The Collector's Trove is proud to bring you the next set of auctions from the Allen Hammack collection! These items were acquired during the last 45 years of Allen's amateur and professional involvement with wargames, roleplaying games, strategy games, and board games. Allen worked for seven years as an employee of TSR, the company that founded the roleplaying game industry.
The auction will present over 40 items including tournament modules for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, TSR employee memorabilia, editorial and development manuscripts, and author comp copies. Highlights of the auction will include a pair of rare TSR buttons, a rare issue of TSR's employee newsletter, Random Events, TSR business cards, and Gen Con memorabilia! Among the very special items are a development manuscript for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons I9 Day of Al'Akbar, original tournament module and character sheets from Origins 1980, Dwellers of the Forbidden City, Allen's original Inverness home-campaign, several home-campaign dungeons, including, Gormenghast, one of the greatest mega-dungeons you will ever see, and Allen's own unpublished Ghost Tower of Inverness mega-dungeon from 1976!
Allen has long been a part of the gaming industry, having been involved in playing, developing, and designing board games, miniature war games, and roleplaying games.
Allen started at TSR as a games editor in 1978, developing, and contributing some writing to scores of TSR roleplaying products notably including the Dungeons & Dragons Holmes Basic Set (1978 editions) and Moldvay/Cook/Marsh Basic/Expert Sets (1980 editions), AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, Deities & Demigods, Fiend Folio, Monster Manual II, Dungeon Masters Screen, NPC, Character, and Permanent Character Record Sheets, Monster Cards, World of Greyhawk Folio, Boot Hill (2nd edition), Dawn Patrol, Gamma World, Gangbusters, Marvel Super Heroes, and dozens of supporting adventure modules. He served in the same capacity for several of the company's boardgames, counting 4th Dimension, Divine Right, Knights of Camelot, Dungeon! (1980 revision), and Escape from New York boardgames.
His major design and writing collaborations include TSR's Top Secret that he co-designed and developed with Merle Rasmussen for about a year before the game was ready for publication. He was also part of the larger design team that produced TSR's science fiction RPG entry into the market, Star Frontiers. In addition to these large projects, Allen also had a major role as a co-designer on TSR's AD&D Monster Manual II, Monster Cards, and the legendary Slavers' series of adventure modules.
Allen was the primary designer and writer for several of TSR's classic games and modules including A3 Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords, C2 Ghost Tower of Inverness, and the minigame, Viking Gods.
He also designed several freelance products, such as TSR's I9 Day of Al'Akbar and Mayfair's Fantastic Treasures I and II, and Monsters of Myth & Legend III. He also designed and developed other games for Mayfair including their DC Heroes roleplaying game and an unpublished G.I. Joe roleplaying game that he pitched to Hasbro.
Allen's amateur and professional involvement in gaming goes back to 1972, spanning all genres of gaming and working at TSR, the company that created the games we all know and love. Quite a legacy indeed! Now you have the chance to own a portion of this legacy!