On November 6th, 1979, four people gathered to try out a new game. They were: Walter K. Campney (the host and instigator), an apprentice machinist who was a science fiction and fantasy fan; Darya Pospielovsky, an engineering student whom Walter had a crush on; myself: just graduated from the University of Western Ontario, trying to figure out what to do with my life (still working on it) and also an SFF fan; and Mark Sinkins, a high school student whom Walter invited to fill out the foursome.
A week or two before, Walter had made one of his periodic trips to Toronto to visit the big science fiction bookstores there. This time, instead the usual Andre Norton paperbacks, he returned with something else: the Dungeon & Dragons blue boxed set, a Player's Handbook and a Monster Manual. He was eager to give the game a try, and so he contacted some of his friends whom he thought might be up for a session.
We all knew each other, thanks to a shared interest in astronomy. We were all members of the London Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. The London Centre would remain the main reservoir for new players for our games until the advent of the internet.
November 6th was cool and rainy. We gathered at Walter's house early that evening. Walter lived with his widower father: pleasant but very shy retired man. When we arrived he retreated into his bedroom and did not come out again until after we left. We set up in the dining room. Walter was dungeonmaster, and we spent a fair bit of time creating our first characters. We had all reviewed the books previously, but there was a lot to learn. Finally, our little party marched into the dungeon. It was module B1: In Search Of The Unknown, and we were all promptly killed. We rolled up more characters, marched in, and were all killed again. And so it went that first night. No one really knew what was going on, but we all had a good time and so decided to meet again next week.
And so the campaign began...
For the first while we met on weeknights, but after a bit we decided that we wanted longer sessions, so we moved them to Saturdays. We would start playing around two in the afternoon, and continue on until three or four the next morning, with a break for dinner. They were great sessions. We all had a load of fun, and of course told our friends, who then wanted join in as well. The original group of four expanded.
We never did finish that first module. After a few weeks we tired of getting continually killed by Walter the DM. Yours truly - who by now had acquired copies of the books, including the new Dungeon Master's Guide - had started creating a dungeon of his own, and so stepped in as DM so that Walter could take a break. However, the carnage continued, as we slowly learned how the game worked. After awhile Mark took a turn as DM, and from there evolved the round-robin system of players taking turns running the games which lasted for the next thirteen years.
By the time Christmas 1979 came around the game was pretty well settled. Characters were starting to live a little longer, and McTavish the dwarf was the first character in our game to achieve second level. We were looking around for a little more in the game, though. New Years Eve 1979 found Walter, Mark and I at a party of unparalleled dreariness in St. Catharines Ontario. We talked about the game, of what to do next. We wanted to expand outside of the dungeons that I, Mark, Walter and Tom Glinos had created. We needed a campaign setting. After some discussion, I hesitantly produced the pages of a map of a continent which - when assembled and laid out - covered much of the living room floor. Mark and Walter were impressed. This was Earth...a setting some 80,000 years in the future.
For more than a decade I had been writing stories, constructing my own future history along the lines of Heinlein and Asimov (though I make no claims that my imaginative or writing abilities are even remotely close to theirs), and this map constituted the capstone of it all. In my version of the future, humanity and its allied races created a great technological civilisation which not only spanned this universe but others as well, before eventually beginning a long, slow decline. The so-called final story was appropriately called The Last Quest, and has the last scientist (actually a historian) completing his lifelong search of finding the original homeworld, Earth. There, he discovered a primitive, agrarian, feudal society threatened by an evil out of the past. The only hope for salvation lay in the relatively new fields of knowledge of magic and mental powers.
Perfect for a D&D campaign!
We set to carving up my map into areas for each DM to control. Walter took most of Nlad (hence the strange names for places in that country), Mark claimed the north (Alaska), and I took the rest. As time passed and other players took turns as DM, we handed out other regions for them to control. Tom Steele took over the Mississippi delta, and his future wife Jill Carroll had Central America (though she never did take a turn as DM).
What really started me developing this map as true campaign setting, though, was the actions of Tiramen, Tom Steele's elf. This character decided that he needed to go and see the elven King (Goldhine), which was a long hike from Su El, where the party was adventuring. I needed detailed notes of the areas he would be travelling through, and so I had to set to work making maps, generating towns and cities and setting encounters. This I continue to pick away at to this day, as time permits.
