Rare Dave Trampier Art - Addendum to Part 1

Adventure Gaming magazine vol. 1 no. 5 cover art, addendum

Back in early 2014, I wrote a series of blog posts about little-seen art by Dave Trampier, the enigmatic artist from TSR's early days, creator of the comic strip Wormy, and co-designer of the board game Titan. As I was in the middle of my series, Dave Trampier emerged from hiding after decades of nobody knowing where he was, agreeing to sell artwork and come to a convention in Carbondale, IL. Unfortunately, he passed away soon before the convention. I had to post the solemn news on this blog.

In my first blog post in this series, I discussed one of Tramp's impressive color works for Titan, a painting was used on the cover of Adventure Gaming magazine #5 for a special issue with several Titan articles.

Adventure Gaming vol. 1, no. 5

I speculated that the image was probably intended as cover art for the new edition of Titan, which was published by Avalon Hill with cover art by Kenn Nishiuye instead of Trampier. I created a mock-up image of what the Avalon Hill game might've looked like with Tramp's art (see Rare Dave Trampier Art - Part 1). Earlier this month (December 2020), I had a Zoom meeting with Tim Kask, publisher/editor of Adventure Gaming and close friend of Trampier's. I asked if he remembered what the image was originally intended for, but he did not. Tramp had given Kask the original artwork long enough to make color separations for printing the cover, then required that the original be returned.

Since that time, Jason McAllister, Titan's other co-creator, also passed away. I assisted the McAllister family in identifying and helping find an auction agent for a number of Jason's personal effects, including several art pieces created by Dave Trampier. One item was a sketch of a store display for Titan games.

Titan display sketch, detail
 by David A. Trampier

The display is sketched in perspective, as if it is sitting on a store counter. The Gorgonstar logo at the base tells us this is not meant as a concept for Avalon Hill's Titan, but for a new self-published edition under McAllister and Trampier's Gorgonstar name. This looks like a new "bookcase" style game box, made popular by Avalon Hill and 3M, and very different from the flat and wide 1st edition Titan game box. The black, white, and red coloring of the display case closely matches the 1st edition game box, so they may have intended to screen print these cases using the same method, with broad swathes of flat colors. The game boxes sketched here would require color separation and CMYK printing, more difficult but not impossible for the Gorgonstar "basement" print shop.

Also, that is clearly the dragon-on-a-volcano art on the cover, the same art seen on Adventure Gaming #5! This looks like definitive evidence that a new edition of the game was intended, without Avalon Hill, and with this stunning artwork to serve as the cover image.

My speculative interpretation of a Trampier Titan box lid, take two

In light of this information, I've updated my interpretation of what this unpublished Titan might've looked like with a black border and TITAN in bold, white lettering.