Every update to "What's New" since the site's inception in November 1999. Presented in reverse order, without hyperlinks.
2005February 11th: - Several additions to the Library section:
- Monster & Treasure Assortment changes
- Definitions of all module codes used by TSR
- A few simple book-binding definitions
- Estimates of print runs for various items
- Updated Ongoing Research page
- Hex Pad, Hex Sheets, and Hexagonal Mapping Booklet clarified. Additionally, a much more rare version of the Games Workshop Hex Sheets discovered
- Many updates to the Foreign Editions Master List, but most notably, further information on the German re-release of S1 Tomb of Horrors, and a large expansion to the known number of Israeli items -- including two modules (HCM1 and HCM2) released nowhere else!
- Yet another (sigh) 10th Anniversary Combo Pack: X1 / X2 / X3 / X4
- Some strangeness with certain illustrations in S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks
- Long-lost Greyhawk information hidden in the Dungeon Geomorphs and Outdoor Geomorphs
- New Second prints of T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil, City System, FR4 Magister, FR5 Savage Frontier, and FR7 Hall of Heroes
- A completely re-worked printing sequence for the Dungeon Masters Guide, based on new information and research
- New info on the first print of the Monster Manual
- A completely new item grading scale, based on the one currently in use by the comic book industry. In short, the old "Excellent" condition has been split into "Fine" (F) and "Very Fine" (VF), and the status of "Mint" has been elevated to a truly perfect copy (most "Mint" items on the market today should be correctly adjusted to "Near Mint"). Additionally (and most importantly, for collectors), "Shrinkwrap" has been changed from "a condition above Mint" to a modifier of condition. Therefore, an item can be "Very Good in the shrink", and will priced accordingly below one that is "Mint in the shrink". All the relevant explanatory essays on this site will be changed in the near future to reflect the new system
- Introducing The Acaeum Valuation Board: a group of individuals charged with the weighty responsibility of managing the estimated values of all items on The Acaeum. Hopefully, this will make our estimated values better able to reflect both short- and long-term market fluctuations. More on the Board can be found at this forum post
- ..and lastly, the first collaborative effort by the new Board: re-vamped estimated values for all items on The Acaeum, broken down by the new item condition scale. See the Indexes for more: Misc Index Module Index Rulebook Index Rares Index . Please note that rather than featuring huge swaths of green and red highlighting, we've designated a raised or lowered value by highlighting the module code column only -- just for this update. Future updates will highlight normally. Also, as this process is still "under construction", expect that some of the values will change as more data is compiled
2004
August 9th:
March 13th: - We are currently in the process of switching host providers. If you are seeing this What's New entry, the new provider is correctly resolving in your area. Please forward any problems you are having to webmaster@acaeum.com.
2003 December 21st: - A significant expansion to our essays on the storage of your RPG collection:
- Mold & Mildew Summary: the original article on this site dealing with the storage of your gaming supplies, and how to prevent & cure common maladies
Understanding Mold: a more in-depth look at what mold is, and how it survives Prevention of Mold: steps and methods used to deter the formation of the mold fungus Treatment of Mold: discussion of how to combat mold should it infect your collection Storage Materials: the right types of plastic bags and cardboard backers
While the depth of information in some of the articles may seem like overkill, the consequences of improper storage could be devastating to your collection. Ignore at your peril!
- A new "cardboard hanger" module print of WG4 Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun, a new Second print of Lankhmar: City of Adventure, and revised print information on the compilation version Monster & Treasure Assortment Sets One-Three
- Several new 10th Anniversary Combo Packs discovered, as well as the long-sought First print of the UK Monster Manual
- The mystery of WGRX Ivid the Undying is solved, but a new mystery takes its place: the "True First" print of the venerable Dungeon Masters Guide?
September 20th: - The booklets of the first three prints of the Original D&D Set, which we've previously described as "woodgrain", are no longer (this also applies to the "True First" printing of Greyhawk). The booklets' original coloration is actually very close to that of later prints; the scans we've had on the site were artificially discolored due to age. The term "woodgrain" will only be used to describe the color of the set's box
- The First (and only?) Australian print of the D&D Basic Rulebook
- The D&D Modules & Supermodules Level Chart, as well as an updated AD&D Modules Level Chart
- Printing mistakes: strange missing illustrations from the Second print of D1 Descent Into the Depths of the Earth, the complete list of missing illustrations from the Monster Manual prints, and the replicated rear cover of Monster & Treasure Assortment Set One onto both Set Two and Three!
- Several new "prints" of modules that came with a cardboard header, suitable for retailers (mainly Toys 'R' Us) to display on a hanging rack: B2, EX1, EX2, I4, L2, and S3. We're sure there's more out there -- scans needed!
