Great Super 8 by Ethan Gilsdorf from 1981 (backstory HERE).
I'm not normally nostalgic, and am in fact deeply uncomfortable with the very idea of the emotion.
This being said, the site of those old gold character sheets, the Mountain Dew, and the at that time new Dungeon Master's screen (much better than the 4th edition one, as the first edition screen had all of the mechanics you'd need as a DM) is pretty overwhelming.
I was eleven years old in 1981 and I'm sure I played through the module they show here. I recognize the map, but can't remember which one it was.
Publishing an article (with Neal Hebert) on elves in Kobold Quarterly (to many, the successor tothe TSR first edition glory days of Dragon Magazine) was an incredible highpoint for me, as is co-editing (with Mark Silcox) the forthcoming Dungeons and Dragons and Philosophy volume for Open Court. We've got some incredible articles that could change the history of the game.
In the introductory portion of the current draft, Silcox and I write:
Whatever eccentric muse should be given credit for inspiring D&D’s original inventors, we think that this much at least is clear: the game’s swift ascent to worldwide popularity in the 1970s and 1980s represents the most exciting event in modern mass culture since the invention of the motion picture. Decried as godless by the pious, dismissed as frivolous by the powerful, and ignored for decades by the arbiters of artistic value, the game appears destined to remain a cultural landmark, and recently seems to be enjoying a resurgence in popularity.
Word.



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