serleran wrote:I have horror stories about the destruction of some of my D&D stuff during the heyday of the "D&D is the Devil" thing...

I lost my 1981 basic D&D box that way. I was however able to argue that the dice & Gateway to Adventure catalog were not demon-possesed per se, plus my Lords of Underearth by Metagaming somehow slipped past mom's God-radar as well.

Before that episode, I attended an afterschool gaming club. Subsequently I would sneak off to friends' homes to play.

As far as the D&D is the devil thing, I lost a Monster Manual to that, indirectly.  One of my best friends had strict Baptist parents and hated the game, they said it was demonic.  These people would flip out into a religious rage if they caught him playing, so he made a special hiding place for all his books and dice between some rafters in his basement.  Unfortunately, he passed away suddenly and at the time had my 1st Ed Monster Manual, not to mention a Deities and Demigods (with Cthulhu and Melnibone) and who knows what other treasures in there at the time.  His family moved away a few weeks after that.  It's all probably still hidden there.  I wonder sometimes if anybody livnig in that house will ever find his stash, years from now.

My parents made me throw out all my D&D materials once, but not because they thought the game was evil...more because I was busy running campaigns and writing up adventures instead of doing my schoolwork!   Luckily, I was able to quickly hide most of my stuff and make a convincing show of throwing out a couple of thick binders full of old dungeon maps and NPC sheets.  

And, yes, I owned a Dark Tower also, and I wish I still had it. That game rocks!

Wow, leave it to the Acaeum forums to bring back these kind of memories.

Kingofpain89 wrote:
Man I would give anything if I still had:

Milton Bradley Dark Tower

Actually, due to a mistake in my search parameters for Dark Tower, I see auctions for these all the time.

If someone has a tower that works they could easily mate it with a board and have something of value.

My first roleplaying game, Star Frontiers Alpha Dawn is in a closet in my bedroom, because I don't want it moved around too much.  Over the past two decades, the box has collapsed, been taped, collapsed, been taped, etc, etc. Every time I pick it up, I expect it to explode into shreds and counters.

Still has the original dice and half a crayon, too.

I took much better care of my D&D books. My original DMG is still in very good shape:



Heh. I enjoy that picture too much, don't I?

FormCritic wrote:Actually, due to a mistake in my search parameters for Dark Tower, I see auctions for these all the time.

I find some interesting stuff from irrelevant search results:

Apple Lane - west coast fruit company during the 1940s; the unused crate labels are now sold by collectors. Maybe inspired the RuneQuest scenario title? Maybe the 'lozenge-shaped world' of Glorantha was an wooden apple crate storing Greg Stafford's design notes.
Cults of Terror - non-fiction book [Manson, Jim Jones], published one year before the RuneQuest title of that name.
Gods, Demigods, and Demons - encyclopedia of Greek myths published one year before the OD&D supplement. Oddly enough, this Scholastic title was probably distributed in schools, yet it has a more 'Satanic' title than TSR's knockoff.
TSR2 - Brit warplane of the 60s with an funny story. They spent millions developing it, then scrap everything as part of a commercial deal to buy the US F-111 instead.
Rocket Propelled Grenades - not a search result, but a story worth telling nevertheless. I'm with two friends, one Lebanese, the other a gamer of domestic origin. The former tells us how he fired RPGs into enemy neighborhoods during the civil war. I reply that myself & the other guy both have shelves full of RPGs at home.

FormCritic wrote:If someone has a tower that works they could easily mate it with a board and have something of value.

There's an ebay store selling spare parts:
eBay listings

Only a few are listed here, but they have everything. I've owned two copies in the past & didn't want another, so recently I just bought various buildings, figures, & assorted pieces. I keep them in my MB Dragonmaster box [the card game companion to DT, with excellent illustrations by the same artist]. if I want to play, I go to:
http://www.wakefieldfamily.net/darktower/darktower.html

FormCritic wrote:...and reduced her ability to supervise you in the future.

Heh heh. Exactly.

I've still got my original books & dice, (PCs and hand written adventures) with the MM being the oldest as its a 3rd print edition. Everything else I picked up around the early-mid 80's with the 1983 cover DMG, PHB & FF books and then took the MM2, WSG and DSG 1st ed prints, although I managed to avoid UA!!  

I didn't add anything else until last year when I started playing again and have now added FR & Greyhawk boxsets and other minor hardback rule books and items, just for interesting reading.

Maybe one day I'll get a white box set if I'm lucky.  

I've still got all my original hardcover books.  I sold all my various modules/accessories to buy comics . . .

All of my box sets like Alpha Dawn, Marvel Super Heroes, Indiana Jones, Companion Rules, etc. . . . well, they gradually had to be disposed of . . . you see, that is where I used to hide my "stash"   .  I figured that good ol' dad would never bother to look inside one of my RPG games . . . and he never did!

But, ya' know, constantly opening them up took it's toll and they'd start to fall apart and . . . smell . . . so I'd have to move on to the next box every so often . . .


Thank God for that Axis & Allies Game!  It was sturdy enough to last for years!    

Dark Tower rules. I do not have one, myself (never owned one) but my fiancées dad has one, and a few other gems of board games, due to having worked at Toys R' Us when they still carried D&D, and D&D-like stuff. Once asked them why they stopped, and they said "that stuff is not 'family friendly.'" Oh well, and pissing off customers by dropping entire product lines is not wallet friendly, o corporation! I do need to hunt that game down, but the real money is in selling Talisman boxes. Not the games, just the boxes. I guarantee at least 75% of every expansion sold on eBay does not have the box. They must be more rare than a prepub mono ST1 written by Tracy Hickman.

I still have my original hardcovers and about 10 original modules, as well as the Basic & Expert sets.  Most of this was bought when I was 9 and my allowance for chores was a whopping $3.50 a week.  Do the math - it was quite the obsession.  

We had some pretty amusing shortcuts, since everyone insisted on having miniatures and 3D dungeons at the time.  Legos became the TOEE, H/O scale plastic Airfix knights became the PCs; we had the original Bulette, Rust Monster, etc. and a bunch of "giants" from action figures.  My fave - candle wax (different mixed colors) became very convincing slimes.

Then there's the time that we had the live tarantula to represent Lolth, and Lolth went ... missing.  In my parents' room.  But that's a drinks-only story so I'll leave the rest, like any 70s DM, to the imagination.