September 9th: - New Second prints of FR7 Hall of Heroes, FR11 Dwarves Deep, and REF3 Book of Lairs
- New First and Third prints of the World of Greyhawk campaign setting, some corrections to the information on the other prints, as well as some added scans of the Gazetteer, the Catalogue, and the Glossography
- First Quest Music Album -- now on cassette tape! Unfortunately, the lower inherent dynamic range of the trusty cassette tape somewhat limits the full impact of this score (cough, cough), but it's still a nifty collectible
- AD&D Modules & Supermodules Level Chart, showing the applicable character levels for each module. Useful for charting out an extensive campaign. If anyone can cook up the data (preferably in an Excel table, utilizing different colors for each module series) for the D&D modules, we'll be happy to post it, too!
June 22nd: - The Acaeum Forums are back online now, after the recent hacking incident. It took much longer than expected, since the phpBB software has numerous bugs in it that were preventing restoration of the database.
Unfortunately, the last backup was May 11th, so all messages (and user registrations) since that point were lost. We promise to be more religious in backups, so future database crashes will be less catastrophic. Apologies for the inconvenience!
June 18th:
- The Acaeum Forums were hacked last night, and deleted from the server. The good news is, the only messages that were lost were the ones since the last backup. The bad news is, the last backup was one month ago. We will be back up shortly, once we're sure that the recent messages can't be somehow retrieved from the server. We apologize for the inconvenience.
June 15th:
- Added "Auction History" columns to all the Indexes, which list average auction prices on eBay and eBay UK. These values are culled from the two main eBay web sites using software specifically designed for The Acaeum by Olav Riediger. More information on this software, and the culling process, can be found in The Acaeum FAQ and in the How to Use This Site essay
- In conjunction with the addition of the Auction History columns, many of the Estimated Values on the Indexes have been adjusted accordingly. Most of the changes have, thankfully, been only minor
- New Tenth and Eleventh prints of the Players Handbook. Also, the mention of perforated or non-perforated reference sheets has been eliminated from the print listings; it was causing too much confusion, and nobody really cared anyway!
- Dark & Hidden Ways and Wild Things receive their own page, and have been moved to the Miscellaneous Index
June 7th:
Appreciate everyone's patience in the lengthy interim since the last update -- as you can see, we haven't been idle, and we hope you enjoy all the additions and changes!
- Just when we thought we had them correctly sequenced: a new Fourth Minus (hybrid) print of the Original D&D Set, and new Fifteenth and Eighteenth prints of the D&D Basic Set
- A new Fifth print of the DMs Screen (which slides the old Fifth print down to "Fifth Plus"), new Third and Fourth prints of the DMs Adventure Log, an interesting new Third print of the UK-version Players Handbook, and three new prints of the Official AD&D Coloring Album
- The Silver Anniversary Collector's Edition boxed set, and a new 10th Anniversary Combo Pack
- The long-lost Second print of Eldritch Wizardry has been found! Everyone who thinks they have a First print had better check this out....
- Due to popular demand, two major improvements to the Indexes:
- A new compact design, with highly-optimized HTML code for faster loading. This was especially necessary since we combined all the Miscellaneous and Module index pages onto single pages
- The Module Index is now organized by both module code and module title -- the sorting is toggled via the buttons at the top of the page ("By Code" and "By Title")
- The Artwork Museum is now online, showcasing original D&D artwork in collections worldwide. If you've got a piece of original TSR artwork that meets our submissions guidelines, please forward info and a scan our way!
- Several interesting updates to the Ongoing Research page
- Info and scans on several TSR newsletters of the late 1980's and early 1990's: Fantastic Adventures, Fantasy Worlds, Game World, and TSR Worlds. To go along with these, a re-vamped Periodicals Index as well
- Module WGRX Ivid the Undying is now available in our Library section. While released as a very large text file to the public domain some years ago by Wizards of the Coast, this particular version has been extensively edited and re-formatted by William Allman, and is most likely very close to what the published module may have looked like. Additional information on the possible existence of a pre-production version of WGRX Ivid the Undying (with cover artwork!) can be found on the Ongoing Research page
February 16th:
- A new Second print of WGR1 Greyhawk Ruins
- Upon finding a third copy of the First print Players Handbook that has a white (not orange) flyleaf, we've decided to delineate it as the "True First" print
- Confirmation of several Hebrew 1st Edition xD&D products, as well as scans of many of the Finnish items
January 11th: - Due to a bug in the forum software, some browsers (notably, Netscape) may have trouble with the registration activation sequence. Once you register with the forum, an e-mail will be sent to you with a hyperlink that looks similar to this:
http://www.acaeum.com:/phpBB2/profile.php?mode=activate&act_key=<activationcode>
When your browser attempts to digest this URL, you may get a "malformed request" error. The problem is the extra colon (":") after "acaeum.com"... delete this colon, and the process should work for you. Unfortunately, we're not good enough programmers to fix this bug in the actual code; hopefully a new version of the forum software will rectify it.
