Disappointment In the Demonweb Pits
Aside from glimpses of classmates with arcane rulebooks tucked under their arms, my first exposure to Dungeons & Dragons was at a local bookstore, and was principally in the form of a module (not that I knew what modules were at the time) called "Q1: The Queen of the Demonweb Pits." I had no idea what it was, but I was captivated by the cover, with art by Jim Roslof .

Well, okay. There was also a handful of original rulebooks from the "classic" edition of the game from several years earlier. Including one book I couldn't begin to comprehend which had an anatomically incorrect naked woman on the cover strapped to a stump. I made certain my dad never saw THAT book when I told him about this new game that I wanted to play. I'd already thumbed through the contents of that booklet, entitled "Eldritch Wizardry", and a booklet called the Greyhawk supplement, and neither gave me much clue how to play the game. There was stuff in them about lands and psionics and druids and stuff... nothing that I could get much clue about.

But the Demonweb Pits module... that was really the one that hooked me. It was shrink-wrapped, so I had no clue as to its contents (and, considering my lack of knowledge of the game, I'd have been just as clueless if I had). But the cover - and the painting on the back depicting a fighter in a web battling monstous red cat-sized spiders swarming him - filled me with promise of fantastic and thrilling adventures. Who were the intrepid heroes fighting - that spider-woman? Where were they? Could I be one of them?

The notes on the cover mentioned battling a demon queen on her own plane (whatever that meant), and notes on eight alternate worlds (Holy cow! They managed to stick eight different worlds to explore inside this little booklet? Amazing!). I would go home, after seeing that cover, and imagine what kind of thrilling possibilities lay within. In my minds eye, I juxtaposed the possibilities with another game I'd only seen but never played, the original text-game "Adventure" (AKA Original Adventure, or Colossal Cave Adventure). Yeah, the one with the dragon on the Persian rug. I was an impressionable pre-teen, what can I say?

On my twelth birthday, my parents got me the game, having no clue what an impact it would have on my life. As if my geekdom wasn't already secure with me reading books about space ships and how to construct your own transister radio. I finally got to play D&D with a couple of experienced players that very day, and find out what all the fuss was about. While it wasn't everything I'd dreamed and hoped for, it was pretty awesome stuff, and unlike any other game I had played.

Several months later, I was an experienced player, and had even tried my hand at running a game or two. One Saturday morning, one of my D&D-playing buddies called me up and said, "Hey, Jay, we're playing D&D today. Want to join us?" Well, of course. He continued. "We're playing this module... Queen of the Demonweb Pits. It says it is for characters level 10-14. You got any characters that level?"

"I have an 8th level thief."

"Well, make him 12th level, then, and bring him."

I'd gotten my thief to 8th level more-or-less legitimately (well, mainly "less," but it was valid by the loose standards of a bunch of junior-high-school kids), and I didn't feel like artificially inflating him to 50% higher than his current state of competence. So I countered, "How about I make a new character of 12th level. What do we need?"

My friend wasn't too sure. "How about I make a paladin," I offered. After all, paladins were holy warriors, sure to be of value against an evil demon queen!

I rolled up the character, and took my bike over to my friend's house. The rest of the group was already there. I didn't know two of the players, and they were dismayed to learn that I'd brought a paladin. Apparently, while the alignment on their character sheets was "good" (mainly - surprise - "Chaotic Good"), they were really worried about a goody-two-shoes Paladin coming in and messing up their fun and making them follow rules and stuff.

We played through a highly abbreviated version of the preceding module. The DM placed us in a drow city that was now in chaos, with fires burning and destruction everywhere. Presumably at least some of it had been caused by our little band of four adventurers. We found ourselves in possession of a strange silver egg, and received a message from some dignitaries who had sent us on this mission that the egg was the key to attack the demon goddess Lolth on her own plane of existence.

Cool!

We figured out how to make it work, and were transported to her demonic realm. We'd been playing for less than an hour, so I figured we were making good time.

The "Demonweb Pits" were this bizarre set of pathways set in an M.C. Escher-esque arrangement. The paths themselves were fashioned out of the souls of the damned, and if you looked hard enough, you could catch glimpses of faces in the walkway, silently screaming in eternal torment. The "walls" surrounding the pathway were simply thin curtains of fog, behind which the Maelstom shrieked, an endless storm of high winds around an infinitely large space of emptiness.

Not that I had a very good chance to see any of this. After an initial battle with demons, where my paladin with his holy avenger sword smote the evil opponents with glee and probably showed up the other adventurers a tiny bit, my companions decided to attack my poor paladin. They attacked him, bound him, castrated him, and tossed him into the Maelstrom. Mainly it was the work of the two players whom I had never met. My friend, fearing their wrath on his poor cleric, did nothing. The dungeon master (the "referee" who runs the game) simply shrugged and allowed it all to happen, his hands tied.

So my total time visiting this module I'd spent months dreaming about had been about 15 minutes, not including the hour preparation.

I said goodbye to my friend and the dungeon master, and decided to go back home. There wasn't much left for me to do.

Later, I called my friend to ask him how the rest of the adventure had gone. "We didn't last long after you'd left," he told me. "Those guys sucked. They kept arguing with each other, and our spells didn't work right. We got attacked by more demons, and we got our butts kicked."

Well, whadayaknow. I didn't remember seeing anything about "karma" on the packaging to the module, but apparently it was in there, too. But unfortunately, the promise of the module cover art was left - that day, at least - unfulfilled.

Fortunately the quality of gaming experience increased substantially as time went on and my fellow players matured. Though strangely I don't remember these two players ever invited to play with us again...


(Vaguely) related tripe-of-the-day:
* Spring and... D&D?
* Adult Dungeons & Dragons
* Original Dungeons & Dragons Trivia
* Teenagers and D&D


Read And Post Comments In the Forum

Labels: Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:00 AM (Permalink)