So this is an inter view I did with my Dad on April 4th; I've been sitting on this completed transcript for a week now because I was going to edit it, get rid of repetitive parts and add punctuation, but since I keep putting it off I'm going to post it as is. I may come back and edit later.
My questions/comments are in standard color while my Dad's answers are in blue.
UPDATE: I have uploaded all of our interviews as a podcast on Anchor called Dungeons and Dragons and Duncanites. This episode can be found at https://anchor.fm/lance-duncan/episodes/DD-Story-1-Introduction-to-the-Game-e3n491
We are recording okay umm so just start with telling me
about how you got into D&D the whole your whole story however you want to
tell it
Okay well the very first time to
it at all role-playing games was in 1973 at tech school for dog handling law
enforcement school in the air force two of my roommates were playing a game
they called allies and axis which we now find out has absolutely nothing to do
with the ones that’s on the market and I watched them and they tried to
encourage me to play and I said no I’m having much more fun watching you two
guys beat your heads together
Can you describe that game in detail?
Well most of the game the guy
that was playing the allies was losing until the guy that was playing the axis
invaded Australia and the united states at that point both the Americans and
the Australians went guerilla warfare
Guerilla warfare was accounted for in the rules of the game
Yup and the
That’s definitely not axis and allies lol
Yeah, I know but it wasn’t
called guerrilla warfare it was just called you want my guns come take them
Yeah
You know and which is the essence
of guerrilla warfare and the guy who had the axis said I’ve won you don’t have
an army you don’t have the government you don’t have this you don’t have this
you don’t have that so I’ve won and he said no not until you get all of to say
that you have and it was just so funny watching them play and also reason why I
did not want to play that was the very first experience I had and that game
took a week
Lol yeah that sounds like axis and allies though but there’s
lots of other games like that too
Ok and then the 2nd
time I was exposed to it my brother was getting married and needed some time with
his future wife and asked that I would go with her brother to a party to get me
to leave my brother alone this was right after I got home from my mission which
would have been 1980 and I got the drift so I went to the party the party was a
D&D game and it was actually dungeons and dragons 3rd edition
and well it was
What was the color of the book
It was dark brown
Brown
It was the big thick one
advanced dungeons and dragons
Ok so it was the first ok yeah Which you could count as
third its first edition but technically you could say its 3rd
because there’s original and there was the Holmes book and there’s AD&D
which called itself 1st edition
Yeah which it wasn’t
But yeah technically you could say it was the third game
Yeah it was the third game
Lol
And um rather than roll a
character up for he just handed me a char sheet prerolled and I was not the
highest level character but I had I was a knight who had really good plate mail
armor really really good sword horseback style sword he called it a he didn’t
call it a bastard sword but he called it something else and it had a really long
blade almost the length of a two handed sword and then I and that all I had I
didn’t have arrows or anything else so I was the upfront fighter and I was at 4th
level and everybody else stood back while I went up front and just slaughtered
everything and if something was gonna get me from behind the entire party would
then focus in on that one entity and usually cleaned out that one while I
cleaned out 4-5 five at a time between my horse kicking biting jumping and all
that other stuff and me with my sword or my lance either way anything I came up
close to was down for some reason I was definitely even though they were
You were rolling good
I was rolling good very good and
it was really exciting because everybody’s telling me oh that was a great roll
oh that was good oh that was this that was that and just really getting me
excited about it and finally it was time to go to bed for him because he was
like 15 the dungeon master
Lol
And so he decided rather than
just cut it everybody count up your experience points and go home he decided to
kill everybody off and so these entities whatever they were I don’t remember
all of what was in it but I know they started killing people off starting with
the thief and the magic user and then working their way up and then last area
there were only three of us I think it was the cleric me and a berserker and we
stumbled into an area that was prehistoric so tyrannosaurus rex brontosaurus
all of them were there and at that point a tyrannosaurus peaked around a corner
and swiftly took out the berserker and was headed for the cleric just in time
to get lanced by me and I rolled a natural 20 and with my horse in full charge
and me with an 1825 strength we skewered him very soundly and he was dead and
then a brontosaurus came around the corner and stepped on my cleric
Ok lol
She was walking so you know it
was easy she wasn’t paying attention I on the other hand saw that and flew into
a berserk rage of a knight thus losing my knighthood in the process and oh
because I was not just a knight I was a
Paladin
A paladin yes and so losing my
paladin stuff I went into a full berserk rage and went and tried to skewer the brontosaurs
and yes, the lance did go in but have you ever seen the size of a brontosaurus
Yeah
Yeah it was a pinprick and he
swung around and
Wait when did Jurassic park come out that was the 90s right
Yeah
Yeah ok
He swung around and hit me with
his tail knocked me off my horse killing the horse and so I got up and got my 2-handed
sword and started whacking at his toenails off and he came down with other foot
and squished me and I thought that might be a fun game never touched it again
though until I got married and found out that all of my wife’s best friends
husbands loved D&D and they played the boxed sets the originals
