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Last weekend, someone on Facebook (Dino) shared an anecdote accompanying this image.

Funny story. Was running this late 80s/ high school. I describe the bridge encounter shown on the front of the module. Players say heyyy… isn’t that pic on the cover? They were careful. Oops….

That’s interesting. After all these years I never realized why cover encounters usually aren’t in any of the adventures I played. If a player was in a gaming store and saw the adventure, the cover art would give away a couple of the encounters. When the art is there, it’s often misleading or too vague to give the players a warning (e.g., S1: Tomb of Horrors). I feel kind of dumb because that never occurred to me. Even as a kid I’d never take advantage of that, so false consensus effect, I guess. When I converted the adventures to 3.5e, 4e, and 5e, I almost always included the cover page encounter, so if you ever want to face a toothpaste demon, I’m your DM.

I’m a dope.

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