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Greetings fellow goon gamers! As some of you may be aware, in 2012 there was a kickstarter campaign to fund a documentary on the history of Dungeons and Dragons and its influences on popular culture. The funding was a success, and work on the project continues in earnest. Near the end of the kickstarter campaign one of the updates expressed a need for assistance in dealing with locating and licensing materials for the documentary. As an archivist with Wisconsin and gaming roots I felt compelled to reach out and offer my assistance. After some correspondence and phone calls I was working with the producers and the director to help locate material for the project. I am posting this thread because I believe the traditional gaming goons have squirreled away original materials or know of such materials that would be of interest to this project. I am not speaking of published materials like rule books and modules, but the daily life history of gaming. Images, audio and video that was captured by your or your parents of key events in gaming history or simply play sessions of old, and I believe you want to share them. Specifically, we are searching most for pictures/film of: - young Gary, Dave, the Blume Brothers, Don Kaye, et al - early TSR - Lake Geneva in the 70's and 80's - Anything from the "Satanic Panic" era (I know there is a thread currently running on this) While the above are things we are definitely on the lookout for we are also interested in materials dealing with gaming from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. Did your father wargame in Minneapolis in the 60s? Did you attend gaming conventions in the late 70’s? Interview the local church for a school project when the moral panic started in the early 80’s? If you feel it may be important enough to warrant screen time I would love to see it and talk to you about it. If you posses any of the above you can start talking with me about in this thread, through our email for discussing materials, dungeonarchives@gmail.com, or you can simply send it to us via this drop box account. If you do send files through the drop box be sure to include your contact information and whatever you know about the files you are uploading. Why should I help you? It sounds like I am just doing your job for you! This is just one part of finding materials for use in a documentary. While the producers and director are out conducting interviews with people I am digging through their old boxes of stuff, visiting news film archives, scanning through microfilm, contacting librarians, archivists, reporters and museums to get tiny clues to where a treasure may be hidden. Some great materials are hiding in the closets of gamers who were not major players in the industry and the only way I can find them is to ask a broad audience. I also need to track down those who own the intellectual property(IP) we wish to use, which can be a lengthy and drawn out process. I see why you are asking us, but I still don’t see why I should help? This is an opportunity to get your own gaming history into the gaming historical record! If that isn’t incentive enough, we will be paying (licensing) material owners for the material if it is used in the documentary. I don’t have an exact figure to give you right now, and it will be modest, but we want to make sure people are appropriately compensated for their IP and assistance. What is there to stop me from spamming this dropbox with goatse? Nothing, though I would appreciate it if you didn’t. I found this great picture of Gary Gygax from the 70s on some website and uploaded it to you, isn’t that great? Yes and no. I love to find materials, but we also will only use material we can license. If you own the IP to the material, meaning you took the picture or film, or you inherited the IP (likely because one of your parents created the image/film) we can license it from you. If you found something great elsewhere but it is not yours, I would love to hear about it but then I also need to try and find who owns the IP and license it from them. I have some really great items but I don’t have a scanner/it’s on old VHS tapes! No problem! Write me and describe what you have. Take a cell phone picture or video if you can. I will help you digitize it on your own or I will do the digitization if you are willing to mail it and we believe we may want to use it in the film. What is the best thing you have found so far? Unfortunately, I cannot discuss much of what I have found so far. I can say that I have found some very cool materials that have probably not been seen by others in decades. I also get to do things like go through papers of gaming icons. For instance, last month I was able to meet up with Margaret Weis and go through her papers with her. If you check out her facebook page from 1/15 and 1/16/2013 she posted images of two of the items we found and I digitized. What else can you tell me about the documentary? I am happy to answer those questions I can in this thread or via email sent to dungeonarchives@gmail.com. However, there are a few other resources you can check out: The film’s website: http://dndadoc.com/ The film’s facebook page An interview with the producers and director The completed kickstarter page Where can I send things or discuss materials again? dungeonarchives@gmail.com http://tinyurl.com/a7sk846 This thread has admin/mod approval
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| # ? Jan 17, 2013 00:14 |
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| # ? May 19, 2013 12:42 |
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In order to give this thread some more momentum I think it would be great to hear any stories you wish to share about how you started gaming. For myself, I was raised on fantasy and sci-fi and would eagerly await the few times a year in the early 80’s when an Outer Limits marathon would be broadcast. My father loved the show when it was originally run and he quickly got my sisters and I addicted when they would run all night marathons. It didn’t take much longer for me to step into a bookstore in Appleton, Wisconsin while visiting my grandparents. I saw a gleaming red box on a magazine rack with a red dragon and some kind of warrior engaged in mortal combat with the beast. It reminded me of the sci-fi television and fantasy movies we watched and stories we were read and I quickly begged my parents for it. After inspecting the box and seeing it was meant for those 10 and up, while I was about 8 at the time, my parents said I could not have it yet. We were in the area for a good long weekend, however, and my whining must have been relentless as they eventually caved. I recall quickly running to my grandparents’ attic and opening the box, amazed at the odd shaped dice and all the books. I tried to play on my own, but would become frustrated and confused having not realized this was not a solitary game. Upon returning to our own home, I quickly recruited friends to play Dungeons and Dragons with and that pretty much spelled the end for my non-gaming self.
