The Great Svenny
By Greg Svenson
(Posted on the Blackmoor mailinglist by Gregg Scott.)
The First Dungeon Adventure
I have the unique experience of being the sole
survivor of the first dungeon adventure in the history
of "Dungeons & Dragons", indeed in the history of role
playing in general. This is the story of that first
dungeon adventure.
During the winter of 1970-71, our gaming group was
meeting in Dave Arneson's basement in St. Paul,
Minnesota. We had been playing a big Napoleonics
campaign which was getting bogged down in long drawn
out miniatures battles. So, as a diversion for the
group, one weekend Dave set up Blackmoor instead of
Napoleonics on his ping pong table. The rules we used
were based on "Chainmail", which is a set of medieval
miniature rules with a fantasy supplement allowing for
magic and various beings found in the "Lord of the
Rings". I had never played any games like it before,
although I had read "Lord of the Rings". Other members
of the group had played the game before, but always
doing adventures in and around the town of Blackmoor.
By the end of the weekend I had fallen in love with
the game.
On this particular weekend, Dave tried a new winkle
for the game. He had been working all week to prepare
a map of tunnels and catacombs under the town and
especially under the castle.
To begin the adventure an evil wizard, played by Jim
Abler, and his pet balrog, played by John Soukup, did
something to Baron Fant (Dave Fant), the Lord of
Blackmoor at the time. I don't know exactly what they
did, as I was playing one of the castle's guards,
simply a man-at-arms in Chainmail with a shield and a
sword. After doing his evil deed, the wizard fled into
the dungeon under the castle which had apparently been
abandoned for many years by the normal denizens of the
castle. So, the Baron picked 30 of his men-at-arms and
sent us to hunt down the wizard. Among the 30
men-at-arms there were six players, myself, Bill
Heaton, Mel Johnson, Kurt Krey and two more whom I
can't remember as I write this 30 years later. I am
sorry, if you are one of those two I can't remember,
please accept my apologies for forgetting. All of us
were level 1 fighters in modern terms, although at the
time you were either a flunky (like all of us at the
start of the adventure), a hero or a superhero.
We started by marching down a huge stair case from the
main hall into the castle's basement, a huge
irregularly shaped room with seven pillars supporting
the ceiling and a large number of doors leading into
the dungeon. This was the only area of the dungeon
that was secure for us "good" guys. We had no idea
which way the wizard went, so we picked a door leading
northwest, later dubbed the "Northwest Passage". We
were carrying torches for light. We meandered about
for a while until we found a staircase going down. We
took the stairs and continued wandering the corridors.
At this point Dave took us into the laundry area of
the basement, telling us he wanted to see what we
would do. He had us line up in our marching order.
Then he turned off the lights saying a sudden wind had
blown out our torches. Then we heard some screaming.
We generally scattered as best we could. He turned on
the lights looked at what we had done and then went
back the other room, telling us that a black blob
(like the thing in the movie "The Blob") had killed
one of the NPCs who ran into it. We soon found that
our weapons dissolved when we struck it. Then we got
some torches relit and found that we could fight it
with fire. Eventually we killed it losing a couple
more men in the process.
After wandering more corridors we entered a room where
we were attacked by giant spiders. Another fierce
battle ensued and we over came them, losing a couple
of men in the process. We found some copper coins and
broken weapons in the room along with a bunch of
bones, including human bones.
Then we found another staircase going down, so down we
went.
[room with the fallen statue of Poseidon with trident]
[encounter with the fire elemental]
We found a magic sword on the ground. One of the
players tried to pick it up. He received a shock and
was thrown across the room. The same thing happened
to the second player to try. When Bill tried to pick
it up he was successful. We were all impressed and
Dave, declared Bill our leader and elevated him to
"hero" status.
We found another staircase going down, now to the 4th
level. Here we found a fountain with a small statue of
a devil in it. There was also an ominous red glow here.
We realized that we had no time reference, but that we
were all getting tired, so we stopped and set up camp
in a large room and bedded down for the "night",
carefully placing guards at the doors.
During the night a beautiful woman came to our camp.
She successfully seduced Bill. While they were
embracing she turned into a serpent and killed him. We
fought and eventually killed it, but Bill's loss was a
major set back for the party. Several of us were
injured trying to pick up the magic sword. One of the
guys was eventually successful in picking it up,
though. We collectively decided that we were in way
over our heads and to return to the castle. Soon we
realized that we had made some errors in making our
maps, too, as we were quite lost. We eventually got
back to the second level and decided that it was time
to make camp again.
While we were resting, the evil wizard and the balrog
decided that we were getting to close to getting out,
so they decided to finish us off. The balrog became
invisible and entered the room where we had our camp
and first attacked the man with the magic sword. After
he killed him we were all awakened and set upon him.
The balrog's body became a flaming torch as he tore
into us. But 20 men-at-arms were no match for the
balrog without our hero. We fought valiantly, after
all, there was no safe place for us to run. After a
while I realized that I was the last man standing. The
balrog realized it, too. He stopped attacking, turned
off his flames and said to me "Go in fear and tell the
Baron what we have done to his men!" Then he
disappeared.
As I looked about one of the corridors became
illuminated. A voice spoke (the evil wizard) telling
me that the illuminated corridor would lead me back to
the castle. After determining that everyone else was
dead, I picked up some leather and carefully wrapped
the magic sword with it and walked down the
illuminated corridor. This corridor led me to a
staircase going up. At the top another corridor was
illuminated leading me to a door. On the other side
was the large room where we had started.
I reported to the Baron what had happened. He looked
at the sword and offered me the unimaginable sum of
100 gold pieces for it. I realized that it must be
vary valuable and bargained hard with him, eventually
agreeing on 150 gold pieces for it. That was more
money than I, a mere farmer, drafted into the Baron's
guard, could imagine (of course, eventually I figured
out that such swords were vastly more valuable than
that, but by then it was far to late to do anything
about it...).
Over time I went on to be one of the heroes of the
"First Fantasy Campaign", picking up the nickname "the
Great Svenny" from my comrades. At one point, I had
much of the dungeon memorized, I had done so many
adventures there. That proved to be almost fatal to
our group, but that is another story.
The Great Svenny is still alive, 30 years later. We
still do adventures, occasionally. The Great Svenny is
currently serving as the "Lord Regent" of the Regency
Council of Blackmoor. I live in my tower, Svenson's
Freehold, several miles east of the town of Blackmoor,
near the Elven village and Wolf's Head Pass.
Editor: Greg Svenson, recently contacted me and told
me that a more complete version of this article, and more
information about his old character, the Great Svenny on
his webstite.
Check it out!
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