Like much of the older D&D stuff, this was originally designed with a removable cover where the maps were printed on the inside. The module itself is a fairly straightforward introduction to the game for players and attempts to demonstrate to DMs how to populate a dungeon with treasure and monsters, but isn't entirely remarkable in helping a new DM otherwise.

POD of course prints the maps on the pages rather than utilizing the format of the original publication. Although the maps don't suffer from the binding issue other modules in these series have, it's still less easy to use. If you really want this, go for the PDF and print anything you think you need. If you must have PoD, I still recommend plotting the map pages for ease of use.

This is a great POD, the service was impeccable, fast and the quality of the print can't be faulted. Illustrations, don't and maps are as per the original and I had no issues reading and referencing it while at the table.

I dropped a star for the content, let me explain. Everyone knows this is a much beloved classic and many have great memories from playing back in the day. But myself and other people I know who have ran it will know that there is nothing much cohesive about it. It isn't an "adventure" per se, more collection of encounters and areas you could use as a toolbox for any low level games you are running. If you bought this hoping for a good way to introduce people to B/X era gaming I think you'd better suited with KotB. But if you want a nostalgia rush and more tools for your DM box then this is a brilliant little bit of D&D history to own.

Overall worth it to have on the shelf because of the great print quality.

Just recently DMing again after long haitus with brand new. Your product was 1st rate!!!! Looking forward to adding more modules for my new group.

My printed copy of In Search of the Unknown has arrived in Japan. Very prompt shipping at a cost that doesn't make me cringe. The printing itself is very, very well done. I would say that if you could make the font a bit darker, and you could edit out the penned Xs on the maps (I know you have limitations, but I'm just saying) it would be better than the new, original copy I had back in the early '80s. Normally I buy vintage originals of these 1ed modules, sometimes of painful cost and poor condition. Although I like having the originals, I much prefer your copies for actual use. Great job!!!

Bought the POD. A word of warning, you'll want better maps. The ones in the POD are exactly the same as those in the PDF as of 7/25/22 (no surprise though), so they are blurry and while not unreadable, aren't exactly great either. I'd suggest finding some alternate versions of the maps online, even though I wish the team in charge of document scans at WOTC would do a better job with it. The book itself is fine. The text is slightly faded, but perfectly readable. Still cheaper than trying to find the original in perfect shape on eBay.

I purchased a PDF copy of this module. It was useful to have the map in particular in electronic form so I could dice it up and present map images to my party showing only what they could see. The type is small and hard-to-read but this is basically the fault of the original module. The room designations are with Roman Numerals which made things a bit more confusing. The reporduction was an accurate recreation of the original.

This has to be the silliest of the early TSR modules that I have encountered. The maps of both levels look like they were doodled by some bored soul one day, before it was decided to turn it into a module. Other than wandering monster charts for both levels there are no monsters and treasure detailed in the module. It is stated that the DM is supposed to put them in as an exercise in dungeon design, but there are only sketchy guidelines given on how to do this. It sounds more like someone was too lazy to bother or in too much of a hurry to get it published. So all you get are doodled maps and room descriptions. Plus with the use of Roman numerals it is sometimes hard to relate the room description to the map location.

This was the first of the OD&D modules issued and by far the worst. Skip over this one and go to B2 The Keep on the Borderlands, perhaps the best OD&D mini-campaign ever produced.

It's an okay scan. Not great, but okay. Yes there are some markings on the map which is weird but no big deal. Two things, however, are very bad. First there is no OCR so you cannot do a fulltext search in the module. Second for some strange reason WotC decided to replace a good scan of this module with a worse one. Come on people, you're literally making your products worse over time! That's really disappointing. Lucky me, I have my old download safely backed up. What should be in this download is both versions of the module, mono and brown cover, both with full OCR. Sadly that's not the case as of today.

This adventure requires a lot of prep work. Its literally up to the GM to basically populate the dungeon. However, they give you a good premise to start from, which I enjoy. So if you need a place to start and need a pre-made dungeon but YOU want to fill in the details... then this is perfect for you!

