By the early 1980s TSR had become so successful that it ran some of its competitors out of business. This was the case with Simulations Publications (SPI), once a worthy opponent to TSR but which by 1982 was small enough to be bought out by TSR. The main competitor of AD&D published by SPI was DragonQuest, a game which instead of experience points leading to levelling up, used a skill based system, more akin to Elder Scrolls games, for example.

So, by 1987 TSR owns the rights to both AD&D and DragonQuest and come up with the idea of creating what they called “Dual Game System” modules, meaning a module which could be used both with AD&D and DragonQuest, for this they tapped Jennell Jaquays, one of their most brilliant designers, who produced this with the help of David J. Ritchie and Gerry Klug and even produced the great interior illustrations which I will share here tomorrow.

As was usual at this time all things TSR were geared towards promoting the Forgotten Realms setting, and this was no exception. The module description also lets us know that the game is fully compatible with the Forgotten Realms campaign.