For the first part of 1980 the gaming group thrived. I returned as DM, with the intention of completing the Su El adventure. This the party did by spring. Then, Mark took over, and we went to work on clearing Marnuk's Dungeon (which is actually southeast of Strabath).
But the first upheaval in the game was coming. Walter had created a most incredible character named Ully. He had great stats (18/00 strength...and this in a day when we still rolled 3d6 for stats with no modifications!), great enough to qualify as a bard. Walter loved Ully, and nurtured him up to 4th level before he had a losing encounter with a wraith and was killed. Walter's heart was broken, and after that his interest in the game started to decline. Perhaps it was a control issue, as well. Walter had been the original creator of our group and out original DM, but he seemed to have been gradually edged aside by myself and Mark, who were much more energetic at making dungeons and adventures than he. When the good weather arrived, Walter announced that he was suspending the group for the summer. The rest of us - and there were over a dozen regular players at that time - did not see things quite the same way, and wanted to continue our weekly sessions. So, Walter left, and we had to find a new home for our sessions. We began moving from player's house to house after that, but the group continued to thrive.
When autumn came Walter returned and we resumed meeting at his house, but something had changed. For one thing, I was back at school, this time in Waterloo (about an hour from our home in London), though I came home every weekend. There were some new players, as well. One especially disruptive player was a fellow named Lee. Walter took his turn as DM, and out of inexperience allowed Lee to bring in a character from another campaign. This character was much higher in level than the rest of the party members, loaded with magic, and owned two artifacts of power! He ran rampant all over the game for a few weeks before Lee grew bored and left, taking with him a fair contingent of our players. Things then settled down, with a much smaller group. Walter ran a first rate adventure and we had a great time. When I took over as DM again I began to run the Giant and drow modules. Lee and the people he had led out of our game caught wind of this and wanted to come back. I allowed our former players back, but would not let Lee in. I had learned from Walter's mistake.
Time passed. In late 1981 I accepted a position at an accounting firm in Owen Sound (90 miles north of London) but still came home each weekend to play. I was only there for three months before I found myself laid off due to the recession and living at home again with my parents. Almost simultaneously, my good friend Steven Wilson (aka Wild Willy) also found himself unemployed. A free spirit if ever there was one, Willy had dropped in and out of our gaming group as he wanted for awhile. Now, he settled in for a long stay. There were a number of us young men who were out of work and/or with time on our hands during the first part of 1982. Willy and I would job search in the mornings and then meet the others for D&D sessions each afternoon. The party covered a lot of ground during the first half of 1982, finishing the giant modules and going underground after the drow.
But more strife was on the way. Another player named Barry had an oppressive gaming style which started to grate on people. Players started leaving, and the fun started to go out of the game. It was an awkward situation: Barry was a great guy in every aspect except when it came to gaming. He had a lot of friends who were also in our group. But Mark and I were unhappy, and others were not coming out as much as they used to. Then, one night, I went over to Mark's place and we played D&D...just the two of us, and had a great time. We suddenly realised what was happening and that Barry was slowly destroying our group. Mark took the initiative and removed Barry from the group. It was an unpleasant time, and we lost most of our players as a result. Even Walter - who was a good friend of Barry's - dropped out. All that remained were myself, Mark and Willy.
It was now the summer of 1982, and Willy was working again, so he ceased being a regular player. Then, Mark revealed that he had started a separate little gaming group for another London RASC member, Guy Lafreniere, and his wife, Mary. Guy loved D&D but could not stand Barry, so a separate group was spawned. I was invited to join in, and the game resumed.
For the next year and a half the group consisted of Mark, myself, Willy, Guy and Mary. We met once a week at Guy's house. They had two young children and did not want a lot of people there; nor did they want to play anywhere else. This was good and bad. It was good to have a regular home for our sessions again, but bad because we could not introduce new blood into the game. It was at this time that a high school kid came into the London RASC who wanted to join our gaming group. His name was Frank Paquet. Guy vetoed the idea, and Frank was not invited.
