Do we know who wrote the Monster & Treasure Assortments?

[geoffrey]

I'm talking about these products:

Monster & Treasure Assortment Set One: Levels One-Three (1977)


Monster & Treasure Assortment Set Two: Levels Four-Six (1977)


Monster & Treasure Assortment Set Three: Levels Seven-Nine (1978)


We know the Dungeon Geomorphs that kind of go with these were drawn by Gary Gygax. Did Gary also put the Monster & Treasure Assortments together? If not, who did?

[Zenopus]

Ernie Gygax's bio on the GP page says he "participated to the creation of such game products as the Dungeon Geomorphs, the Monster & Treasure Assortment, created the Water Weird and even gave the young company a slogan to fit its new image: “The Game Wizards”, for which he was handsomely rewarded by his father with a large glass of single malt and a cigar in his private office at age 16."

www.gp-adventures.com/about-gp-adventures/

He's active on Facebook, you might ask him for more details over there.

[geoffrey]

May 19, 2017 23:17:13 GMT -6 Zenopus said:

Ernie Gygax's bio on the GP page says he "participated to the creation of such game products as the Dungeon Geomorphs, the Monster & Treasure Assortment..."

I think that pretty much answers the question. The three sets of Dungeon Geomorphs were authored as follows:

Dungeon Geomorphs Set One: Basic Dungeon by Gary Gygax
Dungeon Geomorphs Set Two: Caves & Caverns by Gary and Ernie Gygax
Dungeon Geomorphs Set Three: Lower Dungeons by Gary Gygax

If my information is correct, Ernie Gygax was 16-17 years old in the years of the release of the Monster & Treasure Assortments (1977-78). As with the second set of Dungeon Geomorphs, I think it a safe bet that Ernie helped the primary author: his father, Gary Gygax.

[kenmeister]

By the way, I owned these products last year. I recall discovering there are fine differences between them and the Monster & Treasure Assortment compilation. At any rate, I sold the Sets One, Two, and Three on eBay; I actually like the compilation better from a usability standpoint, especially because it is a booklet and not loose sheets of paper.

[Zenopus]

May 22, 2017 7:17:46 GMT -6 kenmeister said:

By the way, I owned these products last year. I recall discovering there are fine differences between them and the Monster & Treasure Assortment compilation. At any rate, I sold the Sets One, Two, and Three on eBay; I actually like the compilation better from a usability standpoint, especially because it is a booklet and not loose sheets of paper.

There's a list of the many changes between the original versions (for OD&D) and the compilation (for B/X) over at the Acaeum. I find the original to be more interesting since it's part of Falconer's Lost Edition era.

www.acaeum.com/library/m&tchanges.html

[Zenopus]

I'm friends with Ernie on FB so I went ahead and asked him about this today. His answer is here.

I worked on the creation alone. Sitting after school at my Dad's desk at 723 Williams St, with percentile dice, paper and pencil. I was to roll up randomly everything (using the original boxed set) and change it as I saw fit to make it fun. Dad was of the belief that the customer seemed to not be like us so much in that they really loved pre-made materials. I also had to create at least one new monster in one case the Water Weird. I also did the geomorphs and Dave Sutherland made them look good, just as Ben does with my Hobby Shop Dungeon levels but Dave didn't quadruple the size of each level as Benoist Poire does. Minimum wage work during my Junior and Senior year of High School. Another duty was to punch in and work with Rob Kuntz in the Shipping department. We just used brown paper and paper tape to ship retail orders to most customers then 1976-77. Terry Kuntz and I did the "new" electrical work in the converted house and Tactical Studies Rules got what they paid for, sometimes in at least one room the light switch would not work...

It's also nice to learn that Sutherland did the professional drafting for the Geomorphs.

[Stormcrow]

May 22, 2017 13:59:40 GMT -6 Zenopus said:

I'm friends with Ernie on FB so I went ahead and asked him about this today. His answer is here.