- A rumor surfaces of a fantastic rarity: Vampyr
- Several additions and corrections to the UK-version Monster Manual
- A new 10th Anniversary Combo Pack
- The hidden entries to MSOLO2 Maze of the Riddling Minotaur revealed!
2002 December 6th: - Flipped the First and Second prints of the Second Edition of Chainmail, due to new information concerning the addresses of Guidon Games
- Some insight on the rarity of the Fourth print Original D&D Set: 25,000 copies were printed, in contrast to the 3,300 copies of the Third print
- A new Second print of the Games Workshop (softcover) version of the Players Handbook, a new Fourth print of the Games Workshop version of the D&D Basic Set, a new Fifth print of B1 In Search of the Unknown, a new Third print of L2 Assassin's Knot, a new Fifth print of T1 Village of Hommlet, a new First print of the Art of the AD&D Fantasy Game, a new Eighth print of the DMs Screen, a new Second print of X5 Temple of Death, and a new Second print of X3 Curse of Xanathon
- Added a new Third print of the World of Greyhawk folio, and completely re-worked the sequence in bullet format (and included additional information). Please double-check your folios against this new checklist, and see if we've got any discrepancies!
- While several people have promised a scan of the super-rare City Geomorphs, none have come through (or they've mistakenly submitted Outdoor Geomorphs Set One: Walled City scans instead). In light of this, we're beginning the believe that City Geomorphs doesn't exist, and we've accordingly relegated it back to the Ongoing Research page
November 4th: - Front page redesign, mostly for esthetic purposes -- but also reflecting a small change in the organization of some sections
- The Acaeum Forums -- meet and interact with the D&D collecting community
September 15th: - Ghost Tower of Inverness: the personal copy of author Allen Hammack comes up for sale at GenCon, setting a new public-auction record for a D&D module in the process
- Additional background info on Chainmail and the orange B3 Palace of the Silver Princess
- Four products originally intended for the Living City module series
- Dozens of new entries and scans in our Foreign Editions section, including the addition of a series of accessory modules only released in Japan: the ACJ series
- Re-worked the Monster Manual and Players Handbook printing descriptions into bullet format. Additionally, merged the Fourth+ and Fifth prints of the Monster Manual into the Fifth print and merged the Third and Third+ prints of the Players Handbook into the Third print
- A new Second print of TSR Hex Pad
August 12th:
- A new (rather, a newly confirmed) Second print of A1 Slave Pits of the Undercity, a new First print of Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits, a new Seventh print of Legends & Lore, a new Fourth Plus print of the Monster Manual, a new Second print of AC6 Player Character Record Sheets, a new Third print of Dungeon Geomorphs Sets 1-3, and a new Fourth print of L1 Secret of Bone Hill
- The rumored First printing of T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil was just that... a rumor. We've deleted it, and shifted the sequence accordingly
- Added the Silver Anniversary prints of modules B2, G1, G2, G3, I6, S1, and S2, as well as the Silver Anniversary print of the original D&D Basic Rulebook. These items were all released in 1999 as part of TSR's 25th anniversary celebration, and appear nearly identical to modules originally published twenty years ago -- thus creating some confusion in the marketplace
- Sixty AD&D modules published by TSR that we bet you've never heard of... the Adventurer's Guild series
- Some more fascinating background on Deities & Demigods
July 1st: - A complete re-tooling of the printing sequence for T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil, a new Fifth printing of S2 White Plume Mountain, a new First print of Hexagonal Mapping Booklet, and new Second prints of C3 Lost Island of Castanamir and O1 Gem and the Staff
- Your Personal Invitation to Adventure flier
- The Acaeum FAQ, featuring answers to frequently asked questions
- Site Statistics and the What's New History
- Our most-requested article: the Mold & Mildew essay. We've intended for a long time to expand this article to include additional information on storing and protecting a collection, but haven't found the time to do so. Here is what information we have
- A cosmetic reshuffling of articles between the FAQ section and the Essays section. No, the organization still doesn't make much sense, but hopefully it's a little more coherent. The Foreign Editions Master List, which many people have had trouble locating, is now in the FAQ section
- Finally, a scan of an obscure Games Workshop item: Hex Sheets
- Info and scans on one of the last great rarities: "Dwarven" Quest for the Rod of Seven Parts
April 6th: - Info on one of the earliest D&D products -- the first D&D Basic Rulebook published in the UK, by Games Workshop. We've been looking for this rulebook for years, and had ended up relegating it to the realms of myth. Not so -- here it is, in the flesh, so to speak
- Yet more rarities! The pre-publication versions of R1 To the Aid of Falx and R3 Part 1 Egg of the Phoenix
