grodog wrote in A Revisit to Stratochamp's Collection:Great pics Matt, and, as always, Bill, your collection is amazing not just for its contents, but for your beautiful organization and presentation of the collection as well!  

What are the new color maps on the wall, in the picture at hitemwithashoe.com/wp-content/uploads/2 ... scaled.jpg?  They don't look immediately familiar, but they look wonderful (some watercolor work on them, perhaps?).

Allan.

Thank you Allan, I'm trying to make it more interesting in photos. It's hard sometimes to take many details away from a wall with 8,000 books on it other than there a lot of brown and white boxes.
Those are watercolors and they were done by Craig Zipse. He did the map of the 7th Sea World (that's on the inside front cover of the hardcover). The original is hanging in our bedroom. He was frequently published in Dungeon and other magazines as well. I love city and dungeon art and he made a number of his originals available to Bracton and I at GenCon about 8 years ago.

stratochamp wrote in A Revisit to Stratochamp's Collection:the EPT Declaration of war poster

Dude was a total perv, but he could draw good.

stratochamp wrote in A Revisit to Stratochamp's Collection:display rack

The effect is similar to what some achieve by collecting shrink - it takes you back to the time when these things were new to you (or in the case of the older items, back to the era of time when these were new to someone).

Hi Axel,
The quick answer is that's the first 30 years of FRP: January 1974 through December 2003.
How I arrived at that is a little longer. I decided in the mid 1980's to try and get "One of everything FRP". That was moving along with me playing catch-up with the old stuff and trying to buy every new item that came out. In 1989 I spoke with Lawrence Schick for about 5 hours regarding his upcoming book Heroic Worlds. I told him "One of everything" etc. When his book was published I bought a copy right away. Cracking it open I checked to see if I was listed in the acknowledgements for the help I had given him. Nope. Then under advice for collectors he wrote "Limit yourself. If you set a wide goal like one of every science fiction game, you'll quickly be overwhelmed." I felt like Ralphie in A Christmas Story. Lawrence Schick was telling me I was going to shoot my eye out. I was crushed. But that didn't stop the book from being the Bible of Role-playing collecting. I updated my collecting goals to be one of everything in Heroic Worlds. While I was trying to do that I kept up with the new releases, so I switched to everything through 1993, which would be the first 20 years. Then 1998. Then everything through 12/31/2000 (the end of the millennium). Well I finally settled on the end of 2003. That doesn't mean I can't get things after that. I have most of the super rare things after that date, but my searches are not as dedicated. After realizing that my kids were more likely to be playing 5e with others I stared acquiring all of that stuff, which had led me back to 3.5 and 4th and I have almost everything for them now. But the searches that really interest me are the items from Heroic Worlds. I think I'm missing 35 items from the book and I'm at about 200 items total (most of them from 1998-2003).
P.S. At the North Texas RPG con in 2014 at the bar at about 2am, surrounded by former TSR staffers including Lawrence Schick, I told my Lawrence Schick story. Everybody loved it, including Lawrence who could not have been more gracious. I handed him my heavily used copy of Heroic Worlds and he signed it "To Bill, who knows a lot more about this stuff than I do. Oh, and thanks!"

Great story and huge achievement, Bill!!!
I am curious as well on your 35 missing items...

What most of you do not know about Bill's collection is that it is guarded by diabolical traps and the undead.  Yes, Bill is a necromancer.  I'm outing him here and now.  

Martin Britt

sauromatian wrote in A Revisit to Stratochamp's Collection:
Module# Strato-1: The Quest for the Thirty-Five

That would be a awesome adventure!  
Count me in for the KS!

Frank you should start a thread about that to see if anyone knows.

I wanted to give a shoutout and a big thank you to Plaag. There was a thread some months ago asking about items we regretted missing on. I mentioned my #1 was Bob Blake's GenCon 9 D&D adventure that TSR let him self-publish some copies of and sell locally in Indiana back in 1976. In circa 2005 the Burntwire Brothers sold this on ebay and I did not win it. It turns out Plaag did. After seeing this thread he reached out to me and made this item available to me for a fair sum. I am very appreciative of his largess. ***THANK YOU SHANE!!!***

stratochamp wrote in A Revisit to Stratochamp's Collection:I wanted to give a shoutout and a big thank you to Plaag. There was a thread some months ago asking about items we regretted missing on. I mentioned my #1 was Bob Blake's GenCon 9 D&D adventure that TSR let him self-publish some copies of and sell locally in Indiana back in 1976. In circa 2005 the Burntwire Brothers sold this on ebay and I did not win it. It turns out Plaag did. After seeing this thread he reached out to me and made this item available to me for a fair sum. I am very appreciative of his largess. ***THANK YOU SHANE!!!***

Ooh. Any chance of a photo and a description?