"We self-published 40 copies of it under the title of Chevalier. It was our intent and our hope to sell our material to TSR as a sort of "Advanced" D&D. We traveled to GENCON for that purpose in August ''76. We never did show it to TSR because we took an instant dislike to Gygax and so sought out another publisher. It required us about 4 months to completely de-D&D our manuscript [...] "
http://ptgptb.org/0015/forum.html
3 comments:
I somehow missed this post. I spent a lot of time investigating Chevalier and frustratingly discovered that it was reprinted print on demand from the late 90s through to a few years ago - for a measly $20!!! You could buy a copy from Wil Backhaus. I wish I'd known back then, I would've bought a copy.
As it is who knows how many copies are floating around out there. There's so little about it on the Net that I can only assume hardly anyone bought copies, which is a great shame as this game is an important piece of RPG history.
The story behind the "instant dislike" varies, including that Gary was berating a volunteer at the con for something or other. The rest is history, anyhow. :)
The story about Ed being the first to come up with term "gamemaster" (other interviews state "invent", IIRC) because he didn't like the phrase "dungeonmaster" requires context too! ;)
I can't remember if I saved the link but I also found another account of that day which said the guys handed the folder to Gygax who then said he wasn't interested.
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