From my college's wiki site, that dorm is currently famous for being a hangout for the role playing group we founded which is apparently still active, and it mentions LARPers practicing the basement ballroom, but they're apparently unaware of the subbasement or it's uses 2 decades ago . . . so I'm not posting the college or building it's in. Me to know and a later generation to find out.
MSU's Wikipedia page doesn't mention their 8.5 miles steam tunnels at all, even on the page dedicated to describing the physical campus. Somethings, universities would rather you "discover on your own." Once your there, after you've already paid your tuition.
well, I have one or two data point to supply:
I clearly remember seeing people playing D&D with some LARP-ish elements at some event- I think an academic team or model UN tourney- around 1984-85. The kids involved were probably junior high age.
The jives with my own antidotal evidence of the last time I heard someone talk about playing D&D in a live action context.
That would have been contemporary, roughly, with the description that the author was writing. I remember the 'D&D is Satanic' stuff coming along around the same time or slightly later, but it was still remote enough that kids from a rural county in the Bible Belt were openly running around with cardboard swords and dice at a school sponsored event without anyone blinking.
The events in the book happened in 1979, the book was published in 1984.
FWIW, The last of the three AD&D 1e books was published in 1979. The book
Mazes and Monsters came out in 1981, and the TV Movie came out in 1982. Patricia Pulling's son, Irving, committed suicide in 1982. In 1984, Lorraine Williams was hired by TSR.
So, I think we're dealing with a transitional period in D&D. The transition from D&D to AD&D, the end of it's first boom, and by '84 Pulling is just starting to really cause TSR serious problems. (She formed Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons in '83.)
I would imagine that an outsider observing that would have called it something like 'live action' D&D, given that people were sneaking off to the boiler room to 'explore the Caverns of Central Heating', or whatever, but there wasn't a lot of 'system' to it beyond regular D&D rules. It wouldn't surprise me if, prior to the general parent/authority figure freak-out regarding RPGs, this kind of thing wasn't a little more common.
I think you've hit it on the head. Now that we're all on the other side of the D&D is occult and such, few people want to admit to acting it out.
Also worth noting that the late 70's was probably an early high-water mark for the campus culture of roof and tunnel hacking- security wasn't as complex, and schools weren't cracking down on the practice yet. Geek-ish D&D players taking advantage of their access to unauthorized places to game in an unusual or atmospheric setting might easily be distorted by the campus grapevine into 'the D&D nerds sneak into the tunnels to play D&D for real'.
The book I read shows MSU had strong motivations for denying that students went down into the tunnels. They were dangerous, so they didn't want to be responsible for any harm they came to. Also, people were using them to commit crimes (burglary, for example). Given that student's weren't allowed down there, none of them wanted to admit that they went down there. (Of course they clearly did. Tables with paper-mache heads and signs that read "Please wait to be seated" don't show up in steam tunnel alcoves by themselves.)
If this is indicative of what happened at other schools, I wouldn't be surprised.
LARP here gets made fun of for the foam weapons a lot. I don't quite get why, as people would complain a lot more would they use real swords.
Yep. First you get called wimps for using fake swords, then you get called crazy for using the real deal. It almost like they don't understand the appeal!
