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.

Another walk down geek memory lane

No trip to Toronto is complete for me unless I head over and have a look in one of my old favorite stores... The Silver Snail.

This is a comic book and hobby shop that I have been visiting since around 1985 or so, I still remember the first pilgrammage there, my RPG/comic geek friends and I made a weekend visit down to a friend of our's place for the weekend for a big Dungeons and Dragons weekend. I think we may have been actually down to go to the Pandemonium gaming convention, but my memory is a little hazy.

Anyway, on Toronto trips, we would always hit the holy trinity of comic book stores to pad our collections. All were on Queen street west. Dragon lady Comics (now gone,) Grey Legion (above Harvey's, now gone) and the best of all, Silver Snail.

I recall on our first visit, we only knew the street, but not really where it was and we ended up walking about 4 blocks past it until someone insisted we check a phone booth for the address. Because of that moment, I will never forget that it is 367 Queen west.
The store front has changed a lot since then, it used to just have the sign and not much of a display, now there is a huge picture window that has some timely awesome construction built in it. This time is pretty amazing looking display for the new Indiana Jones film. You can see some photos of this display here.

In the old days, the downstairs just had rows and rows of comic bins to flip through, with the really expensive comics hanging in bags up on the walls. This has all been replaced with huge pull out drawers containing the comics down the centre, then floor to ceiling bookshelves along the walls with graphic novels, art books and the like.
A beloved remnant of the old days is the stained glass dragon window at the top of the stairs. It used to be that downstairs was comic books, and upstairs was games and miniatures.
These days, games are still upstairs, but there are far less of them. I think the glory days of RPGs are long past. In fact I think my local games store in Boeblingen has a way better selection of games than Silver Snail does now. Perhaps I will do a future post on my local gaming stores. I know of four in the general area.

Now the upstairs is dominated by "collectible action figures" something I am not personally thrilled by. Granted, the sculpting on most of them is pretty amazing, but when I compare them to my good old 1980s star wars figures, I just think the new ones don't seem that fun to play with.
Something really great SS has always been good is Japanese imports. Lots of giant robot model kits and other oddities. I finally found a hat that would allow me to answer the age old question, "what would I look like if I was some sort of human/cartoon fox hybrid?" I tried to look deadly serious.
Well, that is the nostalgia trip for this session. I think I will do some some future posts on the games/comic stores I have in my area these days. It is maybe interesting for the few ex-gamers reading this...

***edit*** I have just learned that my "no longer there" comments are not accurate.

Grey Legion is now named Grey Region and exists on Yonge St.
Dragon Lady Comics has moved to College St.
Sorry about that, but I have not been comic shopping for about 15 years, give my poor memory a break!

Board Game Treasure trove... Part one

One of the things I was looking forward to when I headed back to Canada was rooting through the few old boxes I had left there. I knew that I had left some older games back there, but I was not totally sure what was in there.

Here is what I found...

The first exciting box in the memory pile was the game Hacker (1992). This was a game that HEAVILY borrowed from another game I have Illuminati. Like most Steve Jackson games, it was ok, overpriced and had not as much replay value as you would like. The basic idea was that you are a hacker who is competing with the other hackers to gain control of the most systems. The cards are full of clever "in-jokes" that get a little less funny each additional time you read them.Next up is Marvel Super Heroes, this is an RPG, not a board game. It is funny, this is a game that my friends and I played A LOT, but never really in a traditional RPG manner. Instead of adventures, we would normally create a pool of heroes/villains, then distribute them to each player and have some sort of free for all battle on a big city map. We did this regularly and I have to say it was awesome. The best was throwing in vastly under/overpowered characters into the mix. I am sure most comic fans wanted to know what would happen in a battle between Aunt May, The Fabulous Frogman, and Thor.A game I was thrilled to still have was this one. The Star Trek RPG and Star Trek Advanced Combat Simulator (1986) all in one box. I hardly ever played this one as it was pretty complex and in 1986 I think most of my gaming buddies and I were looking for a quicker fix than power management of capital ships in space. I still have all the books and every single counter, so I think I could still revisit this one, or maybe even EBAY it one day if I think I could need the cash.
Finally (for this post anyway) the single best thing I found was my old edition of Cosmic Encounter. This is the Mayfair Edition, which I purchased around 1992 or so. The original game is from 1977, and I understand it will be reprinted by Fantasy Flight Games later this year. I also owned the expansion, More Cosmic Encounter, but that one was sadly not in the box.

This game is one where you take on the persona of an alien race, and then strive for domination by capturing a fixed number of planets. Each alien race (there are MANY MANY) has a special ability that allows them to do something outside the normal rules. I played this in school and it was a blast. I had already planned to buy the new version, but now I will have to wait and see if it is a straight reprint of this one or contains any improvements.
Stay tuned, there was a bit more in the closet, there will be more posts on this topic coming...