During this period of stability, though, our milieus matured. We completed the drow modules, and Randy the Ranger (Mary's character), slew Lolth. Mark, meanwhile, had developed his own campaign setting apart from Earth, based on H.P Lovecraft's Cthulu stories, and we spent our time battling the spreading evil on the world of Sinnar. Even Willy took a turn as dungeonmaster, running the Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan module. It was...memorable. Guy and Mary were content to remain players, though, and as a result their characters - being played all the time - began to pull away from the rest of ours, level wise. To remedy this we used the slaying of Lolth as a device to "separate" our campaign worlds, making it all but impossible for players to move from one milieu to another. No longer would Leslie adventure with Stiff.
After a year matters began to deteriorate. Guy's interest in computers was growing, to the point that he would rather play games on his new Commodore 64 than host a D&D session. Our sessions began to grow less frequent. Finally, early in 1984 he received a promotion at work which required a move to Ottawa, and suddenly the gaming group consisted of only Mark and I (Willy being an occasional player at best). But perhaps this was a good thing. In early February 1984 I moved into my own apartment, and at a monthly RASC meeting Mark and I approached Frank. He was still interested in joining, and we had a new home for our gaming. Frank was an excellent fit with us, and soon began to develop his own campaign setting, before taking over the Krynn milieu. He also brought in a friend, Sean Flood: a character who provided us with some memorable gaming moments over the next few years.
For six months the four players met each week. The party went to war with Yuri against the evil forces of Golgar, and eventually found themselves in Middle Earth for the first time. In Mark's milieu we ran lower level adventures while Frank and Sean's characters matured and grew more powerful. Occasionally Willy would join us, but these visits were becoming more rare. In September of 1984, though, yours truly was offered a promotion at work which necessitated a move to St. Catharines, about 100 miles away. My work schedule only allowed me to come back to London once every three weeks. On those weekends we held marathon, all day Sunday sessions, and the games moved on. Meanwhile, in St. Catharines, a friend of ours who also enjoyed D&D asked me to DM a party for his family and some friends, and so another group was spawned. That game lasted for over a year before it finally died away, another victim of the lure of the Commodore 64.
In May of 1986 I finagled a transfer back to London, and weekly sessions resumed. Several new players joined the game. Barry Saxon, Joe and Victor were all members of the London RASC. Sean, though, was showing up with less regularity, though. He now had a girlfriend and a challenging career as a taxi driver, and so had less time to spend on D&D. By the end of 1986 he was gone.
The next three years were a time of stability for our gaming group. The five of us met almost weekly. Once in awhile Mark's younger brother Mike would join us. Mark, Frank and I took turns as gamemaster, each running a dozen sessions before passing on the torch to someone else. In the Earth milieu the party defeated the lich Melnar, battled slavers on Oerth, and explored the sewers under the city of Atlantia, capitol of Saltar. In Mark's campaign the party continued to travel the lower planes battling devils, demons and the legions of Cthulu before finally being forced to retreat to another world, Toyoview, a place threatened by creatures from the elemental planes. Frank, meanwhile, moved the party from his own milieu based on western Europe to Krynn, where we battled the dragon armies.
In 1989, Victor took a turn as dungeonmaster. He had worked long and hard developing his own campaign setting, and it was fantastic. However, his style of dungeonmastering was detail oriented and...tedious. People - myself included - started finding other things to do on Sundays besides D&D. Finally, it was Frank who realised that the games were at risk, and took the step of deposing Victor as DM. People started coming out again with Frank as DM, and the sessions continued. Understandably, though, Victor was hurt, and after a few months he dropped out of the group.
At about the same time Barry dropped out of the group as well, complaining that the pizzas we always ordered for dinner were not bland enough for him.
The group survived these losses.
In 1991 a severe blow struck the group, though, as Frank accepted a position with Ontario Hydro at the Bruce Nuclear generating station, and moved to Kincardine. Suddenly the group consisted only of myself, Mark and Joe, occasionally Mike and rarely Frank, when he could get down to London for a session. Still, we pushed ahead, until growing tensions forced Joe to leave in 1992.
With Joe gone, though, Mike became a regular player, and the MAIN party
embarked for the hells on a mission to rescue the soul of Neemar. For me
this was perhaps the best adventure that I had written, as I really endeavoured
to make it a showcase for my milieu and the ideas that I had for it. The
party - led by Stiff - successfully completed the mission just as my wife
accepted a position at The Jackson Laboratory in Maine, which meant a move
of 900 miles.
