just out of curiousity (for the ones in the know...)

when does the date get decided/released for the next one?

i am gonna make sure i am there next time - have already told everyone here that i am going, so nothing is gonna put a spanner in the works this time.

Al

We got home at 11am yesterday morning. It was a sixteen and a half hour drive back home here to South Florida. Man, was I beat... from the whole trip and the drive. I've rested up now, but my mind is still in awe of the whole experence...

For my first GenCon, I couldn't have been more lucky. Being there as an exhibitor, I was introduced to many industry insiders. And the auctioneer staff coulden't have made Acaeum members feel more welcome.

I was streached so thin between working the Dwarven Forge booth, parties, and attending the auctions... I hardly slept...

The highlights of the con for myself were setting up the DF booth and conversing with all the fellow users of the product. The Acaeum meeting was a blast, and a few of us had lunch and a nice chat. And being able to sit and talk with Tim Kask, early TSR alumni, for hours about the early days at the company were quite informative. His memory puts some interesting twists on current OD&D printing order...

Like... they reordered a second run of "first print" supplments (another 1000 each) from GPoLG and filled orders with them past January of 75... The "second print run" was printed later that year and post-dated back to January. They originally weren't sure of how popular the game was becoming, and thought that a second batch would fill the remaning demand for the game. Eventually, becoming obvious that multiple printings would be needed as orders swelled.

And...OD&D boxes were often filled with whatever stock was avalable from a qoute: "not very well organized stock room". After a continued long discussion we concluded that about 20% of all original boxes except the collectors set are ligitimate "mongrels" made with diffrent printings according to Tim... On more than one occasion in his memory earlier printing runs would arrive after a new run had been printed and been already delivered. It was owed books from GPoLG that came up short in earlier runs that needed to be partially or completely reprinted. These were just sifted into the the current stock runs. Tim's own 4th white box confirms this thinking as he filled it from the stock room himself, along with orders that day, and it has three diffrent printings inside as well as the earlist GK sheets... Hmmmm... Thoughts?

The find of the Con was a True First Grayhawk supplement in real nice condition except for a small stain for $15, I haggled down from $18 I found it at a dealer who mostly had comics. It was tucked in amoung just a few eighties D&D moduals he had...

The DMG manuscript though was the highlight of the auction winings for us... And now after having had just a small amount of time inspecting the document, I have discovered a wealth of extra information, but the most interesting pages found so far were two single-sided sheets.The front and the back of the original NPC chacter sheet before the AD&D alignment system had been flushed out... Tim Kask, again, knew excatly what it was when I brought it in the day after the auction to have the gang take a look at it. It is a great window into the development of the NPC. Tim also remembers that it was going to be included in the back of the DMG as a pull-out sheet for DM's to copy. But it was decided to omit it because TSR was so adamant early on about people "copying" thier products. It would go against this long held policy.

Anyway... I've rambled enough... Definitely a memorable time. Can't wait for next year!

Mike

invincibleoverlord wrote:For my first GenCon, I couldn't have been more lucky. Being there as an exhibitor, I was introduced to many industry insiders. And the auctioneer staff coulden't have made Acaeum members feel more welcome.

Heya Mike,

Sounds like y'all had a blast there.
(And I don't need to congratulate you on the DMG ms. again, since I already did so over on DF )

invincibleoverlord wrote:And being able to sit and talk with Tim Kask, early TSR alumni, for hours about the early days at the company were quite informative. His memory puts some interesting twists on current OD&D printing order...

Like... they reordered a second run of "first print" supplments (another 1000 each) from GPoLG and filled orders with them past January of 75... The "second print run" was printed later that year and post-dated back to January. They originally weren't sure of how popular the game was becoming, and thought that a second batch would fill the remaning demand for the game. Eventually, becoming obvious that multiple printings would be needed as orders swelled.

