Board Game Treasure Trove... Part Three, the final one

Here is the last batch of fun that I found in my sister's basement. This one I save for the Dungeons and Dragons books that I found down there. It is by no means my complete, but I did not see some of the older ones, which may still be in my mother's basement too...

I was what you could call an avid D&D player back in the late public school and high school days, my friends and I met several times a week and did some gaming. We grew out from D&D and played many many games... a short list of RPGs I have tried at one time or anther would be...

D&D
Gamma World
Traveller
Marvel Super Heroes
Paranoia (Yay!)
GURPS
Runequest (one of my favorite characters ever)
Rolemaster
Palladium
TMNT
Top Secret
Psi World
Warhammer Role Play
Robotech
Rifts
Twilight 2000
Shadowrun
Probably more I am forgetting...
But it all started with D&D, my first and best love in RPGs. Here are some of my beloved books unearthed from the depths of the laundry room...

The original Monster Manual. I used to just read through this thing and soak up the images and flavour text. As a kid, I thought there was nothing better than a world filled with this crap. I was one of the people who would get Dragon Magazine and flip to the "ecology of the xxxx" creature article right away. This book is pretty worn out though, but I am glad it has survived.

Monster Manual II - just as good as the first! This one contained a lot of the monsters that had been added to the game over the years via modules and articles in Dragon Mag. I think I may have even spent more time looking through this book as the art was of a somewhat higher calibur than the first volume.
When D&D second edition came out, I thought they had a great idea to publish the Monster Manuals in giant binders, then as expansion came, you could just add pages to the book in the appropriate place. In practice though I never really liked it, the book was too huge, and the binder became quite warped. I think I prefer the hard bound volumes and don't mind flipping from book to book.
The 1980s of course brought NINJAs to pop culture and D&D had to of course find a way to integrate them into the game. A complete "Oriental" setting was developed, which of course only really seemed to deal with 80% japan and a little China thrown in. I do firmly believe that after the Samurai and Ninja chapters, no one used this book for anything. I mean, who wants to be a Sohei or Kensei? NINJA ME UP!
The warrior priest (cleric) was always a pretty key role in D&D, the character that healed everyone and did some other non-wizard related magic. There was an earlier book called "Deities and Demigods" that introduced various pantheon's of gods for your fantasy worlds, but that was replaced in the 2nd edition by this book. It was fun to look through, but in practice, I don't think you could ever really integrate real world historical mythologies into a game setting... I like it better when the world is completely alien and fantastic a la Tolkien, rather than having a bunch of knights and wizards in mumbo-jumbo land suddenly deciding to serve Quetzalcoatl.
Tome of magic... more new ideas for spells and items in the D&D world. I don't think I ever used it much as I never really played magical characters. I just liked reading the manuals by the time it was published.
Finally, the Ravenloft campaign setting. This was a supplement intended to create a sort of gothic horror world for adventuring in. Lots of vampires and werewolves and the like. This was also created as a response to the sudden popularity of vampires created by authors such as Ann Rice. I thought it was neat and the art was pretty fine in this one, but I think it was never used by me or our group.
OK, this third one has covered all the old games I dug up from their laundry room tomb. It was great to see them all again and I hope I can enjoy myself reading though them all one day. Chances of playing any of these again in my life seem rather slim, but who knows... maybe when we all retire I will meet up in the old folks home with some graph paper and a bag of dice ready to go.