- The addition of two Games Workshop logos to the TSR Logos page
- An updated State of the Hobby essay, which helps explain several of the highlighted values on the Rares Index
January 18th: - Added in the Fourteenth through Sixteenth prints of the D&D Basic Set
- A major change to the Original D&D Set sequence, yet again. In light of some new information, the old Third+ set has been re-classified as the Fifth (bumping the poor OCE set up to Sixth printing), and a new Third+ print has been identified (it's actually an extremely rare hybrid print). Our estimated values of the sets have not changed, however
- A new Third print of the Dungeon Masters Adventure Log, a new Twelfth (and final?) print of Unearthed Arcana, and new Second prints of the Monster & Treasure Assortment Set Three and Monster & Treasure Assortment Sets One-Three
- By popular demand: the (Mostly) Complete TSR Stock List, listing every item ever printed by TSR. It's actually only complete up to 1998; additions after that point are sketchy. Anyone who'd care to add/update this list, please do so! The list itself is on an HTML page (in our Essays section), as well as in a Microsoft Word 95 document file (in our Downloads section)
- Yep, you guessed it: I'm traveling again, and won't be back until the first week of March. All e-mail channels will still be functional, though, and we'll still be soliciting submissions during the interim
January 6th:
- Happy Holidays! And take a look at what Santa brought for one lucky collector: a First print of Chainmail, one of the rarest of all D&D items
- A new print of the monochrome C1 Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, and some new / revised info on the print run of the orange B3 Palace of the Silver Princess
2001
December 5th: - Apologies for the server downtime this past two weeks. Forces beyond our control (we strongly suspect al-Qaeda had something to do with it) took down the server last Monday. All incoming mail from November 24th through November 29th fell into a black hole and/or was bounced back to the sender; if you sent us something last week, please re-send! If you sent us something before November 24th and have not yet heard a response, that's simply due to the enormous e-mail backlog we've got here. We'll get to your question / submission as soon as we can
- Correction: the changes listed in the Errata Article for the Players Handbook were never incorporated into any print. Additionally, we've added annotations to the Errata Article for the Monster Manual identifying in which print the changes were actually made, and re-classified the Fourth print of the Monster Manual as the true "final" version (incorporating all of these changes)
- A re-vamping of the Chainmail and Palace of the Vampire Queen pages into checklist style, and added some clarifying information
October 19th: - All of the information and scans from our Foreign Editions archives have now been posted to the site, and numerous additions and corrections have been made. Please help us fill in the gaps!
- The Original D&D Set sequence has been re-written in checklist format, which will hopefully alleviate some confusion
- New printings of the Monster Manual II and DLC1 Classics Vol 1
- Clarification on the Understanding D&D promotional flier, along with some new scans
September 9th: - An interesting essay on the disproportionately high value of the Kara Tur boxed set
- Literally dozens of new Foreign Edition scans, some newly-activated links on the Foreign Editions Master List, and numerous corrections and additions to the data posted last week. And yes, we still have lots more information to be posted from the archives!
September 2nd: - Apologies for this very tardy update! We've just not had the free time to devote to working on the site. Nevertheless, today we present one of the biggest updates in quite a while:
- Two new rarities: the TSR Spotlight newsletter, and confirmation on the existence of the City Geomorphs.
- Several updates to the Ongoing Research page.
- The Foreign Editions pages are now in the process of being entered. Links to these pages will appear on individual module / set pages, as a button located next to the item title (in the "Printing Descriptions" section) . The pages currently published on the site are indicated by active hyperlinks on the Foreign Editions Master List (listing every foreign printing known, organized by country). Please note that we're only about half-finished with entering the information from our archives, so don't despair if your submission isn't posted yet; it will be up soon. As always, we're looking for additional information on all of these foreign titles, and a lot of scans. Incidentally, we've identified twelve foreign languages that D&D has been translated into, in one form or another: Chinese, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish... not including the "translations" into British and Australian versions.
- The Errata article from Dragon Magazine #35, by popular demand. This article has been broken into three sections (for the Monster Manual, the Players Handbook, and the Dungeon Masters Guide), and additional changes incorporated. While we admit it's largely useless, it's at least interesting for trivia purposes.
