Deforch's Adventures--my son's first game (updated 7/1/12)

[Cerebral Paladin]

Deforch's 8th Adventure

Last Sunday, I ran a short and straightforward D&D adventure for my son. I'm currently working in Texas on a Monday through Thursday schedule, then flying back home for each weekend. Because of Dallas's inability to deal with snow, I was only back home for less than 36 hours, so I wanted to do something fun with my son on the Sunday morning before I had to fly back to Texas. So even though I didn't really have much of anything prepared or even well thought through, I ran a D&D game for him. One of the nice things about running games for a four year old is that an adventure that would be painfully lame for adults can still be fun and exciting.

Deforch was in his family's castle when one of the peasants who lived near the castle approached him for help. I had fun role-playing the peasant as extremely nervous to be talking to someone as important as Deforch, who after all is the eldest son of the local nobility. I'm not at all sure that my son understood why the peasant was nervous, but he still seemed to be having fun. He did resolutely inform the peasant not to address him as "m'lord Deforch," that just "Deforch" was fine. I couldn't really tell if my son understood why the peasant was calling him "m'lord." Anyway, the peasant told him that one of their cows had been killed--ripped apart--and that they wanted Deforch to investigate, find out what had happened, and prevent it from happening again. Deforch of course agreed.

He then went to the scene of the attack and looked at the cow's body. I described the large puncture marks on the cow, and how it had been basically ripped apart, and started a skill challenge (although I didn't use that term for my son). His initial thoughts were to wonder if it might have been a displacer beast--not Slingie, of course, but some other bad displacer beast. He also looked at the mini of a white dragon and speculated about whether Freezie might rip up a cow like that. I had him roll a skill check to examine the wounds on the cow, and he succeeded easily, concluding that they weren't the sorts of wounds that a displacer beast or dragon would make, but that they included very large punctures, about an inch or two across. My son got excited at this point and wondered aloud whether the wounds were from the monsters Deforch fought before, in the "me-me" adventure as he called it. I was very pleased with this, because I had already decided that the attackers had been kruthiks, which is the actual name for the me-mes. I reminded him of the name, and this time he used the word "kruthiks" instead of using his term for them. He looked around for footprints (another skill check), and after a moment found them--they had five claws all set close together, just like kruthiks!

My son then announced that he was going to look underground for a tunnel. At first, this confused me, but then I realized that he had previously encountered the kruthiks tunneling through the ground, so he figured that there must be a tunnel nearby if there had been a kruthik attack. I thought that was pretty clever actually, and Deforch quickly found the tunnel with a Perception check. Another check or two to wriggle, jump, and climb his way through the tunnel brought him to the kruthik lair.

As he entered, he was attacked by a group of kruthik hatchlings. He used his Dire Wolverine Strike to attack all four at once, killing three of them. The last one clawed and bit him, but he finished it off the next round. He then fought the adult kruthik that was leading this group. It was a pretty tough monster for a 2nd level character to face alone, but I was pretty sure that it would be okay as long as I didn't use its powers in an obnoxious way. I need not have worried. Deforch got a critical hit in one of his first attacks, eliminating almost half its hit points in the first round. Another two rounds of attacks easily dropped the kruthik, and while Deforch took some light wounds, they were nothing to worry about, even for a four year old. Once Deforch defeated the kruthiks, he returned and told the peasant that the other cow and the sheep should be safe now, and the game ended.

It was a fun and entertaining time playing together. As I said, for an adult (or even teen) player, that adventure would have been terrible--completely linear, and with the classic bad skill challenge design of "if you pass the skill challenge, you find the adventure--otherwise, the adventure is over." But I knew that he would pass the skill challenge, because the difficulty was low relative to his skills, and because even if he had gotten three failures, I would have let him keep trying. I might have improved some negative consequence, but even so. But for a child, just getting to play and imagine the scene and roll the dice and then win was enough to make it fun.

There was also an amusing bit of "my son tries to determine the whole game" early on, where he was telling me about an evil villain named Flame Bowl (I think that was the name), who was really dangerous because he could turn into a fire elemental or an air elemental and was immune to water. I explained that that wasn't the villain for today's game but that Deforch could fight him in the future. My son was enthusiastic about that idea--"that's who Deforch will have to fight next time, but he's really tough!" So I think my next game already has the climactic battle pre-planned.

