TWO YEARS AGO, I posted this piece about my ongoing 1e Advanced Dungeons & Dragons campaign, which I described as the “Silver Age” of my Dungeon Mastering tenure. Last year, I told you about the player characters (PCs) involved in said “Silver Age.” And now, the campaign has come to a close. The “Silver Age” has ended.
Before I get into details and thoughts on that, some context.
The “Golden Age” of my D&D years had been from about 1989-1994 (IIRC), when a group of PCs that I came to call “Ariel & Company” campaigned across my homebrew world, encountering and defeating many monsters and villains. I call it the “Golden Age” because, for the most part, the players and characters were outstanding, the adventures had a high-fantasy feel to them, and the campaign was engaging and enduring.
Several characters (and players) came and went over the years, but at its core, the group was led by a wood elf druidess named Ariel (played by my wife, Joni), and included a halfling thief-acrobat (“Roary Tolman”) played by future Jungle Guide Patrick Eibel. The PCs grew in might and established themselves as the “Heroes of the Realm” of a duchy on the frontiers of civilization, serving as the protectors of Duke Tilraed Brangiff.
When Brangiff attempted to peacefully unite the other realms around his as a kingdom under himself, he was nearly assassinated by a dissenting rival (the Earl of Marghvyes). A lengthy war began, and Ariel and Co. were tasked to retrieve the Rod of Seven Parts to tip the conflict in Brangiff’s favor. Though they acquired several pieces, they perished in a total party kill against a cobra dragon.
Just like that, the “Golden Age” was over.
Dawn of the “Silver Age”
Though my gaming group continued on with new characters for a few years after the demise of Ariel & Co., we never reached those heights again, and nothing stuck. Various real-life factors intruded, and I took a break from sustained DMing from 1998-2020, with a few abortive attempts (in 2005, 2010, and 2015) to restart my campaign.
When COVID hit in 2020 and sent everyone home, my neighbor’s son Dylan asked me to revive one of those failed efforts, using PCs written up by him, his brother Nate, their dad Andy, my daughter Ally Jane and her neighborhood friend Jade, and my wife Joni. I saw this as an opportunity to circle back to the “Golden Age,” starting the new campaign in the same location and time period, with the same NPCs. Included in those NPCs were Ariel & Co. at the height of their powers, whom the newbies quickly compared to the original MCU Avengers (and themselves to the scruffy Guardians of the Galaxy).
I was initially dubious that this campaign would have more legs than any of my failed attempts, but led by Dylan, it kept chugging along over the years. Some players (Ally-Jane, Jade) dropped out, some joined and dropped out (Dylan’s friend Blaine, Jade’s then-boyfriend John), some joined and stayed (our new neighbor Steve, and my nephew Daniel).
The new campaign gave me an excuse to expose the newbies to some classic AD&D adventures, the most notable of which was White Plume Mountain. The party succeeded in obtaining all three wonder weapons, with Ogie using Whelm, Ziah wielding Wave, and Alkaios possessing (and sometimes being possessed by) Blackrazor.
Several times, the wizard Keraptis tried half-heartedly to take the weapons back from the PCs, before the players realized that he was watching their exploits from afar for his amusement, keen on seeing what deeds the PCs could accomplish with them. At one point, Keraptis managed to snatch Blackrazor back from Alkaios, but returned it to him a few months later.*
*While Whelm and Wave remained with Ogie and Ziah until the end of the campaign, Blackrazor recently failed a save (rolled a “1”) vs acid and was destroyed by a black dragon’s breath weapon.
Eventually, the timeline in the campaign advanced enough that the war to unify the lands began (again), and the new PCs (who called themselves “Crimson Dawn”–yes, really) fought on the side of Duke Brangiff. As part of the war, they battled orcs and enemy soldiers, and carried out raids against marauding hill giants and frost giants who had allied with the Earl of Marghvyes. Along the way, they killed a major NPC (the witch Skaenja Frostdagger) who had bedeviled Ariel & Co.
When they learned of the deaths of “the Avengers,” the new party picked up where the other party had left off 30+ years ago, winning the rest of the pieces of the Rod of Seven Parts. With the Rod, they were able to prevent Marghvyes’ Black Mask Wizards from waking the Tarrasque to destroy Brangiff’s lands, as well as the allied elvish enclave nearby.
The party also used the Rod capture or defeat several enemy leaders, including the Earl and his son, a powerful psionic (psyker, to you 40K players) who was able to kill others by exploding their heads (yes, really).
Winning the War, and What It Meant
After the defeat of the psyker (who had taken over as the opposition leader after Crimson Dawn had captured his father), the war was over, and Brangiff was crowned king. The Rod itself shattered again into seven parts (as it was wont to do), each scattering hundreds of miles in a random direction, but not before the party used a Wish (through its power) to resurrect Ariel & Co. to help protect the newly-forged kingdom.
At this, the culmination of the campaign, all the players agreed that it was the perfect time to retire their characters:
- Brynjolf and Alkaios were named as nobles to replace two prominent enemies slain during the war, with the latter becoming the new Earl of Marghvyes;
- Ziah took Wave back to her home country to assume her title, granted to her by possessing Wave, as the admiral of the Pharaoh’s navy;
- Muhammed went with Ziah, his purse heavier with a hefty reward from the now-King Brangiff;
- Alphonse married Fea Thalionar, an female elvish knight (formerly another of Joni’s PCs) and returned with her to the elvish homeland;
- Druce was given a griffon by the King, and continued his travels to add to his menagerie of trained animals (which included a liger, an Irish elk, and several raptor birds; the character of Druce was clearly influenced by a certain kid in a baseball cap);
- “Dr. Thunder” (not his real name) became the Court Magician to King Brangiff; and,
- Ogie began teaching magical studies at a prestigious university.
The players were glad that their characters wound up living “happily ever after,” but I was very gratified, too. The crashing end of the “Golden Age” had disheartened my players back then, sucking all the energy out of our gaming group: it’s a wonder that we had continued on afterwards for as long as we had. And it had gnawed at me all those years since it went down.
From a DM perspective, it was great to portray some kickass villains, to see the Rod of Seven Parts in action, to run some epic battles involving tens of thousands on a side, and to resolve that big storyline. Fantasy gaming doesn’t get much better than this!
Having finished such an excellent (if at times, grueling) campaign, I could be perfectly content not to play again, but Dylan and the others are already champing at the bit to get started with new characters. I have a few ideas, which I’ll share with you soon….
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Kenton Kilgore writes books for kids, young adults, and adults who are still young. Follow Kenton on Facebook for frequent posts on sci-fi, fantasy, and other speculative fiction. You can also catch him on Instagram.