Austin Grossman - You

Your pouches are now full of rubies and emeralds dug from the walls; you are all wealthy enough to live comfortably for the rest of your lives. You think fleetingly of going back, but no one mentions it aloud. Why would you? This is the best part of your lives—the four of you together against the darkness and the unknown, a quest that could last forever without your ever wanting to leave this basement.

D) Underground Stream

The distant sound of running water beckons you forward to the place where a swiftly running stream of black water has carved a channel in the stone that leads downward into the earth, through a series of narrow tunnels and larger chambers. An Ancient Giant Cave Pike swims just beneath the surface. Farther down, the stream becomes a river that drops then drops again, then cascades down into a cavern so vast you cannot see the far wall. A fresh breeze blows through it, smelling of salt water and carrying the sound of… crowds?

E) Goblin City

The Goblin City has always lain beneath the kingdom and was perhaps the secret agent of its downfall. You follow the river as it winds through crowded streets and markets to a dock where a skiff is moored, and the party stops to camp by the dark waves of a mysterious underground sea.

Probably everyone’s pretty tired by now, and outside the sun has long since gone down and you’re going to need a lift home, or else you’re going to have to ride your bike a long way on a cold March night, your back wheel sliding on wet leaves as you pass the lit windows of houses and wonder what it’s like, how you’d be different if you lived there. You’re way too much inside your head, and other people notice, but you won’t realize that for another ten years, maybe more, and by then maybe it’s too late.

F) Subterranean Ocean

As you cross the subterranean ocean, shadowy, enormous forms move beneath your boat, lit from below by phosphorescent algae. Nautical movement rules apply.

G) Maze of Wonder

Those who journey to the far shores discover the gemlike Maze of Wonder, where corridors bend at impossible angles and the rules of space and time become less certain. The monster population becomes more exotic—outré, whimsically lethal inventions out of rare rules supplements. Lorac himself lurks here, now an undead being of near-infinite power. He warns you to go back. He, too, was once a prince and a twenty-sixth-level magus, until he opened a portal to the Burning Worlds and was lost.

Here and there portals lead off into other dimensions, where you can fight angels or mutants or space aliens or Nazis for as long as you want to, but the quest remains here.

H) The Base of the World

Few indeed have seen the silent chamber at the base of the world, which is littered with the most flagrantly unfair traps available—soul traps, contact poison, portals leading into doorless chambers filled with water.

Each of you will find a hidden treasure inside, and it’s the one thing you always wanted. The royal signet ring; your master’s sword; a lock of hair; a seed to regrow the forests of your homeland. But now that you think about it, you’re not sure if your origin makes sense anymore. Has it been weeks since you left home, or months? Years? It’s getting late and everybody’s tired and you can barely remember what was said at the start that meant so much, about a girl in a muddy village or a third-level barbarian chief who threatened your tribe. Seems like inventory could just about buy that town by now.

But when you get home, you find that everything has changed. While you were away the town grew into a sprawling city. They built walls around it, then the city expanded past them. It sent roads into the outlying fields, past new farms and over the borders to other lands. The old king died, and in your absence the false prince took the throne. He sent the kingdom deeper and deeper into debt until he in turn was replaced by a council of merchants, and that’s it for the royal family.

More time passes, and the palace you grew up in is now a museum. The forest is cut down; the city spreads along the river to the sea and establishes a port where ships come from all over the world and bear people away to countries you’ve never heard of. The ships bring back textiles and jewelry and gunpowder. New character classes appear, some playable and some not, artisans and musketeers and gangsters and astronomers, which are explained in still more supplemental rule books, Realms of Gold: Age of Sail and Realms of Gold: Sages and Scientists . You pack away the lock of hair, the signet ring, and the sword. All that stuff was long ago.

Decades go by, faster and faster, and now, of the original party, only the elf survives. He has aged only fractionally through the years, and his accumulated experience points have taken him far off any of the level charts. He spends the day lounging in cafés on the cobblestone street where the old tavern used to stand; he pays his rent with jewels and odd coins that ring strangely against the table. He owns a horse and carriage and half a dozen houses in town. He’s an eccentric guest at dinner parties, the subject of society talk and gossip. You—and somehow it’s still you—can invest in merchant caravans for profit. You can finance other adventurers if you want, for a share in the returns. You never marry or have children. You collect old books, a few of which make reference to your early adventures, but only as legends.

One day a hot air balloon passes over the city. It only costs five gold pieces to ride in it. An amusement for gentlemen and ladies of quality!

You ascend. The Sky Zone was never meant to be playable, so now what? You scrounge up a Xeroxed page and a half of sketchy guidelines. Rules for movement, suggested cloud maps, lightning-strike table.

It’s raining hard outside the office this evening, too, there’s lightning here, too, and past nine o’clock it doesn’t feel like work. You’re hanging out late in the break room with Matt and Lisa and you’re trying to steal soda from the machine using adhesive tape, which doesn’t work but is hilarious.

The Sky Zone contains air elementals, floating eyes, yellow lights, storm giants. Giant Erl from the Legendary Adventures supplement in a cloud castle. All areas of the Town, Forest, and Ruin maps are accessible. You find portals to all the elemental planes. You may reach the Starlight and Ethereal Zones from here.

You order new rules through the mail from an address in the back of Dragon magazine, rules not published officially, to describe galleons that sail between planets and starfish with arms that span continents. You resolve to reach the center of the galaxy, the center of everything, if you can, and that’s where the game ends, now not a game at all but a campaign that’s going to go on as long as your life does, no matter what you think of me now, because we are graduating from high school, from college, getting married, and now it’s time for all cards to be turned over, all items identified, all secret areas revealed. And now at last maybe we can score this thing properly.

1971: The Chainmail tabletop strategy game is modified to include rules for person-to-person combat, rules that would ultimately be used in Dungeons & Dragons .

1975: Adventure (a.k.a. Colossal Cave Adventure )—the first text-based computer adventure game—is created by Willie Crowther and Don Woods.

1979: The first Choose Your Own Adventure book— The Cave of Time, by Edward Packard—is published. Adventure for Atari 2600, containing the prototypical video game Easter egg, a secret room showing the name of its creator, is released.