 

[Cerebral Paladin]

The Ninth Adventure of Deforch: Introducing Fire Boss Villain

I ran a quick Dungeons and Dragons game for my son and his friend yesterday. My son was still excited about fighting "Fire Boss Villain," so I wanted to include that in the adventure. Also, Deforch and his friend's character had reached third level, so they had some additional powers. I gave my son a choice from among four 3rd level encounter powers, although that was really too many. He more or less wanted to have access to all of them, and then he picked the worst one out of the group (a power that is essentially Twin Strike with a push--in a game like the one he plays in, which is not particularly tactically complicated, powers that allow pushes aren't very good). Amusingly, his first comment was "I can't push opponents--I don't use a shield," because he knew that his friend's character has a shield push sort of power. After some back and forth, I persuaded him to take Leonine Surge instead, which is also a Twin Strike-plus power--in this case, it allows two attacks, and if they both land, it does extra damage and knocks the opponent prone, which can be pretty useful.

Anyway, we started out by reminding the boys of the dwarven halls beneath Deforch's family's castle that they were exploring. I explained that the rubble from the cave in had been cleared away, revealing a heavy stone door with a strange key hole in it. They spent a while trying to break down the door, hitting it with their magic swords, ramming their shoulders into it, and so forth, but they couldn't get it to open. My son's friend immediately picked up on the fact that they were going to have to go on an adventure to get the key, but of course they didn't know where the key was. With a little prompting, they then went to ask Deforch's dad if he knew where the key was. He suggested that they ask Freezie the Dragon, who knew where lots of things were. Freezie, in turn, actually had the magical key in his treasure hoard. He said that he would fly back to get it for them. They asked if they could come with Freezie, but he explained that while he was their friend, dragons are touchy about their treasure hoards, and he didn't really feel comfortable with having anyone visit his lair. So Freezie flew off to get the key. He told them that he would be back in about 2 hours. Two hours later, he hadn't returned. Four hours later, he still hadn't returned. The next morning, he still hadn't returned.

I had planned on having the Cup of al-Faisal activate and show them a vision of Freezie, who was now trapped in a cage of fire, but without waiting for that, the heroes immediately decided that he might be in trouble and that they should go to his lair to see if he needed help. My son suggested that some villain, maybe even Fire Boss Villain, might have taken Freezie prisoner. His friend went even further, saying that maybe the villain had cut Freezie's head off and killed him. I was a little worried that that would upset my son, but he seemed relatively unperturbed--perhaps he was distinguishing between what his friend was saying and what was actually going on in the game, or maybe he was just taking it reasonably well. I'm not sure. In any event, I made it clear that they would have to go and investigate to find out, so off they went.

I then ran a quick skill challenge of them climbing up the icy mountain trail to the mountaintop where Freezie's lair was. There were a bunch of Athletics checks to climb rough sections of the trail, and what was more or less an Acrobatics check to cross a slippery ice patch. They then came upon a rough cliff. I expected them to just climb it with more Athletics checks, but they decided that they needed some way up it. They talked about the possibility of using their magic swords to change it into a smooth walkway, but I explained that their swords weren't powerful enough. They also discussed using a parachute, but I pointed out that while that would work for going down a cliff, it wouldn't really help them go up a cliff. Then they decided to make a ladder, so I had them make Nature checks to find wood to make a ladder from, and then they reached the top of the mountain.

At the top of the mountain, a group of skeletons (4 decrepit skeletons (minions) and a blazing skeleton that could throw fire at them) attacked them. I used a map from a D&D game day so that they had an image of a snowy mountaintop with a tower on it to help them visualize, but I'm not sure it worked as well as I had hoped--it's hard to say how much it helped their visualization. This turned out to be a pretty dangerous fight--my son's friend, in particular, rolled very badly on some of his saving throws, after an orb of fire from the blazing skeleton lit him on fire. They quickly cleared out the decrepit skeletons, but even with pretty lousy tactics and my ignoring the blazing skeleton's fire aura, the other PC got down to single digit hit points. Still, he got to use his new power effectively, and then Deforch rolled a critical hit on his new Leonine Surge that destroyed the blazing skeleton. With some prompting, Deforch used some snow to help put out the fire on the other PC's clothes, while the other PC rolled to put it out, and they had won the battle with no permanent harm done.

