His Red Box Set Inspired Stranger Things and Sold 40 Million Copies in the 80s.

In this episode of Directors Dungeon, I sit down with Frank Mentzer—a name etched deeply into the foundations of tabletop gaming. Best known as the author of the Red Box edition of Dungeons & Dragons, Frank is more than a game designer. 

He’s a storyteller, an archivist, and a witness to the formative years of a cultural movement. Over the course of our conversation, he opens the doors to a lifetime of design, discovery, and one of the largest privately held collections of games in the world—more than 10,000 and counting.

We begin with “the hoard,” as he calls it: an astonishing array of vintage board games, RPGs, and ephemera stored across multiple locations. But this isn't just a collector's habit. For Frank, it's a record of the 20th century told through mass-market games—their box art, their design sensibilities, and the assumptions they made about who played and why. From post-war optimism to television tie-ins like Bewitched and Gilligan’s Island, the collection traces the contours of American culture long before digital entertainment took over.

But the conversation doesn’t stay in the past. Frank walks us through his early days at TSR, where a job posting led to a career that would help define the hobby. He reflects on his role in rewriting the D&D Basic Set—transforming it from a niche war game into an accessible entry point for millions. We talk about the unexpected turns: editing Gary Gygax’s work, running tournaments at Gen Con, and building worlds designed for collaboration over conflict. His philosophy on gaming emphasizes cooperation, storytelling, and world-building over conquest—a deliberate departure from the competitive mechanics that dominated the wargaming scene he came from.

As someone who has played and designed for nearly five decades, Frank offers rare insight into how the tabletop space has evolved—and how some of the best ideas were lost, shelved, or stolen along the way. He discusses the archival material he’s preserved, including manuscripts, internal memos, and original drafts from TSR's most pivotal years. Whether these will be donated, sold, or published is still undecided—but the urgency to preserve them is clear.

More than a retrospective, this episode is a meditation on memory, legacy, and the quiet labor of keeping a creative history alive. Frank isn’t chasing a final payday. He’s trying to make sure the stories—and the stuff—don’t disappear. It’s a conversation filled with humor, candor, and a kind of awe that only comes from someone who’s seen it all, yet still finds joy in a dusty game box or an obscure ruleset.

If you're a fan of RPGs, cultural history, or just love a good story well told, this episode captures something essential about why these games matter—and why preserving their history is a project worth doing.

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Produced by: Build Something Media

Transcript

(Gentle Music)

(...)

On today's show, I'm joined by Frank Benser. He's a legendary game designer who over the past 30 years has collected a tabletop game collection of more than 10,000 games.(...) He believes it may be the largest privately held game collection in the world. And he tells us about his time working with TSR, the company that created Dungeons and Dragons.(...) Let's get into it.

(...)

All right, so let's start with some questions about the tabletop collection that Jamie has been going through. How long you've been collecting this, the hoard, as I believe you call it, and how big it is and kind of what some of the sentimental value of that is to you?(...) Well, there is very little of it that has actual sentimental value to me, although there are a number of pieces.

(...)

One is a vintage piece from the first invention of color lithography in the 1800s, shortly after the Civil War.

(...)

And that made the company, the McLaughlin Brothers,

(...)

made their fortunes. They started producing games in wooden boxes with this color litho art on the top and nobody had ever seen anything like this. And so they sold like mad. Later on, they sold out their entire line to this upstart from Massachusetts, Uncle Mildy,(...) who then had his own competitors, the Brothers Parker, but Milton Bradley Parker Brothers and all that got eaten up by the company in New York, the Hasenfields,

(...)

which became Hasenfield Brothers, which became Hasenfield Brothers, sorry,

(...)

evolved into Hasbro and is now one of the major companies out there with Mattel and others.

(...)

But the game,(...) when I first moved from the Philadelphia area to Lake Geneva to start with TSR, I had a fair but modest game collection. I was living in an apartment and it was very poor at the time,(...) but I had favorites and we had a regular board game nights with a couple of my good friends.(...) Unfortunately, they had to be stored while I went to Lake Geneva with nothing but bags of clothing really,

(...)

and a small couple of medicines and that was it.

(...)

