By The Scribe

Edited by Kynan Connor

July, 2007.

The Tome of Treasures was originally conceived to be a comprehensive discussion vehicle for all forms of collectible materials associated with the role-playing game experience. The idea was initiated in the summer of 2003 and came to fruition later that fall. The actual name for the Tome of Treasures came from Mike Kuo, a collector and friend who helped guide the early stages of development with both input and submissions.

2003 was a pivotal year for the Tome of Treasures project. I met Ralf Toth in the summer and floated an outline later that fall. Ralf was already interested in creating an online price guide for all AD&D products and agreed to help with the Tome of Treasures as time permitted. He built the first web page in October. Domain registry was transferred into Ralf's name and by 2004 the first forums were launched to help speed-up communication. Ralf's thousands of hours of work has yielded both the basic page structure of the site as well as much of the (Advanced) Dungeons & Dragons archive material. He currently runs the AD&D department here at the Tome.

Once the forums were up and running, it became more feasible to invite other members into the Tome partnership. In the winter of 2004 Christopher Smagghe was asked to join. He has been invaluable to the design of the site and serves as a forum administrator. In April of 2005 Ralf asked his good friend Christian Reitemeier to join in the capacity of administering the Forgotten Realms pages. In November of that year Kynan Connor joined the Tome and has literally overhauled the forums with the introduction of the Research Forums. Previously, the forums at the Tome were designed to be a platform for interactive discussions within the community. When Kynan came along, he suggested that the interactive forum structure be used as an integrative research tool. The Research Forums were entirely his concept, initiation, and construct. They have become an important and integral part of the Tome's current position and future growth particularly with respect to the ability of the community to make user-driven submissions for all to see and add to. He administers the Research Forums and has already listed hundreds if not thousands of items from his extensive personal collection. In the beginning of 2007 Paul Tremiti was invited and has since contributed greatly to the Archive area and now administers the TSR portion of the Research Forum. His generous and mighty work has been vital in covering some of the more important aspects of the TSR collectible community. The latest addition to the Tome family is Michael Deaton. He will be heading up the Archive area coverage of TSR Non-Gaming items.

Today we have 4,500+ pictures on 3,000+ archive pages to offer, plus a whopping 2,750+ pictures inside the Research Forum. And this is just the beginning. The Tome of Treasures is a continual work of construction and discovery. Now is the time to open the doors to enable the public to both enjoy the work that has been done and contribute to the ongoing project, to help write the history about the people and ideas that made the role-playing experience possible.