PlaGMaDA

Hand Bound 0ed Edition by Oban

2012-01-27T05:19:00.000-08:00

And yet gamers had to play Palladium Fantasy to get
the skill Book Binding, Leather.

Another neat player made modification of rule books from Oban of New York Red Box:

First I have combined the PDF files of the books I want to bind, then print them out as signatures - in this case ten signatures of five folios each. The signatures are then sewn together on cords to form the book block. Hand sewn headbands are added to the head and tail. I cut front and back covers, and the cords are woven into the covers, binding the whole thing together. The resulting book is then quarter-bound in leather - I have been using Hewit goatskin for these books. The remainder of the cover is covered in decorative paper. Recently I have started tooling the leather.

Privacy Issues

2012-01-22T15:58:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I find PlaGMaDA documents which include private information, phone numbers especially. It's always tough as to whether or not I should include these documents in the online file.

On one hand, the information is often vague, a first name and phone number without an area code on a twenty year old document is probably not going to lead to an invasion of privacy. On the other hand, I am not going to take a chance - such documents are always removed. If something absolutely spectacular included a piece of private information, I would simply blur or bar out the offending section.

For the record what I tend to find are phone numbers and email addresses. I myself have jotted down emails on character sheets or note pages while at cons, it's fast and convenient.

If anyone does find information like this on a document hosted on the site, please let me know by posting here - I'll fix it immediately.

Looking at the Collection: Attack Bear

2012-01-17T11:46:00.000-08:00

A recent character sheet acquisition from Black and Reade near Denver had something that I found interesting. Here's the first page, which isn't terribly important, and here's the second page below:

A hum drum list of magical items, complete with misspellings. Not that exciting, but then under "livestock" we see an attack bear listed. An attack bear is a pretty fantastic thing to write down on the character sheet as two simple words. If it was my attack bear I'd have written it in giant letters surrounded in lightning bolts, and probably bothered to give it a name. Heck, I'd give an attack bear its own character sheet because it deserves it.

Torn the Elf needs to put a little effort, a little pride into his pet.

This piece is part of a series of homemade character sheets all neatly filled out by the same hand and seemingly never used, it's a reasonable guess that some hopeful DM made a bunch of characters for a scenario that never developed or friends that never came to play. I see a lot of this in the collection and it would probably help to make up a name for the phenomenon, maybe "Empty PCs" because it sort of sounds like "NPCs" when spoken aloud.

You saw a lot of ready-to-go characters with Judges Guild stuff, and with people who were influenced by Judge's Guild. Here's a list of novelty filled 1st level fighters from David McLouth:

Jolly Blackburn's Custom Bound First Edition Set

2012-01-12T09:28:00.001-08:00

(Photo used with permission of Jolly Blackburn)

These are the first edition books used by Jolly Blackburn back in the day, here's what he has to say about them...

"Was organizing my bookshelf and came across this monstrosity -- my original AD&D GMG. I bound ALL the AD&D books as one huge book along with my own house rules/notes. I was such a geek. (Okay I still am)."

The neat thing is that I've seen this before, it's not an uncommon impulse.

"Its actually a great way to bind the books -- it was a Maytag Washing Machine parts manual originally -- three hole punch with four inch spleens. You can open to any page and it lays open by itself. I ended up binding three or four friends' books the same way back in the day."

Smart, simple, a super nice touch that he put the spines inside the spine piece of the binder.

"It has allthe following books in it: DMG, PHB, Unearth Arcana, Deities and Demigods, Monster manual and the Fiend Folio [and the Monster Manual II - ed.]. Once you removed the hard covers you could reall pack them in . ;) Oh I think the Rogues Gallery is in there too."

I love how nicely they all fit.

"I'll confess -- my original inspiration was to thwart players who were always asking to borrow my books."

Ah. Well then.

This item is not from the archive, the photo was provided by Mr. Blackburn for this posting. There are items like this in the archive, but none so grand. It's fantastically interesting when an item is intensely worked and personalized, customized for a specific task.

NY Times mention of a sort

2012-01-10T09:10:00.000-08:00

Just to let you guys know I am always in the field, doing research and working hard, I'm one of the guys in the front row. The D20 Burlesque group is a great show.

This photo appeared in the printed paper, attached to "Players Roll the Dice for Dungeons & Dragons Remake" by Ethan Gilsdorf. The photo is from an art and gaming event called "Dungeons and Dragons, On & Every Onwards" which I curated at the Soho Gallery for Digital Art. The event organizer was the remarkable Tavis Allison.

Two new folders up

2012-01-09T19:14:00.000-08:00

Two new folders are up in the PlaGMaDA archive: a donation by RB and material collected from the games played during the Dungeons and Dragons On & Ever Onwards exhibit at the Soho Gallery for Digital Art in Jan 2012.

