The Awful Green Things

The dream of any game designer, something that keeps paying the designer some (not a lot) royalties. Awful Green Things has been in print, in one form or another for nearly thirty years. The game first appeared as a centerfold of Dragon Magazine # 28, way back in the summer of 1979. As initially submitted, the name was just "The Awful Green Things", but good buddy, Tim Kask, then editor of the Dragon Magazine, thought the title needed more pazazz and added "From Outer Space"... an addition I'm glad he made. A year or so later, TSR put it out as a boxed game (cover shown above), and it sold well. In the second printing, the game came in a large flat box, with cover art by Jeff Dee.

By 1982, in spite of heroic efforts by Will Niebling, TSR couldn't get Sears to put it in their Christmas catalog. Things went downhill for the game after that. When the print run ran out, TSR stopped selling the game and the rights came back to me. A bit later, Steve Jackson got in touch, took up the contract, and published it first in a small green pocket box format. Subsequent SJG printings were in a mid sized boxed format, and a video cassette box... none of which I liked due to the thin counters. However, the 2011 (8th)edition is a work of art, and has beautiful thick die cut counters, superb mounted board, and they colorized my cartoon!!! Kudos to SJ Games!!!

Awful Green Links...

Steve Jackson's AGTFOS page

Andrew Plotkin's handmade Tarot deck



Go back to Tom Wham's Games & Books

Go back to Tom Wham's home page


This page updated November 2, 2011