Remembering how a friend and my dad played a roll in helping me understand Dungeons and Dragons.
I had a friend in the early 80s that introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons. His name was Phillip. Phillip had one D&D book at the time, but we made the best of it together. I think that Phillip knew how to play the game. However, he’d come over to my house just to roll up characters. I never really understood how role-playing related to the characters that we created.
Phillip and I fought monsters with our characters. We really enjoyed discovering the loot that our victories yielded. Rolling on the treasure tables was just as much fun as rolling up characters.
Each of the characters that we rolled up were hand written on a single sheet of notebook paper. We had a stack of characters after a few months time.
My dad is an artist and he loves fantasy. He decided to make his own rendition of a character sheet when he saw the handful of characters that my friend and I created.
I remember being elated to have such a nice character sheet, and I spent hours copying all of my characters from notebook paper to the new character sheet that my dad made for me.
One day Phillip came over and he showed me a labyrinthine dungeon map that he had made. I think it was then that I realized what to do with the characters we made and the power that this game offered me. I had a place where my characters could go, and that place was a place that I could make myself.
In 1982, my parents bought me the Dungeons and Dragons B-X boxed sets. There were two boxed sets; a red box and a blue box. Inside each of these boxed sets was an adventure module.
Phillip’s dungeon, my dad’s character sheet and the two modules from the boxed sets inspired me to create something of my own. So I decided that I would make my own module. I got into my dad’s art supplies and constructed the CHAmbers of Death adventure module.
CHAmbers of Death is a haunted mansion with a funhouse dungeon underneath it. The mansion was loaded with traps and wandering monsters. Each room had something for the characters.
Although the placement of monsters and treasures didn’t make much sense, it was fun to play because it gave us a “sense of location” to fight the monsters and secret places to find the treasures.
There was no role-playing in the funhouse. That didn’t matter though because my friends and I adopted a comfortable play style akin to the “murder hobo”.
Above are the floor plans and dungeon levels of the CHAmbers of Death mansion. Right-click an image and select “open image in new tab” to enlarge the image.
Eventually, I found my way to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and I spent countless hours pouring through the players handbook and dungeon masters guide. My dad expressed interest when he saw how studious I was about the game. So me and my dad played CHAmbers of Death with the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons edition.
My dad rolled up a magic user and named him Grey Cloud. It wasn’t until later on in life that I realized that Grey Cloud was also the name of a science and nature park near our home. So dad probably used the name as inspiration for his character.
Dad gave his magic user quirky behavior. He injected humor between encounters, but while in a fight, played his character like Charles Bronson in Death Wish. It was from the way that he played his character that I began to understand how to role-play.
Since there were two modules in the B-X set, I too made two modules. CHAmbers of Death was followed up by the Dungeon of NO REturn.
I am blessed to have supporting parents and loyal childhood friends. Some of those friends are no longer living but I will always cherish their memories.
Happy Fathers Day Dad. Thanks for the inspiration and support and for playing D&D with me.