Dungeon Geomorphs (1980) is an early D&D accessory I somehow missed back in 2017 when I was posting about all the early accessories. It compiles three even earlier publications: Set One: Basic Dungeon (1976), Set Two: Caves & Caverns (1977) and Set Three: Lower Dungeons (1977). They’re all just…little dungeon rooms, printed in blue ink, that you’re meant to cut out an arrange into dungeon complexes. Hooray?
I will say, though, that the Bill Willingham cover captures something essential about the game, and maybe the hobby generally. I also like the one-color palette, which feels very old school and which I wish would come back as a strong aesthetic.
I have a soft spot for early AD&D accessories like this, the Hexagonal Mapping Booklet, Non-Player Character Records, Dungeon Masters Adventure Log, and the Rogue’s Gallery. I recall being fascinated by the potential of them, the empty hexes, the unfilled logs, the raw stats. They held my 13-year-old imagination as I pored over them in the dark, quiet nights as I tried to truly understand the game. The concept of D&D, and RPGs in general, was so new to me. These accessories hinted at something more exciting than other passtimes I’d had. They implied by their existence that this was different, that I could join in on the creation of the game, rather than simply following the rules and pre-made adventures. Unlike games such as Monopoly, this was a game that encouraged me, explicitly, to add to it using my own initiative and imagination. No other vintage gaming books take me back like these accessories. I still feel a faint echo of the wonder they inspired in me back then.
This is interesting to me, because I come at it slightly different, but similarly, I think because I got into the game just after these sorts of products disappeared from shelves. They don’t really imply the game I came to know, but they are sort of fascinating whatsits that imply different sorts of games that either were and faded out or never where but could have been. They’re far more emblematic for me of the frontier as it was for TSR in the ’70s than any of the TSR-produced modules.