Talk:Eric and the Dread Gazebo

Gather ye references while ye may
Note to self: Gather the references for this that you've seen, such as the one in Son of Portable Hole, to ensure its survival, when you've got yourself under control again. Everyone else, please ask me to hurry this up first if you get the urge to destroy the article. (It's supposed to be a last resort to plug the holes when discussion fails, anyway, not the current shoot-from-the-hip mass purging of disliked content... #¤% whippersnappers. Digress'd.) --Kizor (talk) 02:27, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Alternative link
I first saw this story at http://www.geocities.com/rpgsig/articles/gazebo.html. This link seems to try to give appropriate credit, but perhaps not as thoroughly as the reference currently in the article. --GentlemanGhost 22:35, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
 * That looks like the Mensa RPG special interest group website. Outstanding! Thanks for finding that. JustIgnoreMe (talk) 13:33, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Personal knowledge
I have some personal knowledge about this story. On December 7, 1974, Eric Sorenson and I went to Le Maison Du Guerre (sic), a game shop run by Ed Whitchurch, to get instruction in the miniatures games they played at the shop. This was the first time either Eric or I had been in the back room of the shop. We had (independently) been in the shop previously to buy D&D supplies. After the instruction, Eric was talking to Ed, and said the miniatures wasn't really what he was interested in, and mentioned D&D. Ed told Eric that he ran a dungeon and invited Eric to join. Ed also invited us to come any time to play other games.

The legendary event occurred some time after that. I am guessing it was January 2005, but it could have been later. I think it couldn't be December, because Eric and I played at Le Maison Du Guerre several times before the event. There was a little history between Ed and Eric by this time. They had played a few wargames before the D&D game.

I was not present when it occurred, nor was Richard Aronson. I don't know who was present other than Eric and Ed. I heard about it a day or two later, when I was at the shop and Ed was retelling the story. The story was retold a lot. Ed said it took him a while to realize that Eric had not misheard the word "gazebo", but actually thought it was the name of a monster. Ed called it culture shock.

It must have been Eric's first time in Ed's dungeon, because the adventure started at the castle gates, and the gazebo was one of the first things you saw when you went inside.

A few years later, I was with Eric as part of a new party exploring Ed's dungeon. Eric was playing a descendant of his earlier character. Eric's character attached a sign to the gazebo. It was something like "This is a gazebo. It is not a monster.  It will not hurt you." I have subsequently heard that the sign said "Don't fear the gazebo." It was nothing so pithy. I was there for this one.

In 1985, Richard Aronson told the story to Lee Gold. She insisted Richard write it up for Alarums and Excursions, which he did. Richard had not been at the original event, and I don't believed he interviewed either of them for details. He simply took the heart of the story (Eric thinking a gazebo was a monster) and added details to flesh out a story. The gazebo eating Eric was Richard's invention.

There is more about the story at http://www.theschoolforheroes.com/questlog/tag/dd/   Randall Bart    Talk   04:38, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

DDO
Dungeons & Dragons Online features an explorer point (a significant map marker where XP is awared the first time the player character finds the spot in a huge outdoor area) which is a gazebo called "Deadly Gazebo". It can be seen on this map, in the south east end of the island. They even have (or had?) a developer who named himself in honour of the story. 81.10.151.214 (talk) 09:41, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Popular culture suggestions
The Dred Gazebo appears in the expansion for the board game Smash Up as a Ghost themed location card. 99.234.194.60 (talk) 15:00, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

dating

 * Aronson's account first appeared in print in the APA Alarums and Excursions in either 1985 or 1986 (accounts vary).

I asked Lee Gold, editor of A&E; she checked an index and reports, "Richard Aronson had only one zine in A&E, in #139. That would probably be when the Gazebo story appeared. [...] the February, 1987 issue, assuming I can still do arithmetic." —Tamfang (talk) 20:57, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

malicious website linked as "original"
I'm not familiar enough with the wiki syntax here to fix it, but the link to "the original" on reference 1 leads to a spam website (well, to a redirect trap which goes somewhere dodgy looking). 80.7.82.137 (talk) 14:49, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Trivia list of apperances
This following unreferenced content violates WP:V as well as WP:IPC and was moved here.

Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 07:40, 30 March 2024 (UTC)
 * The first issue of the comic book Knights of the Dinner Table contains a retelling of the story (and makes a similar reference to a davenport in a Flash animated short).
 * A gazebo features prominently in the winter 2006 issues of Nodwick.
 * A Gazebo monster card appears in the Munchkin card game; Aronson told Steve Jackson the story in the mid 1990s.
 * A base called The Dread Gazebo also features in the Awesome Level 9000 expansion for the Smash Up game by AEG.
 * In the MMORPG RuneScape, examination of a player-constructed gazebo results in the message "Run for it! It's a gazebo!"
 * Godville has a "dreaded gazebo" in its lore, which is a monster that can be tamed.
 * During a side-quest in Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward, a character exclaims "A gazebo! Aren't those dangerous!? Then again, you seem a responsible sort--not like to let a wild gazebo run amok."
 * Call of Duty: Black Ops II features an Achievement "Awaken the Gazebo" for using the Pack-a-Punch machine to upgrade a weapon on the first round on the level "Buried". The machine is located in a Hedge maze, at the center of which is a large Gazebo containing the machine.
 * Champions of Breakfast features a boss that depicts a Gazebo with an arrow lodged in its roof tiles