At that point, they made their way into the tower, where they saw Freezie trapped inside a cage of fire. A powerful efreeti met them there, but he declared that he did not want to fight them right then, since he was still weakened from the effort of capturing Freezie, so he would seek his revenge later. He disappeared in a blast of fire, smoke, and scorching hot air. The heroes released Freezie by throwing snow on the cage of fire until it went out. Freezie thanked them, and told them that that was his old enemy, Ignemesis (which I explained was the ancient language for "Fire Villain"). The dragon warned them that Ignemesis would be very angry at them for thwarting the plan to capture him. The players seemed suitably impressed and excited about the idea of facing Ignemesis later. With that, Freezie gave them the magic key, and we called the session after saying that in the next game they would be able to open the door in the dwarven halls.

From a behind the curtain perspective, my plan had been for them to fight Ignemesis this session as well, but the game had run long and the kids seemed a little over excitable. As always, a 2-child game takes much longer to do anything than a 1-child game--a game with two fights and a little other material would be well within my son's attention span on his own (and I suspect his friend's just as easily, although I haven't seen it directly). But with the longer fights with two characters, in particular, the game was running too long. Also, their attention was much harder to keep focused--whenever one of them started to have wandering attention, he would distract the other one. I still wanted to introduce Ignemesis, partly because I knew my son was excited by that idea, so I had him make a short appearance but left the actual fight for some future game.

All told, it was another fun game. There is the difficulty that 4e fights are really long for small children. And it is a constant effort to keep both of them focused on the game. But it ended up being another fun game, both for them and for me.

 

[Siuis]

Needs more Deforch.

Seriously though, I am enjoying this line of stories and learning a lot. Have you played in the last two weeks, or have you been swayed by the tides of reality?

 

[Cerebral Paladin]

Deforch's Tenth and Eleventh Adventures

Sorry about the delay in posting--I've had a busy couple of weeks, and I haven't had time to write up any games until now. But I have had time to play some D&D with my son, so...

I've played several D&D games with my son since I last had a chance to write one of these posts. Most of these were very short games, so I figure that I'll cover them at a faster clip than one per post. They were also interesting in that I experimented with a more free-form approach to running games--unlike most of my previous games with my son, I ran these with absolutely zero preparation and without even using monster stats.

Deforch's tenth adventure presented a bit of a problem. I had told my son that I would run a game for him after his nap, and I had been looking forward to that. But then his nap ran long--to about 5 PM--and I had guests coming over at 6. More to the point, the guests were coming to play D&D, so it would have been even more upsetting to him than otherwise to delay his game to the next day. But it meant that we really didn't have a lot of time in which to play. So, I decided that I would run basically a single encounter. I asked him what he wanted Deforch to do in this game. He said he wanted Deforch to practice fighting with his swords, so that he would get better at it. So I ran a little encounter where first Deforch sparred with two of the guards at his family's castle in a two-on-one sparring match. After they had both yielded, I brought out a figure of a warforged (a type of combat golem, for people who aren't up on recent D&D character types). My son really likes this figure, so I thought it would be fun to use it. I explained that the warforged was a practice golem, clarifying that a golem is a type of robot that works by magic instead of technology. Deforch asked his parents if they had made the golem; they replied that while Deforch's daddy is a wizard and can make some magic things, he doesn't know how to make a golem like that, but that they had actually discovered it on an adventure years ago when they found it in an old dwarven ruins. I pointed out that dwarves are master crafters, and could make things that were better made than just about anyone else. I figured that since Deforch still has a long-term story arc about exploring the dwarven halls beneath the castle, this set up reusing the warforged mini in a later game. Deforch and the two guards then fought together against the golem. After a little while of fighting, I declared that they had won. As a friend commented on a previous game, my son's still at an age when he's happy to accept the joy of winning without really needing the feel of overcoming a difficult obstacle. So we wrapped up the game with everyone happy.

A few days later, we sat down to play another game. Between the previous game and this one, my son had told me that he wanted Deforch to fight a vampire. His interest in vampires came from a book that he has. Some friends of ours gave us a book they made, "My First Monster Manual," which has pictures of one monster for each letter of the alphabet, along with humorous little rhymes. It's a wonderful little book, and he loves it. In any event, he has begun flipping through it to find things he wants Deforch to meet, and this time he wanted to face a vampire. He also talked a little bit about the vampire and its powers--he clearly conceived of vampires as having wizard powers and using a magic wand. It took me a little bit of thought to figure out how to handle this, partly because I want to preserve some sense of different power levels for different types of monsters. Still, I wasn't going to say no, so…

The game began with Deforch's dad telling him that some of the villagers in the local village were sick, and that Deforch's dad was suspicious that the sickness might be magical in nature. My son immediately cut to the chase: "Maybe they've actually been attacked by a vampire!" Deforch's dad agreed that that was part of what he was worried about, but that he didn't know for sure. So off Deforch went to investigate.

