Faltering

A freshman collegian follows the instructions on a flyer to attend a Dungeons & Dragons meet-up. Only two other people show. One the old man cannot remember, but the other is a man who is surprisingly bald for a twenty-year-old, but somehow still less nerdy than the average RPGer. All he wants to do is talk about his previous campaigns, where one of the characters was named “Bill the Human Cleric.” Nothing comes of this gathering. The collegian acquires occasional girlfriends and spends a semester abroad. D&D is relegated to summers only. He sells his miniature collection to the still not-quite-pariah high school friend for seventy dollars, about one dollar per miniature, including his “home-assembled” Heroes of the Lance set. He loses track of his Dragon Magazines and Moldvay set. He does, however, retain all his AD&D hardbacks, the originals and the ones with the orange spines, as well as the rare Deities & Demigods, from before the copyright incident. They are stored in the attic with the unused miniature-war sandbox, which will soon be disassembled by the collegian’s father.

The collegian purchases the second edition core books, though he doesn’t really think in terms of this being a “new edition.” He dutifully tries to learn all the new rules. He quickly susses out the powergaming opportunities in weapon specialization, building dart- and dagger-throwing fighters that he will never play. He and the not-quite-pariah and another decidedly pariah two years their junior begin playing at the youngest’s house in the summer. The younger friend lends the collegian his Elric, Fahfrd and Grey Mouser, Vlad Taltos, and Chronicles of Amber books, and the collegian is turned on to Discworld by the guy across the hall in his dorm. The collegian purchases Scourge of the Slave Lords to run the other two through, although he is irritated by some of the nonsensical dungeon construction therein. The campaign peters out sometime during the middle of the third of the four modules. The collegian graduates. The not-quite-pariah gets married and stays in the far part of the state. The youngest of the three goes to college on the other coast.

Look at that solid GM record-keeping

The best friend and the collegian have one last D&D hurrah at a beach house one summer (though they have a fantastic Car Wars race face-off one New Year’s eve that is so involving it’s past midnight before they notice the time; the best friend sacrificing one of his drivers in a fiery crash so that the other may win). The characters are named “Honk” (after the Rolling Stones’ “Country Honk”) and “Slouch,” and the best friend asks the collegian to draw the 6 CHA Honk as hideously as possible. The old man does not even remember what module was run, or if it was his own creation, but it would be their last Dungeons & Dragons together for a quarter century.

The collegian begins to write a post-War-of-the-Lance campaign, for the lonely fun, even though two of the Dragonlance campaigns have faltered, and the third will soon. He conceives it on an epic level, mapping postwar politics in magic marker on a photocopied image of the continent. The frame for the adventure will be a mimicry of the original’s arc, semi-railroading the players and pulling them to-and-fro across Ansalon. He draws a handful of isometric dungeons, makes lists of NPCs, and invents magic items for the campaign. No one else will ever see these artifacts until he posts photos of a couple on Twitter about three decades later.

Post war of the lance warlords

Dungeon Version

What's the deal with all the pits? In the temple proper!

Dungeon key