And after I adjusted, then I went back and collected a lot of the stuff. And then by that time I realized how little I had managed to save, that some of the ones that vanished over the years were ones that I learned on back in the 1960 to 65 period.

(...)

Avalon Hill board games, other things. Anyhow, so something in me said, "No, relive the old days. You want to get to restock those. Now that you're in Lake Geneva, you have the opportunity to." So I went to the, they run a huge game convention, the biggest in the country called GenCon. And I got involved with their auction pretty early. After I joined TSR by 82, I was working at the auction part-time by 83 full-time as I was working on the Beckman line.(...) And when I worked as an auctioneer mostly and a sorter, you could say, when something would come in, I would say whether this was a rare collectible or not. You know, most of it, no, not. And then other people, this stuff would be headed for, we call it the stacks, these piles of games from hundreds of sellers. And something would be headed in the, go to the stacks pile and I'd roll up, I would pull something out and say, "Wait a minute, wait a minute. This is highly collectible and here's why." And then later, when the seller got paid, we would get perfused. Thanks. So you covered our hotel bill. We never expected that. You know, finding these gems hidden in people's collections. Well,(...) this infected me as well. So I not only restocked those games of childhood, but also expanded my game collection. Also, TSR had this generous habit of giving every employee one brand new copy of everything they made. So I had shrink-wrapped modules and just all sorts of stuff on the shelves.

(...)

And it just started piling up.

(...)

As the addiction grew, I started stopping with both of two wives over the decades,(...) I started stopping at resale shops and antique malls and that sort of thing. And got to know just at a glance, whether some typical family game, let's say for example, the Bewitched board game, or card game, they made both. Whether that is overpriced or a bargain there or what. Is it complete? And I started becoming knowledgeable as to, checking completeness, et cetera. This infected my work at the Gen Con auction in that there would be a stack of things. And if we got into any vintage board games, just with a glance, I could tell people to manufacture the date roughly woes about whether it was a dog, a technical Milton Bradley, you know, kids game, just to keep the kids shut up while you're doing important stuff, or whether it was really a valid game. And I became just out of sheer volume, kind of an expert on a lot of this stuff.

(...)

I had an inventory, I really did. And I tried to keep it up in the beginning, but there were,(...) my game involvement started cascading with the creation of Red Box in that series,

(...)

helping Planet TSR International, being the guy people looked at when they thought of Dungeons and Dragons. The Italian fans, for example, that is where they were first introduced, was my Red Box in Italian. So this fandom grew and my schedule went crazy. So there were a lot of times when I would go to Gen Con, buy literally a van load of games while I was there as auctioneer, drive home and then just no time, throw them into storage, we'll inventory them later. And then that procrastination escalated.

(...)

At this point, well, at some point, I guess about five years ago, because I haven't collected much since,(...) I was certain that it was over 10,000, but I had lost track because it had spread out to two different storage units, plus what I had at home. The items just that I had at home paid for a house for me. And five years ago, I had the divorce, I just sold some game stuff and poof, I had a mortgage free house, it was a trip.(...) But that didn't touch this hoard of stuff in storage, that was the prime stuff off of my shelves at home.(...) And so after the years here, unfortunately I did not have the wherewithal to take real good care of them, like in climate controlled storage, they were just a typical storage unit, the bulk of them, although some were in a moving company's warehouse. So they survived the best here over the years.

(...)

That and included what they had included,

(...)

the last banners from Gen Con Milwaukee before they packed up and moved to Indianapolis where they've been ever since.

(...)

And I have a set of banners that say Gen Con of the unique logo and style that were used in the dealer area and certain other areas of Gen Con. So we're looking for the right venue, you should say for those, because they're so tall, you can't hang them in a normal house generally, if you have a cathedral ceiling maybe. So it's one of the things we're talking to different retailers and institutions, things like that,(...) about disposal of these. And we don't have to get the pinch pennies on this stuff, because there are so many others that we do fully intend to liquidate duplicates, et cetera, of the various ones. The total game count is probably in the 12 to 15,000 range. My partners in this endeavor who are handling the logistics of sorting and then inventory needs, because I unfortunately got old and sick and it got beyond me. But luckily folks have been willing to jump in. A business partnership has been formed, it's all being handled very straightforward and on the up and up.

