News — Jeff Easley

I’ve written a bit on Al-Qadim once before here on AotG, but I have to say the more I look at the rather substantial collection I have, the more I wish I’d actually played it. Today I’m going to take a look at Golden Voyages. Written by David ‘Zeb’ Cook in 1992, this campaign line mixes it up with TSR’s other settings of the time, Dark Sun and Planescape. I’m certainly reminded of Dark Sun as I look at it. A small boxed set, the contents include six detailed booklets, a series of maps by Dave Sutherland III, a few...

In 1986, the market for TSR products was cooling. The company was in a spiritual tailspin after the dismissal of Gary Gygax, and shifting technology was a barbarian at the gate with Nintendo’s release of their NES that propelled Super Mario Brothers to the bestselling video game of all time.It was also a period when the bread and butter modules of the early 1980s were slipping, either to players having ‘grown up’ into DMs that preferred to run their own homebrews or just market share loss taking its inevitable toll. That said, TSR was still producing modules in their now...

There was a time when I fell in love with D&D… well, perhaps that’s not entirely true.  There were actually a dozen times I fell in love with D&D, but the time I fell in love with Aleena was the first time I fell romantically in love with D&D. For all you Grognards out there who remember the Red Box, I have to wonder if you fell in love with Aleena too, and if a part of you died with here in that first intro adventure penned by Frank Mentzer [curse you Frank, and curse you Larry Elmore for creating...

When you go back this far, back to September 1982, it is nearly impossible as a lifelong gamer not to review the entire magazine and just stick to the artwork.  In this case, I’m going to have to give some more detail on the issue, because it is absolutely too good to pass up. It begins with an incredible article tag on the front cover called ‘Fantasy Football’!  I kid you not, 1982 and someone at TSR had trademarked the name before it spilled from the lips of every beer swilling NFL fan or bored office staffer in America.  But...

I’m not sure how many of you out there ever tried the XSOLO series of modules from TSR, but there are a couple that are very fun.  I’m not really certain Lathan’s Gold is one of them, but still, it has some nice artwork in it and I’m tempted to take out my dice and give it a shot just to see. Written by Merle M. Rasmussen [is that a real name?] and produced in 1984, the module takes your character into the Sea of Dread [a favorite setting of mine and one that I’ve played in as recently as...