Old School FRP

Hobby hint from Ral Partha’s 1995 20th Anniversary Catalog: prime your metal miniatures before painting. Partha also provided painting advice in some early boxed sets, which helped elevate my efforts in the late 70s and early 80s.

New recruits, fresh from their bath in a jar of paint stripper. Scale creep wasn’t always a gradual thing, nor was it always in one direction. These are all Ral Partha figures; from L-R: from pack 01-135 Lawful Swordmasters, 02-103 Chaotic Warriors, 02-104 Warriors of Chaos, and 01-137 Chaotic Knights of the Skull. The two larger figures were listed first in the 1986 catalog. The two smaller ones show up in the early 90s, and are comparable to most of RP’s older “true 25mm” figures including the 1970s/80s historicals.

They addressed this, sort of, in the 1986 catalog:

Vista, "The Magazine of the Exxon Travel Club," winter 1979-80 issue, featured a cover story on the future of space travel by Isaac Asimov with art by Robert McCall, including an image from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. "In the year 2079, there will be about 80 space settlements in the Moon's orbit," where "three million men, women and children will live permanently."

More 'spring' cleaning and I can't believe I finally found this, over 40 years after it went missing -- my original copy of RuneQuest 2nd ed from 1980, the stand-alone softcover version with Luise Perrin/Perenne's cover art in color, by Steve Perrin & Ray Turney for Chaosium.

At some point ca 1984-85 I thought it was a good idea to tuck it into the back of an unlabeled folder behind some blank graph paper and an encounter I wrote pitting Sartar characters against Lunar Empire agents, across from some notes on heraldry and late 16th century fashion. There is a hint of flood damage, with minor discoloration of the back cover and minimal paper wrinkling, but it still looks pretty good for a used copy approaching 50 years old.

Regarding the edged weapon prohibition for clerics in AD&D, a rule I still follow when playing clerics of gods from older settings like Greyhawk ("Dragon Mirth," Dragon magazine 45, January 1981)

The initials "LWB" and "LEB" (or "LCB") are missing from this issue's credits. There were 5 "Clarence the Cleric" strips from issues 34-52 with the same initials, inconsistently identified in one issue only as "L W Boelman," in another as "L Blankenship and L Boelman," and in another as "L Blankenship" and "L E Boelman."

Seen at a used book store: Shakespeare by Avalon Hill (1966), a game with a Parcheesi-like board, playable with or without the trivia questions. This was a big hit for the company, in part due to a positive review in the November 25, 1966, issue of Life magazine, an issue mostly devoted to Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories.

Metagaming owes me $2.95.

"The remains of a stalwart soldier, perhaps soon to be 'drafted' into service by the Black Hand." (Kenneth Rahman illustration from “Minarian Legends: The Black Hand” by Glenn Rahman, Dragon magazine 46, TSR, February 1981)