Isle of Dread as an Endless Quest Book from WotC?

Endless Quest was the name of the Pick-Your-Own Adventure Path game books that TSR published between 1982 and 1996. It was recently revived for the  D&D 5th Edition with a series of books by author Matt Forbeck.

Matt recently revealed the covers for two new books in the series that will be published in September this year.

Escape from Castle Ravenloft is especially noteworthy because it is the only book so far to be associated with a D&D setting other than the Forgotten Realms. All the books in the series have tie ins to current D&D Adventure Sourcebooks. The Mad Mage's Academy is tied to Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage for instance.

"You never know, but we’ve stuck mostly to the Forgotten Realms so far. Ravenloft is our first venture outside that." says Matt Forbeck when asked about the possibility of an Isle of Dread tie in book. The question came up because a gigantic hardcover version of the Isle of Dread was released last year. It was published by Goodman Games under lisence, but the previous adventure in that series, Into the Borderlands, is advertised on Wizard's Website.

More Isle of Dread material from WotC would make fans of BECMI D&D and fans of Mystara happy. The setting has been teased in numerous D&D5E books, but Isle of Dread is the only book to fully embrace the setting.

See also: An old analysis of mine about the old Endless Quest Books and possible connections to Mystara (Piazza thread)



-Havard

Chainmail Co-Creator Jeff Perren 70 years today!

Today is a good time to honor another important figure in the history of our hobby. Jeff Perren turns 70 years old today. He was a member of the Lake Geneva Tactical Association (LGTSA) which was the group who used to meet regularly in Gary Gygax' basement for gaming. Among gamers today, Jeff Perren is best known as the Co-Creator of Chainmail. The original version of the ruleset was distributed in the Domesday Book, which many of my readers will know was the fanzine for the Castles & Crusades Society.

Edit: Frank Mentzer revealed the following on the origins on the original edition of Chainmail:

"I believe that Jeff was the sole Compiler/Author of Chainmail (the version for the club, gathering various good ideas and massaging them into coherence). For publication, Gary had to give it more work. I also believe this fact is vastly overlooked."

The original version of the ruleset was distributed in 1970, while Guidon Games published their 1st edition in 1971. TSR published their first version (3rd edition) in 1975 (Acaeum).

For a while, many incorrectly assumed that Blackmoor was simply a variant of the Chainmail game, but although I think that most people these days accept that that is just a myth, gaming historians and fans still debate to what extent Chainmail did influence the two creators of Dungeons & Dragons. My friend DHBoggs has written som excellent articles about this on his blog here.

No matter where you land on those debates, I think we should all be able to recognize that Chainmail was an important milestone in the development of our hobby and we can be thankful for Jeff Perren's contributions. In this short interview, Perren humbly admits that he recieved no royalties for Chainmail, but that he is happy that some of the things he created are still loved. The World of Greyhawk also has a region, Perrenland, that is named after him.

Happy birthday Jeff!



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Note: Image taken from this blog
Note: Thanks to author Matt Forbeck for making me aware of the date of Mr Perren's Birthday.

More discussion of this topic at The Comeback Inn


-Havard