He quickly found a group of villagers, some of whom were "sick" and some of whom weren't. The people who were sick were very pale, with basically no color in their cheeks at all, as well as feeling lethargic and tired. A skill check confirmed that that matched the symptoms of someone who had been attacked by a vampire and also provided the basics of how vampire attacks work: that vampires attack by sucking blood, with their two large fangs, typically biting the victim's neck or wrist. So Deforch checked the sick people, and sure enough, they had bite marks at their necks. At that point, Deforch knew that the "sickness" was actually the result of a vampire attack, but not who the vampire was. So he made another skill check to get more information about vampires, and it turned up two more facts: vampires can't go out in daylight, and they can't enter a home without an invitation.

Deforch quickly asked around about whether anyone had asked to come into the homes of the people who were sick. They mentioned that there was a merchant who had been asking for a place to stay and offering gold in payment…

So now Deforch knew who the vampire was, but not where to find him. I expected him to do some more legwork to get a report on where the vampire's lair was, but instead he focused on nightfall: protecting the people who had been attacked, and defending the rest. He started by telling everyone not to invite the merchant into their homes. I pointed out that that wouldn't keep the people who had already invited the vampire in safe. Deforch immediately said that they should go to the castle, and that he would tell the guards to not admit any strangers after nightfall. Not quite the response I expected (I thought he would just have them stay in their neighbors' houses), but entirely reasonable. And really, having the villagers flee to the castle for protection when faced with a threat is just so right.

Deforch then spent the evening patrolling the village. The "merchant" tried to persuade one of the remaining villagers to let him in, and then raged at Deforch's interference when the villager refused. Deforch rushed over as the vampire turned to face him, with the vampire vowing revenge, and the battle was joined. The battle was short and straightforward. I didn't have actual stats for the vampire, but I made him tougher than a normal foe--Deforch missed on okay but not great rolls, and the vampire hit on okay rolls, doing a bunch of damage. My son asked me to tone down some of the descriptions. When I described the vampire draining Deforch's energy, with a cold touch, trying to describe necrotic damage without using an unnecessarily opaque adjective, he asked that I stop my description. But he was okay with the damage, and after a little while longer, the vampire retreated, disappearing in a cloud of black smoke and a swirl of bats. Deforch would need to hunt the vampire down to its lair to finish the task, but that's an adventure for another day (and for a day when his other parent could join us, since he recognized that it would be a hard task and wanted to bring Deforch's mommy along to fight the vampire).

 

[Cerebral Paladin]

The Twelfth and Thirteenth Adventures of Deforch

The two most recent games of D&D with my son have been unusual in several ways. To begin with, the two games were really part of a single continuous story, and for that matter a story that hasn't yet finished. But much more significantly, it's only vaguely accurate to say that I ran the game while my son played. As I'll explain, my son basically ran the game for himself, with me providing a little bit of input and some rules advice. I'm not sure that the first session even really qualifies as being a game, as opposed to just being a story he constructed about his D&D character (although I suppose it had a little bit of game-like aspects, so calling it a game makes some sense).

We sat down to play a game of D&D, and my son immediately took charge of the storytelling aspects. He grabbed a miniature of a wraith I had (although he often referred to it as a "wreath") and announced that today's game would be about a good wraith who had asked Deforch for help. I decided that turning this into a test of wills wouldn't make it more fun for anyone, so I just followed along.

"What does the wraith need Deforch's help with?" I asked.

"Some bad guy has stolen all of the wraith's pogo sticks and baby bottles. And his babies are really upset about not having their pogo sticks and baby bottles. He wants Deforch to get them back."

Okay, then. Apparently, this is all about pogo sticks and baby bottles? I have to admit that I found parts of my son's creative storytelling to be hard to follow, but I tried to keep up as best as I could. As I remember it, Deforch began looking for clues to try to figure out who the "bad guy" was and where he had taken the stolen goods. The baby bottles and pogo sticks (two of each, apparently) were supposed to be kept in a secret cave, with heavy sealed doors. My son explained that the outside walls were undamaged, but there were claw marks on the inside walls--claw marks like the wraith could make with its long claws. (I figured that explaining that most wraiths are insubstantial would not really help.) Maybe the things had been stolen by a bad wraith that didn't like the good wraith? My son softened this to a good wraith and a sorta bad wraith.

