OSR Thanks Giving Commentary - Greyhawk Show Down In The Old Mine - Unfinished Business

 'The snows & mists around the world of Greyhawk part allowing heroes desperately needed elsewhere to journey to a far away land on another world! But will this be a town's salvation or our heroes doom?! Come with us now down the corridors to the ancient year of 1989 for a game session of the ancient past!'





Happy Thanks Giving everyone & I've been wrestling with Greyhawk once again. This time I broke out my second edition folio & began rereading through it. Is there a dungeon location where the planes cross in a dangerous dungeon? Then an old Dragon magazine article fell out!?Then I started reading about Murlynd & got completely distracted.
Here's the complete background on Murlynd;
'Gary Gygax's childhood friend Don Kaye created Murlynd for the second-ever session of Gygax's Greyhawk campaign in 1972, rolled up on Gygax's kitchen table at the same time as Rob Kuntz's Robilar and Terry Kuntz's Terik.^[1] Gygax later recalled that, in those early days when most players including Gygax himself simply used their own name as a basis for their character's name — Tenser/Ernest, Yrag/Gary — "Murlynd" was the first attempt by a player to make a creative name for a character.^[2] Don Kaye was a fan of the Western genre,^[3] and at one point during the early days of the Greyhawk campaign, Gygax had Murlynd transported to an alternate universe set in the Wild West. When Murlynd was eventually transported back the Greyhawk setting, he sported the Stetson, cowboy boots, Colt revolvers and stereotypical outfit of a cowboy. Although Gygax did not allow the use of gunpowder in his Greyhawk setting, he made a loophole for Kaye by ruling that Murlynd actually carried two "magical wands" that made loud noises and delivered small but deadly missiles.^[4] (Many years later, Gygax created a similar item called "Kaydon's Thunderous Bolters" for the Lejendary Adventures role-playing system. Gygax made it clear that these items fired their six charges using magic, not gunpowder.)^[5]
The game Kaye and Gygax were playing would become D&D, and Kaye would go on to help Gygax start up TSR. In late 1974, Kaye also helped develop the rules for a Western-genre game called Boot Hill. However, Kaye died unexpectedly in 1975. As a tribute to his friend, Gygax published Boot Hill in 1975 in memory of Kaye. In 1983, Gygax would pay additional tribute to Kaye's memory by referencing Murlynd in the published version of EX2 The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror, which also included the spells Murlynd's ogre and Murlynd's void,^[6] and further highlighted Murlynd in the March 1983 issue of Dragon magazine.^[7] The following year, Gygax paid further tribute to Kaye when he borrowed Murlynd's name for Murlynd's spoon, a magical spoon described in Unearthed Arcana that created a bad-tasting but nutritious gruel when placed in an empty bowl."

These days Murlynd role  is  as a deity of Magic Technology in 'Greyhawk: The Adventure Begins, the introduction to RPGA's massively shared Living Greyhawk campaign that ran from 2000–2008'. But it got me thinking about a massive Gamma World/Boot Hill/AD&D first edition adventure mini campaign where our characters back in '89 crossed over into all three settings. How?! The dungeon master in question used the massively underrated BH2: Lost Conquistador Mine by David Cook & Tom Moldvay.




This module provided us with everything we needed to get our characters killed across time & space. So what does this have to do with Murlynd?! Oh just about everything! Appearing across space & time the deity recruited our characters for a massive game involving seven players over the Thanks Giving holiday.After the Invoked Devastation there were places where the planes had been shattered across time & space. I mentioned the Egg of Coot raging across time & space as well as raiding the planes?! Well I wasn't the first DM to do this & in fact one of its wizards managed to find a few artifacts after the events of S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. This bastard had set up shop in the same dungeon across three planes  prime. We were going to have to stop the bastard.
What our party didn't know is that the deck was stacked against us. Alfonso The Grand Adjuster had been recruiting. His recruits included a band of gnoll warriors, berserkers, a beholder, various mutants, & about six gun fighters.


They held the town of BH1 Mad Mesa  & used the mine as their planar beach head into the Old West. We got our marching orders & began to take out the mercenary forces. We managed to free the town & do a bit of pillaging for ourselves. But we lost two our thieves & this would prove crucial coming up.



When we got to the mine we were completely slaughtered by the beholder! Knafr Yeney was the name of the beholder who took great pride in picking off our party one by one 'Ten Little Indians' style. Two of our party limped back to Greyhawk to recruit more adventurers & fighters for the up coming fight. It was a great Thanks Giving game & I might resurrect this idea for a session coming up.