- Eliminated the Fifth printing of the Original D&D Set (the old Sixth printing is now the Fifth). The sole difference between the two prints was the interior color of the booklet covers; we believe this was in error, and all OCE-set booklets have parchment-colored interiors. Also, a bit of trivia is noted: there's a leftover reference to Hobbits (on page 6 of Men & Magic) that the editors apparently missed!
- For whatever reason, The Acaeum Search Engine has been having some problems... not all of the pages on the site were correctly indexing. Hopefully, we've got this fixed now.
June 10th: - A mini-update today, mostly posting miscellaneous corrections. One big correction: the Anauroch Promo Map, trumpeted in the last update, was apparently distributed in Dragon Magazine #124, as well as given out by dealers with purchases of the Forgotten Realms Campaign sets. Our mistake. Thanks to several astute readers who discovered this error! We've decided to keep it on the Forgotten Realms page, but have deleted its estimated values (relegating it, appropriately, to the realms of the collectably worthless).
- Unfortunately, real life intrudes again, sending me once more overseas (but this time only for three weeks). Site updates will resume in July, though feel free to send in submissions through the normal e-mail channels in the interim. On the very front burner when I return is the long-awaited (and huge) Foreign Editions expansion to the site, which will attempt to chronicle every print of every 1st Edition xD&D item in every language. Stay tuned.
May 26th: - Split the Sixth printing of the Players Handbook into the Sixth and Seventh printings, based on new information. In the same vein, renamed the "Fourth Minus" print of the Monster Manual as the Fourth print, and shifted the sequence accordingly
- A new rarity: the Anauroch Promo Map
- New Third and Fifth printings of the D&D Expert Set (and a revised, checklist-style format to go along with it), and new, messy information on the Sixth printing of the D&D Basic Set
- Added several DragonLance items: the DLA, DLC, and DLE module series, the DLR series of sourcebooks, and the Time of the Dragon boxed set
- Updated the Downloads section (fixed a number of links, and added in the most recent of WotC's electronic module releases), as well as updated the Conventions page
May 19th: - New First and Fourth printings of Deities and Demigods, a new Second print of L2 Assassin's Knot, and a new Fifth printing of Unearthed Arcana
- Heavy revision of the Basic Set sequence. Besides rewriting it into a checklist-type format (the wordy paragraphs were getting far too complex), there have been numerous changes, additions, and deletions to the sequence starting with the Sixth print. And while it pains me to say it, if you happen to have a print that doesn't fit these new descriptions (*cringe*), please send it in!
May 7th: - Yet another printing of S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. This module has been very difficult to sequence. If you've got a copy of this module which doesn't fit the printing descriptions listed (heaven forbid!), please send the info our way
- A new Seventh print of Chainmail, a new Second print of the Forgotten Realms Adventures manual, a new Third+ print of the Players Handbook, clarification of information on N1 Cult of the Reptile God, and some new background info on ST1 Up the Garden Path
- The Players Association News and the Players Association Broadsheet newsletters (the predecessors to Imagine magazine)
- Updates to the Ongoing Research page
April 29th: We're back! While we were gone, we received literally hundreds of submissions -- and it's going to take some time to organize and enter them on the site. Your patience is appreciated. Besides the submissions, we've also been working on some new expansions to the site, which we'll unveil over the next month or so. We think you'll be pleasantly surprised. In any case, here's our first batch of updates: - The first major re-vamping of all the Estimated Values, due to a perceived imbalance on many of the lower-value items (many people have said that our values for the cheap stuff were too high, and we agree). Green and (mostly) red highlighting on the Indexes serve to indicate the changes
A major change to ALL module sequences: size of the module (i.e. 11", 10 3/4", etc) is no longer a determining factor in different printings. In reality, there were dozens of printings for each of the later modules, probably every few months or so. Occasionally, TSR would switch printers, or the printers would switch equipment, and the size, color, paper texture, etc would change ever-so-slightly. We're going mad trying to sequence some of the modules (notably X1, but many other modules as well), so we're implementing this change. This affects the following modules (meaning that printings based solely on size have been eliminated): A2, A3, A4, C1, C2, I1, U1, and X1
- A cover scan, and some additional details, on Wee Warriors' Character Archaic. We've added it to the Rares Index as well
- Additional info on the "woodgrain" prints of the Original D&D Set
- Additional info on several of the early prints of Greyhawk: Supplement I
- A new Fourth printing of S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks
- Robert Kuntz's original map for his unpublished module To the City of Brass
- A gradual re-write of many of the printing descriptions into what (we hope) will be an easier-to-understand format. Rather than sticking with the logic-puzzle-style of before ("Third print: As First, but now without a map book, but including two dice chits"), we've opted to go with complete descriptions for each printing. It's longer text, but we think you'll find it more intuitive. An example of the rewritten format can be found on the Special Series module page
- In the same vein, we've gotten a lot of questions as to "what's the Product Number? The TSR Piece Code? The TSR Stock Number?" Completely our oversight. To correct this, we present the Expanded Description section of our module pages; long overdue. Check out the first one on the Aerie Series module page; more will be added in the coming weeks
2000
Oct 6th: Due to a real-life relocation of yours truly to a top-secret training facility in the Swiss Alps (or thereabouts, anyway), The Acaeum will be devoid of updates until April 2001. However, the site will continue to be functional, and we'll still be soliciting submissions through our normal e-mail channels. Just don't expect to see those submissions actually posted until April. We would also ask that you not send unsolicited file attachments (cover scans, etc), due to the fact that we'll be forwarding the e-mail to various temporary (Hotmail) accounts, which can fill up quickly. And since the Sage will be away from his research materials, he might have to "wing" your queries even more than he usually does. See you in April.
