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I'm going to DM my 70-year-old dad's first D&D game
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<blockquote data-quote="Whizbang Dustyboots" data-source="post: 6324654" data-attributes="member: 11760"><p>We finally played Sunday night, the day before we transported a one year old more than 250 miles across California, which was likely the bigger adventure.</p><p></p><p>My brother, who last played 1E in the mid-1980s, surprised me with a folder of photocopied Dragon magazine articles (various monster collections, "new" spells from Gary Gygax, the anti-paladin, duelist and witch classes, etc.) that he'd been holding onto since 1982, along with a hilarious monster he'd typed up and drawn that's basically a flying incorporeal spellcasting insta-kill.</p><p></p><p>Everyone sat down together and rolled their characters together. The Beyond the Wall system has a flow chart, Traveller style, that is used to create characters and several of the fields affect other characters at the table, affecting their stats and creating a shared background. My brother was the Heir to a Legend warrior (happily with an heirloom sword that fits in nicely with the setting and dungeon I created for them), my wife was the Apprentice to a Witch mage (we tweaked one of her rolls mid-session to change her from a crop-benefiting druidic witch into one who could serve as a healer) and my dad was a Local Performer rogue (we thought it was a rogue-mage, and he was bummed to get a social-focused rogue instead of something more spellcasty, so after the session, I agreed he could remake as identically as possible, since many of the tables are shared between characters, as an Assistant Beast Keeper rogue-mage).</p><p></p><p>My theatrical skills were a little rusty, especially with my mom watching for the first few minutes, so the village portion was pretty inconsequential, only picking up once they'd crossed the titular wall and headed into the forest, looking for the goblins who'd kidnapped the local teacher. My wife wasn't used to non-CRPGs, and was baffled by the idea that her witch, whose background featured a lot of time in the woods, could track, until it was pointed out to her, but then took took it. She wasn't as good at it as a real tracker would be, but she didn't fail enough rolls to trigger a goblin ambush. The group got to see a lot of ruined giant and shadow elf constructions in the overgrown forest and spotted the location they needed to go.</p><p></p><p>I laid out the first room's worth of Dungeon Tiles as they descended into the lower levels of a ruined tower and, showing that my brother was still rusty at this point, let my unarmored father go first. (I pushed the table with gear to buy at them repeatedly, and he stocked up on lanterns, rope and a dagger, but not armor.) So, naturally, the goblin guards waiting behind the pillars in the first room peppered him with arrows, hitting him three times out of four shots and almost killing him in the very first round of combat. Oops.</p><p></p><p>My brother turned out to be kind of a badass warrior for a first-level character and my wife hexed the goblins one at a time to lower their chances of being able to hit, describing them shooting at each other, being blinded and so on.</p><p></p><p>At this point, my brother's old school muscles had either warmed up on their own, or my father's near-brush with character death did it, because my brother insisted on capturing the last goblin -- who did not speak Common, because, again, I'm rusty and didn't think to have that all worked out. But they kept him alive, bound and gagged in the first room before pushing in further.</p><p></p><p>The second room had a set of four mysterious fountains, including one portrayed by a miniature, the better to throw off suspicion for a trick later in the dungeon. They made the goblin drink one, and he died horribly (poison). Carefully tested another before, after a painfully long time, discovered it was a healing potion (which they filled their waterskins with, not realizing its magic only works once per day per person and only when taken directly from the pool) and then tried to use the fluids in the room to rehydrate the dried out fountain portrayed by the miniature. I decided to let the results be magical, although about halfway through the process, I discovered making a fake roll really freaked them out, and probably should have just done that from the beginning instead. (Told you I was rusty.) The reconstituted fountain residue gave them darkvision/infravision. (The fourth pool was just cool refreshing water.)</p><p></p><p>From there, they found a barracks (insisted upon by my six year old, when I laid out the Dungeon Tiles to plan the dungeon two weeks before), and they managed to surprise most of the four goblins there in their beds and kill them with only minimal injuries.