Industry News / Collectibles

Louisville, KY (USA), 18 August 2008: Dr. Martin Campion, well-known wargamer and game designer, today announced the sale of a single sheet of paper he found in his filing cabinet, between two conventional wargame magazines. It was purchased by a private collector for 18,000 US$.

This typed & mimeographed item was from April 1970, entitled "Domesday Book #2". This brief publication (not to be confused with the original census of Britain, AD 1086) was the newsletter for the IFW / LGTSA* wargame club of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. It is of great historical import since it contained early drafts of the club's first 'house rules' for medieval wargames (1:20 scale), which were compiled as "Chainmail" (published first by Guidon Games and later by Tactical Studies & Rules), which in 1973 produced a spinoff, the Dungeons & Dragons game. (And the rest, as they say, is history.)

( * International Federation of Wargamers / Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association)

For more information, contact: Frank Mentzer, Box 591, Minocqua, WI 54548, (715) 356-0066, or GamesOfAmerica@aol.com

(See also GamingReport, ConSimWorld, RPGbomb, RPGnews, and ENworld)

If there are any more of these near-mythical items in anybody else's file cabinet, that is bound to shake them loose!  

I wish I had $18,000 burning a whole in my pocket enough to be able to spend it on a single sheet of paper.