While I have unfortunately never gotten to roll dice with him, I knew that my uncle played D&D during its very early days. He suppposedly even wrote for an RPG fanzine, and while I had never seen any solid evidence of this before, my mother recently sent me some of his handwritten notes that she found in old papers from my grandmother's house. Apparently, we get a little glimpse here of what his adventures were like while playing with his acquaintance George as DM. No idea if this George fellow is anyone I've heard of otherwise, but it seemed like it'd be neat to type up the notes and share them here. Hopefully Mom will find more soon...
July 19, 1975
I was recently able to take part in a very unique campaign of Dungeons & Dragons. Because the setting has some really interesting differences from most of the ones I’ve played in up till now (more John Carter than Conan), I thought it would be worthwhile to write up some session reports for the fanzine, so that others can see just how flexible D&D is. I’ll try to remember the story as precisely as I can, but please remember that these are all “after action” reports, so I may miss some details here and there.
When I arrived at my cousin Joel’s house for a summer visit, he asked if I wanted to take part in a D&D campaign his neighbor George had been working on, that had been described to him as “a fantasy war in space” (I think he even said George just calls it “The Star War”). I thought this sounded amazing and, having just picked up the Greyhawk supplement, figured this would be a great chance to try out some of its options before returning to my own D&D group next week. So, we gathered last night at the home of another neighbor (Ted) to have an introductory session where we learned about the setting and created our characters. The adventuring party would be Ted, Theo (we were lucky that with two Theodores in the group, they use different nicknames!), Joel, and me, with George as DM.
George said it would be okay if we wanted to play nonhuman characters (even ones that are usually monsters), and that it would be easy to work them into the campaign world as aliens from one of the billions of planets in the galaxy where the adventures take place. I asked if I could play a Bugbear (from Greyhawk, described as “great hairy goblin-giants”), and George worked out some stats for it really quickly. One of the interesting things he worked into it is that my character (called Chewy by the others) can’t speak Common due to the way my vocal cords are shaped, BUT I can understand it, and there are many characters of other species who are able to understand my language when I speak it. This actually seems like it could make for some interesting roleplaying moments, so I’m excited to see where it goes. At first it seemed like it would get annoying really quickly, but that definitely didn’t happen in our short first session of play.
I also wanted to keep the faux-medieval fantasy theme typical to D&D going a little bit, so I asked if it would be reasonable for my Bugbear to have a crossbow as a main weapon. George said yes, but that it should be set up to fire energy like the raygun-type weapons the others are using. He said he would work something out about how those of the Bugbear species like using crossbows for some reason.
With the options being wide open, I don’t really know why Ted, Theo, and Joel all just wanted to play humans, but they did. Ted is playing an older spellcaster named Ben that George kept referring to as “sort of a space wizard who is also good in combat,” and Joel is this classic “farmboy who wants to be a hero” type guy with an amazing last name: Starkiller. (I actually can’t even remember what his first name is; I just called him Starkiller all night, because that’s just badass.)
Starkiller has some skill in flying, but the main pilot of the group (as George said we should have at least one in the party who owns and can fly a starship) is played by Theo, a pirate named Hans. I figured it would be cool if Hans and I had a history together, so we worked out this fairly elaborate story where he saved my life one time and now I’m completely dedicated to his protection and service. So, it was decided that Chewy the Bugbear is also a bit of a pilot himself.
After giving us a brief overview of the campaign world he has created (which honestly sounds absolutely amazing, and which I could never do justice by trying to describe it here – the key point is that in the galaxy, there is an evil Empire that is in control, and a group of rebels have been joining together to try to fight back against it), George had us introduce our characters to each other and jumped to an actual in-universe scene to make it all more impactful. You guessed it: We met in a tavern! I wish I had a recording of the way George described this “cantina” as he called it, and all the incredible species of aliens drinking in it.
The story so far is pretty straightforward. Starkiller and Ben were given what I assume is the key MacGuffin of the first adventure, some plans for a planet-destroying starbase which are being carried by one of the robots they have with them (both of whom were outside the tavern for our first meeting). So, they hired me and Hans to take them to the planet where they are supposed to deliver them. It was actually a pretty fun scene in terms of interaction, as Theo had Hans go on and on about how great he is as a pilot and how good his ship is, and he actually haggled with them on a price for the job (even though we all knew we were going to take it).
That was pretty much the end of the main story for the evening, and we’ll pick up next session as we head to a new planet on Hans’s freighter to deliver the starbase plans. There was a final little bit of roleplaying where George introduced this alien bounty hunter who wanted to capture (or maybe kill?) Hans. My first impression was that this alien (who I’ll admit had kind of a ridiculous name, Greed-O) was going to play a role in the unfolding adventure, but I hope that wasn’t the case, since Hans pretty much immediately killed him! George and Ted also talked a little about how Ben’s past is going to play a part in upcoming sessions, and apparently George gave Ben and Starkiller some sort of magical weapons that will come up again. I am guessing it’s the “blade of light” that Ben wielded during the tavern roleplaying scene, but we’ll find out more as the story unfolds.
I’ll be back to the journal tomorrow night with updates!
-HAG