Sep 18th: Some revised info on the First and Second prints of B2 Keep on the Borderlands, a new Sixth print of the D&D Basic Set, confirmation of the long-lost Fifth print of the AD&D Players Handbook (finally!), and corrected data on the Sixth and Seventh printings of Chainmail.
Sep 2nd: A new "Fourth Minus" print of the Monster Manual, a new Third print of the DM Screen, a new Second print of the DMs Adventure Log, the original Blackmoor map from the Domesday Book issue #13, a new Second print of the D&D Expert Set, and the addition of two very old and rare items: the Understanding D&D explanation sheet and the TSR Hex Pad.
Jul 30th: The much-requested Trail Maps, and the following module series: FRC, OP1, WGM, WGQ, and WGS. Also, a new Third print of module X1 Isle of Dread, a new Second print of the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, new Third and Fourth printings of Rogues Gallery, some clarified info on the True First / First printings of Supplement I: Greyhawk, and a new Third print of the D&D Basic Set... and yes, this means the whole sequence shifted one-up again. :(
Jul 13th: The PC accessory series, the DDA module series, and the Outdoor Survival boxed game (which is not even a D&D item, let alone a TSR product... you'll have to check out that page for the reason we're including it!). Also new this week, a long-awaited addition: The Acaeum Search Engine. We've been cognizant of the need for this since the site was originally published, but have run into numerous snags in our test-run implementations. It looks like we've worked out those difficulties, and we now present an engine that you should find fast, simple, and enormously useful.
Jul 5th: Submissions Guidelines, to answer some common questions. Also, a new Seventh print of the D&D Basic Set, and the addition of the DQ module page.
Jun 26th: Scans of the super-rare Rahasia (Daystar West) and ST1 Up the Garden Path, and a new Fourth printing of B2 Keep on the Borderlands. Also, TSR has recently made available online copies of EX1 Dungeonland and EX2 Land Beyond the Magic Mirror, links to which are in our Downloads section.
Jun 13th: A smattering of info, and some rough scans, on early Games Workshop items, plus a switch of the Third and Fourth print S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. Also, further edits to the Original D&D Set sequence: the First print booklets were a woodgrain color (the assumption that they weren't was a scanning error), and the Fourth print booklets did not have references to Hobbits changed to Halflings (this occurred with the release of the OCE set). Concerning the Greyhawk "True First" printing described in the last update. We're no longer sure of this item's rarity... 24 hours after the update was published, we heard of three copies. We'll be monitoring auction sources to see how many of these pop up, before deciding whether to lower the rarity score or keep it where it is. And in stunning news, the First print of Chainmail did indeed come with the vaunted Fantasy Supplement. We have all been raised on lies and misinformation. Yesterday, June 12th, we had an e-mail "black hole" for about twelve hours, because yours truly incorrectly configured the mail server. If you sent something to us on June 12th, and have not heard back, please re-submit!
Jun 8th: A new printing of T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil, the "True First" printing of Supplement I: Greyhawk, plus some new info on the First printing of the Original D&D Set. Also, the drama continues on X1 Isle of Dread, this time with additional information on the Fourth printing, and also with a slightly retooled D&D Basic Set sequence (splitting the Third printing into a Third and a Third+). Lastly, we've tracked down a scan and some info on Secrets of the Sages, the Forgotten Realms newsletter available through the early boxed set. Our attention now turns to the five DragonLance Newsletters, highlighted on our Research page.
