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Tuesday, November 5, 2013

OD&D Reprint Previews


The contents. Source: Steve Winter on Facebook


The boxed set reprinting the original D&D set and the first four supplements is set to be released just before Christmas this year, pushed back from November. The cover art of each booklet has been updated in a 'modern' style, but the interior text and art is supposed to be mostly unchanged from the originals, similar to the AD&D hardback reprints.

Steve Winter of The Howling Tower blog and a former TSR employee, received his copy on his last day of his current contract work for Wizards, and posted pictures of it on FB. The set comes in a wooden box featuring an anachronistic '80s D&D ampersand on the cover:

 
The box cover. Source: Steve Winter on Facebook

The interior of the lid features new artwork of a wizard casting, which as pointed out by Falconer on OD&D Discussion is meant to be an updated version of the 'white box' cover (4th+ printing of OD&D):

Inside the Box. Source: Steve Winter on Facebook

Original 'White Box' cover. Source: The Acaeum

And over on the Wizards website, Bart Carroll has been running a series, "OD&D Excerpts", previewing the new booklets and showing comparisons of the covers with the originals. The original Volumes I-III and Supplements I-IV have been renumbered as Books I-VII:

Book I: Men & Magic
Book II: Monsters & Treasure
Book III: The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures
Book IV: Greyhawk
Book V: Blackmoor
Book VI: Eldritch Wizardry
Book VII: Gods, Demigods & Heroes

The set also includes a reprint of the Reference Sheets from the original box and two sets of dice, but does not include Chainmail, the miniatures rules that D&D grew out of, or Swords & Spells, the D&D miniatures rules that are often considered Supplement V.

From these previews, we can see they are correcting some minor typos, such as changing "Forward" in the original Men & Magic to "Foreword". 

I can't say I am a fan of the updated artwork, but it is nice to see OD&D back in print and in the public eye.

For more discussion visit the OD&D Discussion thread, WOTC reprinting OD&D.

4 comments:

  1. Oh no, that means no one will understand %Liar any more!

    ReplyDelete
  2. "Sword of Meal Detecting" jokes shall also plummet out of fashion!

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's a shame that they decided to change the artwork to something modern - and more boring...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Is that Thor on the cover of Gods, Demigods, & Heroes? Come on. Why not just put the set on dndclassics.com in its original form? Is the 'modern' art, a.k.a. obnoxious contemporary mainstream comic book art, supposed to lure the 'younger generation' into OD&D?

    If you're going to throw the old-timers a bone, throw them the whole bone!

    Sorry. Fit over.

    ReplyDelete