At this point, my son explained that Deforch encountered a floating magic sword that could attack on its own. I think the sword may have had a skull on it, but I'm not sure--his description was a little unclear. At this point, I stepped in to DM the combat. I just improvised the sword's stats--Deforch would attack, and if my son rolled well, I would declare that it was a hit. I did the same thing in reverse when the sword attacked. Once I felt like the fight had lasted long enough, I declared that Deforch had prevailed.

With that, we were out of time, so we wrapped up.

About a week later, we got a chance to play again. This time, the plan was for my son's mom to join us (playing Deforch's mommy, Alberta Lovestar). I had planned on following up on the vampire adventure, but my son said that the vampire was too scary, even with Deforch's mommy along. I wasn't going to force him to play an adventure that he found too scary, and he was very definite about this. Also, as we started to play, Robbie became progressively more upset, so their mom went to take care of Robbie, rather than actually playing with us. This functionally meant that Deforch's mommy was on the adventure, but my son's mom wasn't, which made it a particularly bad time to try something a little frightening.

So instead of finishing up the vampire adventure, my son launched into continuing the effort to recover the missing baby bottles and pogo sticks. He declared that Deforch and his mommy were in a cave tunnel in front of a stone door. In front of the door were two white squares (my son put down small white cardboard squares (the backsides of my "Bloodied" tokens) for this) and two red gems (tokens in my mini bag). He quickly solved the puzzle that he had created for himself, putting the two gems on the white squares and unlocking the door. My son declared that there was a group of five skeletons on the other side of the door. The skeletons attacked!

Like in the previous game, when combat began, I basically took over the GMing role. Interestingly, my son was at first hesitant to use his "Dire Wolverine Strike," which attacks all adjacent enemies, because he was worried that it would hit his mommy. I was surprised that he came up with the concept of friendly fire on his own, but I reassured him that that power (unlike some others) only affects enemies. After a little while, all five skeletons were destroyed, and they spent a little time healing up.

He then began describing a second skeleton attack. I suggested that while that might be okay, it might be more fun to have a little variety--to follow a fight with skeletons with some other, different sort of encounter. He readily agreed, and said that instead they would encounter two bad guys and engage in a "match the things that are the same" competition. So I laid out eight miniatures--3 pairs and 2 minis that were similar but not quite the same--as well as two figures to represent the bad guys. Deforch went first, picking out two of the minis that were the same. Then the bad guys picked out another pair. Then Deforch grabbed the third pair. The bad guys tried to match the last two minis together, but my son pointed out that those miniatures didn't match. After he pointed out several details that were different, the bad guys conceded, agreeing that Deforch had beaten them. They proceeded to leave.

Deforch and his mommy continued down the passageway and encountered two kruthiks. The kruthiks initially planned on attacking, but my son announced that he would use the "tile flingers" (he had apparently decided that the cardboard tokens with the gems on them were now miniature catapults of a sort) to fling tiles at the kruthiks. After that the tile flingers hit the kruthiks, they began to run away, but not before saying that someone had stolen the spikes for the backs of the baby kruthiks. Apparently, the bad guys weren't just robbing good wraiths…

With that, we wrapped up the game. These games were interesting experiments. My son clearly had a lot of fun making up the stories, which is of course the key part. At the same time, his stories continue to have the disjointed surrealist aspects that you would expect from a young child, which makes it both harder to understand for me and a little frustrating. And sometimes I have ideas for games that I want to share with him. Still, I think these games were both successes; I'll probably continue to play it by ear, running a game in a more traditional way when he seems interested in that, but not trying to prevent him from making his own stories in games where I'm really mostly his fight coordinator and rules consultant when that's what he feels like.

 

[ellinor]

Obviously, your son is a budding GM. I am shocked. Shocked.

 

[Cerebral Paladin]

Deforch's 14th and 15th Adventures

My son and I have played D&D several times since my last post, but I haven't had time to write up descriptions until now. This post will cover two short adventures in one write-up. There's not a lot to tell, and I don't actually remember them in much detail. My write-ups will be as accurate as I can make them, but I may have some errors in my recollection. The next couple of entries will cover more substantial, and more recent, games.