*nods*. That's what we were already working to, I thought. (If you recall the checks on book sizes and colors on the covers )

The main questions remaining were dates (and I was still going more with the status quo timeframes for selling out) and further evidence to pin down those printing numbers (there still being that 500 quote elsewhere for the earlies and the ratios genuinely appearing to fall out closer to 1:2 early:late amongst those 1st prints known).
Had already guessed 1,000 on the "2nd run" of the 1sts... => viewtopic.php?p=58687&highlight=#58687 , but the good ol' "variant" 1st U&WA (2nd formatted, different cardstock cover) was still causing fun; possibly best "explained" by a change part way through the run even if that's not an ideal solution (somewhat radical - but better on book 3, than 1 or 2?).

No probs pushing those mid/end dates back another month or so, Mike. The 10/18/74 set that turned up a month after my post, above, had been tempting me to do so, for obvious reasons.

invincibleoverlord wrote:And...OD&D boxes were often filled with whatever stock was avalable from a qoute: "not very well organized stock room". After a continued long discussion we concluded that about 20% of all original boxes except the collectors set are ligitimate "mongrels" made with diffrent printings according to Tim... On more than one occasion in his memory earlier printing runs would arrive after a new run had been printed and been already delivered. It was owed books from GPoLG that came up short in earlier runs that needed to be partially or completely reprinted. These were just sifted into the the current stock runs. Tim's own 4th white box confirms this thinking as he filled it from the stock room himself, along with orders that day, and it has three diffrent printings inside as well as the earlist GK sheets... Hmmmm... Thoughts?

Still not sure... Tim was in a somewhat privileged position to fill boxes. No other 4th with 5th ref sheets have been spotted, for example.
In fact, the 4ths are deadly boring aside from those with the missing address labels in the M&M. (There does seem to be more than one box for those, but without the more visible variations in woodgrain and paste-on label, it's not so easy to tell those apart).

I'd run somewhat lower percentages than that for mongrels/hybrids, even for the woodies; mostly being mixes in the boxes. (Have you genuinely observed as high as 20%?).

Cheers,
David. (harami)

tacojohn4547 wrote:I'm new to the Acaeum site, but I wanted to tell you the truth of what went down at the Goodman Games booth at GenCon last Thursday.

I want to thank John for his very classy response.  It's much better than the one Goodman Games gave over on Dragonsfoot.

I also want to apologize for spreading hearsay about him.  That was uncouth of me.

Tell her they found an error in the birth records, it was actually the 2nd.

Break it to her gently, tho.

I'm sure the PM's went out, but I think a lot of people here owe Shane a huge "thanks" for picking up the Goodman stuff for those of us who couldn't go. That is above and beyond.

Deadlord39 wrote:I'm sure the PM's went out, but I think a lot of people here owe Shane a huge "thanks" for picking up the Goodman stuff for those of us who couldn't go. That is above and beyond.

    I actually think it would have been funny if Shane had picked up all 60 copies.  Let's see Goodman hem and haw their way out of that one.  Shane, you might have become the most important figure in RPG gaming for a few weeks or so!!!
 PS, if I had gone to Gencon and learned only 60 copies were made, I would have thought long and hard about doing this very thing if they accepted credit cards at their booth.....

Mike B.

Badmike wrote:
    I actually think it would have been funny if Shane had picked up all 60 copies.  Let's see Goodman hem and haw their way out of that one.  Shane, you might have become the most important figure in RPG gaming for a few weeks or so!!!
 PS, if I had gone to Gencon and learned only 60 copies were made, I would have thought long and hard about doing this very thing if they accepted credit cards at their booth.....

Mike B.

Well I've been talked about during GenCon and a lot since. Also they did take credit cards (course I had the cash in case they didn't).

I was only going for personal copies and those from here that wanted one (or two)..course people around the booth seeing me grab 16 decided to pick up a copy themselves (so thats about 20 or so in those few minutes)

ShaneG.

although i didn`t mention them in my last post, the burntwire brothers were there as well and brought more of their very cool art to the show (including the cover to cyborg commando-which i think frank got a kick out of seeing).