasy output, where are the originals and what condition they are in ? – I agree they need to be preserved for posterity, these scans are pretty good, but in terms de-screening these images successfully with a professional plugin in photoshop maybe double or triple this pixel information would be required, though they still are the best scans on the internet.
The game was terrible. I loved the art though. I remember one summer vacation that I would just stare at the cards for the entire road trip.
This game rules, I personally find it a lot of fun. Still like to play with the family time to time. I’d most closely compare it to the card game Hearts, although the strategy is much more shifting and competitive throughout. Hardly has anything to do with fantasy though, and the tale in the booklet is very contrived even for a card game backstory.
Well, I I’m choked up right now after stumbling into this post. My step dad, I who was still in college at FSU when my mom met moved in with him… Me in tow was the coolest guy. (he passed away four years ago.) He was into computers.. Bang away on his own TI 99 and TRS 80… Drawing fantasy artwork in the spirit of Frazetta and the Hikdabrandts., and with Zeppelin playing always in the background… He’d spend hours working on his very own gaming system to (these are his words now.. Loll) “fix The flaws in Pepper andnGygaxs two games and do somethifng that really took you there” He incorporated using Peppers cards with your character to give other players a visual of who you were. Dungeons and Dragons ID cards kinda lol.. And he envisioned a future iteration of his game where you would use his computer to write a program that you would input your vision of your character and the. Computer would then automatically randomly generate your abilities and then draw your character and print out your ID card… Man if that wasn’t Ai text prompt programming he had in his head forty years ago. Pops was ahead of his time. But alas, I he graduated, and entered the work force and did what a good dad did.. And put his dreams aside to provide so that us kids could try and realize our dreams. Here to you Pops… I hope wherever you are your system is done and your role playing your ass off.
Louis “Xeno” DeBono