One of the things that can make packing up your entire house for a move momentarily not awful is finding stuff that you haven’t seen in years. Case in point, I stumbled upon this unassuming burgundy IBM binder, one of many such IBM-logoed binders I was privileged to have access to as the child of an IBM employee. (And you thought we just got moved around a lot.)

I have been wondering for some time where my old D&D Basic and Advanced sets ended up; I had seen the boxes around, but the contents were missing. Well, I found them.

This is Old Skool. Check out those copyright dates. ’74, ’77, ’78, ’81.

I was very into D&D and AD&D from late elementary school. I still clearly remember getting Gygax’s classic Dungeon Masters Guide for Christmas one year when I was in 5th or 6th grade and reading it from cover to cover to cover to cover. (It was this cover.)

It was First Edition, but we didn’t call it First Edition, because it was the True Word of The Gygax and there was none of this “2nd Edition” or “3.5”, or, god forbid, “4th Edition” nonsense yet. However, in the lame Ohio rustbelt town where I grew up, girls didn’t play D&D. I think I knew of boys at school who might have played, but all I could do was crayon in the dice for my D&D Basic Set, pore over the DMG, Monster Manual, Deities & Demigods, and Dragon Magazine, and write my own campaigns.

And boy, did I write. In the binder are several maps on graph paper, and page upon page of flavor text and encounters and numbered room content:encodeds in black and blue pen on lined notebook paper. Wandering monster tables, notecards with pre-prepped NPCs, lists of noises the PCs might hear if they listened at doors (chanting, creaking, groaning, rustling, shuffling, and whispering. Roll a d6.) The adventures seem to have been an incoherent mix of D&D Basic/Advanced and AD&D, mainly because the availability of TSR stuff was limited to what was sold at the B Dalton at the mall and maybe what the various K-marts and local equivalents stocked.

A selection of maps:

1.) The town of Rodeilus (home to The Red Dragon Inn (#1), which boasted the archetypal jovial, alcoholic, gossipy innkeep and listed “Chop of Beef”, “Stew”, “Roasted Fowl” and “Arby’s Beef n Cheddar” on its bill of fare).

2.) Some kind of keep or monastic complex (a 2-pager!):

3.) A very densely built Level 1 Dungeon:

4.) The most dense dungeon ever. I was apparently determined to use every single inch of this graph paper.

Perhaps I would have had better luck using Dungeon Geomorphs!

My dungeons were overpopulated and rife with treasure. The first level dungeon mapped above featured a happy multicultural mix of evil humans, gnolls, bugbears, various types of undead, kobolds, goblins, ogres, green slimes, and orcs, although the goblins and kobolds are mainly to be found chained to walls or performing menial tasks like turning spits of meat that “look suspiciously like human remains” (what the humans living in the dungeon think about this fare is left undocumented). Handfuls of gold pieces are available for the taking, hidden in piles of rags, and bejeweled earrings and ivory armbands are a sp a dozen. Each room is apparently guarded by a sigil of “Do Not Disturb”, because no one ever seems to get curious and check to see what’s going on 10′ down the hallway (which works out well for the Ghouls Next Door). Most monsters are to be found gambling, snoozing on “crude bunks” or stuffing themselves in refectories while swilling from the barrels and barrels of “cheap but drinkable wine” supplied by vintners unknown. Which also begs the question of where all these scores of booze-guzzling creatures go to use the bathroom. Maybe there’s a potty on Level 2.

I spared no expense in making the role-playing experience as realistic as possible. Just look at the Actual Burned Edges on this scrap of map.

Just don’t look at the back, where I screwed up.

At various times, I was able to sucker my mom and sister into playing with me. Given the lack of players, I vaguely recall having to play an NPC in the party so they wouldn’t be slaughtered immediately. I also remember at least one session ending early because I got pissed off that Robin made fun of the name I came up with for a red dragon central to the plot. (It was “Crispus”. I had just gotten done with an American History unit where we learned that freed slave Crispus Attucks was the first casualty of the Revolutionary War. Give me a break here; for some reason the “Crisp Us” meaning didn’t sink in.)

I also had a tendency to treat the die rolls as law. Basic D&D had something called a “monster reaction roll” where you rolled a d12 to see what a group of monsters would do in a given situation, if the DM hadn’t decided in advance. (It was extremely stupid; the reactions ranged from “Immediate Attack” to “Enthusiastic Friendship”, with stuff in between like “Uncertain, monster confused”. WTF?). During one session, Robin and my Mom encountered a kobold, rolled a d12, and ended up with a new party member.

My mom played a Lawful Neutral Cleric-Ranger, and here’s the proof:

I didn’t get to play in a “real” D&D game until I was in college, and I’ve never DM’ed for anyone other than my immediate family. (Based on my middle school scribblings, this is a very Good Thing.) Also, I still think Gygax’s little-known but awesome Dangerous Journeys system, which he developed after leaving TSR, totally kicks the ass of AD&D 3.5. Just saying.