“Enter the Gateway to Adventure”
From the back cover of the September, 1980 issue of Fantastic Films (Amazon.com search*) comes this ad for the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game.
Maybe I’m a strange one, but I can never understand why various retrospective books avoid sharing old advertisements with us. I would personally love it if reference works spent some time to show off ads from the line being covered; just imagine how much fun it would be if Wizards of the Coast produced a new D&D historical overview title and included many of the old ads.
Related articles
- Spotted Online – The Long Shadow of D&D (battlegrip.com)
- 1997 Documentary, TSR: The Fantasy Factory (battlegrip.com)
Y’know, I have the “30 Years of Adventure: A celebbration of Dungeons and Dragons” book from 2004 (check it out if you don’t already have it!) and I don’t recall seeing even one ad for the game in there. It’s really bizarre, now that you mention it. I suppose lots of material may have been lost or in a funny rights situation due to the TSR-to-Wizards of the Coast transition, but it seems like an oversight nonetheless.
Actually, now that the book’s 10 years old, it seems like it’s time for an update anyway. The book was released just after 3.5 — a lot’s happened since then!