How to keep things going? None of us wanted the games to end. Through
my job at the university I had been exposed to the internet and immediately
grasped the potential of continuing the campaigns by email; but this was
1993, and internet access was not as readily available as it is now.
In the weeks leading up to the February 10th moving date Mark and I played almost nightly. Mike was also there much of the time, and even Frank made it down for one last face-to face session. We were back on Sinnar, and the forces of Cthulu were out to get us.
Then, it was February 10th and I was gone.
After thirteen years, the game hit its nadir. Once I was settled in Maine, I wrote to Frank and Mark, and we tried to play by mail. Two people playing by mail was barely doable; three was not. Mark soon stopped posting, but Frank and I persevered, and the party led by Orlon continued to adventure in the Earth milieu in this fashion for over two years.
But I was not happy. The internet was expanding, and I was continually nagging Mark and Frank to get connected. The situations in their lives at that time precluded this, so I looked elsewhere to slake my gaming thirst and found the usenet newsgroups. It did not take me long to realize that there was a booming community of email gamers out there. I joined my first email game in the summer of 1994, but it was not enough. In August of that year I posted to the usenet for players to adventure in the Earth milieu, and the PBEM game was born. With a lot of help from the players in that game, this novice email DM managed to keep things rolling, and the PBEM game was (and still is) a great success.
In the spring of 1995 the success of the PBEM game encouraged me to
start a second party, EARTH. Composed of a mix of players from PBEM plus
new members, the game was an immediate success, and boasted some of the
finest role playing that I have ever witnessed. Then, in the summer of
1995, Frank went online. The MAIN game - who had covered perhaps a half
a day of adventuring in over two years of mail gaming - went over to email,
and the pace picked up immediately. In addition, we started another party,
consisting of his characters from Mark's milieu. After a bit I asked Frank
if he would mind if I recruited other players for these games off of the
internet. He was agreeable, and after a slightly rough start the MAIN and
GREY parties expanded successfully. The new blood put a new lease on life
for the MAIN game, but GREY never seemed to settle down, and after almost
a year I shut that game down. I don't think that the players in that game
ever realised that the adventure that they were on (the Castle Greyhawk
module) was intended as a joke.
In the fall of 1995 Frank restarted his Krynn campaign online with
two of my characters. After a few months of gaming with just he and I,
he felt comfortable enough to recruit players off the net, and that game
continues to thrive to this day.
My three remaining email games boomed until the spring of 1997, when
yours truly moved to a new job which limited his daytime gaming time. Still,
they did well, and I even found time to start another game, CULT. This
was to be a different style of game, though. Instead of being a party who
would move from adventure to adventure, the CULT group was a one shot deal.
When the adventure (Against the Cult of the Reptile God) was completed
the game would be disbanded. I figured that they would finish the module
in six months, at the most. Instead, the party immediately fragmented and
the pace of the game slowed to a crawl. The CULT game ran for a year and
a half before I finally put a halt to it; the party just over halfway through
the adventure.
Mark, in the meantime, had gained internet access, but his work and
home situation seems to have precluded him from resuming his former active
role in the games. I can only hope that someday this situation will change.
In the spring of 1999 I started a new job with an employer who is not on the internet. Suddenly, my email access was limited to home, and my free time is even more limited. Still, I persevere, and the games continue to move forward.
Where to in the future? After two decades it has been enjoyable to look back to see where we came from. As for what lies ahead, all I can say is that I still have plenty ideas for adventures...I sincerely doubt that I will live long enough to see them all develop to fruition! I tend to run my games on two levels. The surface level consists of a straightforward series of what are basically hack and slash adventures; but on a deeper level there are greater schemes, darker designs and larger enemies. The deeper plots I try to keep subtle, and they develop very slowly. Suffice to say that on Earth there are two major conflicts forming. Earth is one of the "key worlds": where one of the dominant species in the multiverse originally spawned, and so is coveted by the gods. They are moving steadily towards open conflict for dominion over Earth. Meanwhile, two more Powers, ancient enemies from other universes, are also moving into conflict again on Earth.
Who knows what the future will bring?