When I first acquired the AD&D Players Handbook – this was sometime in early 1980 – one of my favorite sections was Apprendix IV: The Kn...

"Dragon's Augury" was the name given to Dragon  magazine's recurring review section. At the time I first encountered it, ...

I'm sure this will come as a great surprise to longtime readers of this blog that, as a young man, I was fairly serious and earnest . Sh...

 As I pen more posts for this series , you'll notice that many of its entries are themselves about series of articles from the pages of ...

Throughout 1982 and into 1983, I regularly saw this full-page advertisement for the Moldvay/Cook/Marsh Dungeons & Dragons boxed sets in ...

I've never been much of a wargamer (take a drink). Despite that, I've always been interested in wargaming, particularly the hex-and-...

A very interesting interview with David "Zeb" Cook about his time at TSR Hobbies, in which he talks about the  D&D Expert Se...

Because I did a Retrospective post on Kara-Tur: The Eastern Realms last week, I was reminded of how excited I was by the announcement that...

April Fool's issues were a staple of my youth, but they're very difficult to pull off. Partly, that's because humor can be very ...

Issue #22 of Polyhedron (March 1985) features an interesting piece of artwork by Joseph Pillsbury. I say "interesting" not solely ...

When I first started writing these Retrospective posts, I set myself some broad historical parameters, in order to pare down the absolutely...

Because of my post about the limited pop cultural footprint of Dungeons & Dragons as a game , several readers pointed me toward the imag...

Could the cover of issue #15 of Polyhedron (December 1983) by Keith Parkinson be any more 1980s if it tried? Like most recent issues, the il...

Issue #9 of Polyhedron (December 1982) features a piece of Star Frontiers -inspired cover art by Jeff Easley. That makes sense, since this i...

Much as I adore the incomparable map of the Flanaess from the World of Greyhawk  – perhaps the best RPG map ever – over the last few years ...

Japanophilia was a significant pop cultural force in North America and Europe during the 1980s. This manifested not simply in the enjoyment ...