One Time at D&D Camp...

By M.J. Harnish and Ben Robbins

A picture is worth a thousand words so take a look at this photo.

It was taken in 1982 at the Shippensburg College Dungeons & Dragons summer camp. Yes, you read
that correctly, a summer camp run by a college for D&D. I saw this picture a few months ago on the
Story Games forums and ended up interviewing the original poster Ben Robbins. The interview
appeared on my blog (http://rpg.brouhaha.us) and that in turn brought out several more people
who had spent time at the Shippensburg summer camp. What follows are the details about the
camp, how it ran, and some of the experiences various attendees he had. Most of these experiences
were Ben's, although I've included anecdotes from other attendees as well.
Ben's experience, as related to me, supplemented by comments by Todd Goldman and Christopher
Weeks:
Shippensburg Dungeons & Dragons Camp (the D&D name was replaced by “Adventure Game” in
1985) ran in the summers of 1981 through 1985. The program was only one of many summer
activities officially run by the university. The actual heart and soul behind the game camp were
James Forest and Larry Whitsel, who managed the camp, gave most of the lectures, and wrote the
adventures.
There were two one-week sessions, running Sunday evening through Friday afternoon. The camp
was officially open to boys and girls, aged 10 to 17 with most attendees falling in the 13-14 year
range. Councilors were older, most in high school or even college. On average, there were about 50
participants per week, and everyone I talked to recalls many of the attendees came back repeatedly
during the camp's years.
Campers were divided into different gaming groups at the beginning of the week, with councilors
doubling as DMs. The day's activities were heavily scheduled: Each morning there was a series of
game-related lectures with topics like “Being a good player” and “How to DM.” The focus, as Ben
remembers it, were largely on gaming concepts rather than a focus on rules mastery. One of Ben's
favorite topics, which was repeated each year due to popular demand, was audience-driven improv
- the audience would come up with situations and characters for the councilors to roleplay through.
An important point of the lecture was that there was no fighting, nor set rules - if the situation
started to devolve into combat the actors stopped and moved on a new one. While these types of
ideas and techniques might seem pretty common nowadays, it was a rather unorthodox approach
back in the early 80's. Todd remembers the lectures fondly as well since they helped show him, even
at the age of 12, that the game could be more than just moving pieces around, picking up treasure,
but rather that the real fun was portraying a character. ch as resolving the challenges.
Afternoons were dedicated to gaming, with attendees being assigned to a specific group, based on
the players' ages, for the week. All the groups played through the same adventure, written
specifically for the camp. While the same campers could come sign up for both weeks, but obviously
that wasn't the intention because they'd be playing in the same adventure twice. While the groups
weren't actually competing against each other, each group tried to get as far as possible before the
end of the week for the bragging rights - a slightly rigged process Ben would discover in later years
when he became a councilor.
The adventures evolved over the years. The first year's adventure, “Dancers of the Dead,” was a
monstrous, five-level dungeon crawl so old school it was prehistoric - the kind of dungeon where
every square of the graph paper has a room or hallways covering it, right to the edge of the page. A
big rectangle of doom (The map below is an actual map of one of the levels).

The follow-up years' adventures were an explore-each-hex wilderness crawl ("Raiders of the Bandit's
Lair"), a high concept dungeon with an overland intro and visual puzzles ("Curse of the Temple of
Set"), a city intrigue plot with NPCs actually taking initiative ("Throne-Fight at Giltham"), and finally a
world-spanning quest ("Odyssey of the Rings").
Throughout the week the DMs had meetings to compare notes about the adventure, discuss what
spots were too easy or hard, as well as come up slight twists to avoid meta-gaming between the
groups. If particular groups were falling behind or looking like they had no chance to actually finish
by the end of the week, the DMs cut corners to at least give them a chance to get to the climax -
even if that fight might wipe them out. Balancing that was the existence of a floating "specialist"
DM, who didn't have a group but who instead ran one particular encounter for each group. In the
first year it was the dreaded "chessboard" trap and in the last year it was a wandering pirate ghost
ship. The guest DM intentionally made those encounters brutal, which put all the groups through
the same wringer regardless of what their normal DM was like.
If you're any sort of D&D-phile, you're probably wondering what system the D&D camp used. AD&D
was the one and only. While Moldvay Basic was out by then, “Basic” was considered kiddy D&D and
looked down on. TSR was also well aware of the existence of the camp since Frank Mentzer served
as a guest lecturer in both 1981 and 1984. He even offered to run the pre-release version of Temple
of Elemental Evil for Ben and a friend in '84, which they turned down (as Ben says “..we were stupid
back then.”). The camp was also advertised in Dragon Magazine.
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and the Adventure Game Club's came in 1985 –
the reasons were never fully explained. While it could have been influenced by the “D&D = Satan
Worship” scare, other evidence suggests that the summer program director, Dr. Kraus , didn't think
very highly of the kids attending the camp (he was more of a sports guy evidently) and caused quite
a stink when he said as much in a newspaper interview. Whatever the reasons, it was a pretty anti-
climactic ending to what sounds like a very well-run and interesting summer activity.
So aside from a trip down memory lane, what does the tale have to offer? First off, I find it
fascinating that what many gamers nowadays joke about (“I wish there was a RPG summer camp
when I was growing up!”), actually really did exist and, more importantly, has the potential to
happen again. The 1980's were not good to roleplaying but in today's climate, RPGs are much more
mainstream. Okay, so that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but the overall market is bigger and far
more diverse nowadays. Whether you like them or not, CRPGs and especially online MMORPGs have
introduced a far wider audience to at least the concept of roleplaying. In addition, the stigma
attached to, and general hysteria surrounding RPGs is far less intense nowadays. There also is a far
wider selection of RPGs available today, capable of appealing to a lot of different tastes.