DM Tales

Ever since I’ve returned to the RPG hobby-space one of my goals has been to collect the three core books for each of the editions of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, as well as it’s successor editions from third edition on. I’ve picked up a number of these so far, including the original covers for the AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide and Monster Manual ¹, but I was really interested in picking up the core books for AD&D’s second edition, which was where I’d ended my D&D journey back in the early 90’s ².

This past weekend we took a trip to our favorite used book store and in the case where they keep their RPG books I saw the book I’d been wanting, a 2nd Edition Player’s Handbook with the Jeff Easley Cover. I snapped an image of the cover, then held it up to the woman at the counter and said, “OK, I’m getting this.” I was thrilled.

When I got home I celebrated by sharing my photo on Facebook ³ and celebrated how I moved one step closer to my collection goal. It was a fun moment for me, and a a number of folks gave some nice reactions. As my wife and I were talking about it she quipped, “Wouldn’t it be funny if that was your copy of the book?” I knew that was impossible, because my copy was long gone, but it was a fun moment.

That night, after the Phillies had won game 5 of the NLCS ⁴, I got a text from an old friend.

Go back to your post on FB. The one about the 2e PHB.

When I did, what I saw floored me. My friend, who I had seen all of two times in the past thirty years had kept a very special copy of the 2nd Edition Player’s Handbook.

The one with my name in it.

I was blown away. It turns out I hadn’t disposed of my copy of that book. Sometime in 1991 I must have lent, or just plain given, my friend my copy–and I had no memory of it. Not only that, but as I texted with him I also discovered that he had my copy of the 2nd Edition Dungeon Master’s guide as well! And now, he’s sending them back. He didn’t need to do this. In fact, I offered to swap the copy I purchased with my old one–but he has doubles and was glad to see them back in my hands. I am beyond ecstatic that I’ll soon have this small bit of my history in the hobby back. And I’m even more glad for an old friend who preserved that part of our childhood friendship for decades. What a wonderful surprise!

1. Gifted to me by my neighbor after we watched the first season of Stranger Things together. ↩

2. I began with Moldvay Basic, in case you were wondering. ↩

3. I’ve got my Facebook feed curated so I don’t see a ton of nonsense, so no judgements please. ↩

4. Let’s go Phillies! ↩