Anyone Ever Heard of Tonisborg???

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JCBoney
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Anyone Ever Heard of Tonisborg???

Post by JCBoney »

This is completely new to me...

http://boggswood.blogspot.hu/2018/01/th ... g.html?m=1
For D&D archaeologists, Tonisborg is like the lost city of Atlantis. Hints and whispers of this very early Blackmoor spin off have excited the imagination of researchers for decades.

Of course, it was inevitable that the game that became Dungeons & Dragons would spread beyond the confines of Blackmoor and Greyhawk. It didn't take long for some of those among the pool of original players, to begin developing their own dungeon lairs, following the examples of their mentor, either Arneson or Gygax. Rob Kuntz's Castle El Raja Key is perhaps the best known example, but there is also Tonisborg, from one of the central Twin Cities players; a megadungeon which held the promise of shedding light on early Blackmoor gaming. Tonisborg was the brainchild of Greg Svenson, who started playing with Arneson and co. when he was still in High School in 1969, and is best known to D&D fans as the creator of the iconic "Great Svenny" character.

"I built a city, called Tonisborg, complete with a dungeon and a network of catacombs, during 1973 and ran many adventures there and all around the Blackmoor area in 1973 and 1974 using the play test rules for the original three little books and then the published books. Tonisborg was located approximately where Vestfold is on the current Blackmoor area maps, for anyone who is interested.

I loaned my materials to one of the other guys in 1980 so he could run an adventure for a new gaming group and never saw them again. He just said he lost them. Oh well..."
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Re: Anyone Ever Heard of Tonisborg???

Post by Ragnorakk »

This is the first that I have heard of it. I am probably not running in the right circles though.
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Re: Anyone Ever Heard of Tonisborg???

Post by Philotomy Jurament »

Ragnorakk wrote:I am probably not running in the right circles though.
Story of my life, man. ;)

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Re: Anyone Ever Heard of Tonisborg???

Post by JCBoney »

Ragnorakk wrote:This is the first that I have heard of it. I am probably not running in the right circles though.
Man, I'm a D&D history junkie, and I have never even heard of it until tonight.
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Re: Anyone Ever Heard of Tonisborg???

Post by Melan »

Really interested where this leads. For all the stories of Ye Olde Megadungeons, authentic specimens are still largely mythical.
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Re: Anyone Ever Heard of Tonisborg???

Post by TRP »

So, at times when ancient Israel needed moral guidance, or faced a crises, the priests would just so happen to "re"-discover "lost" books that would bolster the priests' sentiments on the circumstances of the moment.
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Re: Anyone Ever Heard of Tonisborg???

Post by jgbrowning »

I'd never heard of it, but I'm not a scholar either.

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Re: Anyone Ever Heard of Tonisborg???

Post by thedungeondelver »

This thread is literally the first I have ever heard of it.
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Re: Anyone Ever Heard of Tonisborg???

Post by bobjester »

ODD Proboards, this thread, 2008 gsvenson mentions Tonisborg:
http://odd74.proboards.com/thread/683

More development at Havard's Blackmoor/Comeback Inn, in 2012, as the "lost" city (or castle) of Tonisborg is incorporated into the Vestfold:
http://blackmoor.mystara.net/forums/vie ... =22&t=4145

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Re: Anyone Ever Heard of Tonisborg???

Post by JCBoney »

bobjester wrote:ODD Proboards, this thread, 2008 gsvenson mentions Tonisborg:
http://odd74.proboards.com/thread/683

More development at Havard's Blackmoor/Comeback Inn, in 2012, as the "lost" city (or castle) of Tonisborg is incorporated into the Vestfold:
http://blackmoor.mystara.net/forums/vie ... =22&t=4145

8)
Thanks. The more I thought about it, the more the story about how it was lost sounded vaguely familiar, but I can't trust my memory these days.
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Re: Anyone Ever Heard of Tonisborg???

Post by bobjester »

JCBoney wrote:
bobjester wrote:ODD Proboards, this thread, 2008 gsvenson mentions Tonisborg:
http://odd74.proboards.com/thread/683

More development at Havard's Blackmoor/Comeback Inn, in 2012, as the "lost" city (or castle) of Tonisborg is incorporated into the Vestfold:
http://blackmoor.mystara.net/forums/vie ... =22&t=4145

8)
Thanks. The more I thought about it, the more the story about how it was lost sounded vaguely familiar, but I can't trust my memory these days.
Most welcome.

Yeah, same here. I was almost sure that Tonisborg was Blackmoor related. There had been other maps and campaign notes that are slowly being scanned from notebook scraps, and I thought this might be part of it. Not the same campaign that I remembered, however.

I am a very infrequent member of the Comeback Inn, and even less on the OD&D Proboards (I never get email notifications from proboards), so I usually rely on following links to those sites more often than I like.
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Re: Anyone Ever Heard of Tonisborg???

Post by Zenopus Archives »

I'd never heard of it before either, but I'm not really well versed on the details of the various Blackmoor players and their own dungeons.

Here's a detail from the dungeon posted on Facebook by the "Secrets of Blackmoor" documentary maker:

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_ ... 5294807322

If you look at his public posts, he's been posting little bits of the dungeon for the last few weeks.
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Re: Anyone Ever Heard of Tonisborg???

Post by T. Foster »

This is a pretty cool rediscovery, which I have zero doubt is going to be blown completely out of proportion and treated as a new sacred text by those inclined to such behavior. It would be nice if they just posted the 9 sheets for everybody to see, but given the people involved it's much, much more likely that this will be dragged out and milked for much more than it's actual worth - that the privileged inner circle of initiates will jealously guard its secrets while sharing scraps and hints with the faithful.
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Re: Anyone Ever Heard of Tonisborg???

Post by JCBoney »

T. Foster wrote:This is a pretty cool rediscovery, which I have zero doubt is going to be blown completely out of proportion and treated as a new sacred text by those inclined to such behavior. It would be nice if they just posted the 9 sheets for everybody to see, but given the people involved it's much, much more likely that this will be dragged out and milked for much more than it's actual worth - that the privileged inner circle of initiates will jealously guard its secrets while sharing scraps and hints with the faithful.
Yeah, kinda like with Castle Greyhawk/Zagyg. 8)
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Re: Anyone Ever Heard of Tonisborg???

Post by grodog »

Melan wrote:Really interested where this leads. For all the stories of Ye Olde Megadungeons, authentic specimens are still largely mythical.
I wouldn't say that, Gabor: all of these still exist, even if they're not all published:

- DA's Castle Blackmoor - published twice (JG and d20 versions)
- EGG's original Castle Greyhawk - mostly unpublished save some extracted pieces
- RJK's Castle El Raja Key - first version mostly-published via ERK Archive and some extracted pieces (S4, S3, WG5, etc.)
- EGG + RJK's expanded Castle Greyhawk - mostly unpublished save some extracted pieces
- PB's Jakhallan Underworld - unpublished but soon to be published by the Tekumel Foundation

Other, less-well known but still extant mega-dungeons include Kask's Kwalishar dungeons, Ward's Dragonworld (campaign, not sure if it had a mega-dungeon too), apparently Tonisborg, and likely others too.

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