(...)

We are still awaiting our scanner, we wanted to be able to take a flash two second pick of every game as it goes by, just to establish condition and the inventory record and all that.(...) But my partners, as I say, are talking Guinness Book and are reaching out to them. Apparently there has never been a private collection of this scale.

(...)

I knew of a larger collection that Darwin Bromley, the founder of Mayfair Games, who I'm happy to give Duke credit here.

(...)

But it turns out he kept the collection in his company's name. And they acquired basically one new copy of everything from maybe 1981 or two on through up into 1990s. So that was an astounding collection. They just kept it all in the warehouse in perfect shape.(...) Most of that, as I understand it, was donated or sold to the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. Another major name in this little sub-industry of game collectibles.

(...)

So that's where we stand with the hoard, as you put it, the collection that got away from itself but is now being rescued, finally. Thank goodness. Yeah, no, that's wonderful.

(...)

So I know that you said that a lot of the games that you learned on are games that you've kind of went searching for later and that you collected so many of them as you were going along throughout the years.(...) How did those games, the games that you reminded you of your youth, how did those influence the work that you did on D&D when you were at DSR?

(...)

Well, really not at all. Most of the games that I gravitated towards of that era were, well, first were the World War II and then Civil War and then ancient era war conflicts, playing out battles in different modes.

(...)

I evolved beyond that. There was a brief skirmish I had with miniature figures and going through all that. But mostly I moved into board games of science fiction and fantasy nature, excuse me.

(...)

Now, science fiction and fantasy board games really continue the same mentality and mechanics

(...)

of the ancient war games.(...) You have basically two or three or four sides, but you duke it out and see whose forces are stronger, better equipped,(...) or better deployed tactically, or just better with eye rolls in many cases.

(...)

Whether it's on sea or on land, or that was a whole hobby there. The advent of role playing in 74, however, kicked me beyond that. By 1976, I was first explored D&D, and by 77 I was running a regular game

(...)

right up until I left for TSR in January, 1980.(...) But in exploring that and role playing, I tried, I really consciously had evolved beyond the war game thing. That whole realm was there. If I wanted to go back and enjoy just a duking it out war game, whether fantasy, science fiction, or historical, in any mode. And if I really wanted to gloss it up, go to a convention and get involved in a mangers war game where people have spent weeks painting entire armies of fantasy figures and things, all laid out on elaborate terrain that looks like Mars or New York City or something. It's just the amount of work that goes into these is amazing.

(...)

But mostly I evolved, and I put this way deliberately, I tried consciously to evolve beyond that more,

(...)

shouldn't say primitive, because they're certainly very complex, but that more primeval sort of entertainment where that hearkens back to our origins as humanity,(...) being able to accomplish over others, other beings over the environments, over competitors, such as homony and orthalis that homo sapiens won out. And all this is competition. I've gone on at length about that philosophical trend that how role playing breaks out of that emphasizes cooperation. But as a result of this, my game designs are really nearly free of, in many cases, of that war game influence and that conflict influence. And instead I had fully embraced what I first ran into a TSR, and that was the presentation of logical, consistent worlds of fantasy, not just a setting or an adventure, but the world, the whole environment in which this is located. And thus I tried to aim the entire Beckney line, really in this respect, culminating in the companion set with detailed instructions on building your own huge campaign world, a whole continent full, if you like, and what everybody does and where the money comes from and what goodies you have found out of the earth or out of forests and things like that,

(...)

hunting, fishing, and all the various resources that you get into in a more primitive, but non hunter-gatherer society,(...) having evolved to settlements

(...)

and making the first steps towards greater civilization. So I was proud to illustrate in my own way, explaining to folks how they did that. Now my board game collection, on the other hand, became, sort of evolved its own purpose. And when I realized that the depictions, the art on the covers, especially, of the family games of the 20th century illustrated the scope of the 20th century in America. And so it became my focus to collect the 20th century board games and card and tile and other games, but mostly those, separate from my role playing and hobby games thing,

(...)

to try and illustrate really the history of the 20th century from the common cultural point of view long before internet and all this. So we see the licensed games based on radio shows. There was one called "Fibber McGee and Molly" that was very popular before television. This became a card game that people played at home. The earliest television shows in black and white spawned licensed board games. Right away, the game makers saw the money and the potential here. And for example, the old show "Combat," "Vick Morrow" back in the late 50s and 60s. That had its board game. I mentioned "Bewitched," of course, one of America's favorites there, but the Beverly Hillbillies, just all in all, every popular show, Gilligan's Island, every popular show had its game. And the artwork in the World War II era and coming out of that was very distinctive in showing this post-war boom period America, both in the style of the art and the selection of topics for the art when they were free to go beyond what the basic game was.

