Hunters of Dragons - The Original Dungeons & Dragons Collecting Guide (1st Printing)

Dungeons & Dragons is the world first and still the most popular tabletop role playing game ever, now with over 35 years of history behind it having been first published in 1974 by a minuscule company in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin (USA) and created by Gary Gygax and David Arneson. You can see Dungeons & Dragons products in game stores, hobby stores, selected comic stores and bookshops and many Internet retailers even today, in the age of computer and on line games.

However, Dungeons & Dragons was for a long time not just one game, but two: an easier, beginner friendly version called Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) and another, aimed to gamers and experts, named Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D). D&D was published from 1974 to 1993 and it was popular especially outside the United States and the English speaking countries. AD&D got its start in 1977 with the Monster Manual and it got a second edition in 1989. When Wizards of the Coast decided to release a third edition of AD&D, it choose to use simply the Dungeons & Dragons name that had more mass recognition. To avoid confusion, the TSR version of D&D is often called Original Dungeons & Dragons or, especially in Europe, Classic Dungeons & Dragons.

Besides gaming proper, D&D and AD&D developed a loyal following of collectors, first in the US and then worldwide. With the advent of Internet, collectors from around the world had a chance to trade, buy, sell, compare notes, share information and create websites devoted to the products they love. Nonetheless, despite some excellent game collecting books (for example Heroic Worlds by Lawrence Schick) and great web sites (for example The Acaeum), professionally produced books about D&D and AD&D collecting were missing…

…until now!

Hunters of Dragons is the first professionally produced, designed and published book entirely devoted to Original D&D collecting. The book has a complete history of the Original Dungeons & Dragons game, a complete (as far as the author and the contributors are aware of) listing of every Original D&D product released (including non English versions and original non English language items!) with a lot of images, rare and very rarely seen photos and advertising for the game, a chapter (written by Mark R. Shipley with advice from Shane Glodoski) about Judges Guild (a company that fot a license for Original D&D products that had a big impact on the game and tabletop role playing games in general) and three interviews: one with Gary Gygax (author of the game), David Arneson (the second author of the game) and Larry Elmore (the great artist that revolutionized Original D&D in its fourth edition with his amazing artistic skill).

Hunters of Dragons is published by Wild Boar Edizioni, one of Italy’s main role playing game publishers, with the Italian edition of worldwide successes such as Exalted and Traveller in its lines.