Mike Mearls posted an article today referring back to his introduction to AD&D 2nd Edition and it triggered a memory I do not think I have shared here before.
As far as 2E goes my friends and I at the time thought it was pretty good - yes it changed up some things from what we had before but some of those we knew were going to be changing (thank you satanic panic) and we liked a lot of the rest. The Dragon Magazine preview booklet had given us time to digest some of the new before it officially arrived. We rolled up new characters, translated a few, and made the jump without much angst or drama. We played it a lot through the 90's.
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| Right, that one |
The memory deals with the '93 Origins Game Fair which was held in Fort Worth that year. I had heard of Origins for many years at that point but had never been to one. We had a bunch of smaller local/state cons in Dallas and occasionally one in Ft. Worth but this was going to be a big one. I played in the Star Fleet Battles tournament - briefly. I went with my best friend at the time and I believe we also played in a big Battletech game and a decent sized Warhammer Fantasy fight. The dealer's room was a big draw of course and I spent a fair amount of time at the GDW booth as Traveller: The New Era was a big new thing in our world at the time and I was interested to see what was coming next.
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| This one is probably worth another post. |
The most relevant part to this memory spark was later in the con when the live auction hit. There was a lot of cool stuff - remember we didn't have eBay available at the tap of an app back then - and I don't think I won any of it. Near the end though the 1st edition AD&D books started to show up - pretty much an avalanche of 1E books I would say. Lot after lot - and no one was buying them!
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| Dominating - in 1993 anyway |
I saw PHBs, DMGS, MMs, and all of the later hardbacks - in all of the various covers and in everything from "perfect" to "run over by a cement truck in a rainstorm" condition - showing up with opening bids set at 1$ and even lower, stacking up at the auction table as book after book came up with no takers. Every once in a while someone would drop 50 cents on one, but no one was paying significant money for any of them.
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| Some were pristine, some were far rougher than this. Ripped, torn, chewed, submerged at some point ... |
I know a lot of the retro crowd likes to make a big deal out of people who never stopped playing AD&D but standing in that room at that con it was very evident that the time of 1E was over. At last as far as the people at the convention were concerned. I assume a lot of people held onto their books - I know I did - either out of nostalgia or sure, maybe thinking they might run it again someday, but 4 years in Second Edition was the version people cared about. It was a shock to see how things had turned around where books that were such a huge part of our lives were now effectively worthless. Edition changes were still somewhat new then. How that has changed!
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| The Water Gardens, right next door to the convention center. "You may remember me from such films as "Logan's Run" ... |
Postscript: Yes it did occur to me years later that I could have made some money if I had jumped in and bought up some of those books.
Post-postscript: That said, even circa 2010 when I was outfitting the boys with the full set of Basic/Expert/AD&D/AD&D 2E/D&D 3E player books* it was not difficult to find examples of all of those online or in used bookstores nor were they priced like a "collectible". So I would have been waiting for a few more years to make my fortune with the "Origins Haul".
*We were playing 4th at the time after playing a lot of Basic D&D and I wanted them to be able to join any game they ran across with friends or whoever. Hey, they were interested and I had the chance to do it so why not?