</p><p></p><p>Returning to the pool room, they shied away from the oversized double doors (which Jenn figured out on the way out were locked anyway) and went down a side hall through another door, discovering a room full of spiderwebs. (The penalty room if they chose not to bring a lockpicking rogue.) My wife , incidentally, is not a fan of spiders and knew that those were there for her benefit. By my brother's OSR muscles kicked in again, and they threw lantern oil at the webs from the door and their ridiculous collection of 10 torches were turned into thrown flaming missiles, bringing out a large spider the size of a pony and two more the size of large dogs, which the group dispatched with relatively little effort. An evil altar miniature (again intended to throw off the scent for a later room of the dungeon) sucked up more time, as their witch detected it was magical and they put dead goblins and spiders on it, poked it with the Heir to a Legend's sword, and so on.</p><p></p><p>At that point, though, we ran of out of time, since we had three small children and a baby roaming the house, and we shut down for the night. My brother proclaimed the Beyond the Wall character creation system "pretty cool," my wife said just flinging cantrips around while saving her one big healing spell a day to be kind of unsatisfying (I warned her it was even worse under many other systems) and my dad wanted to rave about the game and plan for the next one, either with all three players together in the same dungeon (which only has two rooms to go, as currently planned) or another one if it's just him and my wife in a (probably all-dwarven) team.</p><p></p><p>Although I'm pretty good, I think, at improvisation in play-by-post, I'm going to go ahead and write out room descriptions, dialogue prompts and so on for the last two rooms, so that I don't forget my ideas the next time around. (I had gone to the trouble of tracking down goblin songs for them to sing and poisonous plants to use for goblin names, all of which were wasted.)</p><p></p><p>The miniatures (Reaper Bones, which were bolstered by two trips to game shops in Berkeley) worked great, but Dungeon Tiles take up a lot of room and aren't terribly flexible. I planned ahead and had the tiles for the dungeon in a single baggie ahead of time, but I probably should have had baggies by room, to make setting up each as they got to it quicker. I may end up going with a Chessex battlemat and wet-erase pens after this dungeon is finished.</p><p></p><p>Oh, and next time, I'm going to swear my six year old to silence, since he announced that the boss of the dungeon was an ogre, before play even started. (He watched, fascinated, as I originally set it up during the planning period.) I may end up changing the next room's inhabitants or just chalk it up as a life lesson.</p><p></p><p>But most importantly, my dad, after 35 years (!) of waiting to play D&D, had a ball, and had a million ideas for next time, suggestions and so on.</p><p></p><p>The kids -- two six year olds and an eight year old -- each peered over the edge of the table and announced they wanted to play in the future, and one of the six year olds helped draw the village map at the beginning (something else generated during the character creation process).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Whizbang Dustyboots, post: 6324654, member: 11760"] We finally played Sunday night, the day before we transported a one year old more than 250 miles across California, which was likely the bigger adventure. My brother, who last played 1E in the mid-1980s, surprised me with a folder of photocopied Dragon magazine articles (various monster collections, "new" spells from Gary Gygax, the anti-paladin, duelist and witch classes, etc.) that he'd been holding onto since 1982, along with a hilarious monster he'd typed up and drawn that's basically a flying incorporeal spellcasting insta-kill. Everyone sat down together and rolled their characters together. The Beyond the Wall system has a flow chart, Traveller style, that is used to create characters and several of the fields affect other characters at the table, affecting their stats and creating a shared background. My brother was the Heir to a Legend warrior (happily with an heirloom sword that fits in nicely with the setting and dungeon I created for them), my wife was the Apprentice to a Witch mage (we tweaked one of her rolls mid-session to change her from a crop-benefiting druidic witch into one who could serve as a healer) and my dad was a Local Performer rogue (we thought it was a rogue-mage, and he was bummed to get a social-focused rogue instead of something more spellcasty, so after the session, I agreed he could remake as identically as possible, since many of the tables are shared between characters, as an Assistant Beast Keeper rogue-mage). My theatrical skills were a little rusty, especially with my mom watching for the first few minutes, so the village portion was pretty inconsequential, only picking up once they'd crossed the titular wall and headed into the forest, looking for the goblins who'd kidnapped the local teacher. My wife wasn't used to non-CRPGs, and was baffled by the idea that her witch, whose background featured a lot of time in the woods, could track, until it was pointed out to her, but then took took it. She wasn't as good at it as a real tracker would be, but she didn't fail enough rolls to trigger a goblin ambush. The group got to see a lot of ruined giant and shadow elf constructions in the overgrown forest and spotted the location they needed to go. I laid out the first room's worth of Dungeon Tiles as they descended into the lower levels of a ruined tower and, showing that my brother was still rusty at this point, let my unarmored father go first. (I pushed the table