Primordials

The "Primordials" campaign is a placeholder name used to designate the predecessor to the Bastard Greyhawk campaign, which ran from mid-to-late 1981 until around late 1982, which is when the Bastard Greyhawk campaign commenced.

Real world history
Sometime in late 1980, Rob Vest first discovered a copy of the AD&D Monster Manual in a hobby shop called Something To Do, located in the Green Tree Mall in Clarksville, IN. At the time, he didn't realize it was for a game, but thought it was just some kind of cool bestiary. After much begging, he finally received the Monster Manual for Christmas of that year, along with a first print edition of Deities and Demigods (including the Melnibonean and Cthulhu mythos) and a copy of Dragon #55 (with a cool Erol Otus cover).

It didn't take long to figure out that the books were actually game manuals, but he had no idea where to find the actual rules for playing (nor the money to buy them). He and his friends, Wayne & Tony Lester, and Mike and Danny Walls, eventually figured out that they were supposed to draw dungeons on graph paper and fill them with monsters, but they still didn't have any proper rules, and only six-sided dice.

Desperate, with little to go on, Rob developed a crude version of rules based on what he could figure out from the stat blocks in Deities and Demigods. He picked up the concept of "hit points" and "damage" but had no context for Armor Class or THAC0. As the MM only included hit dice for the creatures, he filled his dungeons with deities, and had a player pick another god for his "character." When the protagonist encountered another god, they would roll six-siders to see who went first, then six-siders again to hit (1-3 was a miss, 4-6 a hit). Damage was the maximum of whatever the deity's weapon did. Crude and ridiculous to be sure, but it was all they had.

Eventually, Rob got his hands on a copy of the 1981 Dungeons & Dragons boxed set (probably for for his birthday that summer), which had just recently appeared in local department stores like Target and K-Mart. Even though it was not "Advanced" D&D, there were finally rules, and proper dice. Wayne and Tony had moved away shortly after school ended that spring, so Rob and the Walls boys started rolling up characters (even developing their own standardized character sheets) and playing. Rob and Mike took turns DMing, and ran through several adventures--mostly The Keep on the Borderlands (since it was included in the 1981 box), but also "The Haunted Keep," the sample adventure in the Basic Rulebook  (12 adventurers went in, but only the thief Daydra survived). During that time, Rob also procured the "expert" boxed set, the AD&D Player's handbook, and the Dungeon Master's Guide, which gave them more options. The fun lasted until about the fall of 1982, when the Walls boys were forced to quit by their parents (they felt the game was "taking over their minds"). Luckily, Rob and Brad became friends that school year, which would eventually lead to the birth of Bastard Greyhawk.

Characters

 * Clay of the East Woods, half-elven ranger
 * Daydra, human thief
 * Fingolfin, elven fighter/mage (Rob Vest)
 * Foetar, human fighter (Danny Walls)
 * Galadreal, elven fighter/mage, lover of Gubbik Lidden (Mike Walls)
 * Lord Gordon, human fighter (Mike Walls)
 * Gubbik Lidden, human fighter, lover of Galadreal (Mike Walls)
 * Sarnath, lizardman fighter (Danny Walls)
 * Treelorn, human druid with a mohawk (Danny Walls)