News — Jeff Dee

The 1981 release of the Tom Moldvay edition of D&D Basic was before my time. I was 10 when this book was published by TSR for the final time, and I wouldn’t enter the hobby until the Red Box two years later.Still, the nostalgia content for the Moldvay box still resonates heavily in the OSR today, the bulk of players remembering it fondly right alongside the Trampier PHB and the Sutherland MM and DMG. When taking a look at it today, I’m moved by the interior artistic content since it captures a perfect era in the TSR evolution, something...

I often try to remember when I first got my hands on a copy of Fiend Folio. Truly, I have no recollection of that day, although I’m sure it was in some made gaming binge rush to outpace my DM Mark on how many core books we had. Whatever the case, it was mostly an afterthought to my gaming days, and honestly, like Erol Otus’s work at the time, I wasn’t really a fan of the art.Later, however, once I’d aged, actually studied art beyond the passing fancy, and had the beginning stages of nostalgia for the bygone days...

If you are an old school gamer, then you probably have a vague memory of the first D&D product you ever saw. For me, those visions of the past cycle around three distinct images, none of which I’m exactly sure were really ‘the first’. One, of course, is Elmore’s cover of the Red Box, viewed in the Sears Christmas Catalogue. Two, would be Jim Holloway’s cover for Dragon Magazine #88 owned by a fellow student in my 7th Grade art class who sat across from me. Third, would have been Jim Roslof’s cover for A2 Secret of the Slavers Stockade...

Please remember to go to Black Gate and take a look at my 'Top 10 RPG Artists' article if you get the chance.  You can find it here!   Now to the other good stuff!  Produced in 1981, the TSR classic A series module A3 Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords highlights some of the greatest artwork collected from the famous TSR ‘First Four’ [Jeff Dee, Erol Otus, Bill Willingham, and Jim Roslof]. This rather light 28 page module is the 3rd on a four part series and for AD&D 1E characters level 4-7. It was written by...

The 1980 release of the colorized cover edition of T1 The Village of Hommlet is certainly a foundation of the RPG industry and an iconic piece for almost any role-player brought into the game from the late 1970s all the way up to 1990.Truly, it is an incredible piece of work, penned by Gary Gygax and established as ‘the’ introductory module for the new Advanced Dungeons & Dragons system. Now certainly, B2 Keep on the Borderlands and X1 Isle of Dread might be more popular because they were included in the Basic and Expert boxed sets respectively, but again, that...