I was reading an old Dilbert book yesterday and ran across this strip.
Is it just me or is that the first edition AD&D player's handbook cover demon?
Brow ridges, horns, mouth shape, teeth, nose, arm position...
(Hotlinking to Grognardia's copy of the image here... it's all on Blogger's servers, right?...)
Grognardia has begun a series on the history of art in D&D with discussions of three Player's Handbook covers: understandably, for a blog called Grognardia (but I think he justifies this assessment cogently), he considers the AD&D PHB cover the Best Cover Ever; he moves on to the revised cover of the same book, which came out I guess in 1983? -- and moves on to the 2nd Edition cover.
I was never a real grognard in the sense that I played old school D&D for any extended period of time; I played Tunnels & Trolls. However, I did own the AD&D books, and I had friends who played D&D who I played with sometimes. And I guess I bought mine pretty early and so did my friends, because the oldest AD&D art is what I associate with AD&D. I couldn't have told you what was even on the "revised cover" AD&D players' handbook, and 2nd edition D&D -- well, I was never a big D&D fan to begin with, and by the time 2nd edition came out I was playing other things.
So not out of loyal old-school grognardism, but just from being out of touch, my mental idea of what D&D is is extremely old school (but not ultimately super-old school, because while I owned a copy of white-box OD&D, I bought it as a curiosity, not because I knew anybody who played it).
