Wilmark Dynasty was a fixture on the East Coast convention scene in the US during the late 70's and early 80's. They ran most of the adventures seen in this index, hereunder. John Corradin and Lee McCormick were the founding members of this gaming association/publisher. They had developed their own role playing system called Melanda but it is all vaguely familiar to D&D. They did also produce a number of adventures that are directly associated with the D&D system prior to Melanda. Most publishers were 'encouraged' by TSR to develop their own unique game lines right around 1980 so this arrangement of events is not unusual for that period.
Many of these adventures are rather short. The reasoning is they were designed to be played at tournament over a single session in many cases. The earliest of these books are really tough to find in near perfect condition. The covers are made out of construction paper with 3 hole punch with metal grommets.
Here is a tidbit we received via email from Lee McCormick....
The Wilmark Dynasty was actually formed to promote responsible tournament/convention management. We have been running invitational role playing tourneys since 1979. We ran events in all the major east coast tourneys from 1979-1985 (Gen Con East, East Con, Origins East, Atlanticon, etc.) to the point that the last Atlanticon we were involved with we took 22 gamesmasters to run over one third of the conventions role-playing and table-top tourneys. We accounted for running 11 different role-playing game systems that weekend and I don't quite remember how many board or tabletop tourneys.
We've turned our talents in more recent years to LARP- style events (lots more design work required, but a different level and crowd of gamers). Each year we run one LARP on Labor Day weekend for up to 80 players and in the Spring we run Relaxicon (a pot pour ri of mini- larps, tabletop, talent show, karaoke, and original parodies on games/TV show games/etc.) which is great fun.
In 1981 John and I opened a games store in Newark, Delaware which John now manages.
We are fortunate to have contacted Lee McCormick for an interview. Please stop over to have a look....Interview.
We can confirm from the Gen Con East program for 1981 in Cherry Hill, NJ that there were a few other titles in play listed below. Even though these were ran with the published modules they were only tourney copies and were not otherwise published themselves. Thanks to Lee McCormick for help with this information.
-- Countdown at Villa Arhoz
-- The Screaming Swamp Temple
-- Fortunes Told, Won & Lost
-- Wilmark's Threescore Revenge
Further there were a number of titles mentioned in the back of 'Escape from Shadowland' and 'Melanda, Land of Mystery'. Some of this have yet to be seen or at least confirmed to exist. Some were later bundled into the back of a Melanda rules book or supplement. It is not likely that the following items made it to publication as the two items this list appears in seem to be the last items to make publication with Wilmark as their attention shifted to starting up a game shop......
-- Emphasis Role Playing
-- Charts and Dice Do Not a GM Make!
-- In Search of Starfax
-- The Temple of Gold
-- The Imprenetrable Forest
-- Fortunes Told, Won and Lost
"The Wilmark Dynasty published 6 adventures for Dungeons and Dragon (or they could also be used in the Wilmark Dynasty's original role-playing game : MELANDA). Each received critical acclaim for the concepts and depth of roleplaying. The modules are not up to today’s standards as far as artistry and presentation which is amateurish at best. However the modules have been widely lauded for their uniqueness of design and the cleverness of their challenges. All in all a module which is an absolute must for the serious collector!" -- from Days of Knights auction webpage.
It is interesting to note that all of the the Days of Knights auction webpage's claim that 500 of each title were printed with a claim that fewer than 100 survive. This could be bold speculation or an insider's perspective. It does differ from the claims made in the interview provided within this site. Alas that period in time was more than 25 years ago. Sometimes details can be muddied over time. It is up to us to draw our own conclusion based on the information available to us.
In a recent estate sale, the printing count is stated as 1000 copies for each 2nd print and each module that only had a single print. The stock sold included 110 copies of most modules and with previous sales, the number of surviving copies is clearly over 200.
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