One of the things I like about the metal group, Blind Guardian, is how they reference random geeking, nostalgic things. Memory is one of the great gifts of humanity, and I enjoy recalling distant memories. There is a certain sweet longing for moments lost to time. Blind Guardian recalls those to my mind.
I heard the words, “Do you remember, when we were ‘real’ knights, we’ve slain the dragon, in the room light,” in one of their songs (probably not the real lyrics) and it got me remembering nights of gaming past. I’ve liked RPGs for much of my life, and in High School I was quite excited about table top games. I found out that my friends were playing the Middle Earth Role-Playing game (MERP; acronyms used to be all the rage in such circles) and I was thrilled to sit in for a friend one day, and then join the group. Unfortunately the Game Master (GM) was… special, and everything collapsed shortly after the party started riding the dwarf around Florida… ‘cause, you see, he had epic explosive diarrhea that was being used as propulsion… yeah, it was as retarded as it sounds.
Not too long after that (though from my perspective of more than 10 years since, “not too long” may have been over a year) we started playing Dungeons and Dragons with my history teacher. He had an introductory set of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (maybe Basic Dungeons and Dragons?) with stock characters. What is to follow is a sort of amalgamation of various memories, I recall it very vividly but several different sessions are all mashed together regardless.
We went over to a friend’s house one night and played through the module. That experience has defined my ideal role-playing game session ever since. It was dark outside, the living room was lit but not overly so, creating a feel of seclusion. There were other people in the house, and there were people beyond the house, but for that night the universe contracted to that living room and expanded to our imaginations. I had gotten my own set of dice earlier and still marveled over their weird shapes.
The scene was set as a small, dismal medieval-esq village, far from major cities and effective protection. People (and a dog) had gone missing and our characters, the plucky heroic type, went to find out what happened. Since we hadn’t created the characters, there was some bad jokes at their expense (the cleric Mitchifer was renamed Bitchifer, and Thadeus the Wizard became Thad’Ass), yet while jokes flooded the room, there was an underlying feel of seriousness.
We somehow came upon a goblin sentry guarding the entrance to an underground cave network. A battle ensued but we were victorious and got inside. This was my first dungeon crawl and the real-world-room seemed to grow darker as we entered it’s strangely blocky corridors (for some reason I imagined them as carved hallways, but I am fairly sure they were supposed to be naturally formed). Quickly the path before us split into a dizzying number of potential paths and I remember feeling confused. Videogames had taught me that even naturally occurring “dungeons” are linear and any side paths are merely for the placement of treasure. We went down a side path and discovered some kobolds holed up. Apparently we were approaching the “kingdom of Tayge!” (I can still hear the Kobold’s voice, as provided by my teacher, in my head). We talked a bit but eventually left that area; amazingly, it seemed that the cave network had more to it than just our immediate goals!
Eventually we came upon some bugbears who were preparing to invade the town (why? Cause they are bugbears; they are evil, obviously… or something like that). We took out a few but quickly discovered that and entire army was marching towards us from elsewhere in the network. Bitchifer threw a magical hammer at the roof of the tunnel that the army was marching from and collapsed it, sealing them off from us and saving the town. We rescued the people and dog and returned to the town, heroes.
In a later session we, as the same heroes (and playing at the school, I think), traveled to a nearby ruined monastery where the undead were amassing. I recall the image of a mighty bramble mound in which the ruins were nestled, and the panic of being nearly overwhelmed by zombies before Bitchifer’s “Turn Undead” power saved the day. We met the vampire that was responsible for the unrest and dispatched him in a single round. This fearsome foe never even got the chance to hit us.
Then that was followed up by the conclusion to the campaign, with us traveling to a mountain and defeating a dragon (ha, I bet you thought I was just rambling, but it all ties in with Blind Guardian in the end). We climbed a mountain, fought a wyvern (and a character nearly died), battled our way through orcs (which I over-killed, thinking they were actually dangerous as in Tolkien’s books), and barely managed to fell the dragon before it escaped. The rewards were sweet, the honor great.
Unfortunately that was the last of the Great Adventures. We played other DnD characters, and we played the old D6 Star Wars (and the newer one, I think), we played Trinity, and other things. But for many years that was the only campaign I had ever completed (a lot of the other games would start and stop, never really getting past a session or two). I’ve completed one other, since, but it doesn’t compare. This! This is where it felt like we were heroes, defying odds, battling impossible foes, striving to greatness.
Do you remember when we were true knights? We’ve slain the dragon, in the roomlight. Now yours is the future, your quest for the truth.
