Eldritch Wizardry and nude women! D&D history help, please.

[CrusaderX]

TSR's 1976 Eldritch Wizardry D&D supplement featured a cover painting of a nude woman tied to a sacrificial altar.

Did this stir up much controversy at the time? Did TSR eventually pull the product from the shelves?

I've heard about this product, but I don't recall hearing about what fallout, if any, this product caused at the time.

 

[Geoffrey]

I remember hearing that many retailers would call up TSR and order a bunch of copies of "all your D&D books, except the one with the nude".

 

[Ranes]

I can't answer that. However...

I don't know if they were inspired by EW but Ral Partha used to make a series of wonderfully politically incorrect miniatures that depicted various nude, female, sacrificial victims that I vaguely recall stirred up a little controversy in the hobby press. While I was still at college, I had a part-time job at my FLGS. I'll never forget one customer in particular who seemed unhealthily fascinated by them.

Bedraggled and unkempt with dirty fingers that were always covered in plasters, he would shuffle over to the miniatures bar and ask, in a gravelly voice, "Can I have a look at your victims, please?" Once presented with the tray of assorted figurines, he would painstakingly examine each one closely, grunting occasionally.

Ah, happy memories...

 

[Mouseferatu]

I can't answer that. However...

Great. Thank you very much for those nightmares!!

 

[Mouseferatu]

Ah, happy mammaries...

Oh, and I corrected your "typo".

 

[Wombat]

I don't remember a lot of controversy about it, but then again, I had to get all my stuff via mailorder, as there were no local gamestores. In general, however, the cover merely reinforced the notion of D&D as "that game that Satanists play".

The miniatures, OTOH, did generate a lot of complaints, because I was well hooked into the miniatures market by then and heard a lot of the flak about that.

 

[diaglo]

brown paper wrappers.

the clerk at the store wouldn't sell it to the kid with the money.

i had to get my older sister to purchase it for me.


and as others have said trying to buy the minis was far worse

 

[Style]

They got a posse together in my town and burned all the copies that they could lay their hands on, along with a really bad effigy of Gary Gygax. Those were ugly days, man. Ugly days.

 

[BOZ]

did someone say something about nude women?

 

[countgray]

I was 10 back when I bought it and the gamestore didn't say anything to me when I bought it, my parents never thought twice about it, none of my friends ever talked about it.

Back in the 70's people were less uptight about nudity in art and movies and such.