Are you currently burdened with a nerdy friend in need of a really good Christmas gift, and an extraneous $6,000? Then you’re in luck, because BoingBoing is reporting that an original copy of Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson’s Dungeons & Dragons is currently on the eBay auction block.
Subtitled Rules For Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable With Paper And Pencil And Miniature Figures, the three-booklet set comes in the original woodgrain box that TSR, Inc. shipped out a thousand copies of—mostly to direct customers and hobby shops—back in 1974. It also comes with a loose-leaf reference sheet, a 20-sided die, and a note from the original owner, a school librarian who apparently used the game to teach his students about tactics, teamwork, and orcs.
The original Dungeons & Dragons was a far cry from the slick, polished system published by Wizards Of The Coast today; the only available classes were the magic user, the cleric, and the always intimidating “fighting-man,” and the game assumed players already had a working knowledge of several popular wargames of the day (including Gygax’s own Chainmail.) If you want to own this piece of tabletop gaming history, you’d better be ready to pony up some cash: bidding is already up to $5,800, with three days left on the auction.