Inside a granary.  Apparently this is where a farmer keeps grain.  Basically the enclosed second floor of a barn.  We had no grain...so it made a very cool fort.  We could run around and try to kill each other in various ways when we needed a break from roleplaying.  

This was our main base of operations when we weren't at the kitchen table.  While not as organized as LARP, many an impromptu siege was played out.  It's a wonder nobody was ever seriously hurt.

We used to play in a small cave near a creek. I formerly live in the Eastern panhandle of WV and the whole Shenandoah Valley is riddled with sinkhole, caves, and underground rivers. Luckily for us my friend's parents owned a fairly sizable farm with a decent cave.

Generally, we'd all have flashlights and lanterns bring our sleeping bags and the two strongest of us would carry down our collective gaming material in a big steamer trunk we found in the barn. Fortunately the cave was relatively free of debris and dry though still pretty humid so our character sheets were like sponges by morning. Really set the scene. I stashed a set of dice in that cave. I'd bet they're still there.

Howdy All,


Had a DM once decide he didn't want to go through the trouble of creating an adventure to get through the sewers of Erelhei-Cinlu so he had an NPC, a half-drow rake, give us a riddle.

The riddle halted play for 5 weeks as we tried to figure it out - in game. We were all in serious gaming withdrawl by the 5th week. Our DM was my locker partner in highschool and best friend. Every day I guessed a new answer. All wrong, of course.

Finally, one rainy day in my home town he relented. The riddle was meant for the real-world not Greyhawk. He had set up an elaborate scavenger hunt.

We hunted all over town for clues, finally going to a huge storm sewer where a storm drain pipe crossed some 30 foot above the rocky floor below (we had crossed this pipe like a balance beam every day on our way home from grade school). At the end of that sewer pipe was hidden note that said, "Congratulations, you have made it through the sewers of Erelhei-Cinlu!"

We all breathed a sigh of relief and said, "Man, am I glad that's over!"

I reality, I think our DM needed a mental break after an intense 4 year campaign through the summer after gradeschool and all the way through highschool.


Futures Bright,

Paul

While stationed in Okinawa in 92, the base (Kadena) was in lockdown during a typhoon that lasted for 6 days. Our entire D&D group arranged to pull one of the hanger security duties during the phoon. Six hours before the phoon hit, we had all of our D&D stuff stashed in the hanger with 2 fully stocked fridges (one beer and one food). So, here we are for 6 days in a hanger, packed in with eight F-15 fighter jets and support gear, getting hammered in shifts by the storm and the beer, playing D&D and not caring if the hanger came down around us or not.....
....ahh the good old days..(opens beer)..heres to ya mates!

I once ran Palace of the Silver Princess on a 300kph Japanese bullet train, en route to Hiroshma.

All of these pale in comparison to the guy on Enworld who related a story about gaming in the military - specifically in his tank, with enemy rounds smacking into the side of the vehicle.  I'd have thought you'd have better things to do with your time in that kind of situation than roll dice.  Either way, makes a good story...

There are a few that come to mind :


In the early eighties I was in a Cthuhlu campaign which took place in a flat above a funeral parlour (about 15 miles from Whitby) -- Just the right atmosphere for gothic horror gaming.

I once ran a D&D scenario set in a remote coaching house and its surrounding wilderness. We played it at an isolated 16th century inn on the north Yorkshire moors (The Lion Inn at Blakey Ridge). The snow was deep and the mist thick outside, blazing fires warming the place, with plenty of Old Peculiar and good food for sustenance. The memory is a little hazy but I can't think why.

I ran a ‘castles and coasts' scenario when we hired Roch castle in Pembrokeshire for a week, with the local smuggling run by an uneasy alliance of Gnolls and humans rapidly overshadowed by the sinister goings on in the dark castle perched on a rocky outcrop. It should be noted when running to escape a large group of smugglers it is not always advisable to head towards the nearest castle just because the smugglers appear afraid to follow!

The scenario I ran when we stayed in Chillingham castle was undead heavy, inspired by many local stories of haunting, spawned by the violent history of this region. I couldn't resist including a short ghostly figure dressed in blue appearing in the corridors as one of the skeletons found walled up in the castle was of a child in the remains of a blue jacket.

The last time we stayed in a castle there were plenty of gamers but not even a hint of an RPG scenario. Probably a good job as many of our wedding guests would not have appreciated it.  


Malcolm.

bombadil wrote:This is where I lived during my first year in college at the University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point.  It's known locally as "The Castle".  My room-mate and I lived in the 2nd floor of the closer turret.  The 3rd floor was unfinished, and no-one lived up there, but we often heard strange noises up there at night.  Things being dragged around, heavy thumps, that sort of thing.  There was a rumor that a young woman had been murdered on the 2nd floor shortly after the building was completed (I don't know when that would have been).  Anyway, we gamed through many nights in there, and it was fantastic.  Man, those were the days!  

[ Image ]

Thought that place looked familiar! Went to Point from '88-'92! Woof, woof!  

improvstone wrote:I am waiting to hear about a session run in a castle.  Maybe some of our European cousins have had the pleasure.  

I am sorry, I did not have this pleasure, but sometimes conventions take place in such places in France.

For me, the most interesting place was inside a german bunker on the french seashore, in the middle of (quite) savage dunes. These bunkers from WWII were not destroyed (operation Overlord was far away from there), but there are now very damaged. After some grilled sausages over a firecamp, we ran a Cthulhu scenario inside the quarter (very uncomfortable BTW, almost filled up by sand).    It was a great souvenir. Not for the scenario -probably something related to zombies or something like that...-

There is a graffiti on the wall, probably written by german soldiers, in gothic characters "Humor ist when man trodzdem lacht". We always have this sentence in mind ...

Bunkers were one of our favourite playgrounds, but we didn't run RPG again, because it was absolutely impossible to roll dices on the sand  

Keith wrote:In a '79 Plymouth Volare' ... (everyone can sing that damn song, now) ...
This was one of countless college road trips from Birmingham to Santa Rosa Island off Pensacola beach

I was driving ... the guy in the passenger seat was DM ... he ran a module, but I can't remember which one ... the two other players were in the back seat.

We rolled dice in a shoe box top ... but if the car swerved or hit a bump and changed a die roll, then the player had to accept whatever the "new" roll was.  

Keith

This story kinda got me thinking.  I wonder if the writers for That 70's Show ever thought about doing an episode where Eric picked up one of the original D&D box sets and they all got together one Saturday in Forman's basement to play the game?  They usually did a pretty good job of inserting a lot of the pop-culture from the 70's into the shows plot.  There were several episodes that featured Star Wars and I thought they were some of the funnier episodes.

They would probably have gotten stoned, tried to play the game, one or more of them would experience one of their "daydreams" with all of them dressed up as corny looking knights and wizards, Kelso would have complained about there being no board, Jackie would have gotten bored and left (taking Kelso), Hyde would have equated role-playing with some government conspiracy, and Red would have called them all idiots for wasting their time and threated to stick his foot in their asses.

I could see them taking a road-trip to GenCon in the Vista Cruiser.  The show was set in Wisconsin.