Very nice for this aadventure to be available at a less-than-ridiculous price. BUT the scan and print quality are horrendous. I bought a printed copy because it is usually more pleasant to read. Unfortunately, the poor quality makes this strenuous to be .

Okay so first of all: the old optional brown cover PDF which has been removed is a vastly superior scan in addition to more professional editing layout changes, though I respect that the original mono color version should be preserved as an option. If I was given a choice for the POD, I would have chosen the brown cover, but regardless the mono cover desrves a better treatment than this.

The entire scan is too light, like nobody properly adjusted the gamma so black is printed is black. This is apparent in the dark parts of iamges, but also makes the text soft and fairly difficult to read on some pages (it varies page to page, but never reaches the true black of many other POD's I've received). There's a pencil mark on page 19 and page crinkles/borders at the end that should have been caught and cloned out during QC, in addition to the gamma issues. Then there's the maps. It's quite obvious the scanned copies here were in a sorry state and some effort has been made to crop around as much of it as possible, but yeesh... first of all someone's pen X's have been drawn into the version scanned and weren't bothered to be cloned out, but it all just looks so grimey and low contrast. It's frequently hard to make out what's in a room or even what the numbers are. In addition to the sloppy attempts to cover up the poor condition leaving us with big splotches of artifacts around the legend. Surely there's a copy of this accessible out there to WotC that is in better shape, or take the scan of the brown covered version and photoshop the roman numerals onto it. Or recreate the asset. This just isn't an acceptable copy of the map and is often illegible. I found a mono-cover copy on eBay for $40 with a great condition map, it's really not that rare of an asset to excuse presenting this way.

The quality of the reprint is great, quite durable, and the clarity of the images, are more than I could have hoped for. I’m very pleased with the reproduction, only wish that other classic mods/classic booklets were also available in soft cover print, and not just as a PDF.

In Search of the Unknown was not the first adventure ever created, it was not even the first TSR adventure ever created. It was though one of the very first adventures I ever encountered and one of the first I ever ran.

The adventure is a great case of both teaching tool for learning DMs (we were all new to this once) and DIY Dungeon. Some areas are detailed, but many are not, leaving room for the neophyte DM to record what monsters and treasure were in each room. There are also a plethora of cliche spawning Dungeon tropes, that were just getting started here. Magic mouths, one-way secret doors, a mysterious creator of the dungeon, or in this case, two, and strange magical artifacts.

This adventure was the perfect learning tool for me at the time since my own version of D&D was a mix of Holmes Basic and the AD&D Monster Manual. This "Basic" introductory module was released before the Basic game, but it moves elegantly between Basic and Advanced that begs you to mix and match your rules systems. Author Mike Carr even gives some guidelines on how to use this adventure with AD&D.

The module is pretty typical for the time. 32 pages of b/w art and text. Detached cover with blue maps printed on the inside of the cover. The first 6 pages are dedicated to running the adventure and how to run this one in particular.

I have used this adventure to start every new campaign I have ever run in D&D, regardless of the edition. The dungeon crawl here is so primal that it calls out to you. A true In Search of the Unknown indeed. The one thing I never did, however, was to investigate more about who Rogahn and Zelligar were and why they left their lair of Castle Quasquenton.

One thing that B1 did give me, in a roundabout way, was my very first witch NPC Marissia. She is in the lower parts of Quasquenton and she is attempting to summon the spirit of her master Zelligar and her father Rogahn.

The adventure has stood the test of time and it is a great combination of flexible dungeon design. Nearly anything can be put into this adventure to raise or lower the difficulty as needed.

got the softcover version. For 10$cad u can't complain at all! I sure wish I could get the rest of the 'B' series in softcovers

One of the first adventures ever printed for D&D and did not age well. Not much of a story and basically just an empty map to stock with creatures. Unless you want some deep nostagia or just want to complete a collection, skip it.

This re-print is of inferior quality. I would not recommend purchasing the print edition as it is hard to read because of the poor quality of the original scan. Better off finding an original copy on eBay.