The original red box
Red and blue boxes
That’s called the magenta box now
Yes
It’s not red box that we have it’s the earlier red box
Yes
The 1981 red box right
Yes
Ok just making sure
Yeah so anyway they got they
rolled up a character for me his name was gurgen don’t ask me why I just picked
something weird on purpose he was an elf who was a thief which means he had
some magic abilities but he was able to steal now I’ve looked over that book
since and there’s no way that you can have an elf thief with magical abilities
Yeah
Either you’re a thief or a mage the
fact that you’re an elf doesn’t make you have option of both unless you go with
the dual class which they did not tell me about otherwise I would not have gone
with the dual class so anyway I was mag thief and I was getting beat up all the
time while they were laughing and there guys were doing good I was more of a
distraction for the other people so that
my guy my team could go kill them all it was fun for them very fun for
them and I got kinda discouraged that my because he would get so close to dying
and faint he did not get any experience points for killing because at that time
whoever dealt the killing blow got the experience points
Yeah
And I wanted to get experience
points so they convinced me that if you don’t like the way the game is played
maybe you should become a dungeon master tis was
Of course they would do that
This was their way of making sure
none of them had to be the DM and I did so I took about 6 months reading up
learning all about it then we finally had our first game which was the one with
all the mushrooms in it
Search of the unknown
Search of the unknown
The module
Yep
B1
Yeah, we did that one they
cleared it out I put some extra little tidbits in there and that weren’t in the
book because it says that there’s
It tells you to
Yeah that too and they all
survived they all loved the game and so they wanted to do another adventure so
I said ok and I got up the nerve to start reading some more modules and stuff let’s
see the 2nd one before I got done with the project I was working on they
handed me the elf that stole the sword of truth
Yeah, the yeah ok the sword of justice
Sword of justice
It’s in dragon magazine
Right and because that I thought
because that was such a short one it would be an easy one to do
Lol
And so, I got all that and then
as we went down into the ones underneath where there you roll up what turns in
there before hand it seems that my rolling of the monster was much higher grade
than their level of characters because eventually they all died
Yeah
And they thought it was good
game but they didn’t like their characters dying because those were some of
their favorite characters
Lol
And so, we’d take another one
and so we did the not the keep on the borderlands but the one where the carrion
crawler is just outside to the left underneath
Oh, that’s the 83 red box
Ok
That’s the adventure in the module I mean in the rules in
the dungeon masters guide whatever
Yeah so, I did that one and I
built that one from scratch all the way out to the end and had a secret passage
that led out the back on the bottom
Right
Into a river that was kinda
infestigated infested with crocodiles Nile crocodiles
Of course
Yes, well they didn’t know that
until one them fell in and the Nile crocodile caught hold of his foot and they
were able to grab him in time and they only had to do major healing to make it
where he could continue to walk and they continued looking for the wizard of
that game and found him and brought him back to justice so they were happy with
that game and that started my dungeon mastering
Ok. wait, never mind
Anyway, I played with them for a
couple years and then we had children and Linda and I moved down to Clairmont
ca and no longer were able to play but while at work some coworkers mentioned
that they lived pretty close to us in their opinion they lived about 15 miles
away from where we lived
Yeah people will go pretty far to play D&D
Yes, they will
Wait so mom was playing in your earlier games
No she didn’t really like it but
when I had these other friends come then she wanted to play and she played for
a while she was a magic user and did not do well but the other 3 people did
quite well with or without her and we played for about a year and half and then
I got let go of the job that I was at
again and had to leave went up to Sacramento didn’t play again until my kids
were older I think Cassie was maybe 7 maybe 8 Heidi would’ve been then 6 Bridget
would’ve been like 3
Bridget obviously wasn’t playing at the time
She thought she was
Lol
And then we just kept playing
adding new characters for new members of the family like lance and Jared
Yeah but you forgot about me later remember
Yeah
Yeah ok so when you ran that castle from the boxed set you
know the room with the harpies
Yeah
So, in the book it says that you shouldn’t allow them into
that room until they’re 2nd level so how did you handle that
Oh, that was easy
They were 2nd level already
Yeah, they were usually 2nd
level I kind of directed them as to which way they should go
Ok
By giving them options or not
giving them options
Right
This door is locked you don’t
have the ability to unlock it
Ok\
Well see last time I ran that dungeon back when I was in
college I had forgotten about part oh they have to be 2nd level and
so I was like ok well you can’t open it but then they took basically they had a
battering ram and burst the door open
Lol
Because because I’m like well ok yeah, your gonna open it
that way
Yes evidently
With enough force you will open it lol and so they went in
and all of them were charmed except for one and basically the harpies made the
ones that were charmed kill the one that wasn’t charmed
Yeah
Ok and the harpies ate all the rest
Yep that’s how it works
There’s a reason your supposed to be 2nd level
Yep
Lol ok so ok so something you kinda mentioned earlier kinda
touched on was so when you played right after you got married that was like 84
No, it was still 83 when we started
playing
Ok that was 83 so was it all guys
Yes
What was your experience what was the group when you played
with your brother or your?
