the Real Life story of the Darkhold gamers

The world, characters, and stories on this website are not pure fiction; it's an AD&D game with a long history . . .

[Note: This was authored by David P. Murphy - one of the players since the days of U of F. I (BJ Mitchell) will add my own comments in brackets.]

The game was started by a group of Northwestern University undergrads living in the Foster-Walker Housing Complex (known as simply "The Complex") which consisted of two quads, each containing four houses. Houses 5-8 were on the north side of the building:

#	house name	comments
5	Marvin Gardens	had the largest Monopoly deed card in the world, courtesy of the Parker Brothers
6	Latham House	once the home for a famous person
7	Marshalsea Hotel	named for a London prison
8	Penthouse	you can imagine their mascot

The first dungeon master was a 6-year med student named Ronin Rubenoff, running a world he made up based loosely on Earth/Middle East. He left after his sophomore year and Jeff Baker took over from there, on a world he designed named Darkhold. The characters eventually grew in stature and legend and ended up calling themselves the Mortal Heroes.

[BJ Note: Reducing the Baker years to two sentences is like reducing a history of the Roman Empire to "I came, I saw, I conquered." I will have to add stuff to get the full flavor across. Or better, I'll get Baker to do something.]

After Baker left Northwestern, the others moved to the world of Greyhawk with Rippie as the DM, or retired from gaming. [BJ Note: Rippie was a very good DM as well. I also learned most of what I know about macroeconomics from playing in his game.]

player	character(s)	house	campaigns active in			comments
player	character(s)	house	Ronin's 1977-1978	Baker's 1978-1980	Rippie's 1980-1981	comments
Ronin Rubenoff	original DM	H6	DM
Jeff "The Bake" Baker	?, fighter DM and original developer of Darkhold	H6	*	DM
BJ Mitchell	Avatir, Roman Catholic priest a.k.a. Clint Priestwood, Vatican Death Commando	H5	*	*	*
Ed Kuffert	Peter Damiano Rosenstern the Sinner, magic-user	H5	*	*	*
Rik Yoshida	?, paladin	H5	*			webpage
Don Woodard	Math, magic-user	H5	*
Derek Decker	?, assassin	H6	*			website
David Smith	?, magic-user?	H7	*
Glenn Rippie	Corwin, magic-user DM	H7		*	DM	webpage
Melvin Barnes	Professor X, psionic Lord Kiata, ranger	H8,H6		*	*
Brian Elza	Valacar, elven magic-user Piestrates the Just, cleric	H6		*	*
Ken Chesborough	Perseus, druid/illusionist	H6		*	*
Larry James	Lawrence Dreamstalker, magic-user/fighter	H6		*
Carrol Herman	Theodosius the Just, cleric	H6		*
Jim "Flash" Williams	Ramahotep, master thief	H6		*
Barb Roa	Athena Ravenhair, magic-user	H6		*
George Chronis	Lord George Dragonslayer, paladin	H6		*
Ben Goldberg	Benthos Arborean, druid	H6		*
Robert Mesrop	Augustus the Heartless, fighter	H7		*
Lee Motluck	Bruce Lee, monk	H6		*
Bob Lacatena	?, fighter	H6		*
John R.	John Paul, cleric [VDC]	H7			*
Valerie Martindale	Rook, paladin	H7			*
Jack Goble	?, druid				*
Bridget Reilly	Bridget Manylives, ranger				*
Christina Clay	?, druid	H6			*

It should be noted that during this period, Ed Kuffert also ran a D&D game.

BJ moved on to doing graduate work at the University of Florida in the Department of Astronomy, where he started/joined a game as an extension of the previous with the following players:

picture of The New Heroes

back row
James Webb	Constellus, ranger	webpage
Edwin T. "Tom" Rusk	Tim the Enchanter, magic-user
Mike Freed	?, fighter
Gilbert Milner	Denis Moore, paladin	was recently Marketing Director for Steve Jackson Games
James Kolasinski (R.I.P.)	Precious, fighter/thief	webpage
Gregory Fitzgibbons	Silverleaf, magic-user	webpage
William J. "Billy" Cooke	Alrik, cleric of Odin	webpage
middle row
Beatriz F. Fernandez	Dalynne, thief	webpage
BJ Mitchell	Clint Priestwood, Vatican Death Commando
Glenn H Schneider	Dworkin, illusionist	webpage
Dr. John P. Oliver	O J Draxargen, silver dragon	webpage
front row
J. Leanne Gable	Tyy Sirian, houri Kira, witch
Beatrice ?	Penelope, druid
not in the picture
Noel ?	Hans, dwarven fighter
Brenda Fitzgibbons	Brendel the Sticky, thief
David P. Murphy	Ironfist, monk of Odin	webpage
Laura Hammond	Shanna, barbarian
Roger Ball	?, druid
Marc Hassler	Naurli, druid
David Shepherd	Sir Robin the Brave, ?
Toni ?	?, ?

