Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Ashabenford - 1987 (Year of the Acid-Washed Jeans)

In going through my old notes in preparation of this week’s series of posts, I came across the original Ashabenford I put together back in 1987. Consisting of eight pages (including map) of dot-matrix printer majesty, I scanned them and turned them into a .pdf, both for my own purposes and to share here with the easily-amused. Spelling errors and other goofs are maintained for historical accuracy. For those students of history interested in seeing what we did back before the flood of Forgotten Realms material saturated the marketplace, you can grab a copy of this relic here. This was how we rolled back in ’87.

12 comments:

Grim said...

Awesome,i love stuff like this.

I could try and OCR it for you if you want to edit it. no guarantees on the accuracy...

Christopher B said...

Sweet! (I suppose this places me among the ranks of The Easily Amused. :P)

Steve C said...

That is so how we rolled back in '87. Cool stuff. Although I usually wore torn blue jeans and a Slayer or Metallica t-shirt. :-)

Anonymous said...

Impressive. That's a great thing to have saved all these years! Thanks for making it available.

Blotz said...

I gotta say wow, the only surviving thing in my collection that old is my PHB.

Michael Curtis said...

I could try and OCR it for you if you want to edit it. no guarantees on the accuracy...

Thanks for the offer, but I think it's best to preserve the document as a reminder of what once was in all its imperfections. If I was to ever revist Ashabenford, I'd do an revision based on the original setting but expanded to represent the march of time and my own evolution as a gamer.

Michael Curtis said...

I suppose this places me among the ranks of The Easily Amused.

No shame there. I count myself amongst the ranks.

Michael Curtis said...

Although I usually wore torn blue jeans and a Slayer or Metallica t-shirt.

I avoided the acid-washed trend myself. But according to the scroll of years, 1987 was indeed the Year of Acid-Washed Jeans (having followed the previous Year of the Skinny Leather Tie).

Michael Curtis said...

Sadly, this is one of the few documents that survive from my original Realms campaign. The only other documents I could find in my notes dating from that period were two adventures (one missing a map) and a few rough NPC record sheets & notes.

As this period was also one that featured a lot of "Seat of the pants" DMing, the lack of written notes from that time is indicative of the way we were playing.

Adam Thornton said...

Apple Imagewriter?

Michael Curtis said...

Apple Imagewriter?

I'd say probable, but I can't be certain after all this time.

Tacoma said...

I can't help but feel that it was "Ashbenford" without the extra vowel. This might have been due strictly to a misreading of the forgotten realms atlas map with its tiny handwritten text. But we had the Volo Guides so that's no excuse!