Deforch's fourteenth adventure was a short game at home. As with the previous game, I had planned on an adventure to fight the vampire, but my son quickly nixed that. He said that he didn't want to fight the vampire until he got another attack card, meaning until he leveled up. He was very clear about the fact that vampires are tough, and that he needed to be higher level to be ready to take on a vampire. I found this very interesting--it's the first clear evidence of strategic thinking on his part, and it's also of course the first example of my son deciding to "grind" up to a higher level before taking on a challenge. But that meant that my initial plan of an adventure in the vampire's castle had to be shelved for the time being. I didn't want to upset him by trying to railroad him into an adventure that he doesn't want to do, and I also wanted to respect his strategic planning--especially because a vampire is a dangerous foe for a 3rd level character to take on. So that left me needing to quickly improvise an adventure without a direct confrontation with the vampire.

I started things off by having Deforch's dragon friend, Freezie, report hearing some strange noises in the local village butcher's shop--some sort of repetitive scraping stomping noise that seemed to be coming from the basement. Freezie couldn't fit down the stairs into the basement, so he told his friend Deforch about the noises. Deforch talked to the butcher and quickly headed into the basement to investigate for himself. He also heard the noises that Freezie had told him about, although he couldn't hear them until he was in the basement--good thing dragons have keen hearing! Deforch could hear that the noises, which also included some moaning, were from the other side of the wall. So he drew his swords, and pried at the stones in the wall until he opened a hole into a roughly dug passageway that led underneath the village… and a group of zombies shuffling along the passageway.

Deforch immediately attacked, and quickly dispatched the zombies. On one of them, he found a letter from Ignemesis (also known as Fire Boss Villain) to the vampire! The letter said that Fire Boss Villain was sending these zombies, as the vampire had requested, to help defend the vampire's spooky castle from the possibility of Deforch attacking him. Deforch was excited to find confirmation that the vampire was based in a haunted castle--he had previously known that the vampire was probably in a castle or in a dark cave, but now he knew it was a castle, and in fact could be pretty sure which castle because of the direction that the zombies were going.

Deforch also took this opportunity to taunt his enemies, sending a letter down the passageway to the vampire (how wasn't entirely clear) telling the vampire that the zombies would not be showing up because Deforch had destroyed them, and that soon Deforch would be coming for him. With that, we had run out of time and stopped the session.

A week or two later, my son spent the afternoon at his friend "Alan"'s house. (Alan is a pseudonym to protect the privacy of a 5 year old.) I began running an adventure for the two of them. The idea was that it would continue the storyline with the dwarven halls underneath Deforch's familial castle, with a combat, a puzzle, and then maybe a second combat with Ignemesis. Unfortunately, it was not a day of intense concentration for the kids. The first combat went okay, although Alan wanted to do other things by the middle of it. It took a fair amount of work to finish the fight. Once it was finished, we asked Alan if he wanted to continue, and he said no, so we wrapped up there. My son was a little disappointed by that but quickly focused on other things. And it was hardly just Alan's distraction--a little later, Alan suggested playing a game of Pokemon (the collectible card game). About halfway through that game (even playing a half length variant), my son lost interest and the game petered out, to Alan's disappointment. Attention spans are not great at right around age 5, and some days are like that. Oh well.

 

[Cerebral Paladin]

Deforch's sixteenth adventure was one of the best games we've had in a while. It was fun and exciting, and my son stayed focused and into the game for the whole session.

Before we started, my son said that he wanted to become friends with some more monsters, in addition to Freezie the Silver Dragon and Slingie the Displacer Beast. I could work with that, so I quickly came up with an idea for the adventure. Freezie approached Deforch and said that he wanted to visit one of his friends who lives at the top of a mountain. He immediately got the obvious conclusion… "But it's a dangerous mountain, with lots of monsters on it, so Deforch should go with Freezie in case something attacks Freezie!" Exactly, I thought. So Deforch, Freezie, and Slingie all set out on an adventure together traveling up a trail leading up a very dangerous mountain.

They proceeded up a trail that switched back and forth as it climbed up the mountain slope. After a short hike, they reached a point where a raging river cut across the trail. There was no ford available, and indeed, the river across the trail did not look either natural or like it had been there for long--if nothing else, the river had turned and begun flowing uphill across the trail.