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| # ? Jan 17, 2013 00:15 |
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Here are a couple of examples I can share from Margaret Weis's papers. The first is an annotated manuscript page from chapter 10 of "Dragons of Autumn Twilight"  The second is a birthday to Margaret from the employees of TSR. Drawn by Larry Elmore. 
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| # ? Jan 17, 2013 14:01 |
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I've been playing D&D-based computer games since I was like 4 years old, with the old SSI golden box games (Champions of Krynn was my first I think), but it wasn't until my teenage years that I actually played tabletop, mostly because it was in high school that I started having friends worth a drat. I was in a kinda goth/heavy metal group of friends at the time (I was around 13) and some of us thought it would be cool to play so I offered to master, and we went to a McDonalds, borrowing the book and dice from some other guy, and we used lovely plastic toys as miniatures, and graph paper for a playing board. Sometimes we didn't use miniatures at all. Let's face it, combat in D&D can get really loving boring if there's a lot of creatures taking their turns, so I usually simplified it, or did away with combat almost entirely, and instead forced the players to rely on their wits to beat the opponent, with creative puzzles and traps that you can't beat just with skill rolls. Of course, thinking all that up takes a lot of effort, and ever since I stopped being a lazy highschooler and started working, I can't spare so much time, so the habit of playing D&D has died down for me. I've seen the TG forums here, and playing via internet seems like the only way I could get back into the game. I should try that someday.
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| # ? Jan 17, 2013 19:47 |
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I know what you mean, Pocholo, I haven't been able to play as much as I would like either. I have a group but because of just general life we can barely get together once every other month. I really need to find an online game that meets on a weeknight I can make. Kickstarter has been killing me, I keep on picking up all these new games and then never have anyone to play them with. Working on this project has been nice at least. Lots of nostalgia and I get to sort of play vicariously through the stories I hear and the things I find.
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| # ? Jan 18, 2013 13:23 |
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I was lucky enough (for TSR purposes) to grow up in southeastern WI in the 70s and 80s. I got to visit The Dungeon (the TSR store in Lake Geneva) a few times, and when Dragonlance hit, it was relatively easy to get to autographed stuff (Weis, Hickman, Elmore) from signings that were not at GenCon (which was in Milwaukee then). I have a bunch of autographed Dragonlance stuff from back then that I haven't had the heart to throw away, but that mostly isn't in good condition either. No photos or videos, though -- I was just a kid and had no idea that TSR (or I) wouldn't always be there. 
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| # ? Jan 18, 2013 15:03 |
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I feel your pain of youth. I kick myself now, not even for not taking photos of things but just wasted opportunities. I saw Gary Gygax at the Gencon auction many times in the 90s and even briefly spoke to him a few times, but I never really grasped who I was really speaking with. It would have been nice to just take a bit more advantage of that had I really stopped and thought about who these people were. I also remember being shocked when I heard TSR was bought by WoTC, how could that ever happen? The joys of being a teenager, c'est la vie. Speaking of the store The Dungeon, we are looking for images, candid shots, etc. of that store (interior or exterior) if anyone happens to come across any.
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| # ? Jan 18, 2013 15:22 |
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| # ? May 19, 2013 12:42 |
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I don't know if any of you make it out to Garycon, but we just finalized getting a table there for digitizing materials at the convention. I don't know how much material we will get but I am sure there will be lots of stories.
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| # ? Feb 2, 2013 15:15 |
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