May 23rd: New prints of Unearthed Arcana and Lankhmar: City of Adventure, some tidbits of info on Rahasia (Daystar West), and the addition of the GAZ and REF accessory pages (now on the Miscellaneous Index, along with the AC page). And speaking of indexes... we've expanded the Dragon Magazine Index into the new Periodicals Index, covering Dragon, Dungeon, Polyhedron, and Imagine magazines. It still needs a bit of fleshing out, so please help us patch the holes with your submissions. Last but not least, a long-overdue rewrite of the How To Use This Site introductory essay. Hopefully it's a bit more comprehensible this time.
May 12th: A new print of I3 Pharaoh, some corrected details -- and a new Fourth print -- for Palace of the Vampire Queen, a hint of a very rare Forgotten Realms newsletter (obtained with a form from the First printing of the boxed set), a new print of Monster & Treasure Assortment Sets One-Three, and various updates to the Research page. Also, something we've been planning to do for a long time: the TSR Logos page. While the names we've assigned to the logos are arbitrary, knowing exactly which logo we're talking about in the printing descriptions can be very helpful. We've added a "Logos" button to all the item pages, for quick reference.
May 8th: Added two new prints of module B1 In Search of the Unknown. The Forgotten Realms Campaign and the Dragonlance Campaign pages are finally up, along with the Forgotten Realms Adventures hardcover manual and an expanded Art Books page. Also, two rare oddities: Quadrille Graph Paper and the First Quest Music Album.
May 6th: Revised / corrected printing info on modules B3, B4, D1, D2, D3, G1-2-3, L1, S1, T1-4, and X2 (some major, some minor). Also, the Fifth print of Chainmail is now relabeled as the Sixth, based on new information. Please update your collection inventories accordingly!
Apr 7th: A new print of Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits, a blurb of info relating the R-series modules to the World of Greyhawk, new information on the First print of Supplement I: Greyhawk, and info on the 10th Anniversary Combo Packs. Also, a shuffled sequence for the Original D&D Set; in short, the "Fifth" print we had was correctly relabeled as the "Third+" print, and some further details were added to all the printings. Hopefully this will clear up some confusion.
Apr 5th: Yet another print of X1 Isle of Dread; a re-sequencing of the monochrome G-series modules due to newly-discovered Second prints; a strange "hybrid" print of the Monster Manual; a new print of B2 Keep on the Borderlands.
Mar 31st: Important legal notice. Please read, as it concerns what may or may not be taken from this site. While we feel it is unfortunate that we need to enforce our legal copyrights, a certain unscrupulous individual seeks to profit from the thousands of hours of work that has gone into this web site. We would hope that you would avoid supporting his efforts and thus encouraging this kind of behavior.
Mar 30th: Some info on rarities: ST1 Up the Garden Path, Bigby's Tomb, Quest for the Fazzlewood, and modules L4 and L5. Also, a newly-discovered Second print of module B1 In Search of the Unknown.
Mar 20th: To the City of Brass, an original AD&D tournament module by Robert J. Kuntz, is now available in our Downloads section.
Mar 16th: Updates have been a little slow lately, as real life intrudes a bit. We promise to shove it back in the closet and get to work soon. We also apologize for the server downtime the last week. Our web host provider, ICOM.com, has been jerking us around for the past month or so. As a result, we fired 'em. Our new host, GlobalHosting, is not only extremely fast (or so they claim... if not, we'll probably fire them too!), but gives us twice the server room, which was getting a bit critical. All this for twice the cost. :) And for those of you who could care less about our server problems: besides several new scans (we're rapidly getting rid of those "scan needed" placeholders!), we redesigned our front page to eliminate scrolling on 800x600 browsers. We've also dug up some strangeness on module X1 Isle of Dread, and revised the printing sequences of the DMs Screen and Chainmail (hopefully we got them right this time), with help from several individuals. Check them out. On the front burner: a Forgotten Realms boxed set page, a page for the REF accessory modules, a couple more D&D oddities, and a very special (and legibly edited) original AD&D module by Robert Kuntz.
Feb 13th: Several new scans this week, including the very special, super-rare cover of Jade Hare, and the long-awaited "questionable artwork" from Palace of the Silver Princess.
Feb 8th: Reorganized the Module Index alphabetically by module title, rather than by module code. We think modules you're searching for will be easier to find this way. The module pages themselves have remained the same, i.e. grouped by module code. The one casualty of this change is that the "Up" navigation buttons in the module pages will all take you to the first Module Index page, A-C. Unfortunately, this is an unavoidable limitation of HTML (in order to go directly back to the Index page you were just on, use your browser's "Back" button). Sounds confusing, but it will all make sense once you try it out.
Due to recent information we've received on several new printings of older modules, we've been forced to revise the printing sequence for many of them. As a result, if you've used our pages to label the modules in your collection, please go back and double-check them! The affected modules are B1, B2, B3, C2, D1, D2, D3, and S2. Also new today is the Forgotten Realms accessory module series page, and an addition to the Palace of the Vampire Queen page: her sister module, Dwarven Glory.