Deforch immediately began gathering up wood to make a bridge. I was pleased that my son came up with a quick, reasonable plan to handle the problem. A quick skill check sufficed to build the bridge, and he began heading across the bridge.

As he reached the middle of the bridge, a strange watery figure rose out of the river. "Who are you that would intrude on this mountain?"

My son smiled excitedly. "This sounds like a fight!" I agreed that it could be a fight, but I cautioned him that Deforch might not have to fight the water spirit--perhaps they could talk. If he had insisted on turning this into a battle, I would have been happy to follow his lead.

My son decided that if the spirit was willing to talk, Deforch would switch from outright violence to not-very-subtly-veiled threats of violence. "You should let me pass, because I have lots of power cards for my attacks!" I may have had him roll an Intimidate check--I'm not sure if I did or if I just relied on pure role-playing for this.

The spirit blinked at him, the rocky chips in her eyes shining like the light on the quartz on the mountain slope. "I can tell you are very powerful and dangerous… but I have powers of my own." The spirit holds up her hands, and with a woosh an arc of water courses between her hands. My son was clearly a little frightened by this. "Why are you here, and armed so heavily? Do you mean harm for this mountain?"

"Freezie, my dragon friend, wanted to visit his friend at the top of the mountain. But the mountain is dangerous, so we came with him."

"The mountain can be dangerous, and more of late. And I know well the one who dwells at the mountain's summit. If you are people of good will, I have a request of you. There is a cave farther up the mountainside. Animals that have entered that cave do not return. I would appreciate it if you would explore the cave and find out what is threatening the good creatures of the mountain."

Deforch quickly agreed and set out across the river. After a short hike farther up the mountain, he saw a cave mouth leading into the mountainside. He traveled into the mountain and found several animal skeletons lying in the cave, near a fire that continued to burn in a fire pit without consuming the wood in the pit. As he looked at the fire, he noticed some motion by the ceiling. He ducked out of the way as a large shapeless black mass dropped from the ceiling. The strange ooze lashed out at him with a black pseudopod, but Deforch dodged aside. He slashed back with his sword. The attack seemed to hurt the creature, but it also cut off another chunk of the ooze, which continued to fight.

Freezie spoke up. "Deforch! Your sword blows seem to be cutting off parts of the ooze. Maybe there is some way that we can destroy parts of the ooze with something other than your sword?"

"Try your frost breath, Freezie!"

Freezie's frost breath washed over both the original black pudding (to use the actual name) and the new black pudding. The breath did harm the black pudding, but it did not destroy either the original black pudding or its spawn. Slingie also attacked, and his claws ripped off another chunk of pudding that kept fighting.

The black pudding's pseudopods smacked Deforch, burning him with their acid touch. Freezie said, "I don't think my frost breath will work. Maybe there's something else we could use?"

Deforch decided that maybe he could burn the pudding, so he ran over to the fire, pushed his swords into it, and used his swords to shovel burning wood onto the black pudding. This had a dramatic effect, burning and damaging the pudding and without creating more of the spawn. While Freezie and Slingie finished off the black pudding spawn, Deforch continued throwing fire onto the black pudding. Finally, the pudding collapsed and burned up. They had dealt with the threat in the caves that had been killing all of the animals that came inside.

With that, they continued through the cave and emerged out just below the summit of the mountain. Deforch, Freezie, and Slingie walked up and met a great feathered serpent, Axatl the Couatl. Axatl the Couatl greeted his friend Freezie, who introduced him to Deforch. Axatl congratulated Deforch on having dealt with the black pudding, a dangerous threat on the mountain, and said that he was happy to have met Deforch. I showed my son a picture of a cobalt from the Monster Manual, although he didn't seem terribly interested in the picture. He did have some fun talking to Axatl.

With that, we were out of time, and my son had to go off to gymnastics camp.

Overall, this session was great. We both had a lot of fun, my son stayed focused, and we were able to do some interesting new things. He had fun and effectively dealt with both of the problem solving bits--crossing the river and figuring out the trick to fighting the black pudding effectively--as well as having some okay, albeit a little primitive, role-playing. Interestingly, my son, who was very interested in Deforch becoming friends with another monster, was not terribly engaged by the picture. I suspect that he would have reacted a lot better to another miniature to represent his new friend--the picture was a little abstract for his play, I think. But it was a great session for both of us. At the end, he said, "this was the best game ever!"

