Reminiscing: Old Greyhawk Adventures

I remember a time when AD&D was all I wanted to do - all day, every day. When I woke up, found my friends, and we just played all day into the late hours of the evening with only meal breaks and occasional exercise at the beach or the playground. Granted that was like 30 years ago, but it still has stayed with me all these years.

Those were great times. We knew only a smattering of the rules in the AD&D books and still managed to play the game. My first "campaign" I ran involved a generic adventure in the town of Woodwych in Greyhawk. There, a wizard had become leader of the town and was trying to enslave the populace. The heroes, Nicholas Lornallow (fighter) and Chong-Hing (a monk) were later joined by Dread Delgath (a thief), and Kendrick Magnus (cleric of Odin). It was just some friends sitting around a table and playing characters we had just rolled up. Little did I realize that this early taste of being a DM would change my views of the game forever.

I remember these heroes involving themselves with a winged-folk magic-user shoppe owner, a devil-worshipping cleric whom Nicholas took to bed, tracking her down and later running from said devil-worshipping cleric, and assisting elves in he Celadon Forest rid themselves of nasty creatures from the Fiend Folio that had invaded their tree-homes. During their many adventures they found some awesome magic items - a medallion of teleportation, a ring that could conjure light on command, a defender sword, and some others that I don't remember. We actually played these characters in a linear campaign for a while until we went back to the published adventures and new characters in the late 1980s. The last thing we did in Greyhawk was blow up the planet in a great cataclysm between the demons and devils. Basically, we were stepping on each other's toes as DMs, switching back and forth and using the same place names in different ways. So, if we couldn't share it, we destroyed it.

It was a great afternoon and seemed really weird. In sort of a "Crisis on Infinite Earths" scenario, Greyhawk ceased to exist and everyone's characters were blown through portals into new worlds. One was the Forgotten Realms (run by Steve), the other Primordia (run by Nick), and I made up the proto-Thuin which would later be renamed Sturmgard. College beckoned and we turned to other gaming, namely other campaigns in my case and other activities for the other two DMs.

I spent the last few weeks of summer before college reading the DMG from cover to cover, trying to make sense of the combat rules. It was then that I learned a 2nd edition would soon be released. Finally, we would be in on the ground floor of D&D! All the work I had done on Harn and Thuin would have to be re-done in this new edition. I decided to abandon Harn because the feel of that campaign was more suited to wargaming or historical re-enactment than fantasy role-playing. I focused all my attention on Thuin and came up with sort of a dark sword & sorcery wilderness packed with perils. I was trying to recreate the dark and gritty D&D of my youth. But the new rules that came out for 2nd edition would not allow it. All the "political correctness" irked me. Gone were the terms I had come to know. The combat system was better, but less stream-lined. It was easier to adlib though and I did that liberally after a while.

We had an awesome time playing D&D in college. All the campaigns were exciting, mainly because it was more than just the three of us playing. By finding all these other people to play with, the experience was heightened from fun to thrilling. We would talk about D&D all night in the dorms, formulate plans for overcoming obstacles in the game, and discussing plans of how our own campaigns would work with the new rules.

When I came home from college I was adrift without a D&D campaign. Sure, I was able to rejoin one of the side campaigns I played in, but I was really hoping to DM again. Shortly after joining up with the "Sunday Dorks" from work, I found my calling - permanent DM for a 2nd edition Greyhawk campaign paying homage to Gygax's vision. We had some awesome moments and made memories that I will be able to take to my grave, knowing that we had created something special. I later revisited Thuin and had a long-running Thursday night game that splintered apart after losing one of the key players to marriage. Although there have been starts and stops with these campaigns in the past 30 years, I still keep trying to recapture the fascination and wonder I had playing AD&D at Steve's house all those wonderful summers ago.

In an attempt to do so I hijacked the players from another campaign and in 2000 we started running the Known World with AD&D rules (mostly by the books with written house rules). It was very fun in the beginning and we played religiously every weekend for a good long while. But then real life began to intrude. One friend suffered a stroke. He was the inspiration for the adventures and he could no longer understand what was being said. It took a long time for him to recover enough to play again. The other players have aged and now it becomes more difficult to get together. Medical problems, children, work problems - all have affected the campaign.

I am trying to get myself back to the happy times of summertime AD&D. All this planning and organizing just to schedule time to have fun really sucks. I just want to have a week of nothing to do or worry about and simply play - like we did when we were kids....