Trial by Pylon (1982) is sort of a lost game. Published by Bar Sinister, my understanding is that while it appeared at some conventions, it never got picked up for distribution. As of a few years ago, one of the artists, Charles Gronauer, had a large number of the 5,000-unit print run in storage, which is how I wound up with my copy (via Adam at Collectible Science Fiction).

What we have here is a fairly simple card-based dungeon crawling game (though there are plenty of outdoor locations). There are three configurations. The first is a basic game, get as much treasure before you leave. The second introduces bribery rules for using treasure to avoid combat and variable power levels for encounters. The third is the full game, which has players searching for four artifacts before they die or exit the maze. There are six different characters, each of which plays somewhat different. It’s a pretty straight-forward game that feels a touch too complicated for me to ever want to play it.

That said, as an object, Trial by Pylon is a thing of great beauty and, I imagine, great expense for the time. There are 218 cards, all full color, each with individual, non-repeating art, with backs featuring metallic ink. They’re all gorgeous! A lesser game would have 50 treasure cards that say “Treasure” with maybe three different values. This deck is a set of valuable and art objects that could fuel a whole fantasy campaign. Same with the 50 weapons cards; their numerical values don’t impact play much, but the depiction of each adds character and atmosphere, especially the more unusual examples.

The larger decks merge encounters, locations, characters and exits. The monsters are a mix of fantasy standards (minotaur, dragon) and new (and often horrible) creations (masker, brain beast). They all feature novel designs. But for my money, the very best are the location cards. I love a picture of a room, and these vibrate on the frequency of the archetypal. Truly, the “Dungeon” card is one of the best visual distillations of a dungeon I’ve ever seen. I’d reproduce every card if I could.

It’s like Sutton Hoo but for early ’80s fantasy art, a trove never seen, uncliched, fresh, an untapped resource. All the artists — Gronauer, Rik Weaver and James B. Upright — as well as the art director Sarah Clemens, are all unsung heroes as far as I’m concerned.