When we last left my tale of the Early Days, I hinted that the good stories coming out of my group lured a large wave of new people into my game. As I mentioned before, my campaign consisted of myself as the DM, plus four women (Allison, Elise, Christine, Robyn), and was then supplemented by two later additions (Kim, and our first guy, Eric).
Now, what needs to be borne in mind is that all my players came from the same source: the college-age Christian fellowship of which I was part of, and attended on Sundays along with the regular church service. The fellowship, called Seekers (after Matthew 5:33), was composed of students from a large number of colleges in the greater Boston area (particularly MIT, Wellsley, Harvard, Northeastern, and BU).
This all needs to be said in order for people to understand why the next stage of my campaign's history was called "The BU Invasion". Now, before the BU Invasion hit, we gained one more member; and that was Tim, boyfriend of Robyn, who in turn was one of the founding four. She asked if he could join. I agreed, and he brought in a cleric named....Tim. Yes. Tim the Cleric. Considering that Monty Python and the Holy Grail fever was still raging at the time, the name sort of squeaked by.
I also need to pause and point out the following irony....back in those dim dark years of 1978-1979, few women role-played, and certainly born-again Christians weren't supposed to. So naturally, the group consisted overwhelmingly of female players, and all of us were born-again, evangelical Christians. Man, do I love swimming against the tide!
SO anyway...the BU Invasion. (p)Rick, the player that I've referenced before in terms of his role in the unfair slaughter of my first paladin (see the appropriate Curmudgeonly Rambling), was nominally affiliated with the BU contingent at Seekers. And he told everyone about it. They were fascinated.
Suddenly, I received this massive influx of B.U. students, eager to play the game, and I was still suffering from that bizarre disease that prevented me from using the word "no". Our active roster, as in, people who we could count on attending every weekly game, soared to SIXTEEN. Now, it needs to be said that of my original six players, all but Allison left the group. So, in essence, I gained fifteen new players, and among them were the guy who I've called Batman in previous entries, the guy named Donzo who played stupid useless characters, and a host of others.
And people were so eager to start, that, rather than roll up characters for their first session, they'd look through the "dead pile" that I kept (for ego purposes....sort of having a trophy of every kill!), renamed the character, changed the alignment, and off they went (a lot of these dead pile characters never made it past 1st level, so it was an easy process). And fortunately, (p)Rick was such an awful player that he was single-handedly responsible for about half of the dead PCs in my folder.
So we'd have our weekly routine....head over to the BU dorms on a Saturday evening, commandeer one of the student activity rooms (since all other self-respecting college students weren't there on a Saturday night, rather they were out vomiting in the gutters and singing off-key), start around 6pm, and play till 1am on Sunday. Sometimes, the games lasted all night, and we left as the sun was coming up.
But wait! I hear you say. If you were all evangelical Fundies, weren't you supposed to be in church on Sunday morning? Yes, under normal circumstances, this was true. However, Seekers met on Sunday EVENING, so we could sleep in on Sunday morning, then attend the evening service and Seekers. See? Neat as can be! We could fulfill our Christian obligations AND still be raving, drooling game-geeks. Best of both worlds!
Of course, the problem with having 16 people in your campaign is that personality conflicts inevitably arose. The worst one had to be the romantic triangle. The participants were Kevin, a passive-aggressive guy who had the "bad boy" reputation in Seekers, Butch the Yuppie, and Heather, a very pretty, very likeable, very cool girl. Kevin and Heather had dated for a while, and eventually she broke it off. She and Butch began hanging out together. All THREE of them found their way into my group. So, we had Kedar the Fighter (Kevin), relentlessly arguing with and harrassing Genghis the Ranger (Butch), while a completely flummoxed Hawthorne the Paladin (Heather) looked on, not knowing exactly what to do.
Things came to a head in what was eventually known as the Dragon Incident. The adventuring party, which at this time had acquired about as much personnel and firepower as the 101st Airborne, ran afoul of a huge red dragon....which got surprise on the party. It let loose with its fiery breath weapon, with devastating results.
Several characters died outright. Allison's character's unicorn mount pretty much turned into a flame-broiled Whopper. But despite the hideous carnage, the survivors charged. One guy (also named Kevin, as if running 16 people wasn't confusing enough) had his character (Nahac, a gnome fighter/illusionist) grab a pair of Gauntlets of Ogre Power from one of the dead, put them on, ran under the dragon, and began punching it in the stomach. My best friend Larry took his monk (Melchizedek), and began climbing the wall in order to leap on the dragon and attempt to punch it into submission. Yes, despite their wounds, their dead, their Kentucky Fried mounts, the party pressed forward to engage this Ancient Huge Red Dragon (anyone who has the original Monster Manual knows just how awful that is).
Except for Genghis, Butch's character.
Genghis ran out of the chamber.
In the words of Robin's minstrels:
"When danger reared its ugly head, he bravely turned his tail and fled!"
He retreated. Advanced to the rear. Buggered off. Scarpered. Ran for his life.
The howls of protest were deafening. And none howled louder than Kevin. The survivors eventually overwhelmed the dragon, but no thanks to Genghis (who was denied any share of dragon loot). The atmosphere got downright toxic. And poor Butch tried to atone for this for the rest of his playing days ("What's that? A Balrog? Genghis attacks it single-handedly!"), but he never lived it down. Kevin made sure of that.
However, as time went on, the fact that all of the gamers were college students from out of state began to take its toll. People graduated, and many moved on to jobs outside of Massachusetts. Of course, there was always a supply of fresh blood (Mwahahaaaha), but the group membersip was never very stable or consistent, although a small handful were gradually beginning to emerge as the future core for my campaigns well through the 80's and into the 90's.
But that's a story for another time...