(...)

One of the more nefarious illustrations, I won't name the manufacturer, but the game is, I think, battleship. And you basically have a board and two people play and you guess where the other guy put his battleships on a hidden board, comes down to that, by guessing numbers and locations. But the illustration on the box lid is of the father and son playing this game for the whole family, it says on the box, while the mother and daughter are doing the dishes in the kitchen, in the background.

(...)

Very role-specific for its era and something that we have, thankfully, evolved beyond,

(...)

in part due to the advent of single parroting and making everybody realize this is normal, this is stuff everybody has to deal with, no household activities are in no way gender-specific,(...) except the sole topic being that attending for newborns in which the woman has to have a dominant role just for natural normal reasons. But for everything else,

(...)

everything is much more shared these days and that equality is then reinforced and illustrated on later game titles. The latest I have though, I cut it off, it was at the year 2000, in part because my career was getting so darn busy and in part for financial and physical reasons, it was just overflowing by that time. It kept growing for many years longer, but I'm glad it's finally being rescued, like I say.

(...)

So let's talk a little bit about the days at TSR.

(...)

Could you give me a little bit of insight for people who don't know,

(...)

what your role was at TSR,

(...)

just kind of for a newcomer, someone who's not, who doesn't know a whole lot about D&D.

(...)

Okay.

(...)

It's a long and complicated story, a tree with many branches, so bear with me. I got hired with no editorial experience by this up and coming booming game company that already had nearly 50 employees

(...)

to be an editor for me, hired me as an editor and they explained after I got there that it was kind of an excuse because they had openings approvals for a designer and an editor and the designer slot had been filled by somebody that they knew and really liked already, but they really liked my designs as well. So they strained at Nat's and found an entry in my resume that I was the editor of the high school yearbook many years earlier and we all know what we do in high school. It's not a real job of editing and work per se, you know, you get your name into your book and you have other people who are doing the real work mostly unless you're a hardcore who's going to become a major newspaper publisher in the future in which case you're in and head over heels. Well, I was not in head over heels. I was a typical high school teen and so,

(...)

but they found that in the resume and they cited that to make the excuse to the blooms and Gary apparently that, yeah, he's worth higher in Sears, look, and look at these designs. And so they gave me a shot and that's how I ended up at TSR.

(...)

So my first job was technically just editing.

(...)

I came to the attention of Gary Gygax, the founder of that company and co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons. When he wrote a new adventure module for Dungeons and Dragons and it came to my desk for editing, my supervisors told me, no editing, proofreading only, we don't change words and mess with the boss's stuff, okay? If he deems it worthy of going out, then we take his word for it. And we need this one out fast. Nevertheless, I found that there was a major thing omitted in the adventure that needed to be covered and I wrote it up in my best imitation of Gary's writing stuff, sent it over to him by inter office memo. Lo and behold, it came back within the week. Yeah, it looks good, use it.(...) He just forgot this one aspect and it's the chapel by the way, the place where the clerks work and they are key figures in this adventure of keeping our shorter lands that he wrote.

(...)

So that brought me to his attention and not in an unfavorable way. When we talked about it later, he was sort of, so you're the one who had the guts to point out something is wrong, it was wrong and offer a solution. That's how you get things done, my boy.

(...)

And later that year, I won a DM competition and got selected to start an international role playing games club for TSR.(...) So that became my next job after succeeding with the boss and doing okay at editing, but no great shakes and not really doing any writing up to that point. But apparently I can handle myself well and they liked the way my head worked. And we had gotten along great at the wargaming tables behind the scenes when we would get together in the dungeon hobby shop, Gary and I and many other employees and duke it out old fashioned, have a battle and see who wins.

(...)