I worked on the creation alone. Sitting after school at my Dad's desk at 723 Williams St, with percentile dice, paper and pencil. I was to roll up randomly everything (using the original boxed set) and change it as I saw fit to make it fun.

I'm surprised they actually wanted to roll everything randomly instead of just assigning scores all the way down the page.

[geoffrey]

May 22, 2017 13:59:40 GMT -6 Zenopus said:

I'm friends with Ernie on FB so I went ahead and asked him about this today. His answer is here.

I worked on the creation alone. Sitting after school at my Dad's desk at 723 Williams St, with percentile dice, paper and pencil. I was to roll up randomly everything (using the original boxed set) and change it as I saw fit to make it fun. Dad was of the belief that the customer seemed to not be like us so much in that they really loved pre-made materials. I also had to create at least one new monster in one case the Water Weird. I also did the geomorphs and Dave Sutherland made them look good, just as Ben does with my Hobby Shop Dungeon levels but Dave didn't quadruple the size of each level as Benoist Poire does. Minimum wage work during my Junior and Senior year of High School. Another duty was to punch in and work with Rob Kuntz in the Shipping department. We just used brown paper and paper tape to ship retail orders to most customers then 1976-77. Terry Kuntz and I did the "new" electrical work in the converted house and Tactical Studies Rules got what they paid for, sometimes in at least one room the light switch would not work...

It's also nice to learn that Sutherland did the professional drafting for the Geomorphs.

Very interesting. I would guess, then, that Gary's contribution was basically that of editor, ensuring that nothing crazy found its way onto the page.

[Vile Traveller]

May 22, 2017 14:46:06 GMT -6 Stormcrow said:

I'm surprised they actually wanted to roll everything randomly instead of just assigning scores all the way down the page.

May 22, 2017 13:59:40 GMT -6 Zenopus said:

I'm friends with Ernie on FB so I went ahead and asked him about this today. His answer is here.

I think it's good, because it shows what the random tables produce. The published Traveller star sectors, on the other hand, seemed to have been fiddled with quite a lot. If you have to change things substantially to make them work, there must be something wrong with your tables, I always say.

[Starbeard]

There is a podcast interview with Ernie Gygax a few years ago—I think it was Dead Games Society #8—where he talks about working on the Geomorphs.

I think Gary's name was on it because it was still in that era of TSR where writing credit went to the person who oversaw the product, rather than the person who created it.

[Zenopus]

May 22, 2017 16:48:48 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

May 22, 2017 13:59:40 GMT -6 Zenopus said:

I'm friends with Ernie on FB so I went ahead and asked him about this today. His answer is here.

It's also nice to learn that Sutherland did the professional drafting for the Geomorphs.

Very interesting. I would guess, then, that Gary's contribution was basically that of editor, ensuring that nothing crazy found its way onto the page.

For the Geomorphs, Gygax indicated he wrote the sample encounters per this post on Enworld, and he may have wrote the whole intro text as well. And he may have done the same for the M&TA sets.

[Zenopus]

May 23, 2017 2:23:26 GMT -6 Starbeard said:

There is a podcast interview with Ernie Gygax a few years ago—I think it was Dead Games Society #8—where he talks about working on the Geomorphs.

Thanks! Just listened. The part where he mentions the Geos and M&TA is just after 39:00.

I note he mentions the Water Weird again in connection with the M&TAs, but the Water Weird doesn't actually appear in that product. It first appeared in the Lost Caverns of Tsojconth (1976) - along with the debut of the Troglodyte and the Neo-Otyugh - and then in the Monster Manual (1977) where Gygax credits it to Ernie.

[strangebrew]

I think the original three M&TA sets are the TSR items I'd most like to see in pdf format. They're pretty rare, they have practical use, provide an interesting insight to old D&D, and were originally just loose sheets so you won't miss out on much just printing them out.

Hopefully someday but I think it's very low on the priority list for WOTC.