The steam tunnel incident refers not to a single event, but rather to a set of urban myths wherein players enacting live action role-playing games perish, often in the utility tunnels below their university campus.

Egbert incident

The original incident involved a student named James Dallas Egbert III (October 29, 1962^[1] ? August 16, 1980), who was incorrectly alleged to have disappeared into the Michigan State University steam tunnels for reasons related to the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D).

Egbert was indeed a player of D&D, but it was later revealed that his entry of the steam tunnels was unrelated to the game. At the time, the 16-year-old child prodigy was struggling with depression, was under intense academic pressure from his parents, and was battling drug addiction. In addition, his young age, advanced IQ, and other issues had made it difficult for Egbert to make friends on campus.^[2] Egbert entered the steam tunnels on August 15, 1979 with a bottle of Quaaludes intending to end his life. The suicide attempt was unsuccessful and when he awoke the next day he went into hiding at a friend's house.

A well-publicized search for Egbert began after The State News (MSU's daily student newspaper) broke the story of his disappearance from his room in Case Hall (a student dormitory) in an article written by Michael Stuart. Egbert's parents subsequently hired private investigator William Dear to find their son. Dear knew nothing about Dungeons & Dragons at that time. He questioned some of Egbert's friends who were nearly as ignorant, since Egbert had never played the game at Michigan State. Dear concocted a theory that Egbert had gotten lost in the steam tunnels during a live-action version of D&D, and the press repeated Dear's hypothesis as fact.^[3] The search for Egbert continued unsuccessfully for several weeks.

In fact, Egbert had fled campus. As the furor over his disappearance spread, several of Egbert's hosts asked him to leave their homes, fearing repercussions with law enforcement. Egbert eventually traveled to New Orleans, where he again attempted suicide, this time with cyanide. After this attempt also failed, he moved to Morgan City, Louisiana and took a job as a laborer in an oil field.

Four days into this new job, Egbert called Dear and revealed that he was hiding in Morgan City. Dear traveled to Louisiana and recovered Egbert. (Other reports say he was in Texas.) When the two finally met, Egbert asked the investigator to conceal the truth of his story. Dear agreed and released the 16-year-old to the custody of his uncle, Dr. Marvin Gross, on September 13, 1979.

Because of his promise to the boy, Dear left the false news reports unchallenged for the rest of the boy's short life. Egbert's third suicide attempt on August 16, 1980, by gunshot, succeeded. Four years after Egbert's death, Dear revealed his story in his 1984 book The Dungeon Master.

Prior to Dear's revelations, Rona Jaffe had already published a thinly disguised fictionalization of the press exaggerations of the Egbert case, the 1981 novel Mazes and Monsters. The book was adapted into a made-for-television movie (see Mazes and Monsters) in 1982.

Pritchard incident

In 1988, during an investigation into his stepfather's murder, Christopher Wayne Pritchard told police he and his friends occasionally entered the steam tunnels of North Carolina State University at Raleigh, N.C., to map them out for the purposes of incorporating them into their D&D game. In a later police interview, he claimed he and his friends once got high and played D&D in the steam tunnels with martial-arts style wooden weapons. Several ex-roommates and members of his gaming group, including James Upchurch, also confirmed Chris's account in police interviews, putting the number of sessions at perhaps a half dozen. The weapons involved were variously described as darts, knives, torches, fake samurai swords, rattan sticks and clubs. Drugs and alcohol were said to be involved. Police investigators found the letters "CWP" spray-painted in the tunnels.^[4]

Other versions

• Later versions of the myth involve groups of students attempting to enact "dungeon adventures" in the steam tunnels, getting lost and dying of hyperthermia or other causes.
• In the book The Rule of Four, several sections involve use of the campus steam tunnels, sometimes for games, but not for D&D.
• A similar incident is often referenced in the Knights of the Dinner Table comic. One of the characters, 'Nitro', earned the nickname "the Lord of Steam" after a live-action game in the steam tunnels under Muncie, Indiana's Ball State University went disastrously awry. Nitro's group continues to embark on yearly steam tunnel forays in the comics, which are simultaneously promoted and disavowed by Weird Pete's Games Pit.
• A similar idea was used in Neal Stephenson's 1984 university satire The Big U. In the novel several live action role playing gamers head into their University's sewers to play a game called "Sewers and Serpents".
• David Foster Wallace's 1996 novel Infinite Jest features characters on the verge of schizophrenia clambering through steam tunnels and being hypnotically lost in media.
• In the novel Mazes and Monsters, by Rona Jaffe, a group of college friends play the role-playing game Mazes and Monsters, using an abandoned mine near their college campus for a live-action version of the game. One of the students (played by Tom Hanks in the movie) suffers a psychotic breakdown while playing the game.
• The 1985 comedy movie Real Genius, portrays a teenage student named Mitch Taylor (played by Gabriel Jarret), who suffers from the stress of early advancement in a technical college. His carefree dormmate, Chris Knight (played by Val Kilmer), warns Mitch that if he lets the stress get to him, he'll wind up in the steam tunnels below campus, making reference to a former genius student, Lazlo Hollyfeld (played by Jon Gries) who has been lurking in the tunnel system for years since he cracked under pressure in the early 1970s. Lazlo enters the tunnels through a secret passage at the back of Chris' closet.

References

External links

• "The Disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III" by Shaun Hately
• "The Attacks on Role-Playing Games" by Paul Cardwell, Jr.