RPG-A-DAY 2015 Day 16: Longest Game Session Played...96 Hours Of AD&D

16. LONGEST GAME SESSION PLAYED...

During summer break of my junior year of high school, my D&D group met every weekend to play. Sometimes Friday night, sometimes Saturday, sometimes overnight...1983 was a banner year for dungeon delving. At one point in the campaign, we reached the "endgame" -- our final confrontation with the evil anti-paladin who had been the bane of our games all summer. (Who was based on Frazetta's Death Dealer, per 1980's RRPG gaming cliches.) Since it was getting late, we ended the night's gaming at that point, and made plans to get together on a Thursday afternoon to start The Grand Finale. On Thursday, we gathered at Roger's house, around the game table in the basement. We had brought many 2 liter bottles of cheap store-brand cola, a dozen bags of chips, and 40 cheeseburgers from Burger King. We had all made arrangements with our respective parents that we wouldn't be home until the Bad Guy was dead. Oddly enough, all of our parents were fine with this.

And the dice began to fly.

We stormed his castle defenses. We slaughtered his undead army. We defended the village at the foot of the mountain. Sometime Friday afternoon -- after 24 hours -- we all crashed for about 4 hours and slept. When we got up, we took our places at the table and began where we left off.

We fought his second-in-command -- a lich necromancer. We traversed the Negative Material Plane to retrieve a magical artifact to defeat him. His ghoul legions fell at our feet. We blew up his tower fortress. We ate cheeseburgers, and we crashed again for a few hours.

We woke Sunday at 5 am, and we drank soda and rolled dice and yelled and gamed and shouted and IT WAS EPIC. It was Gaming Nirvana. It was fighting the good fight. It was hanging out with good friends. It was the end of an awesome story.

By Monday morning, we were half-crazed with sleep deprivation and malnutrition. But we put an end to the anti-paladin once and for all, as he dissolved into a sticky puddle upon the final blow. (Though there was an eerie laughter floating on the breeze, hinting that we'd only banished him until a future showdown.) I think I slept for 3 days afterward, but that gaming session will never be surpassed for sheer concentrated awesomeness.