New 2nd ed AD&D item... and you thought you had it all;)

[beasterbrook]

Well here is a new item for you all to be on the look out for... (Merry Christmas!)

Adventure Quest (tm) From the Creators of Dungeons and Dragons...



Produced in 1994 by ORBIS Publishing in London as a fortnight collectiable series. 3 issues were produced and offered in a few test markets and then cancelled. TSR were never sent a copy of issue 3 at all...

Origionally slated for 40 issues,each issue was suposed to come with 6 playing cards (for a total of 240) that feature characters/magic spells/ magic items/ creatures (picture on front stats on the back) featured in each edition of the magazine. Subscribers recieved free binders throughout the series (none were produced) that held 13 issues. Two official multi-sided dice were included as well (issue 2 had a free 20 sided dice?)

Each issue is split up into various parts: Sage Advice, Heroes & Villains, Player's Almanac, Creature Catalog, Sword & Scroll, Gamequest, Gamespeak

Issue 1 comes with a special 12-page introductory pull-out. As well as the following cards: Sethias Chase; Lumenar; Bloodstaff; Goblin, Great Cat, Tiger; Red Dragon Hatchling (I'm missing these! were they made? probably)

Issue 2 comes with the following cards: Mercutia Belladonna-Sunglory; Magic Missile Spell; Cloaf of Displacement; Read Magic spell; Griffon; Zombie. Also says come with a 20 sided dice. (I'm missing these! were they made? probably)

Issue 3 comes with the following cards: Reggi Barleycob, and ??? (maybeOgre, Harpy, owlbear?) My copy is still sealed in the origional packaging. Six card in individual packaging inside.
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All three issues of this magazine have a heavy recycled use of TSR artwork from all of the various game worlds. I bought the 3 issues due to the obvious TSR link of the covers (There was another copy of issue 3 for sale at the time but I chose just to buy the one... doh!) I have also confiremed that Wolfgang Baur has coppies of isse 1 and 2. He has said that the 3 issue was never sent to TSR. These are the only issues that I'm aware of... Wolfgan was sent London to the Orbis offices as part of the joint venture, and one of the Orbis employees came to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, as part of the same deal. No binders were made. David Wise was the writer, Kim Mohan edited, Brian Thomsen was the publisher, all on the TSR side. None of them saw #3.

The English publishers Orbis, were taken over by DeAgostini in late 90's and they know nothing about it. The Aussie and NZ distributers were taken over by an encyclopedia company and now just sell online...

This seems to be issued at about the same time as "The Classic Dungeons & Dragons Game"stock #1106 I have included 3 scans1)front issue 12)Left side of an inner page3)Right side of an inner page showing covers of issue 2, 3, and 4 (which was not produced)

The best place to search for these I believe would be in the UK (unfortunatly for most of us) It looks that this was not for distribution in the US. (Although I did buy these items this from a US source on ebay)






This is taken from an interview with Dave Wise at
http://www.ptolus.com/cgi-bin/page.cgi?int_dnd30_DavidWise
it is the only reference that I can find on the subject....
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Monte: Please share with us a funny or interesting story about your time working on D&D.

David: I'll tell you about the time I wrote almost a quarter-million words about AD&D, for which I was fully paid but which never saw publication . . . and I did it all in 12 weeks . . . while continuing to work full time as a game editor. TSR got involved with a British magazine called Orbis, which publishes 36-issue series of periodicals about individual subjects -- in my case, all about AD&D. Each issue carried 18,000 to 20,000 words and was divided into specific sections, each covering the same topic every time. I love to write, and I was thoroughly delighted to be writing fantasy for a living. However, the release schedule was one issue per week, and the publisher wanted to move from the word processor to the printed page in the shortest amount of time possible, so that was the schedule I got: 18,000-plus words per week, as a side job, while I continued my regular duties as an editor. I did get some help writing along the way, but I still wrote damn near all of it.

Those who have written for a living will cringe at the thought of 18,000 words per week, for 12 weeks in a row, with or without another job. Throughout those three months, I went to work in the morning, came straight home nine hours later, went directly into my home office, and wrote until bedtime. On the weekends, I put in eight to ten hours each day. My birthday arrived around Issue 8, and my wife organized a surprise party for me, including a Milwaukee Brewers game with all my TSR buddies: We went to the game, I spent nine innings fretting about how much writing I had to do, we went home for cake, and everybody immediately left afterward so I could get back to work. What a summer!

Why wasn't it published? Because the first issue went to press, and when we received some pre-sale samples, we discovered that the Orbis editors had changed some of the material, essentially Anglicizing the text so it wouldn't sound like it was written by an American. A disagreement arose over editorial control, and Lorraine Williams' basic management style was always "my way or the highway." In short, the deal feel apart and the magazine never saw the light of day. I was paid for my services and that was the end of it.

Here's the kicker: As we parted ways, my editor Wolfgang Baur bade his Orbis counterparts farewell and remarked what a shame it was that we had worked so hard to meet all those deadlines, only to have the project go down the drain. "Oh, we never expected you to hit those deadlines," they responded. "We only set them up so aggressively because we like to keep our writers moving forward. We were quite impressed by the rate at which you Yanks produced the material. . . ."
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Very interesting item. You got me stumped on that one. Surprised Kuo didn't find that one!
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