Q&D???

[aher]

Referring to The Dragon #34 (February 1980, Vol IV No 8) retrieved from the Dragon Magazine Archive on CD--

In the Sage Advice column on page 16, Jean wells writes: "...but I prefer Q&D/AD&D."

What is "Q&D"? An OCR error scanning the dead tree version to PDF? A typo in the dead tree version itself? Some meaning of "Q&D" other than "quick and dirty" that I'm missing here? Does anybody have the dead tree version of The Dragon #34 for comparison purposes?

Interestingly, in the answers in this column, the phrase "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons" (with "and" spelled out--no ampersand) appears twice, "Advanced D&D" appears once, "AD&D" appears twice, and "Original Dungeons and Dragons" appears once. There's no editorial consistency or apparent naming conventions here. But paging through the Player's Handbook and the Dungeon Masters Guide, I see only "Advanced D&D(TM)" or "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons(R)" always with the ampersand, and "Advanced" never abbreviated.

BTW, I know the term "Q&D" isn't a defect in my CD Archive alone, since Googling "but I prefer Q&D/AD&D" produces a couple of hits.

[talysman]

I'm hoping someone has an answer for this. When I saw the question, I tried to find what I could. I don't have the hardcopy (probably did at one time, but I gave away a bunch of Dragons years ago.) So, I tracked down a fuller quote.

Will you answer questions about Boot Hill, Divine Right, Gamma World, etc.?

No, not on my own time. I don’t play those games much. I have, but I prefer Q&D/AD&D. To have any questions in those areas answered, you will have to write to TSR and then they will see that the correct person answers your letter

It seems from the context this is strictly about TSR games, so "Q&D" can't be an abbreviation for another game available in early 1980. I checked some TSR product lists and couldn't find anything listed that could be reasonably abbreviated as "Q&D". So that leaves:

- OCR error, probably for "D&D"
- mini-game published in an issue of Dragon (maybe?)
- abbreviation for "Quick & Dirty", used as a name for some house-ruled variant.

The first is the most likely, but it's the enticing possibility that there was some other (fan? in-house?) variant we don't know about that makes the question interesting.

I seem to remember there were some Dragon articles with "Quick & Dirty" in the title. Maybe these represent part of that variant?