Trampier became an iconic artist for me when I got my first AD&D Players Handbook. That book cover and the original AD&D DM's screen are inscribed in my early RPG experiences. I wanted to create this page as a collection of his artwork from that period.

I started playing Titan around 1984. I was fascinated with the detailed artwork and calligraphy. Each creature and space on the board was a unique illistration.

I discovered Wormy soon after, and every trip to the mall would find me in B. Dalton's book store flipping to the back of each Dragon magazine.

Before I could more easily identify his style I started looking for his signature which can be found on most of his artwork from AD&D.

I ran accross some work he did for other games as well, including Gamaworld and Star Frontiers.

The Dragon Magazine archive became a great resource to scrape Wormy images and learn more about Trampier. He is first mentioned as a "staff artist" in the September 1977 issue:

"‘Wormy’ is the brainchild of Dave Trampier, our newest artist here at TSR. It is planned that 'Floating . . .’, ‘Wormy’ and Finieous will all be regulars, in TD’s own comic section." -- Tim Kask

In the December 1977 issue he provided a protrait of the TSR staff falling out of a dragon pulled sleigh with Tim Kask at the reins.

"By December 1977, I'd been at TSR for 7 months, and I was already good buddies with all the guys in the sleigh. Indeed, that's Tim Kask at the reigns, Jake Jaquet calmly reading a book, E. Gary Gygax, looking back at the viewer enjoying the ride, Dave Trampier (who drew the piece) is leaping out after his famous leather hat, that's me (Tom Wham) with my fingers in my beard... sadly watching my walking stick fall away (I gave up my car that year and took up a walking stick), poor David C. Sutherland III has his foot on a runner clinging on for dear life, below Tramp's hat a sublime Rob Kuntz is about to pull the rip cord on his parachute, and falling away hoplessly into oblivion is, of course, Joseph G. Orlowski. Tramp had a knack for capturing us all." -- Tom Wham

Tramp remained a staff artist for Dragon Magazine until 1979. Later he was listed as a contributing artist but it seemed like this was mainly for the inclusion of Wormy in the magazine.

When I first looked up Trampier on the internet back around 2000, there wasn't much written about him. These days it is nice to see that there are a lot of people like me out there. The story of him being interviewed as a cabby in 2002 blew my mind, with the reporter having no idea about his life as an influential artist. At the time I was releaved to learn that he was still alive. The fantasy that the story of Wormy would be continued someday is gone, but has been replaced by a happyness to have been moved by him. I'm also thankful to all of the people out there that also cared about him and have threaded information together about his story.