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In 1980 TSR had already started to expand its role-playing brand with the addition of Gamma World, but they didn’t stop at the post-apocalyptic market. Enter the espionage role-playing game Top Secret.  Written by Merle M. Rasmussn [probably a fictitious character] and edited by Allen Hammack, this boxed set featured a full game book and adventure that would become the standard arms for most TSR boxed games until the mid-1980s. I played the game only once, but would have loved to give it a nice campaign shot if the DM was right for it [someone who could run a Bond-like...

There is no shame in my admission that I have an unabashed love of Robotech.  I love the animation, I love the RPG, I love the fiction, and heck, I even love the toys!  Still, the Robotech RPG has to be one of the most impactful pieces of gaming literature I’ve ever used in my years as both a player and a DM. Released as a licensed product by Palladium in 1986, Book One: Macross was something that jumped off the gaming store shelves as an opportunity for something completely different; that being a quickly resolved mecha combat rules set....

In the mid to late 1980s TSR tried to build on the success of their Basic D&D boxed set series by adapting a world dedicated to these supplements.  The result, Gazetteers, an impressive series of campaign setting books detailing the Known World as broken up into various countries. There were really no huge surprises or inspirations here as the design staff simply took real world empires throughout time and placed them haphazardly into the setting while sprinkling in nations dedicated to Dwarves, Elves, Halflings, and Orcs.  Still, the art from these books are excellent. Today, I look at GAZ 11...

I have to admit that doing an art review on any Dragon Magazine is a tough proposition because the bulk of the pages are filled with rather stunning gaming advertisements.  Still, there are three features that you can be assured are always reviewable with the magazine, the cover, the articles, and the comics. Today, I’ll be looking over Dragon Magazine #103.  Obviously, the first thing that is going to catch your eye about this particular issue is the stunning cover by artist Robert Pritchard back in 1984 [the issue itself is from November 1985].  I don’t know much about Pritchard,...

Back in the mid-1980s my DM, Mark, and I had a kind of gaming arms race going on.  Unfortunately for me, our remote location in rural northern Indiana didn’t give me access to a gaming store that wasn’t more than an hour away, and his older brother Greg, already in college, always managed to get him info and product well before I could lay hands on it.  This was the case with most everything pertaining to AD&D until at last, in 1986, I managed to get my first hardcover TSR book before him.   That book, Dungeoneer’s Survival Guide. Unfortunately for...