After setting up the RPGA, Gary, the boss decided that I was the one to tackle a rewrite of the original Dungeons and Dragons game. Now,(...) when this came out in 1874, it was very crude and they didn't even call it a role playing game. It was another of these wargaming things, okay.

(...)

In 1977, a volunteer author from California rewrote that with more of an emphasis on playing the roles, which is what everyone suddenly realized was the cool new thing about this type of games.(...) In 1980, the other person who I was hired with, Tom Mulvey, wrote a whole new set of basics. So essentially he did the third edition of the original set.(...) But around that same time, just as he was finishing his writing,

(...)

the business was exploding so much that they had openings in Sears, mall stores, the bookstores like B Dalton and Walden books, if you remember those from the old days. And rather abruptly, management had an emergency meeting and decided that what they were currently creating, the Mulvey basic set that came out in 81,

(...)

wasn't gonna cut it. It wasn't going to look good enough. The artwork could be saleable at Sears. It wasn't written for novices. It was still aimed more at hobbyists. Now the artwork was delightful and a bit cartoonish, but it fit right into where the hobby was at that point. And some of the artists are still world famous. Errol Otis in particular, who did the covers were two box sets, one that Mulvey did and the second one is sequel to that.(...) But by 83, they needed a brand new fully pre-sold, pre-planned product that would sell in and meet the mass market expectations next to book covers and things like that. The kind of artwork coming out of New York City and California. And we're this little company there in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. It was a bit of a challenge, but they tackled it. Luckily sales were rolling well enough that they had the funding to make it all happen to hire top notch artists. One, first, two, the first being Larry O'Mara and Jeff Easley, who are world famous to this day for this and the earliest,

(...)

I'd say realism style and the fantasy artwork. Now this had been done before by the brothers Hildebrand and others, but this was, and Boris Fayo, I hope not to mention the master, but this had not been introduced into hobby gaming really.

(...)

I mentioned Mayfair Games earlier. They became noted with some very good fantasy sales reusing a lot of those book cover pieces of art because it was germane, that the artwork was relevant to the pieces they made. And they saved a lot of money that way, not having to pay to have the piece created, but just paid to have it reused. You can make a lot of savings that way in the publishing industry. I'll look into it if you're interested.

(...)

But TSR was creating everything all new and had a whole room full of these artists who fed off of each other ideas and creativity and several of them just became world-class in a matter of a couple of months, just with what they were assigned to do, the knowledge they were getting with all that.

(...)

So a lot of what I did, getting back to that story, was in addition to creating this five-box set,(...) more fully explaining the Dungeons and Dragons game, which had been done first in 1974, but not even as a role-playing game, as just a war game. Then by Dr. Holmes in 77,(...) the volunteer from California, then Tom Mulvey in 1980, 81, then mine in 83, taking that final step, as it turned out, towards explaining it to everybody.

(...)

And with cover art, it would make you wanna buy it if you saw it in the mall.(...) Well, yes, the cover art is what sold that and it sold tens of millions of copies, the five-box sets overall, all over the world because they went and translated it into 14 languages and even Russian and Mandarin Chinese. I mean, who does that? But published works, almost nobody. But my works have enjoyed that scale of coverage. It's just been amazing.

(...)

As part of what I do here in my old age is visit fans in other countries and share the excitement of the early days with them, how much this game meant to them. And that was what I lucked out, frankly, because as I say, I was a paid editor, had almost no experience at writing, although my two years starting this role-playing game association and writing all the newsletters and things, plus writing four adventure modules that we published and another half a dozen or more tournaments for that. Well, that really honed my chops and got me pretty good at writing fantasy stuff. Nevertheless, what I actually wrote in the box sets was instructions.(...) It is a turn down in the long run. I am far better at explaining stuff,

(...)

really boiling it down to the nuts and bolts, than I am at creating fantasy stories and things like that. I can do okay with that, just out of sheer exposure to it over the years. But you want top-notch storytelling. Look at Tracy Hickman, Ari Salvatore, a variety of others, Ed Greenwood, who have made their careers in writing fiction and telling these sort of stories. Now me, I'm the explainer.(...) So at TSR, first I was an editor, then I was the RPGA builder, and then I was the author of the five box sets that made up the basic one. During that time though, since I knew the game so thoroughly, one of the first things that happened was Gary appointed me. His creative aid was the formal position title on the tree of hierarchies and all that. But basically I reported directly to the president of the chairman of the board, no fool and no kitten, and had an office in the executive territory with the heads of finance and marketing and everything,

(...)

which they did not appreciate a lot, but they did appreciate the fact that Gary was extremely busy. And when he needed to talk game stuff, which was the foundation of our business, he needed me there in a minute, not in 15 minutes from some other part of the building. So that's just the way it evolved.

