May the Dice Be With You!

On a couple of occasions I've told the story of how I landed a free copy of the French language edition of the Tom Moldvay-edited Basic Set in the Fall of 1984. Thanks to my mother, I now have this copy in my hands again and I've spent a portion of the day looking through it -- it's been quite the trip down memory lane! Here's a photo of the box:

As you can see, it uses the same cover as the original 1981 set, even though it was published in late 1982. Here's the title page, which is slightly different:

What's interesting about this page, aside from Gygax's inscription to me, is that the illustration is a Jeff Easley reinterpretation of the original Bill Willingham piece. Next up is the cover of the French version of The Keep on the Borderlands.

This one has a new illustration by Jim Holloway. Also in the box are the French versions of Palace of the Silver Princess and The Lost City, but both of them use them same artwork as the English language originals. Here's the title page of module B2:

There's a second inscription by Gygax, along with another Holloway illustration that I don't recall ever seeing before and that appears to be a variation on the Jim Roslof piece from the version of the module I own. Flipping through these books I noticed quite a few reinterpretations of iconic scenes from the Moldvay rulebook by later artists, including a couple by Larry Elmore. It makes for an odd visual experience, since I "recognize" many of the illustrations, even though they're done in a different style by a different artist.

I'll probably have more to say about the 1982 French Basic Set in the coming days.