This map was drawn by Paul H. while playing with Mike Mornard,
an original member of the Gygax game group.

Top Secret map acquisitions, a minor quandry

2011-12-13T19:43:00.000-08:00

Daniel J, Top Secret Report Page, c.1994, South Carolina

A Daniel J, formerly of South Carolina, has donated a handful of Top Secret game documents from the mid-1990s. and he also donated these items which he acquired from an unknown creator, but are also Top Secret oriented.

Archivists have quandries with which I am only now getting familiar. The piece pictured above consists of three separate documents stuck together with staples and adhesive. The yellow pages are just glorified Post-It notes. The question is how to scan this information for the web portion of the archive? Do I scan it intact, as I did here? Do I remove the sticky pages to allow a clean scan of what's underneath?

In all honesty, there isn't actual information conveyed in the precise placement of the sticky, so I should be able to remove it and reattach it with a clean conscience - but not all schools of thought agree with this.

Reintroducing the Play Generated Map and Document Archive

2011-11-13T19:41:00.000-08:00

(I'm porting these articles over from a defunct website)

Introducing the Play Generated Map and Document Archive to RPGLife

Ezra Claverie, "Beneath the Crater of the Slave Lords", c. 2006, St. Louis, Missouri

The Play Generated Map and Document Archive is exactly what its title implies, a physical collection of ephemera created during game play. The main focus is on RPG materials; maps, character sheets, visual aids, etc. I am trying to treat these items as "folk art", getting others to acknowledge their aesthetic and social value. The mission statement can be read here.

I've long thought that a blog might be a useful tool, keeping up and informal discussion of the archives contents. This discussion will later be formalized into explanatory materials which will be included in the website itself. The blog format, of course, will invite others to chime in with information that might help me better interpret the collection.

David McLouth, Dungeon Map D1 L1, c.1983, Michigan region

For example, this map is part of a large collection created by a fellow named David McLouth. The dungeon keys are here and here. The McLouth pieces are the most recent donation to the archive, and are quite distinct from other maps I've collected from other times and regions. This particular set of dungeons are heavily influenced by Set One of the Basic Dungeon Geomorphs put out by TSR. While I don't have this direclty from Mr. McLouth, I feel that the angular dungeon structures and thin lines are in direct contrast to the more typical dungeon format seen in The Keep on the Borderlands. Stylistic inferences aside, mixed in with the McLouth materials were sheets taken directly from the TSR Set One, numbered and annotated for GMing use.

Part of my reason for running a blog to accompany the Plagmada site, and emedding it in a community like this, is to invite associations which I failed to pick up on. The RPG world is large and complex, for the first and second generations of RPG gamers and publications, there is a lot of variation in things as simple as how to draw a dungeon or interpret a rule. Variety of viewpoints, that is part of my hopeful harvest from the blog - a chance to pick your communal brains and have someone say "Hey, that section there was lifted whole cloth from Wights and Wyverns E7".

And, like I said, this will also work as a verbal mumble to accompany the archive. I will give bits of background about the pieces, share my "aha!" moments and bits of confused research.

Two composite maps

2011-01-13T19:43:00.000-08:00

David McLouth, Composite Map A, date unknown

Here are two views of a giant composite map put together by David McLouth. Going through his stacks of papers, it took several passes before I realized that the graph paper had been regridded and coordinates noted at the intersection of each set of lines. A quick logical leap later and I realized that the sheets fit together into one uber-map. Initially despairing, I believed that I did not have the full collection of maps as the letter rangs were F through N and the numbers all in the high teens - it was until assembling the map that I realized that the clever mapmaker had chosen center coordinates that helped avoid negative numbers. Centering on the center of the alphabet instead of A and 0.

Here's a detail.

And here's a second composite map.

"Space Invaders" show at F.A.C.T.

2010-05-13T10:28:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year, I was asked to arrange a selection of PlaGMaDA pieces for "Space Invaders", and exhibition at the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology in Liverpool. Most of the works had to be borrowed from individuals, as the archive did not have a sufficiently large pool of computer game based maps.

PlaGMaDA contributors included:

Keith Clement
Chris Grega
Eric Mason
Alex Myer
Dan Torop
David Welbourne

The Space Invaders exhibition is traveling to the Netherlands Media Art Institute, August 27 through November 7.

Computer Game Maps Needed

2009-10-15T10:34:00.000-07:00

Hi there folks,

I am working with the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology on a traveling show on the history of virtual game spaces. I am curating a selection of maps of classic computer games, the sort of thing that it seems like you folks are resurrecting here on this site.

What I am collecting for the exhibition are maps, notes, instructions, etc, anything written or drawn on paper during game play. The physical documents themselves will be what is exhibited, so this is something you need to have in hand and be able to send.

