Name that book!

I'm reading a trilogy of books right now, The Fionavar Tapestry(hmm, can't figure out how to underline...oh well), by Guy Gavriel Kay. I'm reading them because a friend gifted me with them saying that I might like them, as they are about a group of college students that get magically transported to a fantasy land.

I immediately jumped on the offer, as I flashed back to a book I read as a young lad, lo these many years ago. Alas, these books do not contain the story a read mumblety-years ago. I'm about halfway through the first one, and while it is intriguing, I keep getting distracted trying to remember the story I read so long ago.

So I thought I'd throw it out on the net, on the off chance that someone that stops by here might have read that story, and can tell me what the name was, so that I can track down a copy of it for myself.

What I remember of it is only vague, and a little sketchy. It would have been early, early 1980s, not too terribly long after D&D made it's appearance, and grabbed the imaginations of kids(of all ages) like a bear trap. I seem to remember that the premise was that of a group of college age students, who got together fairly regular for a fantasy gaming group, run by someone a little older than themselves, possibly a professor type. The DM somehow figured out a way to transport the group into the D&D-type game they were playing, with the members of the group becoming the characters that they played. Two things stand out in my, admittedly hazy, memory. One, the DM gathered various sundries that would approximate the gear their characters would use, and stored it in wooden trunks, one for each player/character, to be transported with them. Secondly, and possibly most identifying to someone who has read the story, I recall that the player who played a thief-type character, was greatly into the role-playing aspect of the game. Consequently, the character he played had only one hand, or maybe it was one eye, I don't recall exactly which, but I do know the player was initially horrified after the transfer, to find himself so handicapped when he became his character.

Does any of that ring any bells with anyone? I've read so much fantasy since then, that I've totally lost anything else that might have been specific to that book, but I do remember liking it at the time. Of course, it could be absolute crap writing, but to a mumblety-teen year old boy it was amazing, and got me to branch out from reading almost exclusively westerns, to almost exclusively Fantasy/Sci-Fi genre.

If anyone had the faintest idea of what that might be, please, please, please let me know, so I can kill this niggle-worm, and track down a copy of the book for myself :)

Thanks,

Casey