My brother never played he
thought it was silly
Ok but when you played the first time you played
Oh, with my bothers girlfriend’s
brother
Ok complicated
Ok that was totally mixed and it
was about equal
Ok did how was the treatment of the guys towards the girls
in those games
Rather suggestive I mean there
was propositions going on left and right and these were all shall I say minors and
because they were roleplaying they could do anything they want and since their
characters were adults guess what they did
Yeah ok that leads into the next question ok were you older
than most of the other people you played with because you got in the game at
what 23
yeah
1980 you were 23 right
Yep
Ok so
No no 1980 I was 26
Cause that’s the first time you played right 1980
Yes
Yeah you were 26 ok so
And yes, I was older than all of
that group and when Linda and I got married yes, I was older than all of those
people
Ok cause there’s a lot of people who are online or I meet at
other places and there’s a lot of them that started in the early 80s or the
late 70s but they started when they were like ten or their early teens you know
like the latest usually is like 17
Right
So, in comparison you’re really old
I understand this concept
I don’t know how was that for you did you feel the age
difference
Logically oh yeah there were
things that I would never have done but they did which is why oh and some of
them especially in my quote in quote brother in laws group they really got to
the point to where I started worrying about them because they couldn’t tell and
then I had read stuff when I was working in the university about people who had
gotten down into the service tunnels and were playing games in those service tunnels
and one person actually came up dead in the service tunnels
Yeah, the Pulsipher case
Yes
Which half of it basically a private eye was hired and then
he wrote a book and half of the stuff in the book was made up
I believe it
But anyway, that got me to
thinking that this is an enjoyable game and there are going to be people that
are really stupid playing the game that will lose their minds and can’t tell
the difference that when I took level of dungeon master a lot more seriously and
I decided that my children will probably want to play and id better make sure
they understand the difference between fantasy and reality
Yeah did you see the movie mazes and monsters with tom hanks
No
Did you hear about it when it came out cause?
Nope
Cause
I just now heard it for the
first time
I think it was in the late 80s it was but yeah it was a
movie about people who played dungeons and they didn’t call it dungeons and
dragons they called it mazes and monsters because copyright
Right
But you didn’t hear about it when it first came out
Nope
Ok cause a lot of people in gaming hate that movie
Why is that
Well because it portrays roleplaying games and they think it
portrays them in a bad light because the main character tom hanks he obviously
has mental issues but in my opinion, I watched that movie a few years ago and
that movie really is not if anything has a good view of D&D because it
shows how he copes with D&D that’s my view of it
Ok
But most people just they like you know but they were alive
when the movie came out too so whatever
Ok so so you got the sword of justice from the dragon
magazine but that was given to you
Yes
Did you have any more encounters with dragon or dungeon
magazine
They would occasionally give me
their latest purchase to read and peruse and I found that most of the stuff
that was in dragon magazine bored me
Yeah
To the point to where I could
probably get through 3 or 4 paragraphs of each article and then just go ok I
don’t care
What about dungeon magazine that was only adventures
Same thing I just you know these
people that their nitpicking or they were fantasing beyond logic it was just I
had the feeling that these people had the mentality of an 8-year-old playing
dungeons and dragons as a dungeon master
Yeah well that’s cause a lot of them were 8-year olds
Ok
Lol 12 more likely but you know so when you first started
out you started with modules
Yes
What do you think about their quality of adventure writing
well B1 is to teach you
Yes
How well did that teach you
Pretty good pretty good the red
book going through the adventure for yourself taught me very well and all the
modules all the games that were in the red and the blue books were very
interesting I created some of my own dungeons with them as the background and
they were fun but I find that where I had the most fun was when I started
having my children play and their friends coming over
Ok
That would’ve been when we moved
to citrus heights
Right but when you were DMing with other people before you
were playing with us it was all you were only doing modules
Yes
Ok
And only what was in the module
I did not
You didn’t tinker with it
I didn’t tinker with the module
Except for like B1 because you had to
Yes I had to roll up monsters
and encounters and all kinds of things that’s as much tinkering as I go at that
stage but what did happen was because of that I learned that I had to write
down not only the characters abilities each one of them but I also had to write
down each and every room and what was in that room and if they came to that
