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Ever since my twins were little -- they are now seventeen -- we've been playing D&D in the same world I co-created with a friend from high school (way back in the '80s). By the time the twins were twelve their little sister had joined them, and now she has been playing with us for five years.

Thing is, we don't play D&D like most folks do, and I never have. As a teen, I was lucky enough to have played D&D with two actors (three if I count myself), an illustrator and now metalsmith, a couple of writers (again if I count myself), and some other smart and flexible folks who came into and out of our campaign from time to time. This all meant that we didn't just spend our hours rolling dice, moving little figurines around a map and killing as many monsters as we could. We rarely dungeon crawled, and we could have full eight hour sessions where all we did was role play, interacting as our characters by debating, politicking, nation building, or just drinking in a tavern. I carried this method of play on with my kids, and after years of playing together (admittedly with a couple long layoffs when their interest waned) the highest level any of our characters has achieved is 6th, and we've moved through our fantasy world slowly and methodically, doing everything from performing as an entertainment troupe at Maargold Station to paddling on the rivers of Mithae to delivering the body of a friend to his parents in the Tremblant to inciting a labour movement in Thaddeus to joining a movement to overthrow the Eye. But after years of slow role playing with the kids, I realized that we have done even less dungeon crawling than my friends and I did in the '80s. I thought it was time to change all that, so "Enter: The Lost City."

Once I decided to go back to an old D&D module so my kids could have the full D&D experience, however, I had to figure out how to let them use characters from our main world -- and the world's we've all been building independent of that one -- in a way that wouldn't disrupt the flow of our game and would allow the characters to go back to whichever world they had come from when we were finished. Here's what happened ...

From our main world came Lennart (a grey dwarf Priest of Gameroth), Viola (a human Ranger), Mitek (an elven Wizard), & Danen (a human priest of Valartin); from my youngest's world came Bethane (a half-elf / half-lizard man Thief); from my alternate-history USA came Lt. Brett Galvin (a soldier / gambler), and they were all eventually joined or replaced by characters from my son's worlds because some of this original group just didn't make it -- but we expected that.

The original party -- those I've named -- went to sleep in their worlds and awoke on the dunes outside the walls of the desert city where The Lost City begins. They found one another, bonded over their dreamstate-transportation to the sands of a strange world, made their way into the pyramid at the heart of the desert city, then after an arduous dungeon crawl (which took our family over six months to complete, playing once and occasionally twice a week) -- and after finding the titular "Lost City" and ignoring it in favour of the pyramid -- the party (those who remained and those who joined along the way) finally killed Zargon at the base of the pyramid and found themselves transported instantly back to wherever it was they had fallen asleep on that night they had found themselves on the sand dunes.

Along the way they met characters that Tom Moldvay created years ago -- like the warring brothers Demetrius and Darius, the Were-Fox siblings, the Wizards of Usimagarius, and the cult-like Cindiceans -- and they met new characters I added to enrich their journey -- like Seigrid the Gnome, the trader of the pyramid, and Ecumenziez the Blue, a blue dragon who I made a sort of menagerie keeper of the lowest levels of the pyramid (a much better way of explaining the presence of Were-Bears in a room just down the hall from Displacer Beasts). But that's really the beauty of Moldvay's module: it is so, so flexible; it provides a wonderful framework for adventure with lots of detail already in place, and it allows for a Dungeon Master's imagination to run free.

Don't be afraid to go back to these old modules, and if you are new to D&D and a fan of 5th edition definitely seek them out in their new adapted forms (which are ready for you to play with the new rules). The Lost City and all its kin are magical. And trust me ... you'll find a way to make it work for you and your players, and you'll have a blast. I promise.