Jolly Blackburn's Custom Bound First Edition Set

(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

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

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

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



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

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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.

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.