When T1 came out...

[GT]

...it really didn't "move" that well at the two local hobby stores that carried gaming materials. It didn't have the immediate appeal that, say, the G-series or S1 or S2 did. Everybody wanted more "epic" material! Being a fanatic, I picked it up anyway (I was one of two in the Purdue group that bought it when it came out...) and was pleasantly surprised by the content and information! Anybody else remember 79/80 and how it sold in your areas?

[ghul]

gt said:

...it really didn't "move" that well at the two local hobby stores that carried gaming materials. It didn't have the immediate appeal that, say, the G-series or S1 or S2 did. Everybody wanted more "epic" material! Being a fanatic, I picked it up anyway (I was one of two in the Purdue group that bought it when it came out...) and was pleasantly surprised by the content and information! Anybody else remember 79/80 and how it sold in your areas?

Well, I suppose my youth shows here, as I'm about 8 or 9 years younger than you, GT. It (T1) was the second module I ever bought (first, if you don't count the fact that B2 came with my Holmes edition set). This was about 1981. I can easily say I was oblivious as to how it sold; nevermind, I don't even remember where I bought it. It wasn't the Hobby Store, because they only sold trains and model cars.

By around 1982 or so, I recall Waldenbooks selling AD&D modules on a spinner wrack, and that was my main source for buying all my modules for quite some time. I do remember looking at T1-4 in its shrinkwrap at Waldenbooks (in the mall) every week, contemplating whether I'd buy it or not due to the steep price. I'd never seen the likes of it before, a module that big. By then I was 14 or 15 and had half a mind to steal it, but never did (not out of any moral sense, because more than a few comic books found their way under my shirt back then).

[GT]

Uncanny... I swiped a few comics from the local Hook's drugs in roughly the same age category--I quit by High SChool having never gotten caught but considering it of negative impact to others. Never swiped a module--I bought T1 at a little "hole-in-the-wall" store in Lafayette called The General Store that sold hobby stuff, but it was jam-packed with all sorts of games (TSR, SPI, Avalon Hill, Amarillo Games, etc.) I remember stopping by every week anticipating a possible new module or Dragon... sometimes a new Grenadier miniatures set. I REALLY shoulda bought the old OD&D Barsoom booklet which they had!!! Ahhh, well--hindsight is 20/20 and all that!

[Scott]

I was too young. I didn't buy it until several years later when I got older and started buying my own stuff.

[GT]

BTW, by 1979 I was in college at Purdue and in addition to loans, grants and scholarships I had saved about $3000, which was a lot of money then. It went towards pizza and gaming... I hadn't started drinking beer yet then!

[Scott]

My paper route financed my gaming. Once or twice a week I'd walk to the hobby shop and buy something new.

[ghul]

admin said:

My paper route financed my gaming. Once or twice a week I'd walk to the hobby shop and buy something new.

Same here. I had the easiest paper route in the world. Apartment buildings that I wasn't allowed in, unless I was collecting payment. So all I had to do was drop a stack of newspapers in the front doorway of each building, and if a paper got stolen, it wasn't my fault. I delivered about 100 newspapers in about 25 minutes. My buddy (and player in my DAILY d&d game) had a paper route with 40 customers, and it took nearly 2 hours to complete, delivering on this big hill with narrow streets and houses separated by a good distance.

[Scott]

I guess I had about a hundred customers on Sundays. Several streets that followed the contour lines on a hillside so that one side of the street had no steps, and every house on the other side had steps. There were a couple of big dogs that would chase me too; one actually jumped through the front window to get me.
Then after I collected I'd take my hard earned loot and go buy D&D books or minis. I remember once while buying some WW II German minis, as I was counting my change, the store employee said, "you're a paperboy, aren't you?".

[foster1941]

As a kid I skipped over T1 - I'd already played the B-series modules and when I "graduated" to AD&D I wanted higher-level stuff, not to start over again at 1st. Plus I didn't (and still don't) like the Jeff Dee cover art, and was wary that it was part 1 of 2 and part 2 hadn't been released yet, so I'd presumably be left hanging. Plus I remember an older kid claiming it was boring and only good for thieves, which didn't sound very appealing or like a good use of my limited allowance money. That said, when T1-4 was released I was all over it - the biggest D&D adventure ever! Finally a published "big dungeon" like they talk about in the rulebooks! A whole campaign in a single book! I eventually did pick up a copy of standalone T1, for completeness' sake and to get a bigger/better copy of the map (the one in T1-4 sucks - it's too small and split across two pages so you have to do some folding to make the two halves line up) but that wasn't until a year or two later - I remember stumbling across it in the back of some small-town toy store while on a family vacation c. 1987 or 88; it had probably been gathering dust there for 5+ years.

[Scott]

The hobby shop where I bought my D&D stuff didn't have it stocked for a while. I didn't know anything about it. Then one day it was there. I had a few bucks, and picked it up. After I got home and read it, I was completely confused. When I ran it, I fumbled through town as quickly as possible, and rushed the party to the dungeon. It wasn't until years later that I really gained an appreciation for everything that was going on.