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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. The stories are almost entirely apocryphal.
Egbert incident
The "original" incident concerns a student named James Dallas Egbert III (1963-August 16, 1980), 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 had indeed played D&D and did enter the steam tunnels, although this was later revealed to be unrelated to the game. Instead, the 16-year old child prodigy was struggling with depression and under intense academic pressure from his parents. In addition, he was battling a drug addiction, the fact that he was an undeclared homosexual in an intolerant community, and had found it difficult to make friends on campus due to his young age and advanced IQ. Egbert therefore entered the steam tunnels on August 15, 1979 with a bottle of sleeping pills intending to end his life. His 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, and his parents hired private investigator William Dear to seek out their son. Dear knew nothing about Dungeons & Dragons at that time. He questioned some of Egbert's friends who were nearly as ignorant; Egbert had never played the game at Michigan State. Dear developed the 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. The search for Egbert continued unsuccessfully for several weeks.
Meanwhile, a series of Egbert's hosts had repeatedly asked him to leave their various 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. 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 died on August 16, 1980 as the result of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on August 11. Four years after Egbert's death, Dear finally 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. In an era when very few people understood role-playing games it seemed plausible to the public that a player might experience a psychotic episode and lose touch with reality during role-playing. The book saw adaptation into a made-for-television movie in 1982 starring Tom Hanks. Publicity surrounding the novel and the movie helped to further the urban myths surrounding D&D and other role-playing games.
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. Another fictional depiction of a "steam tunnel incident" is the animated Dungeons & Dragons television series, in which a group of small children are transported into an alternate universe through a D&D-themed roller coaster as it passes through a tunnel. The children are then presumed to be dead when they do not appear at the end of the ride.
In the book The Rule of Four, several sections involve use of the campus steam tunnels, sometimes for games, but not for D&D.
References
- Dear, William C. Dungeon Master: The Disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III, Houghton Mifflin, 1984.
See also
External links
- "The Disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III" by Shaun Hately
- "The Attacks on Role-Playing Games" by Paul Cardwell, Jr.
Dungeons & Dragons | Role-playing game terms | Michigan State University | Urban legends
"Steam tunnel incident"