Why D&D's Palace of The Silver Princess Module Was Recalled
There is one Dungeons & Dragons book that has become more valuable over time, due to the fact that almost its entire print run was willingly destroyed and an altered second printing was rushed to market. This book was an adventure called Palace of the Silver Princess and it was recalled due to a mixture of its risque content and artwork that offended the wrong people.
Dungeons & Dragons was dogged by controversy during the early days of the game. The creators of Dungeons & Dragons were accused of promoting Satanism, with the idea that the game was indoctrinating children and teaching them black magic. These accusations led to Dungeons & Dragons being cited as driving people to commit murder, which dragged the game's name through the mud in the press. Despite these accusations, there was no objectionable content in the books and many stores had no problem stocking the game.
Dungeons & Dragons books faced legal issues from time to time, which led to books being changed in later printings. One example of this was the Dungeons & Dragons book with copyrighted Cthulhu content, due to a mix-up regarding licensing rights. In most cases, the later printings would either acknowledge the issue at the start of the book or remove any material that caused issues. Palace of the Silver Princess was a rare example of a book being recalled and heavily changed between printings, due to concerns over its content.
The main reason why Palace of the Silver Princess was recalled was due to an illustration on page ten, called "The Illusion of the Decapus." The illustration (seen above) shows a woman tied up by her hair in a torture chamber, while a group of hideous humanoids cut away her clothes with blades.
The author of Palace of the Silver Princess was Jean Wells, and she discussed the illustration in an interview with Grognardia. Wells created the scenario in order to prompt the good-aligned characters into action. The entire scene is an illusion created by a monster called the Decapus, which is trying to lure adventurers into a trap. The scene and the artwork were initially approved, but it ran into major issues when the book was printed.
"I created the Decapuses to draw paladins into the room quickly without thinking and to be the first in. I wanted them to rescue the maiden who’s clothes were torn and seemed to be surrounded by nine ugly men taunting her. Ed thought it was a good idea and so did our boss Harold Johnson. It went through the channels with no problems at all until it had been printed. Then all hell broke loose in upper management. The next thing Ed and I knew we were in trouble. Will Niebling was sitting in Dave Sutherland’s office mad as hell. Ed and I had no idea why. Will accused us of putting S&M into a child’s module. Neither Ed nor I even knew what that was. Will found it hard to believe, but it was true. Until this, upper management had no interest in a hands-on read before they modules to press."
"The Illusion of the Decapus" scene was entirely removed from the second printing of the adventure, with both the illustration and the description of the room taken out. There were Dungeons & Dragons books released with mature audience labels in the early '00s that dealt with adult themes, but this was twenty years after the release of Palace of the Silver Princess. This was a time when the creators of Dungeons & Dragons were trying to keep the game as clean as possible.
"The Illusion of the Decapus" was just one reason why Palace of the Silver Princess was recalled. Page nineteen of the adventure featured artwork showing triple-headed giants standing around a cooking pot. It was revealed in an interview with Wired by employees working at TSR at the time that the faces of the giants were caricatures. The upper management thought that this was an insult aimed at them when they were actually caricatures of people who worked at the company at the time. They insisted that the image be removed in later printings of the book.
The initial print run of Palace of the Silver Princess was recalled and destroyed. A second print run was issued, which replaced the offending illustrations and included different edits to the text. The two versions of the adventure feature different colored borders, with the initial run featuring an orange cover, while the revised run has a green cover. Copies of the original orange version of Palace of the Silver Princess made their way into the hands of fans and it's considered to be one of the rarest Dungeons & Dragons books of all time. An original copy of Palace of the Silver Princess can cost over five thousand dollars on sites like Noble Knight. This makes Palace of the Silver Princess one of the rarest pieces of Dungeons & Dragons merchandise, even though its material seems tame by today's standards.
Source: Grognardia, Noble Knight, Wired