Friday, March 22, 2024

Hobby Shop Dungeon

 I have rooting around on the web for old-school dungeons and ran across a photo of the sixth level of the Hobby Shop Dungeon. My first reaction was "wait a minute" don't I have this. The Marmoreal Tomb Kickstarter was supposed to have something to do with this dungeon. Unfortunately, a closer review of items from the Marmoreal Tomb Kickstarter reveals a different dungeon in the "spirit" of the Hobby Shop Dungeon, so not the same. I unleashed my google-fu on the Hobby Shop Dungeon to try and find other levels. The first level is relatively easy to find. The original notebook containing the whole thing was sold at auction some years ago. Several secondary sites show a picture of the first level from the auction site. However, the auction site itself has gone "zombie" and my antivirus software recommended I not pursue it further. Some work with Wayback Machine did manage to revive an earlier version of the auction site which actually contains photos of the entire notebook (although some of the key is shown only as a fan of pages rendering much of the writing on the back pages in the fan unreadable). I have not yet deciphered the key from blurry photos of water-damaged handwritten text. The maps on the other hand are fairly legible. As a side note, although Ernie Gygax ran this Dungeon for most of its existence, the maps are attributed to Terry Kuntz. Here are some linked images:








Benoist Poire is attempting to redraw these from the originals (surface level here, first level here), but if he proceeds at the same speed as he did on the Marmoreal Tomb it may be a while.

2 comments:

  1. If Terry Kuntz is the mastermind of these dungeon maps, he's a sick genius. Those are things of utterly complicated labyrinthine beauty. I'm going to go draw now. Inspiring stuff!

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  2. Wow, stumbling upon the remnants of the Hobby Shop Dungeon is like uncovering a piece of gaming history! It's a shame about the challenges in accessing the full notebook, but the maps are intriguing nonetheless.

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