This was on BoingBoing, so maybe you’ve seen it already. This is a collection of handmade dungeon maps and notes for D&D campaigns, crafted back in the 1980s.
Maybe you’ve had this happen yourself. You find a manila folder (or Trapper Keeper or three-ring binder) from your youth, filled with painstakingly detailed maps of imaginary dungeon complexes. Memories come back in a flurry—memories of inspiration and expectation, of the made-up history of the place and the adventures that just might happen there. Or maybe these old documents come back to you anonymously and forgotten, as passersby from an another age of your life, as folks you knew before you were reincarnated.
Whatever. Whatever these maps are to you, they were a nostalgic reminder of another time, for me. I smiled and I thought you might, too.
This is the sort of thing where I look at it and think “This should get a Creative Commons License put on it, or be released into the public domain or something.” As it is, these are nice and nostalgic, but not terribly useful. And the original generators aren’t doing much with them, either. But if other creators had free reign to adapt, modify and redistribute, then they could make these into something new and wonderful, be it new adventures using old maps or be it some sort of art project repurposing D&D maps to their own end. If you’re not using your old D&D notes, why not let someone else do something cool with them?
I’ve got notebooks sitting around my house that are FILLED with notes and maps like this. They always take me back to that sense of wonder and mystery that 14 year old me had about gaming. It was like schoolwork, but about things I liked. Thinking back about it, it was probably one of the things that helped nurture my work ethic.
Ha. I’ve still got maps and notes that I did back in the 70s when I was in 5th grade. Mostly it just went in a box with all the other 1st gen D&D stuff.
I look around in it once and while and go, “Man, no way do I have the patience to play something like this again.” All those graphs and tables! UGH.
Thanks for linking to those maps. Quite a nostalgic rush.