with gear to buy at them repeatedly, and he stocked up on lanterns, rope and a dagger, but not armor.) So, naturally, the goblin guards waiting behind the pillars in the first room peppered him with arrows, hitting him three times out of four shots and almost killing him in the very first round of combat. Oops. My brother turned out to be kind of a badass warrior for a first-level character and my wife hexed the goblins one at a time to lower their chances of being able to hit, describing them shooting at each other, being blinded and so on. At this point, my brother's old school muscles had either warmed up on their own, or my father's near-brush with character death did it, because my brother insisted on capturing the last goblin -- who did not speak Common, because, again, I'm rusty and didn't think to have that all worked out. But they kept him alive, bound and gagged in the first room before pushing in further. The second room had a set of four mysterious fountains, including one portrayed by a miniature, the better to throw off suspicion for a trick later in the dungeon. They made the goblin drink one, and he died horribly (poison). Carefully tested another before, after a painfully long time, discovered it was a healing potion (which they filled their waterskins with, not realizing its magic only works once per day per person and only when taken directly from the pool) and then tried to use the fluids in the room to rehydrate the dried out fountain portrayed by the miniature. I decided to let the results be magical, although about halfway through the process, I discovered making a fake roll really freaked them out, and probably should have just done that from the beginning instead. (Told you I was rusty.) The reconstituted fountain residue gave them darkvision/infravision. (The fourth pool was just cool refreshing water.) From there, they found a barracks (insisted upon by my six year old, when I laid out the Dungeon Tiles to plan the dungeon two weeks before), and they managed to surprise most of the four goblins there in their beds and kill them with only minimal injuries. Returning to the pool room, they shied away from the oversized double doors (which Jenn figured out on the way out were locked anyway) and went down a side hall through another door, discovering a room full of spiderwebs. (The penalty room if they chose not to bring a lockpicking rogue.) My wife , incidentally, is not a fan of spiders and knew that those were there for her benefit. By my brother's OSR muscles kicked in again, and they threw lantern oil at the webs from the door and their ridiculous collection of 10 torches were turned into thrown flaming missiles, bringing out a large spider the size of a pony and two more the size of large dogs, which the group dispatched with relatively little effort. An evil altar miniature (again intended to throw off the scent for a later room of the dungeon) sucked up more time, as their witch detected it was magical and they put dead goblins and spiders on it, poked it with the Heir to a Legend's sword, and so on. At that point, though, we ran of out of time, since we had three small children and a baby roaming the house, and we shut down for the night. My brother proclaimed the Beyond the Wall character creation system "pretty cool," my wife said just flinging cantrips around while saving her one big healing spell a day to be kind of unsatisfying (I warned her it was even worse under many other systems) and my dad wanted to rave about the game and plan for the next one, either with all three players together in the same dungeon (which only has two rooms to go, as currently planned) or another one if it's just him and my wife in a (probably all-dwarven) team. Although I'm pretty good, I think, at improvisation in play-by-post, I'm going to go ahead and write out room descriptions, dialogue prompts and so on for the last two rooms, so that I don't forget my ideas the next time around. (I had gone to the trouble of tracking down goblin songs for them to sing and poisonous plants to use for goblin names, all of which were wasted.) The miniatures (Reaper Bones, which were bolstered by two trips to game shops in Berkeley) worked great, but Dungeon Tiles take up a lot of room and aren't terribly flexible. I planned ahead and had the tiles for the dungeon in a single baggie ahead of time, but I probably should have had baggies by room, to make setting up each as they got to it quicker. I may end up going with a Chessex battlemat and wet-erase pens after this dungeon is finished. Oh, and next time, I'm going to swear my six year old to silence, since he announced that the boss of the dungeon was an ogre, before play even started. (He watched, fascinated, as I originally set it up during the planning period.) I may end up changing the next room's inhabitants or just chalk it up as a life lesson. But most importantly, my dad, after 35 years (!) of waiting to play D&D, had a ball, and had a million ideas for next time, suggestions and so on. The kids -- two six year olds and an eight year old -- each peered over the edge of the table and announced they wanted to play in the future, and one of the six year olds helped draw the village map at the beginning (something else generated during the character creation process). [/QUOTE]
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