This group was set in the same world — Darkhold — and called themselves the New Heroes. Yeah, the silver-dragon-as-player-character was pretty munchkinish, but that player was a professor of the department in which the DM was doing graduate work . . .
[BJ comment: Not that it did any good.]

BJ married Leanne, upgraded his studies to Johns Hopkins [BJ Comment: Calling going from University of Florida to Johns Hopkins an "upgrade" is like calling going from a Pinto to a Rolls Royce an "upgrade"], realized Melvin had moved nearby, started another extension, found me, added a few others.

the New Balance

This is a rare group picture, taken during David & Wendy's wedding reception on 17 August 1991,
of most of the people who had participated in the "New Balance" game up until that point.

standing in the back are
Frank Miller	Rok Highmageson, half-ogre fighter Nagomi Gracen-Yurosawa, cleric
Dave Bassler	Quarkus, druid
David P. Murphy	Ironfist, monk of Odin Father Gregory, cleric (VDC)	webpage
Karen Bassler	(Dave's wife, not a roleplayer)
Wendy Murphy	(David's wife, not a roleplayer)
Melvin Barnes	Shadowspawn, elven magic-user/thief
John R.	Calvin MacStuart, half-orc fighter
Leanne Mitchell	Arionrhod Graylock, witch Jade Daywalker, slightly undead fighter
BJ Mitchell	DM from Hell and --- still! --- Clint Priestwood
the three guys kneeling in front are
Jeff Davis	Evander Holyshield, paladin	webpage
Mossadeq "Muskie" Zia	Severian, cleric of Dionysius
Mike Hsu	Flint Fireforge, dwarven fighter
not in the picture
David Gresham	?, ?
Candy Gresham	?, ?
played in the game after 1991
Brian Elza	Valacar, elven magic-user
Jack Goble	?, ?
Valerie Martindale	?, ?
Rachel Schmutter	Ariadne, half-elven druid
Amy Grimes	Pickles, druid
Tom Walcott	Mentor, cleric of Athena

Recently, Ironfist died in personal combat. I decided that the manner of his death was honorable enough to warrant not being raised (hey, he's Norse, they want to stay dead), and I rolled up a new character named Thudain, who is multi-classed and whose personal philosophy can be summed up thusly:

I am a dwarf, therefore I hate giants and want to kill them.
I am a ranger, therefore I hate giants and want to kill them.
I am a cleric of Thor, therefore I hate giants and want to kill them.

Simple, neh? He doesn't care too much for tree-huggers, either [elves].
Sure it's stereotypical, but, hey, I just rolled him up one session ago;
give me time.

14 august 1998

Well, he didn't fit in too well; the rest of the party resented a cleric who wasn't primarily a cure machine. Actually they hated him, because in addition to limited curative powers, he could not Raise Dead at all. So for the sake of group goodwill (damn, I rolled a natural 18/00 strength for that dwarf!), I created Father Gregory, a Vatican Death Commando . . . he's worked out okay so far.

4 March 2001

Times change, people change, but the game remains the same.

It's been a long time since I've added to this page, so a summary of all the changes in personnel is due:

Mike and Muskie left long ago; their desire to roleplay had simply disappeared, and they continue to work at AOL despite being married and rich.
John got married and is a father and lawyer in Chicago.
Brian Elza is spending time on his new house.
Dave Bassler stopped coming over because the game became too political and dramatic for his hack-n-slash style. God knows there are times when I empathize with him all too well.
Jeff still can't decide what to do with his life, so he's back in the area for a jumpstart.
Jack and Valerie moved to London (you don't have much choice when you're career military) but they hope to move back in two years.
Brian "Cheebie" Merchant played for a few months but got married and left
Rachel (a gaming friend of Frank's) joined, and while both she and Frank have frequent logistic problems showing up for sessions (transportation, health, job requirements), they're both still active members.
Melvin and I both have new sons (Connor is mine, Tre & Mark are his) which forces us to miss the game once in a while.
Leanne of course lives in the same house as the DM, which makes it a bit easier for her to attend, and BJ continues to enjoy trying to crush us beneath his iron fist [BJ Note: "Try?" What "Try?" Bwah-ha-ha!], but they both act in and support local theater so every few months they have a four-week sabbatical from roleplaying.

We played Vampire: the Masquerade for a while (first indirectly, as a world our AD&D characters visited,
then really playing it) but that didn't last too long. We went back to playing AD&D, but Leanne brought her
Vampire character "Jade" back with her, as playing Arionrhod within the group had become both limited and difficult
(one of the drawbacks of having a large group is trying to get both the people and the characters to get along).

[BJ Note: Another update is in order. I'll do it soon. We have more roster changes.]

Click here if you should be mentioned in one of the above lists but aren't, or you are but don't want to be, or you are and your link is missing, or you're linked but would rather not be, or your info is wrong or misspelled, or if you want to tell me how much you like this page.

30 June 2001

New pictures of the group.

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