Gateway to Ravens Bluff, The Living City

RPGA was the tournament division of TSR, and had been quite popular in the early 1980s. By 1987, in the face of decreasing membership as D&D tournaments fell out of fashion, RPGA introduced a "shared" campaign setting called "Living City" that was set in the city of Ravens Bluff. RPGA members could submit their own material to be used by everyone. Some of these submissions were shared through a series of supplements; the first in the series was LC1 Gateway to Ravens Bluff, The Living City. Members' submissions were compiled into a 68-page softcover book by Jean Rabe, and edited by Skip Williams and Ed Sollers, with cover art by Keith Parkinson, interior art by Angela Bostick, Timothy Bradstreet and Rick Lowry, and cartography by Guy Mclimore and Valerie Valusek.^[1] It was published by TSR under the RPGA imprint in 1989, but was only sold to RPGA members via mail for the first year. It was offered for sale to the public in 1990.^[2]

In his 2023 book Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground, RPG historian Stu Horvath disparaged the cover art of the entire Living City series of books, saying, "The covers are surprisingly second rate for what amounted to a new and exciting way to play D&D." Horvath specifically called out Keith Parkinson's cover art of Gateway to Ravens Bluff, saying, "Despite being set in the Forgotten Realms, the cover of the first book is a re-purposed painting of Caramon and Raistlin Majere, heroes from the Dragonlance setting, and it isn't even one of Keith Parkinson's best." ^[3]