Looks like someone snagged that for a good price.

ZardokhasSpoken wrote in Stupidly Rare Non-TSR Products:How about the items from Claymore Games, like Armaron, Dunderhall, Claymore Castle, Eliburn, and Forcetta?  Search engines bring up few mentions. And I have never seen or heard of any set available for sale.  Am I just looking in the wrong place?  Are these less rare than I imagine, just impossible FOR ME to find?  I saw the mapset for Armaron and they are simply splendid!  Someone posted them somewhere a long time ago.

Cheers!

Zardok

I spoke to the guys from Claymore Games before they closed down (mid to late 90's I think), and got a stack old maps and notes from an instore campaign that had run a few years before, and was more like an ongoing dip in and out affair on account of there always being a different set of kids playing. I think they had a regular party with their own characters running on a mid-week evening, and at the weekend they had a different party depending on who was there, using pregens.
Claymore Castle and the dungeon beneath it had full map sets (I believe because there are no unexplained staircases) which were hand drawn and printed on plan printing paper which is kind of yellow with brown ink. 4 or 5 floors IIRC spread over 5 sheets but there was some side-by-side thing going on there too. The castle was few maps on graph paper and a dozen or so sheets of notes. Then there was a binder of campaign maps, notes and characters, and a folder of typewritten draft to go with the maps (Armaron) and some mocked up card covers which had obviously been done on a photocopier indicating that they intended to small press about three different things.

It's been so long since the place closed. I did meet one of the original owners (of the store) again in the early 2000's at Claymore Games (the games convention that still runs to this day) and ask if he had any issue with me redrafting the maps and putting the info I had online. He didn't. I still try to go to CG every year, but last year was clash with something, and this year obviously was a blow out.

So, these are more like a homebrew dungeon, like World of Sarland (which was a set of 10 I think), Pit of Geburah, City of the Revenant or the Hobby Shop Dungeon, all of which appear to have been play tested and planned for release at some point, but none making it to full production. If I meet Bob again I'm sure we'll end up talking shop. Last time I talks to him he was standing manning stall selling wargames figures and decals, but that was 20 years ago.

As regards the others, the Pit of Geburah (Rob Kuntz) notes/draft was published digitally by RJK on his DVD Rom, whatever that was called. The Hobby Shop Dungeon was Kickstarted by Ernie Gygax. No-one ever got anything but the rights were re-sold again to TLG who published it, so Kickstarter backers can go to them for it and learn their lesson. City of the Revenant was a campaign city that appears to have gone through three or four playtests and adjustments, and was to be based in part on the proposed hardback Planes of Existence, being co-written by Steve Marsh and Gary Gygax. Internal politics at TSR seem to have killed the hardcover, ergo no need for the supplementary campaign to support its release. How much within them seeded the evolution of Planescape is open for discussion. Very few have access to the Planes of Existence MS, so they would have to comment if any light is to be shed. The World of Sarland name cropped up again recently, but I suspect it was just coincidence. I also seem to recall discussion of a novel based upon it, however, my research there was primarily discussions with the author as to whether he retained a copy? (At that point he did not. Shame because my copy had a missing page, and each page had about 5-8 room descriptions on it.) Did the author want a copy? (Yes please, so I sent him a copy.) And have you thought about publication? (Not at this time.) I am sure my copies of all of the above (Except PoE which I have never set eyes upon) reside within the collections of others here, even if they rarely visit. God willing, they are all still with us.

IIRC it came with a folder of notes, some of which had been typed out, most of which were still in hand written form. A lot of it was not fully connected, or not apparent what it was referring to. There were a few pages on language and diction for example that looked like they may have had a grounding in Gaelic, but not being a Gaelic speaker, I don't know. That said Tolkien's elvish sounds like its foundations are Gaelic also, and it runs through Irish, Welsh, Flemish and French, which then bleeds nicely into Spanish and Italian, so who the F knows. I'm guessing people just pick sounds that sound somewhat 'foreign' to them and build fantasy languages that way. So a lot of it was campaign setting as opposed to specific dungeon materials.

I do remember that both times I played in it the entrance we used was actually in through the lower level, once by boat to a bandits hideout like Seren Ironhad (although I haven't read it that's just my impression of that module). The other time through natural caves half way up a mountain and then repelling down to a dungeon floor. The castle itself sits on top a huge mountain at the centre of a very flat plain. WHF it does there, and how exactly it is strategic seems to be very illogical, and also whoever occupies it seems to have no bearing on the factions that mine the mountain for its resources. So it steps out of the realm of being congruent and internally logical and into the realms of pure fantasy in that sense. I like the maps because they're part of my teens playing D&D, but like most homebrew, the memory of being out of an evening with friends far outweigh the writing when you look at it in retrospect.

I do still have copies of the maps I'm sure, although I haven't seen them for probably 10 years, and I do still have the digital files also I think. As for the original folder with the original prints, I cannot be sure. I may have sold them during my fire sale about six years ago when I offloaded virtually my entire collection, or I may have passed it to a friend for safe keeping, or stashed it at my parents' house.

I did recently repost one of the maps that I has run through an art package over on Dragonsfoot, but I cant find it now.

Also, it was the process of converting the paper maps by hand into digital maps that got me back into drawing maps again, which was something I used to fill scrap books with at school. So for me producing maps is something I can do with ease. Graphically I much prefer the old school hadn't drawn maps that Dyson Logo among others have held onto. The problem of course is always producing a good quality product, and the maps do not do that. None of the manuscripts I mentioned make for a good product, maybe with the exception of the Hobby Shop Dungeon, but we've all seen what happened when Ernie tried to monetise that.

ZardokhasSpoken wrote in Stupidly Rare Non-TSR Products:Has Troll Lord released the Marmoreal Tomb?  I cannot find it available anywhere.  I know a beta version was released to backers but the full version still appears to be in production.  The maps I saw for Armaron were very intriguing, and I PMed you a link to a map that seems to be level 3 for something very similar.  So my offer still stands.  If you are interested in recreating the maps, I would be interested in trying to make sense of the keyed notes.  

Cheers

Zardok

From what I can see, TLG e-mailed a PDF to backers, who promptly shared it online, but I don't believe there is any commercial product available. How pissed must those backers have been to leak what they bought online, in apparent retaliation for what had been done to them? I've never seen anything like it. I know of plenty of things that are two or three years out from KS and have never turned up as illegal downloads in the wild. So for something to be posted within a week of it being issued privately, EGG Jr. must have brushed some of them up the wrong way.

Anyways, it looks half baked when you compare it to what the Kickstarter promised to publish, which is only to be expected given that it's now a rush job sticking plaster affair. But we might get lucky and see a full product coming out sometime in the future. I suspect though there will be a truncated sticky plaster product published, to save face, and then a follow up product with the rest of the material published which everyone will have to pay for. Only time will tell.

TLG are keeping correspondence private between themselves and the financial backers that Ernie stiffed, but it looks like TLG are going to partially make good on Ernie promises, which, if it happens will be a wonderful thing for Mr Chenault to do. If he does supply Ernie's backbone this time out, and expunge the stain on the Gygax name, I sure as hell hope old lady G will see her way clear to cutting them some slack with the CZ license. But I doubt she'll go that far, because that would require some integrity.

So thumbs up to Stephen if this is truly a magnanimous gesture - hats off to you, Sir. Its a shame the digital product is going straight out to so many people you didn't intend if for, for free. But it's free advertising and EGG Jr. and Pals are already $100K up in the deal. Maybe watermark PDFs with people's names and e-mail addresses and you'll slow that leap to piracy down a fair bit.