On 25 Years
"Roll a twenty-sider...just for fun."
-Philip L. Pike
In the fall of 1979 I was starting my junior year at Michigan State University. I was 20 years old, weighed 133 pounds, and had just come off a summer working as a surveyor's assistant up in Sault Ste. Marie. Jimmy Carter was president. Recent or current movies included "The Amityville Horror", "Apocalypse Now", "10", and "Life of Brian". The number one song was "My Sharona" by The Knack. The Tigers were heading for a 5th place finish behind Baltimore in the AL East (of 7 teams, as there was no Central division then), but they had just hired a new manager named Sparky Anderson, who promised to build the team into a contender.
I had started my own D&D campaign back home over the summer, and was about to unleash it on the wider world of MSU. More than twenty five years later I'm still running the campaign. It seems appropriate, especially with D&D having recently celebrated its 30-year anniversary, for me to take a look back at the history of the campaign, and what it has meant to me over the years.
Back then D&D was just beginning to become really popular. I had become vaguely aware of the game in the fall of 1978, when I used to go over to the student union to play games on Saturday afternoons. I would play Avalon Hill board games like "Panzer Leader" or "Air Assault on Crete", or other games like "Stellar Conquest", but over in the corner there was always this other group playing some strange game without a board. I kept hearing interesting snippets of conversations about hobgoblins and dwarves and fireballs, and I wandered over once or twice and watched what they were doing. It was the first exposure I had to role-playing games. What I saw interested me enough that when two guys on my dorm floor asked me if I was interested in playing, I said yes without hesitation.
In D&D I found more than just a game that appealed to my love of fantasy and challenged my imagination. I also found a kind of salvation. By the time I was ready to start the Elcea campaign at MSU I was in bad shape. My mother had died unexpectedly at the start of the year, and that summer my girlfriend and fiancée of the past two years had broken up with me, largely because she didn't know how to deal with the depression and confusion I was in following my mom's death. I didn't know how to deal with that, either. All I knew is that I was sad, confused, and almost desperately lonely.
Quite soon, however, my dorm room was filling up with people on a regular basis. Dennis, my roommate, knew Art. He joined the campaign, followed by Terry, Rich, Pete, John, Mike, and Greg. Others would follow. The campaign gave me not only another world in which to lose myself, it also gave me a social life, and good friends. I am one of the few people whose GPA probably improved as a result of playing D&D. When my mother died it had plunged from about 3.8 to below 3 almost immediately. I had no ability to focus on or even really care about my studies. As the game went on and my spirits improved it rose back to respectable levels, though it never did completely regain it's former luster.
I ran the campaign at MSU for about two years. That era came to an end in the fall of 1981 when I ran out of money. I had been paying my own way through school, and the expense had finally eaten up my available funds and far outstripped the money I was making. But I carefully packed up my notebooks and continued to work on the campaign background as I moved out to the West Coast. Dennis, Pete, Art, and Rich had already left, but I still left behind a large group of players who continued to run in the campaign Mike Driscoll started.
I ended up in Buena Park some months later, living with my grandmother and my cousin Becky. Becky was getting over a divorce, and she had played D&D in college. About a year after I left Michigan Becky and I ended up sharing an apartment, and we determined to start playing again. We recruited Leanne, whom Becky had met at church. Leanne had never played before, but she was interested in me, and saw that this was a good way to spend time with me. She not only achieved that goal, but enjoyed the game for it's own sake, too.
Like the MSU campaign, the California group expanded quickly. Richard and Barbara joined us, and the core group was formed. The subsequent history of the campaign is probably at least generally familiar to most of you, so I won't go into great detail about that. We played in Southern California from the fall of 1982 until I moved to Corvallis in December 1999. Players joined the campaign and others left as their lives took them out of the area, but everyone's participation became woven into the lore and stories of the campaign.
More important, though, is the fact that the group very quickly became more than just a game group. We also became a social group, and had a lot of fun together outside the game. The fun we had and the friendships we formed have had a huge impact on my life. I not only shared a lot of good times with the circle of friends that comprise the California group, in a very real way they helped raise my children. And like all good friendships they have been a source of strength and support for me through the ups and downs life has brought over the years. I think almost everyone in the group could say the same.
The bond was strong enough that when I moved north the group refused to let me go, and found ways for us to continue playing together. And there is a group in Corvallis now, carrying on many of the same traditions. We have fun together outside of playing the game. And it seems very cool to me that my kids are now part of that group. They grew up watching the game being played and hearing us talk about the campaign. To them, stories about Bodo, Stargoth, Orsnian, and Soujrnee are as familiar to them as stories about Ichabod Crane or Captain Hook.
**
It's a long way from here to that dorm room at 4 West Wilson Hall, and an even longer way from a very skinny 20 year old college student to a 46 year old software analyst with a mortgage, a wife, and two grown children. It may well be, in fact, that the only constant in my life through all those years has been the game. I had no idea 25 years ago, of course, that I was starting not only a game but a career. If someone had told me in 1979 that I would still be doing this in 2005 I'm not sure I would have believed them. But the idea would have pleased me, I think.
The game has given me more than friendships and memories over the years. I have a deep, restless imagination that never seems to stop working, and Elcea has provided an outlet for that. A lot of what I think about goes into the campaign world or into the adventures themselves in some form or another. Elcea is a kind of alter ego for me and its lands and coastlines, the adventures we have gamed there, and all of its peoples and creatures are deeply impressed on my subconscious. And certainly the constant exercise of my wits and creativity must do a lot to keep my mind strong and supple. Twisted and strange, perhaps, but in a strong and supple sort of way.