(...)

So my position there involved advising other departments a lot, the sales department on how much to print, what and when, the international on which things to translate, what would go over better in other countries as opposed to the American point of view with our Western fondness and slam bang and all that, appealing to a different mindset really in a lot of those cases.

(...)

Advising TSR legal,(...) looking over products they want to know, does this in fact on our intellectual property copyrights and trademarks or not? Can you give it a quick look and tell us, you know this stuff best and you can do it in less time than anybody else and be dead or inaccurate every time. So I ended up advising TSR legal on a variety of things on a regular basis. It wasn't a big part of my schedule. That was quite regular. Then there were other parts of TSR I got involved with as well in just making the whole company run really. Then in 1985,(...) my boss Gary was forced out but it had hostile takeover from within a stock buyout. You know, that's business junk. I hung in there for another year at Gary's request to wait. Although he understood that I would give him no information about the company or anything, he was now out and it just wouldn't have been ethical. And he agreed fully. But a year later, he gave me a call and said, the funding's been lined up. We're starting a new company. And I joined him along with Kim Mohan the world renowned editor of Dragon Magazine, the number one editor of Gygax over the years. So all the different hardbacks, the main things he wrote. Kim Mohan was the editor of all that. So we got together and gave a company a try. Unfortunately that was underfunded and it folded fairly quickly.

(...)

Oh well, I moved on to other things outside of gaming from there.

(...)

So looking back at the time of TSR again,(...) were there projects that were seriously considered but never actually came into existence that you think maybe should have or you're glad that didn't?

(...)

Well, there's a mixture of all of those emotions and a variety of stuff that came up.

(...)

For a period of two years, we had as a guest contributor,(...) Francois Marcelle Freudevall, who was a noted game writer and rowing designer with Jules Descartes, mostly out of Paris.

(...)

And he came over to visit for like two years. It was a trip.(...) Gary wanted to get to know him, liked a lot of his designs. And he and Gary talked about some co-written designs a number of times. Unfortunately, none of those got produced.

(...)

A couple of ideas they had got stolen outright by people that were in Gary's circle in the LA group, shall we say.

(...)

One of these was, well, no, we won't get into that, that old argument. Anyhow,(...) we did license a toy called Fortress of Fangs that I forget who made that. It might've been Mattel, but probably not that major. Anyhow, it was a place that you could open up this monstrous looking head and there were levels of dungeon inside it and all that sort of thing. Well, that came about because Francois proposed it. And he and Gary were playing around with releasing this as a dungeon with a toy optional, excessive.

(...)

And then other things, the whole company and the basic line, everything was just exploding so much. It was just one of the many products,(...) the projects that never happened. Fortress of Fangs playset came out as a straight license, but not with an accompanying adventure.(...) Things like that. So that was one pretty cool looking thing too, what they had drawn up. I still have a copy of the original rough manuscript posing that in my archives. There's a lot of that around here. I have archives from TSR manuscripts from all through 80 through 86, including a lot of the tournaments that were run at many conventions all over the country.(...) Just ended up in my collection over the years, purchased them for the most part.

(...)

But some just being thrown out by TSR and others.

(...)

So I guess what do you plan to do with that collection, that archival collection?

(...)

Well, we're still analyzing what I have. There's just so darn much.

(...)

Another part of that archival collection is the early drafts and printouts using, by the way, TSR's distinctive line printer,

(...)

where it would print a whole line at once and just gonna clunk, clunk, those old clunky type corporate printers.(...) And we would print out reams of stuff on that. I mean, literally reams as much as a couple, two, three feet tall stack of paper, if I were to stack it all up. This included my early drafts of the basic expert, companion, masters and immortal sets.