 

[Cerebral Paladin]

[A placeholder for me to fill in with the first adventures of Sir Warchop, Baron Chesterfield, a new character that my son has been playing recently.]

 

[Cerebral Paladin]

Sir Warchop versus Tailigon

Yesterday, my elder son (just under 6 years old) announced that he wanted to play a D&D game. I’m always game for that, so we headed down to the basement to play. But this game was a little different from our previous games—as we headed downstairs, my son informed me that this time, he wanted to play the bad guys, in particular Tailigon, a dragon with a stretchy tail and a dangerous set of tail attacks. We got to the table downstairs, and he handed me the figure that we’ve been using recently for Sir Warchop, Baron Chesterfield (one of his PCs) and he said that I would play the hero character. As he set up a group of skeleton warriors around Tailigon, it became clear that he wasn’t planning on playing an adventure with me DMing for his bad-guy dragon. Instead, my son had decided that he was going to run a game for me.

He began by narrating the problem that forced me to go on an adventure: a group of new dragons, led by Tailigon, had moved into the land, and when they snored in their sleep it produced a lot of smoke that was covering the land and making it not nice for anyone else. So Sir Warchop needed to head out to stop the dragon threat. He began by asking if I wanted to spy on the dragon first. That seemed like a good idea, so I said sure. He had me roll a d20 to see whether the “skulls” (his word for the undead) would spot Sir Warchop. I rolled an 8, so he said that one of the skulls looked over at Sir Warchop, but didn’t immediately raise the alarm. Sir Warchop froze, and my son decided the skull thought he was a statue and ignored him. Sir Warchop did see the group of four skulls guarding the dragon. More importantly, he saw a river of lava with a larger group of skulls swimming in it. (Apparently, their weapons burned up, but they could make new weapons from other skeletons.)

My son also asked if my scouting platform had a catapult on it. That seemed like another obvious “yes” to me. So then, with some prompting from the DM, Sir Warchop dipped the catapult ammunition into the lava, so now it would be flaming ammunition. I was finally ready to attack. He asked me who I wanted to target, and I said the skeletons around the dragon. But he warned me that attacking near there would surely be spotted by the dragon, so I decided to attack the skulls in the river of lava first. A decent roll later, and all that remained were the skulls around the dragon and Tailigon itself.

I then attacked with the big catapult rock, which my son told me was big enough to attack five targets—perfect! One of the skulls was crushed outright, the rest were battered but not defeated, and the dragon took a lot of damage but was so tough that it only bruised its claws. As Sir Warchop rushed forward, Tailigon declared that before anyone could challenge it, he would have to go through skull training. So Sir Warchop had to jump over a pit of lava, swim through a lake filled with piranhas without getting eaten, sneak through a room filled with sleeping dragons, and then defeat a skull in single combat. Sir Warchop rolled well and made it through the first three challenges without incident, although some of the dragons stirred restlessly before settling back to sleep. The duel went very well for Sir Warchop—a natural 20 defeated the skull and brought him before Tailigon itself.

Sir Warchop told Tailigon that he did not want to fight if he had to, but would if that was necessary to make the land safe. Tailigon replied that he would not leave without a fight, and if he won, he would use his breath to ignite the smoke in the air on fire, making the smoke from the snoring dragons even worse.

The battle with Tailigon was protracted. Tailigon used a series of clever powers, such as flying around in a circle with its tail on the ground to generate a tornado. With each subsequent power, Sir Warchop would try to do something to counter it, and then Tailigon would move on to his next power. But finally when Tailigon slammed down onto Sir Warchop from high in the air, Sir Warchop positioned his lance so that Tailigon drove the lance into its own belly. Tailigon was wounded—not beaten, but hurt badly enough to want to talk. Sir Warchop had said from the beginning that they could have peace if Tailigon left these lands. Now, Tailigon offered to surrender. Sir Warchop agreed to the offer, only to be betrayed by the treacherous dragon! Tailigon resumed its attack, but Sir Warchop continued to gain the upper hand. Finally, Tailigon surrendered again, this time meaning it. Tailigon agreed to stop all of the dragons from spreading smoke, and promised to not harm any of the people or animals in the lands around Sir Warchop’s lands, although there was some mention of the possibility of Tailigon hurting the lands of neighboring evil rulers. With that, they agreed to be friends in the future.

Overall, it was a fantastic experience. I’m sure this is the first of many instances of my son DMing.