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.