Surveying the Gen X landscape and the origins of geek
Many thanks to Anthony Savini and Cecily Tyler, director-producer and producer (respectively) of the one and only Dungeons & Dragons: A Documentary, for the pics. Thanks also to Bill Meinhardt and Scott Brand. The cycle is part of their incredible D&D collection.
The box front is missing Bobby and Uni, but Strongheart, who appears in only one episode of the cartoon, is front and center. I’m trying to track down the artist.
More on the Power Cycle (“Exciting 3-D Dragon Head”) here.
From Dragon #74. If there’s one thing that can make your gaming session a real hoot, it’s a life-sized owlbear. Just don’t invite Tom Hanks.
The Art of the Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Game focuses on the heavyweights of the day: Easley, Elmore, Parkinson, and Caldwell. Thankfully, there’s also quite a selection of Timothy Truman, who I think is generally underrated. Almost all of the art above, most of it Truman’s, is sourced as “product design,” referring to the AD&D LJN toys released in 1983.
Many of Truman’s illustrations made it onto the action figure and adventure figure (PVC) cards, including the popular first series releases Warduke (Evil Fighter), Elkhorn (Good Fighter Dwarf), Zarak (Evil Half-Orc Assassin), and Melf (Good Fighter Elf). The same illustrations appear later in Quest for the Heartstone (1984), a module that includes many of the characters from the LJN line (and others that were meant to be part of the line but didn’t make the cut).
Truman’s gnoll illustration (sixth image down) is originally from Return to Brookmere by Rose Estes (1982), an Endless Quest book. His Orc (third image down) appeared on the back of the Orcs of the Broken Bone adventure figure card (below). His awesome Skeletal Warrior did not, for some silly reason, appear on the back of the Skeleton Soldiers of Sith card. The less awesome substitute is below.
There’s a nice trio of inks by Jeff Easley (seventh image down), also sourced as product design. I’m not sure if or when they were published.
Meet Grimlin. He’s a level 13 lawful good Elf Lord with a passable 1,900 hit points and 1,500,000 experience points. Trey tells the epic tale at his blog, From the Sorcerer’s Skull, and has a separate post about his cousin’s old school dungeon map, which contains a tower filled with “vestal virgins & such.”
There’s a lot to love about Grimlin and his myriad possessions (and “henchmen”), and everyone is going to have a favorite bit. For me, it’s the parenthetical four words under experience points on the bottom right of the second page: “(has been to college)“!
Send it all to PlaGMaDA, Trey! Grimlin deserves nothing less than immortality (although, honestly, he’s pretty much there already).
From the ’82-’83 Quartz Hill High School yearbook. Quartz Hill is in California’s Antelope Valley, northeast of Los Angeles.
I do believe the gent in the middle is wearing a head armor piece and holding a wooden weapon of some kind. The gent to his left is holding the original AD&D Players Handbook. Is that a gorilla on his ringer tee?
The girl-guy ratio is damn near 50-50!
(Photo via QHHS Alumni)
The geek is Patrick Rothfuss, who discovered D&D in the early ’80s, became a writer of fantasy novels, and recently found himself listed in Appendix E of the new Dungeon Master’s Guide. Read the hilarious and heartfelt story—he takes the sleeveless t-shirt head on, don’t worry—at his website.
I bet you’d forgotten about the Aerobie, the “flying ring” first sold in 1984. Because so many of us demanded a more aerodynamic flying disc, preferably one designed by an engineer.
Yup. I haven’t found one in the package yet, but here’s proof that it exists.
If you thought the D&D big wheel was a myth, think again. Coleco released a series of Power Cycles throughout the ’80s, this one among them, although I’ve never seen it advertised in any catalog. The pictures aren’t great, and the specimen is pretty beat up, but we can see that the cycle is fashioned in the image of—you’ll never guess—a dragon. I’m betting some sticker highlights have fallen off the face and probably the wheels (see what’s left on the nostrils and the wings). I love the colors.
The Elmore art on the back of the seat, from the box cover of the 1983 Basic Set revision, is the go-to image for all the licenses from 1983-1984, and there are three more pieces on the cycle’s dash. The two on the stem are also Elmore, seen here and here. I can’t identify the image on the very top—could be lenticular.
If anyone has an advertisement for the cycle, or pics of one in better shape, please let me know.
A real beauty, presumably sold at The Dungeon Hobby Shop. The dragon illustration is by Bill Hannan, taken from the cover of Dragon #1 (1976) and later used for the cover of TSR’s Days of the Dragon Calendar (1980).
Item sold on eBay a while back for just over 20 bucks.
UPDATE (1/19/15): Thanks to some digging by Zenopus Archives at The Acaeum, Scott Moberly posted the below photo from Gen Con IX (August, 1976) showing Rob Kuntz wearing the shirt. I’ve changed the production/availability date on my post accordingly. (The Dungeon opened in April 1976, and Ernie Gygax confirmed that he remembers the shirt well.) I’ve got a Gen Con XI t-shirt here, by the way.
2 Warps to Neptune 