Sample

The deadline is coming up quickly, as I need to ship the 30 chosen maps/papers to the UK mid-November.

If interested in submitting, you can either PM me here or email me at YYcolleYYctions@YYHplagDDDmada dot org. (remove the capital letters).

Thanks,

tim h

Two new sets of contributions

2009-04-02T23:23:00.001-07:00

I'm happy to list two new sections have been put up in the gallery:

Chris Engels from Hamster Press donated some Matrix Game note sheets and scripts:

and

Tony Dowler of Planet-Thirteen.com donated some material as well:

Tony Dowler wrote the very fun "How to Host a Dungeon" game, which I heartily recommend.

Hand Drawn Map Association

2009-03-04T09:32:00.000-08:00

I'm happy to announce that a selection of maps from the archive have been featured on the Hand Drawn Map Association site.

The HDMA is an excellent site, I cannot recommend it highly enough.

A pretty good summary of the archive, in letter format

2009-02-14T11:42:00.000-08:00

So I received this email some time ago from a fellow named Adam, reproduced with his permission:

Ozark1,

I'm contacting you because I have a question about your play generated map and document archive that I found. I'm just wondering if it is the case at all that you pay people for their donations. I don't mean to sound selfish, and I apologize if i do - in no way do i fail to see neither the aesthetic value of what you have preserved nor the respected and genuine purpose of your site. Thank you for your time.

adam

In all fairness I must say that I misread the second to last sentence, and thought he was challenging the aesthetic value and purpose of the archive. I was confused by a double-negative. But I the response I wrote I felt summed up the PlaGMaDA project and its intent pretty well.

Hi Adam,

First, I don't pay anyone for the donated pieces at all. Occasionally I'll bid on something I see on eBay, such as some 1975 in-house TSR character sheet which were up last week. Unfortunately, those things tend to quickly get out of the price range I allow for eBay items. I always offer to reimburse donors for shipping, but am seldom taken up on the offer.

The purpose of the site is just that described in the mission statement - in short, to create a catalog of "play generated objects" and to identify some types of these as folk art objects with both aesthetic and cultural value. The initial focus of the archive is on role playing game maps and supporting play documents.

These items, the maps especially, meet every definition of "folk art" I can find - not that I am trained folk art historian. As such, I am positing that these are items which need to be preserved as objects potentially worthy of study. Sadly, the documents are often considered valueless and discarded by their owners after their time of usefulness has passed - incidentally, this is another common trait defining folk art.

So I'm arguing that these documents are valuable as culture. They are a fundamental component of tabletop role playing games, a revolutionary new form of play originating in the 1970s without which we wouldn't have contemporary computer RPGs. Enough scholarly interest is spent on contemporary game culture that at some point someone is bound to need this sort of archive. It's a service. As a curator at the American Folk Art Museum said, "Tim, you're going to make some graduate student very happy one day." I'm not a trained cultural theorist, but even I can see other interesting paths of research hidden within the archive.

Aesthetically the archive is a mixed bag. I'm not going to say that "beauty is in the eyes of beholder", that's a crap cop out. I will say, again, that all the elements which make folk art desirable are generally to be found in a document in the archive. Especially the maps. They have an authenticity derived from their purpose and use, and are usually loaded with "empty signifiers" which convey a lot of importance but no concrete meaning. The average map is a labor and it shows, this alone loads it with a certain value. Even the dungeon keys can make an interesting read.

Furthermore, many maps have a visual relationship with certain minimalist artists in which I take a great and secret pleasure.

Last, and certainly not least, is the history of the game itself and the nostalgic pleasure lots of folks have found going through the archive. I play RPGs, you probably play RPGs, lots of folks play RPGs. Most of us have done it our whole lives. It's interesting to be able to see AD&D character sheets of mysterious origin detailing the characteristics of strangers, to puzzle over the logic of home-brew rules, to revel in the decisions a 1970s GM made as to how many hobgoblins to place in a dungeon. It's like looking through family photographs, in a way. Or maybe photographs of another family who visited the same places around the same time you did as a child. The archive is a history of folks you don't know who played the same games and had many of the same experience and adventures as you, they are friends you never met.

Rock on,

tim h

A quick introduction

2009-02-14T11:33:00.000-08:00

Hi all,

So I am finally making the long intended migration of the PlaGMaDA blog to blogger.com. This space is much more accessible than the private forum it resided on earlier, which will make it easier to answer questions and address the issues which are flooding my email account.

PlaGMaDA is, of course, the Play Generated Map and Document Archive. It's an archive which collects objects made during the course of game play, with a focus on RPG paperwork. This includes maps, character sheets, notes, sketches, homebrew rules, etc. The website itself can be seen at www.plagmada.org. Look in the archive section for all the images.

Best,

Tim H