There is the copyright page (white) that used to be poorly glued in on the right side. There is no yellow Intro page. The double-sided page with the Contents and expanded Background is, in my version, two single-sided pages. The maps definitely have a gray grid on them. The pages have, if I'm looking at the right thing, streak marks near the right edge, ending with a small ink spot at the bottom of the pages.
There is the yellow cover page, single-sided, with the title. There are 12 pages, double-sided. The map pages appear to be photocopies. None of the pages have the streak ending in a small ink spot. There is gray in the map grids, but it's not crisp like the black folder version. One curious thing about this version is the materials that came with it. On the back of what might be described as office scrap paper (3 pages from a campaign for a city council seat in Knoxville, TN, dated October 1977), there are hand-written notes for five characters (magic-user, fighter, cleric, fighter, and thief). It makes me wonder if someone didn't print-up or copy some of these for a small tournament somewhere. On the copyright page there is an address label for one Lou Zocchi in Biloxi, MS, that has been placed over the TSR Hobbies Inc. Maybe he ran a POTVQ tourney. It might very well be that the gray grid with the streak POTVQs were the only ones sanctioned by Wee Warriors/TSR (and the booklet, of course). It's very possible that the other versions are bootlegs. The only other explanation for a short version lacking the gray grid with streak is a tournament someone hastily put together. The weird thing is that the streaks are totally missing from the yellow. If someone had photocopied POTVQ using a black folder version, they couldn't do it without copying the streaks. That's what puzzles me. The yellow did come in a large ziploc bag.
It ties in with "The Endless Dungeon" and "The Village", which I'd forgotten about till I saw them listed at your forums. These, like a boardgame I did all on my own, were all from the period when Zocchi would take a minimum order on anything Wee Warriors did. Some fairly crackbrained things resulted from that.
I'm wondering if all single-sided pages means it was photocopied.
double-sided text
invincibleoverlord wrote: II. A Yellow-Covered bagged version that could be qualifying as a variant printing, but before we entertain this again to Brad…Stephen could you please look at your Yellow-Covered copy again? Is the reason the graph is not present in the photo something to do with it being such a light gray that being scanned in through the plastic bag…it's just not coming through? The only reason I ask this is I compared our Level 5 map to Stephen's photo. There exact right down to the hatch-work and even where the graph touches the architectural lines. The only difference is that our graph-lines continue into the rooms and in Stephen's photo they stop. The bright light of the scanner could be reflecting off the plastic and blanking out the light gray graph in the rooms. Just guessing… and it's puzzling because if the graph were not there then a printer of this version would have had to make a separate new plate with no graph in the rooms. But then why leave it under the hatch-work? Mike
invincibleoverlord wrote:1. Well one thing we can sort of rule out is Brad doesn't remember ever doing anything that wasn't offset printed. 2. I also finally dug out the old 1976 TSR Handbook and compared the copier signature to the PotVQ replacement map sent to Tadashi we have.
invincibleoverlord wrote:Wow, this just keeps getting weirder…. 1. About Stephen's Bella… I could swear I see faint marks where the graph in the rooms' should be.From looking at his photo it looks like a copy of an offset version with the copier set to "lighter", and it lost the grid…or maybe it's a second or third generation copy of a copy.
afoolandhis$ wrote:I can see what you mean, but I believe what you're seeing is the map on the page behind the one that's visible in the photo. That's evident when you shift the pages by sliding them between thumb and forefinger through the bag. I'll try to get another shot with the pages slightly separated if possible.
mbassoc2003 wrote:afoolandhis$ wrote:I can see what you mean, but I believe what you're seeing is the map on the page behind the one that's visible in the photo. That's evident when you shift the pages by sliding them between thumb and forefinger through the bag. I'll try to get another shot with the pages slightly separated if possible.Does that mean the other pages have a grid but the last one doesn't?
FoulFoot wrote:[ Image ]
mbassoc2003 wrote:This is a yellow cover version with the sketch of the tower on the front?
My best guess, looking at the material empirically, is that my black folder version is made up of printed map pages and photocopied text pages, which suggests that, originally, the makers decided to print more copies of the map pages than the text pages because the text pages were easier to reproduce with a copy machine and would require less toner, thus saving money. It may very well be that the black folder was an attempt at a deluxe edition after the first run was sold. It could also be that the black folder was an in-house special. I just don't know. If you remember Mike Kuo, he bought a black folder in shrinkwrap off of Ebay a few years ago. If he still has it, he might be able to shed some more light. It's obvious that my yellow-covered version is a complete photocopy, except, maybe, for the cover.
It's obvious that my yellow-covered version is a complete photocopy, except, maybe, for the cover.