Feb 1st: A brand-new Quest for the Fazzlewood entry, lots more cover scans (we're now updating the "Mod" column for modules when new scans come in), and a continuing-to-balloon Research page. Also, to answer a common question: we do small updates to various things all the time, and don't necessarily mention them here in What's New. This section serves only to notify of the big updates. We're collecting data for an upcoming FR module series page (Forgotten Realms). We need any trivia you have about them, cover scans, etc. (As of right now, we're only concentrating on the FR series, not the FRA, FRE, etc). Check the Research page for new developments on this as they occur.
Jan 21st: The Links section is now online. No more "Under Construction" pages! Also check out the added WGA module series (we're slowly bowing into pressure to add more module series, so stay tuned).
We've deleted several items from the Miscellaneous Index, namely the coloring books (except for the Official AD&D Coloring Album), the D&D Binder, and Giant Coloring Poster. After some internal arguing, we've decided to limit the Miscellaneous section to game-related D&D items only. Otherwise, we'd need to cover such things as action figures, Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books, TSR lunchboxes, etc. While we admit that several of the deleted items do have market value, we're guessing that the majority of the RPG collectors out there are not interested in anything that doesn't interface with the game directly.
Jan 13th: The last of the indexes, the Miscellaneous Index, is now finally online! Now we can concentrate on updates, and all those small things that we've been ignoring. Like the Links section. Speaking of updates... we'd like to offer our sincerest thanks to all of you who have sent in corrections, additions, scans, etc. We're thrilled to see that our enthusiasm is infectious -- and we're working hard to try and incorporate all the extra information as quickly as possible! We've already lost a few slaves to the demanding work schedule, but that's how these things go. If you've sent in info or scans and you don't see it up yet, rest assured that we'll have it online in the next few days. Some highlights of today's update: The D&D Basic Set sequence has gotten a revamping, due to a flood of new info concerning the earliest sets. We fear we're still not done. Also, we've gotten a lot of tidbits concerning stuff on the Ongoing Research page; seems like we toss something new on there every day or so. And a word on how we do our updates. We keep the "master" web site on a local server, which we do all our daily updates to. Since we've been working on half-finished indexes, we've only been "publishing" this local web to the Internet server about every ten days or so. However, now that the indexes are finished, we can update the Internet server much more frequently (like every couple days). Use that "Mod" column in the indexes to let you know what's been changed. This "What's New" page will simply serve to point out major updates. Again, thank you all for a great first month. Here's to many more. Keep those submissions rolling!
1999
Dec 13th: Front page redesign! Hope you like it. We've also deleted some planned sections: - The D&D Third Party Index. These items are covered quite thoroughly over at Matthias Bock's Non-TSR xD&D Item page. Please check it out!
- The Buy/Sell section. We decided it would be a conflict of professional interest to advertise the buying or selling of items that, in effect, we're appraising. If you want to sell us something, that's great; send us an e-mail and we'll consider it. We aren't currently interested in selling anything ourselves, however.
- The Traveller section in its entirety... The Acaeum will now be exclusively dedicated to the Dungeons & Dragons game system. For one, Far Future Enterprises (the current Traveller copyright holder) has prohibited copyrighted images from being displayed on web sites, including cover scans. Secondly, we frankly don't have all that much to say about Traveller. Very few Traveller products have multiple printings, or for that matter, any real worth at auctions. If you'd like info on the game, check out Ron Brown's excellent Traveller Downport site.
The Dragon Magazine Index is now online. We scaled back some planned features on this, too, in light of the recent release of the Dragon Magazine CD-ROM from TSR (containing every issue from #1 to #250, plus the Strategic Reviews!). Our Dragon Magazine Index will simply serve as a quick-reference for those who choose not to purchase the CD-ROM. Next up is the Miscellaneous Index... it's almost complete. And then that darn Links section.
Dec 4th: Apologies for the downtime this past week... big server crash.
Nov 29th: The D&D Game Book / Set Index is now online. We're especially proud of this one, as much of the information in it has never been compiled before. Also, we've added in the CA and OA series of D&D modules. Next up (within two weeks, hopefully) will be the D&D Miscellaneous and Dragon Magazine indexes.
Nov 20th: Last night we published the final build to the server. We're now operational, but a few things are taking longer to implement than we anticipated (big surprise). The only indexes currently up are the massive D&D Module Index and the Rares Index -- the others should be ready in about two weeks. Also, some of the sections (notably Links) are not as fleshed out as they will be.
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