(...)

Early drafts, later drafts, corrections, copies, and then final drafts dated, and then everything on that.

(...)

From the horse's mouth, as you might say, before the editing took place, before any of this had print.

(...)

So these have some value, archival value, as I say, various other tournaments.

(...)

Frankly, to be blunt, it depends how the money shakes out. I do fully intend to donate the stuff that most people don't want. That is to say, my 20th century family American game collection. Most people have played too many games in the closet as it is. All would be fun to see those, but no, go out and buy them again or something. And as I say, the Strong Museum in New York, the Strong Museum of Play has plenty. They have all of this stuff for almost all. So first priority would be donating things to the Strong that they don't have yet, or better shape copies and things like that. Now, this is an outfit that has the original oil skin prototype of a board game that has sold for many decades as Monopoly,(...) and to have the prototype of Monopoly in your collection. That's your serious high grade museum here, folks. So they would be my top priority and for a donation. I'd rather stay on their good side.(...) I've interacted with them several times, thank you.

(...)

Next is all these common family games from Milton Bradley, Parker Brothers,

(...)

Post-Parchese, Whitman, publishing, just all these. And I would,(...) if I had my brothers, they will all be donated one good copy of each forming a collection of American games(...) to an institution such as a college or university, or an institution such as,(...) I've already talked to people here in Beloit. Beloit is having a resurgence. They have new funding coming in.(...) They are putting up a casino as we speak with apartments next to it, just huge amount of development going on. And I asked them flat out, "Would you be interested in the world's biggest and best board game museum outside of the Strong in New York?" And they were, "Boy, we're in the planning stages, but let's stay in touch."

(...)

University of Wisconsin is talking with me as well.

(...)

If the state of Wisconsin or another state, maybe Massachusetts hasn't had a chance to get their hands on a good collection like this because it's all over at the Strong, I don't know.

(...)

And since Hasbro ate up Milton Bradley, Parker Brothers, and all the other great Massachusetts companies that helped build this industry, the board game industry,(...) maybe Massachusetts would be interested in establishing something like this. But with more than 10,000 items, we're talking a serious effort in that line. Now, if we can sort all that out,(...) donate that, have a tax write off, to be blunt, of course, as for we're laying out expenses on storing the stuff and equipment and just all the different aspects. Not much on people yet, but we're gonna be getting into personnel costs as well and moving costs, everything.

(...)

If I can get away with it, I wanna donate that stuff as I've outlined, and then sell the hobby stuff and the game collectibles to cover the costs of all that.

(...)

As that shakes out, if the archives don't need to be sold to raise money, then I'd rather them go to either

(...)

one mega collector who would be the designated internationally known landing spot for these one-of-a-kind, irreplaceable stuff.

(...)

None of this is in anybody's game collection, and all the top collectors just start to quiver when the topic comes up. So I would rather it go to someone with private means who could top off the ante, as it were, and provide me with enough money to live the rest of my life.

(...)

And if it can't be done that way, if somebody doesn't have that level of funding, it doesn't take much for me to live. I lived there for many years.

(...)

If it takes breaking it up to make that happen, we'll figure out how best to do that.

(...)

That's fair.(...) So let's talk about projects that you may be working on in the near future.

(...)

So kind of walk us through, obviously you had a Kickstarter a few years ago, you're looking at redoing that, is that accurate? Or is that something new? Sorry, can you repeat that? Are you looking at potentially doing a Kickstarter, is that accurate?

(...)

I don't know that to be the case, no. Okay, maybe I was wrong then. Yeah. For writing a module or something along those lines, is that accurate? Yeah, that very possibly.

(...)

