Can you clarify whether those are 5-pointed asterisks, or 6-pointed asterisks on the page? The infamous "hard to read" font had 5-pointed asterisks, might be a clue.



If you haven't already compared it to the 2nd GH (pg. 13-15 or so, I'm not lucky enough to have one!) I'd do so.

I posted a link over on Rob Kuntz's boards to this thread, perhaps some of the guys there will be able to shed some light on the origin of the sheets.

tfm wrote:table titles. For example, on page 10 of the T1st Greyhawk the word "Addition" parenthetically follows the title Other Statistics Regarding Thieves. The word "Addition" does not appear on the goldenrod reference sheet. On page 34 of T1st Greyhawk after the title MAGIC/MAPS DETERMINATION TABLE: the words "Additions and Changes" appear parenthetically. Again, these words are missing in the goldenrod reference sheets. There are other examples.

Is it possible that these sheets are in-house prepub playtest sheets for Greyhawk? Does anyone know if TSR created and used such materials in a preproduction mode in '74? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

That's quite possible, even probable, but to really know for sure you'd need some difference that could date the goldenrod sheets ahead of the T1st Greyhawk.  :? Perhaps it's an editor's copy of GH.

Look for printing flaws/corrections in the type of the two -- broken characters, etc. Spelling mistakes will probably not help much, as you don't know when they've been fixed/imposed.

grodog wrote:Here's the thread over on Rob Kuntz's PPP boards:

http://p085.ezboard.com/fpiedpiperpubli ... =131.topic



Rob just replied.

Interesting... I like Rob's answer. (thx)



Taking the Strength table as an example, the text was entirely reset for the GH second print. Thus, the old plates could have been "broken up"- as appears to have happened since it appears to be spot on the T1st as far as I can see- to produce ref. sheets for in-house use.



1975 (GenCon) would have been just as likely as 1976 given the GH printing dates.

No reason why those plates couldn't just have been left kicking around until then, however.



Does the color match the 1976 Character Sheets (difficult to tell from the scan)?



Another hint as to the "in house" nature might be that there appears to have been little effort made to centre the text blocks without the "fold" going through some of the characters.



(aside: Was going to say the staple doesn't look like one from a T1st GH or 1st/2nd woodgrain, fwiw, but that also appears to be over the cover fold. No "evidence" of value, there)

This is great stuff!  Thanks for the help.  I checked out the info on the PPP boards and people in the know have suggested two possible scenarios.  The first scenario suggests that the sheets are in-house TSR that were also used at Gen Con 1976 (thank you D.)  The second scenario suggests that the sheets were produced as part of later editions of OD&D concurrent with the release of Greyhawk (thank you R.)  In any case both parties seem to agree that these are indeed Greyhawk Reference Sheets.  The lost is found!



If we get down to cases, it seems to me that the second scenario would be the easiest to affirm/disaffirm.  Does anyone out there have a set of these sheets, in either white (the color I would expect if released as a supplemental reference sheet) or of a goldenrod color?  According to posted data there were 3300 sets of the 3rd Woody produced, so if this was a standard item, there's got to be more out there.  



At this point in the query I'm less inclined towards the second scenario for two reasons.  First, another member who has seen 19 3rd prints related to me that he had not seen the goldenrod sheets before.  Second, if it was a regular-release item, then why wasn't it added to the Reference Sheets booklet when it was compiled?  Furthermore, if it was a regular-release item, that would mean that every 3rd print out there that didn't have the sheets would be incomplete, which doesn't feel right, or a different edition, which doesn't feel right either.



The first scenario (part of it, anyway) seems more plausible to me, but there are some questions there too.  If it was an in-house TSR item, then you would think that the paper would be the same as in the in-house Character Sheets.  But . . .







Obviously, the paper used to print the Greyhawk Reference Sheets is different than the paper used for the in-house Character Sheets.  The GRS are printed on a much coarser paper, and consequently, the detail is not as good as in the supplement itself.  This does not mean that TSR didn't use these sheets in-house, it just suggests it.  An in-house scenario would be more plausible if something else can be shown to exist concurrently and printed on the same paper.  Even so, it's not very easy to discount the in-house scenario because of the parenthetical words.  Take a look at the following sample







I can't imagine why the parenthetical words would not appear on the GRS, and, in fact, one does, as you can see in the first image at the top of the thread.  When I first saw them, I thought that the sheets predated the T1G because of the missing information, similar to page 43 in EW1&2.  But if it was routine practice to break the printing plates into blocks to print the Reference Sheets, then why break off all but one of the parentheticals?  "It just doesn't make sense," as the lawyer said.  Any guesses here?  



Based on what we have so far, I favor the Gen Con solution, that the GRS were printed solely for tournament use, given the quality of the paper and the time frame.  This one might be affirmable in strange kind of way.  There are two DM pencil marks next to two of the monsters described in the sheets, giving their numbers for encounters.  Does anyone know what tourneys ran in ‘75 and ‘76?  If someone has one of these, please email me a list of encounters.



Thanks again for your help.

Thanks for the offer.  I scanned very carefully the sheets and it appears that there were at least three different monster encounters as suggested by the pencil marks:



1.  An encounter with 3 djinni;

2.  An encounter with 7 wights;

3.  An encounter with 1 stone giant.



It's a long shot I know.  I've got programs from Winter Con VII and Michicon VIII and they don't have the kind of detail that is needed to answer the question.  We need tourney data for '75/'76 Gen Con.  



On a side note, the great one himself said on the PPP boards that he didn't recognize nor remember the goldenrod sheets at all.  Perhaps someone at TSR made up a few for the staff or for use at Gen Con.  The boxed set they came in was purchased from a bookstore in Ottawa, if that is any help to anyone.  Another member is tracking down a very thin possibility that the center pages from an earlier print of Men & Magic--which also came in the boxed set--belong to a copy in his possession.  If anyone else out there has a copy of a Men & Magic (1st or 2nd print) that is missing the center pages, please let me know.

*waves to Burnie Bros.*

Re. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 8709946098
"These were only available to mail order customers who purchased a GREYHAWK supplement along with the Dungeons & Dragons game"

Did you manage to find out anything else that's not been noted here, thus far?


The whole layout of the text on those sheets still gives the appearance of being an ad-hoc job rather anything done on a formal basis (casually split text block, poorly set for centre fold, etc.).
I've never seen them in any 3rd or 4th(-) print set that contained a GK2nd or 3rd print Greyhawk, many/most(?) of which were presumably purchased via Mail Order.

IMHO, the "ad-hoc" theory (initially for tourney, internal, or whatever use) then distribution of any "spares" as freebies still sounds better to me for lack of definitive evidence. If there were thousands of these ref. sheets around, we would surely have seen more of them by now?

(JM-02c)

We have updated our listing with the additional "origin" info.

We haven't learned anything new. Hopefully some more copies will surface with additional info.

Has anyone tried contacting Tim Kask? He may remember something.

(sry, my eyes skipped that line...)

tfm wrote:2. A Gen Con 76 item

In that hypothesis, GenCon '75 (late August) is still a better candidate for my money; both in terms of the context of the "finds" and the Greyhawk printing sequence.