The game itself occurs here in the external world, of course. And I have fond memories and associations with all of the different places that the game has taken place. At MSU we played in my dorm room. I set up at my desk, and the rest of the room was filled with people. They were on the couch, on every other available piece of furniture, on the floor, and up on the loft beds. At times there were as many as 14 people in the tiny room. And we would play for hours, frequently until very late. I don't recall that we really minded the crowded conditions at all, though. We had a wonderful time - even if Pete once woke up the women in the next room by kicking the radiator on the wall, and Terry once put his fist through the back of the door.
At Fullerton we played in the living room of the apartment Becky and I shared. I set up a card table and ran the game from there, and the other players occupied the couch and chairs. Emily, then 6 years old, would make a nest under my table, and took very seriously her job of carrying notes from me to the players - at least until she eventually fell asleep. There were only a few players - Becky, Leanne, Barbara, Richard, and at times Art Ward - so conditions were much less crowded, even though it was not a gigantic apartment.
After I moved in with Leanne in Downey we played there. We gamed from that house for many years. We were always at the big dining room table, though in three different rooms as time went by. After Leanne's parents moved out we turned their room into the game room. That was a great place to run a game. I had the card table (donated by Peter) and the group had the big table. And Nova donated her water bed, which made a handy resting place, though not without dangers, as Barbara discovered one day when Kim sloshed her right out of it.
Wherever in the house we were, though, we always got together in the afternoon and played ball in the schoolyard out behind the house, and then would frequently jump in the pool for some "killer murder ball" before eating and getting ready to game.
Now that I'm in Oregon the local group gets together around our dining room table. I used Peter's card table for awhile, but now that we have a larger table I sit there with the players. For the California group I sit at one of the computer desks and peer into the monitor. The monitor is flanked by my screens, and my dice box sits beside me. It is remarkably similar to being at the head of the table just as I always was, although I can't be pelted with ketchup packets when I crack a bad pun or do something nasty to the characters.
I'm not sure how the ketchup packet tradition got started. I think it was Barbara who initiated it, though. Certainly fast food was a frequent dinner choice, and packets were available. For awhile the missiles got more sophisticated, as Camille introduced various disk launchers into the group. Rachel has kept the tradition alive here, though she mostly reserves her packets for those who crack bad puns. With Mark and Alex and I at the table it is usually a target-rich environment, though.
No mention of the social aspect of gaming in Elcea can be made without mentioning food. When I think of getting together with either the Oregon or California groups I often think of the many great meals we have enjoyed together. Food is of course a very social event itself, and it has been my great fortune that both the California and Oregon groups include people who not only love and appreciate good food, but are good at preparing it.
Food back in the MSU days meant either ordering pizza or taking a break from gaming and trooping to the cafeteria for a communal meal. Not great food, but there was at least a lot of it. In California we used to take turns cooking, and many a tasty meal we had! Here in Oregon we sometimes eat beforehand, sometimes somebody cooks, and sometimes we order Chinese or some other type of food. And outside of the meals there have always been snacks. It isn't too much of an exaggeration to say that the Elcea campaign runs on chocolate. At least this DM does. Here in Oregon the Cooks always bring a big tub of M&Ms and carefully place it within handy reach just over my DM screens.
Another thing that I think of when I look back over more than 25 years of the Elcea campaign are some of the phrases that have worked their way into the history of the campaign. Perhaps the signature phrase of the entire campaign is "Roll a 20-sider - just for fun". This dates from the early days of the MSU campaign, and has become shorthand for anything I do to toy with the players. There are many other phrases, though, that might be familiar to those reading this essay:
Music has always been an important part of the game, too. The music I most associate with the campaign is Rick Wakeman's "Journey to the Center of the Earth". Kevin and Dennis introduced me to it the very first night I played D&D, and I have listened to it while playing and designing dungeons ever since. I was delighted when, many years later, I brought it out for the first session with Swords and Scrolls here in Oregon and discovered that it was a favorite of Mark and Lori, as well.
There is a lot of other music I have used to set background mood for the game, mostly soundtracks. "Raiders of the Lost Ark", "Seventh Voyage of Sinbad", "Conan the Barbarian", "The Wind and the Lion", "Ladyhawke", "Princess Bride", and "The Day the Earth Stood Still", among many others. I also used to play Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" when a character died but I have mostly given that up, as I am not fond of having my nose hairs yanked out. I still play ELO's "Turn to Stone" when someone is petrified, though.
**
I have put an enormous amount of time and effort in designing and running the game over the years. For this I have been compensated many times over in what it has given back. I have tried to touch a little on what the game has meant to me, and some of the elements that have made it memorable. The most important element, of course, is the people I have played the game with. Role-playing is a very social activity, and it has been the most important part of my social life for a long time. Many of the players have become lifelong friends not only with me, but with each other. And the social net the game has cast is responsible for no less than four marriages - John and Laura Martin, Mike and Liz Visser, Mike and Becky Driscoll, and Kim and Eric Williams.
Will I play another 25 years? It is, I admit, an odd thought. I make no predictions. I would never have thought, back when I started, that I would still be playing all these years later. I imagine I will keep running the campaign as long as it is fun and I have players willing to join me in exploring Elcea. If that means I end up running the campaign in a nursing home somewhere, so be it!
Do you have any comments, questions, or responses to this article? Send them in! I'd like to hear them, and if there are enough interesting ones I'll add them to this page.
Ideas and contributions to future editions of "Mere Chronicles" are also being accepted.
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