room at a certain time did the thing that was in that room stay if they missed it
or did it come out of the room cause it heard noises down the hall and that was
a very enlightening thing because if they have a treasure in reality they’re
less likely to leave the room unless they bring the treasure with them if the treasure
too big to bring with them they aren’t leaving that room they might call for
backup which couple of times they did and they may be dead but then backup came
and it made for interesting game but more interesting learning experience for
the dungeon master
So, did you so you did modules so is that did you play
mostly in dungeons or wilderness or what was the mix
It was mostly dungeons but you
had to do some wilderness to get from one dungeon to another so that amount of
wilderness yes
It was more of a
journey type thing
Yeah and you know things happen
on journeys you know you stick your hand in a plant and it eats your arm off
Or there’s dinosaurs
Yes
What was I gonna say more about rules so we used a lot of
house rules when you were playing with us
Boy did we ever
Yeah, I didn’t know how many until I really started studying
but once I went through and read more of the stuff from dragon magazine or the gazetteer
series based on the known world a lot of the house rules we used were in those
other products so did you take rules from those products or did you develop you
own house rules
I mostly when I read dungeon
magazine and dragon magazine and all those things I would see these rules and I
would say yeah that’s a good idea but I don’t like the way they’re doing it so let’s
do it with a little tweak and it would be almost the same so that everybody who
read dungeon or dragon magazine or all the others they would remember something
about that rule and would accept it
Yeah
But it wouldn’t be what was in
the magazine
So, you would get inspiration from other sources
Yes
Was there any specific rule you made up on your own just
because
Yeah when I started playing with
Cassie’s friends definitely the rules were coming down faster than I could keep
track of them all and that’s when it started losing interest for me cause you
know situations would come up and I don’t know I can do this or not example a
human being then being cursed to be half human half dragon and wants to be full
dragon and how do they then continue to play and I just had problems with that
and I don’t know I’m glad that that person quit playing soon after
Right we won’t name her
No
So also, you said your first character was an elf magic user
thief
Yes
So that may have been except you were playing AD&D it
makes sense for AD&D but in the Holmes book you know the blue book the
basic blue book not the expert I have it you’ve seen it right
\yes
So, with that book there’s a little paragraph in there that
mentions you can have any character type or class like there it says oh elves
and dwarves and halflings can also be thieves and those will be in future rule
books
Right
Then it also says relating to the half dragon character you
could be any creature as long as you start at low level and reach high level as
long as there’s a slow progression you start weak
Right
So that’s been in there since the beginning
Yes, it has
But it’s kind of frowned on these days
And for good reason having a
half human half dragon really should not be
Hint hint 5th edition hint hint
Yeas I mean half orcs is bad
enough
Yeah
Can you imagine a half kobold
half halfling?
No, my favorite thing is you’re a halfling half of what
Lol yes exactly you definitely
aren’t a short human
This is why I don’t when I let people be halflings in my
games I don’t tell them they’re halflings I tell them they’re Hin h-i-n which
is what they’re called in the known world
Ok
It’s in later products not the original
Oh ok
Because who’s gonna call themselves a halfling
Lol
You know who calls themselves a halfling that’s stupid
It’s like in the movie willow
everybody calls him a pick but he says he’s not a pick
He’s a
He’s an Elwyn
Yeah and Elwyn and then the Daiquinis
And the regular sized people are
Daiquinis
Yes
And they’re looked down they’re
looked downward upon by the Elwyn
Yeah ok so ok so can you describe the people you first
played with who they were if you remember
No one was over 17 there was a
cheerleader type girl in the group most of the other guys most of the guys were
jocks but not jock stars I think my future brother in law was the only one who
wasn’t a jock and the other 2 girls that were there I think were just groupies
of those jocks and I think the whole get together was a way for my future
brother in law to actually curry favor with this in crowd
Ok he was your first DM right
Yes
And you said he was
15
Yeah, he was 15
So
And he was it appeared that he
had some experience in doing this evidently maybe he brought the crew up from 1st
level to whatever levels they were I know one the magic user was 8th
level how he got killed off so easily I still don’t recall or understand
Ok yeah so as a 15-year-old dungeon master how did he DM
like what was his style
Hack and slash
There was just a bunch of monsters and you were supposed to
kill them all
Yep
Did he roleplay any of the monster or what did he do?
