Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Vintage Homebrew Adventure

This week’s been a busy one, but fear not: I’ve not abandoned my post and continue to subject myself to post-apocalyptic misery in order to bring about a better Gamma World. The next installment of "Radioactive Theatre" is on the way, as is another edition post-mortem.

Until then, however, I thought I might share with you a little bit of bonus material I recently received in a used boxed set of Mentzer Basic, or as the owner of my FLGS called it, “free art.” There are three or four of these gems, each dating back to an earlier and simpler time, none of which were created by me. They easily could have been though, and looking them over reminds me of the adventures I used to create back when I was less concerned with maintaining things like “realism” or “play balance.” A state which I still strive to return to on some level.

Every time I come across one of these amateur adventures done by an adolescent, I always have the urge to try and take the germ of the idea they (or myself) created and expand and/or improve on it. One of these days, I may actually get around to doing so and thus allow my gentle readers to experience the Mike Curtis version of Module D1—The Dungeon of Dread.

7 comments:

David Larkins said...

This is great stuff. I recently had a similar experience.

As I said in a comment to the linked post, I'd love to do a coffee table book project of gamer doodles, maps, adventures, and other such "folk art." The tough part would be assembling the material.

ze bulette said...

I picked up a large set of campaign materials, maps, and even fiction in a lot of old d&d stuff I found via Craigslist last year. I keep thinking I should try to contact him and see if he'd be ok with me putting some of it up on the web for the heck of it. It's mostly not my cup of tea, but it holds a kind of weird archeological interest for me. Do I technically and really hold the rights to do whatever I want with it per our verbal agreement? :/

thekelvingreen said...

Love it.

Empty room, empty room, skeletons, empty room, orcs, skeletons, empty room, empty room, WHITE DRAGON! Aiee!

Fandomaniac said...

Classic! Reminds me of some of my own 12-year old creations. Thanks for sharing!

Keith Sloan said...

A lot like my early work, I have to say!

Anonymous said...

sirlarkins, that'd be a great collaboration with Tim Hutchins' Play Generated Map and Document Archive.
- Tavis

Greg Johnston said...

My friends played in a game a long time ago and they created something that they called "Map Buddies". These were usually drawings made by the players on pieces of paper and index cards that chronicled various scenes during their adventures. Some had word baloons with some of the dialogue. They were most hilarious. We got together several years back when one of our freinds and one of th eplayers died and we opened that box of Map Buddies to re-live those memories of the game and of our friend.