Monday, May 1, 2023

A Musical Odyssey

Every now and again, I come across evidence of a Dungeons & Dragons-related product I'd never heard of. Today, it's First Quest: The Album.

Released in 1985 as a double album (in both vinyl LP and cassette form), it's apparently a narrated AD&D adventure accompanied by instrumental synth music. What's interesting is that, nearly a decade later, in 1994, TSR would sell a different product under the name of First Quest – a boxed introduction to roleplaying games that included an audio CD for use with a starting adventure. 

Since I have never seen either of these products, I'd be curious to know more about them, especially the 1985 album.

9 comments:

  1. The '80s one is kinda fun if you like synth-y '80s fantasy cheese. It's not too difficult to track down if you just want to give it a listen, you can find it on Youtube easily enough.

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  2. The cassette version is on youtube over here:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FC4ZDGk5lfI

    The vid includes images of the adventure(?) that appear to be printed on the case insert. Weird little obscurity, I'll give it that.

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  3. I got the 90s box set as present when I was a kid! My siblings and I had already been playing for a year or two so we didn't really need the rules intro, but we still sometimes quote the hilariously overwrought CD ("Old man, what are you doing in this temple of Evil?" "I am the last priest-king of Tetiswan Temple..."). I think it actually contained four adventures, including a Spelljammer adventure with the aptly named Captain Blotomous the giff (hippo-dude).

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  4. First Quest: The Music is my most prized D&D possession. It's literally the first dungeon synth record. The music is, I think, largely good to great, especially the first and last tracks. The musicians were all film score people and one of the songs also appears on the Return of the Living Dead soundtrack.

    The 2lp packaging includes a large Elmore painting in the gatefold, and the inner sleeves display a map and rough adventure designed to coincide with the narration. It's an excellent package headed by Paul Cockburn of TSR UK (and later GW with WFRP). It was only ever released over there and so is pretty rare to see in the states.

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    Replies
    1. I've listened to a couple of the tracks and I think that it's great. Real proper 80s teenage alienation synth feel to it, transporting me back to late night movies on TV.

      It would fit right into Stranger Things.

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    2. Wait, which track was in Return of the Living Dead? That's awesome.

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    3. "The Living Dead", naturally.

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    4. To be honest, I don't know what I expected. Now that I'm listening to the track it's incredibly obvious, I do remember this playing in the movie.

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