The way it boils down is this, I have first off a 45 year history of playing this game, D&D. And thus in running the game, my campaign game, the ongoing game with various different sets of players,

(...)

that occurred from 1977 on a regular basis through 2021 at least, possibly 22. For a large part of that time, I have online chat room logs of 29 years of games, right there. I have all the game materials that I used to generate the in-person games across all that time, much of it somewhat fleshed out. You know how it is if you're a game master or you play this game and create anything. What you first create is not like these published modules with all the purple prose and all written out and illustrated. Now, it might have a few scribbles on it by your pencil when you're bored, but mostly it's abbreviated notes on what you would write up in that full form if you need to. And when you run the game, it turns out you don't need it written out in full form. My goodness, you just those cues and working off of notes and you can keep everybody entertained for four hours, no sweat. You can keep everybody entertained for 29 years straight, no sweat as I proved. So I have all these crib notes,

(...)

both notes of all these adventures and me being me, a lot of them get pretty far out there. I did write the "D&D Immortal" set involving five dimensional spaces and immortal beings in five different spheres of specialty and across all the infinite planes of existence and juggling several infinities at once in the process. I used to be a higher level math major back in college and some of it shows, I'm sorry.

(...)

The magic word today, by the way, is brains, B-R-A-N-E-S. Look it up, quickie. Anyhow, the mathematical side.

(...)

So one of the projects is to get as much of this in print as possible with the assistance of others and not have me sit and go through and explain my old notes, hopefully work with a development, would be the best way to put it, who would take my notes, write it out in the longer form and then run past me and say, why did I mess? I gotta mess something here and then I'll insert a few bits, we'll polish it up and then potentially publish that. Now, all of these adventures take place in a campaign world that Gary Gygax,

(...)

formerly an in print,(...) approved as being East Greyhawk(...) across the solenoid ocean, east of the continent of Arid,

(...)

which is where his Greyhawk is located,(...) was my continent of Aquaria or Aqua Aruidium. The names tied in and everything.(...) However, he was forced out of the company and Gary no longer had a say in what was Greyhawk and what was not at the time by then. And so obviously I cannot claim that this is in Gygax because Greyhawk, when we publish it, we don't need to. And it turns out over the years, enough people have remembered my name, an obscure figure and all this, but nevertheless, they wanna see my campaign world, especially if, even by word of mouth, especially if Gary considered it worth packing onto his epic starting campaign world, the very first world ever published for D&D. So I'm happy to say I get along great with Heidi Gygax and other members of the Gygax family. I have no resistance from them as long as I pay the legal rights and all that and get new credit where it is. And at 74, I'm not a money-grubbing glory hog(...) that I would have been perhaps in my 30s, 40s, even 50s. At this point, I'm trying to share the wealth, spread the knowledge and give due credit as fast as I can give it to all the unsung people, especially throughout the history of the hobby. And I'm quite content with what little I will reap. If little it is or a lot it is, we'll just see how it goes, but it's not my objective is to make money with this,(...) I just wanna get rid of the stuff that is piled up. I'm acutely aware of how fast my parents when they hit 80 worked at getting rid of the stuff so there wouldn't be anything left for my sister and I to deal with. So I've done the same sort of things to take care of my sister who will outlive me, no doubt.

(...)

And it'll go from there.

(...)

Frank, thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining me. And thank you so much for that mission.

(...)

We're aligned in that sense in that, if I don't make any money or if I break even from this, I'm gonna be happy because I will have had the opportunity to tell a good story that needed to be told.

(...)

And so I'm glad that we see eye to eye on what this is really about. Because it is, it's about that. There's so many great stories. I do want there to be enough money to take care of the people getting involved with this, including you, especially Jamie. Yes. I know what kind of revenue he needs for his lifestyle and everything. So we've got to work on that and build a company here that will do that. Oh no, I agree with that. Frankly, in the long run, I would be perfectly content with 20% of what we pay Jamie.(...) I'm not in this for money at all. I'm just finishing out a long and glorious ride.(...) And the stuff I have done, the places I have been, just it's the kind of life a lot of people look at and say, oh, I wish.

(...)

And I keep doing it repeatedly, year after year. World travels, unique stuff, meeting famous people, presidents, just all the stuff.

(...)

Life's awesome. I love it. Crazy world. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm sure we'll be talking again. If you want extra content featuring each guest, including Frank,(...) and if you'd like to support chronicling the stories that go along with Dungeons and Dragons and other RPGs,(...) consider joining and supporting our Patreon.

(...)

Even supporting the free tier helps. Next week, Sarah Davis Reynolds will be joining us. She's the co-creator of The 20-Sided Tavern, an off-Broadway live play show that incorporates audience participation and gameplay.

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See you then.

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(Dramatic Music)