Homemade D&D module, 1981

Tim H sez, "A recent and amazing donation to the PlaGMaDA.org [ed: Play Generated Map and Document Archive] project: A beautiful, hand-made homebrew addition to the classic TSR Against the Giants series."

I wish I had the modules and monster sheets I painstakingly made in my youth. I used to cram them into envelopes and mail them, full of hope, to Dragon magazine. I suppose it's possible that they're in a filing cabinet at Hasbro or whomever ended up owning TSR's materials.

Habitition of the Stone Giant Lord (Thanks, Tim H!)

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awjt

Oh man. That is 100000000000000x AWESOME!!!
http://www.webmikey.com Mikey

Beautiful module! It immediately reminded me of my own childhood D&D creations – I would love it if your readers took a look!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/webmikey/sets/72157604413692091
- http://plagmada.org Tim H
  
  Mikey, those are fantastic.
  - http://www.webmikey.com Mikey
    
    Thanks so much, Tim!
- mwschmeer
  
  You can grab PDFs of WEBMikey’s two Mini Modules here:
  
  http://rendedpress.blogspot.com/2012/01/even-more-goodness-from-1981.html
- http://twitter.com/monte_jewell monte
  
  So cool!
  - http://www.webmikey.com Mikey
    
    Thanks, Monte!
- MooseDesign
  
  Those are awesome! Love the colors and the cutaways…
  - http://www.webmikey.com Mikey
    
    Thanks! I used to keep yellow construction paper just to make those little banners. :)
- corydodt
  
  Lots of win here.
http://plagmada.org Tim H

Hi all,

This is Tim Hutchings, the organizer of the plagmada.org archive. I Submitterated this piece myself, I hope that isn’t bad form.

The archive collects and preserves things like this, preserving them from the inevitable trip to the garbage bin. I encourage any of you who know gamers, especially EX-gamers, to suggest they donate their old gaming ephemera. Contact information is on the plagmada.org website. The documents are scanned and shared on the site, then archived away for safety. They are brought out for research and exhibition needs, exhibitions out of the archive have been mounted at Cranbrook, FACT in Liverpool, the Nikolah Kunsthalle in Copenhagen and elsewhere. If you are at a university, consider hosting an exhibition at your school gallery.

If anyone has any questions about the archive, I would be happy to answer them.

- tim hutchings
- http://plagmada.org Tim H
  
  Oh, and I’d like to share a PlaGMaDA partnered event that is coming up this Wednesday in NYC:
  
  http://muleabides.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/games-that-cant-be-named/
  
  It’s a free day of game play, playtesting a game system. All are welcome, expect to sign an NDA.
- mwschmeer
  
  I threw the images in a PDF & a CBZ you can grab from here:
  
  http://rendedpress.blogspot.com/2012/01/plagmada-hosts-fan-module-from-1981.html
A. .

feminine freudian gates of the last page seal the giant’s lair from the eyes of children; do not wake the ankylosaur.
BadIdeaSociety

It isn’t a homemade D&D module without obvious eraser marks on your illustrations.
SomeGuyNamedMark

The grid paper maps reminds me of the maps my brother and I would make while playing the Wizardy series on our old Apple II. Hours of counting steps down halls, confirming which way a door faced, etc.
kartwaffles

In junior high, graph paper had only one true purpose: dungeon maps.
- oasisob1
  
  It has another purpose now?
WaylonWillie

Neat! This makes me wish I had my Zork maps…..
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

I churned out reams of dungeon levels back in the day. I threw most of the stuff out before moving out of my parents house in the mid 90s.

By the time of AD&D, I was writing stuff professionally, for various magazines and smaller publishers.
MooseDesign

I have all the Basic and AD&D dungeons I designed, and created art for as a kid filed neatly away in the filing cabinet… perhaps I should scan? They are pretty hilarious, but I really did go the whole way with them in imitating a proper module with art, loads and loads of maps, and detailed descriptions of each room and creature or secret… Not as much storytelling as I would want now, but still lots of fun to look back over with adult eyes.
- Ceronomus
  
  Please do MooseDesign. Lots of us would LOVE to see them.
- http://plagmada.org Tim H
  
  Hi MooseDesign, if these are in imitation of a module I’d love to see them. If you’d like to scan them for inclusion on plagmada.org it’s usually a 300dpi jpg. Email me at the contact, submissions@plagmada.org and we can discuss some other things…
  - MooseDesign
    
    OK, will do! I’ll probably need to disassemble them since the booklet ones were stapled along the spine (yes, I made spines) in order to scan them without damaging the pages. But this post made me go back and dig them up and have another good laugh… I even included the TSR logo with some ludicrous adventure names like, “Stone Death” and “The Sanctuary of Zeus”.
YamaraTheGod

Cory, it would be Hasbro who wound up with TSR properties, but it is unlikely that submissions sent to Lake Geneva would have survived.

Back in the early ’90s I remember phone conversations with Dragon magazine editors about the nightmare of independent submissions. In the early years they would very often get identical ideas in the mail, and feel unable to use either, so they stopped accepting them. Unless you sent an SASE with submission paperwork signed, it was likely trashed unopened.

Tim, this is an amazing project. I can say authoritatively that Yamara herself would heartily approve. I will see if I can attend your playtest tomorrow night, it sounds intriguing.
- http://grumer.org/ Avram Grumer
  
  I don’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved that my own crudely typed and illo’d submissions are unlikely to have survived.
  - http://plagmada.org Tim H
    
    The cruder the better! There is no shame!
- http://plagmada.org Tim H
  
  If you come by please be sure introduce yourself, NYC is full of awesome gamer types and I’m always looking to meet more.
mat catastrophe

You guys just created your own modules?

I created an entire game and world.

(No, really. I did. Not sure why. I’m pretty sure it was crap.)
- http://plagmada.org Tim H
  
  The particular charm in Habitition is that it so clearly apes the style of the modules. The method of delivery is so considered…
Dicrel Seijin

This brings a smile to my face.

I’ll have to consider donating my material (if I can find it). Though I think the only material that has survived my various moves are the ones from college (since they’re mixed up with my other papers).
RainyRat

Ah, fond memories here. I remember turning in a “choose your own adventure” story for standard grade English. And having a cool English teacher.
yeastbeast

I, too, would make my own D&D modules and monsters, sending them to Dungeon Magazine and Dragon Magazine, respectively. My proudest creation— the Petroll, a combustible humanoid created by a fire-obsessed archmage for use as a walking siege weapon– came back with rejected with a smudge of White-Out on the manuscript. Underneath the White-Out I made out the words “This is disgusting.” I still have the manuscript.
- http://plagmada.org Tim H
  
  That’s fantastic! I’m confused about the White-Out, was that what was disgusting? Please consider scanning your manuscript for the arhive.
  - yeastbeast
    
    The editor wrote “This is disgusting” then decided I shouldn’t see it.
Spriggan_Prime

If WotC didn’t burn TSR’s old files I’m sure Hasbro torched ‘em when they bought WotC.
http://www.facebook.com/timdlittle Timothy D Little

That really brought back alot of good memories of playing AD@D all weekend and waiting by the mail box each month for my new issue of Dragon to come in. Truly wonderful days those were.
Michael M. Hughes

Oh, man, I love this thread. Here’s my level one adventure, The Catacombs of He Who Never Sleeps:

http://michaelmhughes.com/wordpress/?p=170