Daily Doings at the Line of Death Bar & Grill

Earlier today, khaosworks posted a note to his Facebook which had links to three articles in Escapist Magazine about the past, present, and future of Dungeons & Dragons, also known as D&D.

This brought back some fond -- and not-so-fond -- memories. I first cut my teeth on the original D&D, back in 1978 -- high school for me. We had spirit-master copies of the original three rule books. There was a nice article in the Courier-Express about the wargame store in town, The Articles Of War. But the rest of the folks in the war games club in high school didn't want me in their group or their games. So I found other people to game with.

Then in 1979, basic D&D came out, in the box with the blue book and some cheap polyhedra dice. (The edges and points on those dice wore and chipped quickly.) And I remember riding the bus to Ulbrich's (a bookseller and office supply store) in University Plaza one Friday night in the fall of 1979 to buy the first edition AD&D rulebooks (which I still have). I never bought the AD&D 2nd Edition rulebooks, or any books from subsequent versions. Nor did I play any of the later versions.

I also started getting into Game Designers' Workshop's space-based RPG, Traveller. I bought whatever rule books I could find. But I never found anyone to play with. So the rule books sat around, unopened.

The collector in me would like to complete the set of rulebooks I have. But that's something that's low priority right now. I found some lists on Wikipedia that I can use to inventory what I have, and what I need to get to fill in my gaps.

What I'd rather have is the original D&D rulebooks and supplements in electronic format. If they're PDF files on either a CD or DVD, they'd be much lighter to carry and much easier to transport and store. I'd also like to get back issues of The Dragon magazine, the original Traveller rulebooks, and back issues of the Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society. I know the Traveller stuff is available from Far Future Enterprises. But the early D&D stuff? Unknown.