No, they were all insignificants
that would just all of a sudden turn up and you had to fight or die or flee
Ok what about the 2nd group you played with
The 2nd group I
played with they were a little bit more informative about how the game actually
worked
Were they closer to your age
Yes, the oldest one I was 26 the
oldest one was maybe no I was not 26 I was 29
This is when you were playing with mom’s friends
This when I was playing with
your moms friends the oldest one was maybe 28 the others were 25 or so so like
those who had been on missions had been home for a while and there was a couple
that did not go on missions but they enjoyed and they were part of our home
teaching or not home teach family home evening group
In the singles ward
Yeah well it wasn’t the singles
ward it was the young marrieds group at the church
Yeah yeah yeah whatever the same thing
Yeah really lol I mean there
were 8 young marrieds in this one ward and all 8 couples met for family home
evening
Yeah
Cause out of the 8 there was
only 1 that had family ties in Escondido so we all kinda grouped together and
one of the things they like to go out and do was go out and have pizza and
watch star trek and play dungeons and dragons oh till Battlestar Galactica came
out
Oh yeah what was I going to say how long were your game
sessions and how often did you play
Most of the time the session
were about 4 hours and we played when we were at our peak we played every other
week
Ok so that’s ok so when you first started playing did you
guys use miniatures
No
Or battle mats
Nope that was later
Later as in
When I got my own group going there
from coworkers and that was only to give them a sense of direction so they
could figure out where they wanted to throw their next strike how they wanted
to move their characters and where the enemy was sitting
But you didn’t like buy any miniatures and paint them
No just you know drew out little
pictures of their characters and put down on the table and then I had pictures
of monsters that they might encounter and the size of the room possibly
Ok oh when you first started DMing did you fudge the dice
and how often
When I first stated DMing no I
did not fudge the dice and I would roll it in front of them and they would
always be upset because when I rolled dice at that time in life 20 was common
Lol you ever think maybe you had a loaded die
Yes, several times and we wound
up switching dice to prove it
This was with the first group
who couldn’t believe that someone this new could roll 20s that often
Like being new has to do with what your rolling
exactly
so, you know that blue set of dice I have
yes
that’s from the original 1983 basic set did you buy that
yourself
I did I bought that set
Was that the first set you bought
Yes, it was
Ok so the expert book the green expert book well its green
now it used to be more blue
Yes
Did someone give that to you or did you buy that one
Yes, that would be Dwayne Hansen
gave that to me
Ok so you had the original isle of dread and the original
expert book but then you also had the new the later the revised expert and
revised isle of dread
That is correct
You bought those ones
I did
So, you bought all the boxed sets that we have
Yes
Besides the original
The complete box sets
Cause its actually very rare for other people who play the
same edition as us to have the immortal box set
Yeah, I know I got that because
I thought it was going to be merely a continuation of everything when it got to
the point where it’s actually
It’s a complete set of new rules
Yeah, the new rules are god
worship
Just be glad you didn’t get into the newer so they did a so
you know they did the rules cyclopedia which was all the boxed sets together
except for immortals
Yes
And then they did immortals as a separate box set with a
special adventure
I did not know about that but
yeah
Just be glad you didn’t use those rules because those rules
are worse
I believe it
Cause those rules are more in line with AD&D rules with
actual gods they make the immortals more godlike and less less you know like
the immortals
Yeah
So, when you got the box sets and there was the immortals
how did you view the immortals in the game
Gods
Yeah ok cause a lot of people in D&D they have some
strange idea that the immortals aren’t gods
Uh they are like Greek roman
Yeah exactly
Hindu and Pakistani which is now
considered a part of the Sumer
Yeah cause you know anyone who’s remotely acquainted with
classical literature you know Greek roman whatever literature
Right
You’ll notice that they interchangeably call the gods
immortals and gods
That’s correct
You know and how people don’t see it is it really frustrates
me so I guess that’s all my questions
My thing is with the gods as a latter-day
saint you know those are nice fantasies but you’d really better stay away from
that all together because I have seen people go off on the deep end on other
things and that’s really one thing you don’t want to go off on the deep end in
Yeah ok that it
