
Once upon a time comic books featured full page advertisements for TSR’s Dungeons and Dragons tabletop roleplaying game. I never bothered to read these sequentially but nonetheless I marveled at the creativity of using a narrative as a marketing tool. It made sense to have a story driven pastime to be presented this way. It went from one image representing the proverbial thousand words to a fleshed out stationary commercial. If these were animated they would convey the same message. You can’t say that about a single image advertisement.
As an artist, the visuals of Dungeons and Dragons is what has always been my primary attraction to the brand. While these are not the best rendered examples of what D&D has to offer, they are charming and attention grabbing and I still adore them.






2 comments
Love those ads. A lot of work went into them. I have some of the ones you featured.
I mostly read digital comics now, but when I pull out my floppies I really get a kick out of ads like these.