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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cerebral Paladin" data-source="post: 5422102" data-attributes="member: 3448">Deforch's Fifth AdventureLast Sunday, I ran another D&D adventure for my son.  There were some worrying signs beforehand, but I basically had to run the game anyway.  My son basically refused to take a nap that day, which meant that he was overtired--never a good situation when starting something complicated.  At the same time, we had promised him that we would play D&D with him on Sunday while trying to assuage him on Saturday, when we refused to let him play in a D&D game with some of our (adult) friends.  Suffice to say that as a 4-year-old, he is not ready to play with the adults yet, but he didn't really understand that.  So, faced with the choice between running a game for an overly tired child and triggering a (justified) tantrum about our breaking our promise, we went with running the game.His mom joined us as a second player, playing Deforch's mommy (statted up as a warlord with lots of powers oriented towards giving other characters extra attacks, so that her actions would bolster his instead of overshadowing them).  She asked what Deforch's mommy's name was, and without hesitating my son said "Lovestar."  After a little speculation by his mom and me about whether this indicated some elven ancestry, she asked whether that was a first-name or a surname, and he said that it was a last name--her first name was "Alberta."  So we decided that "Alberta Lovestar" and her son, Deforch, would go on an adventure together.The adventure began while Deforch was having a conversation with Camiflax the Dragon.  (We've more or less changed the name of the dragon to match my son's pronunciation.)  They heard a humming noise, and Camiflax asked if Deforch was carrying the Cup of al Falsal.  He said he was and took it out.  They could see that it was making the humming noise, and Camiflax explained that the Cup of al Faisal had magical powers of prophecy (and then explained what that means).  Deforch filled the cup with water, following Camiflax's instructions, and an image appeared in the water of a group of zombies and skeletons walking across a bridge into the nearby village.  My son was gratifyingly impressed with the idea of an image appearing in the cup.  He said "oooooooo..."  It's kinda awesome how easy it is to produce a sense of wonder.They immediately headed off to defend the village against the undead.  I described how Camiflax dropped them off and then flew to defend the other bridge into the town.  Deforch and his mommy then fought a group of two zombies and three skeletons.  The fight basically went fine, but my son got really upset when Deforch's mommy got bloodied by a critical hit.  He was like, "That means she's almost destroyed!  And I'm not very effective right now!  Waaaah."  I'm not really sure what he meant about not being very effective--he was actually perfectly effective.  <shrug>  It was also a little surprising because Deforch had been bloodied in previous games (and actually had gotten a lot closer to being defeated).  I think that the idea of Deforch's mommy being destroyed was actually a lot more frightening than the idea of Deforch being defeated, perhaps especially because Deforch's mommy was being played by his mommy.  This was also clearly a function of my son being too tired.  We spent a while comforting my son, and after he calmed down, they finished defeating the undead.At that point, the Cup began humming again.  Deforch quickly filled it with water from the river and a new image appeared--it showed Deforch going off into the woods and finding a clearing with a checker-board pattern.  Deforch quickly headed off and found the checker-board pattern--some squares had green grass, while others had blackened and dead grass on them, in a 5 by 5 grid with black squares in the corners.  He also found a pile of 13 shiny stones (represented by a pile of beads I put on the map, next to the map of the checker-board.)  At this point, the Cup spoke and said "3-2-3-2-3."  My son figured out that he should put the stones on the black squares of the checker-board, although he followed the diagonals instead of the horizontal patterns as I had intended.  When he had placed the last stone, all of the stones sank into the checker-board squares and the whole field became green and healthy looking.Deforch returned to the castle, and Camiflax told him that he had destroyed that source of undead by curing that field.  He also asked if the Cup had begun speaking to him.  Deforch said that it had, and Camiflax told him that that was a very good sign--it meant that the Cup was awakening and beginning to attune to Deforch as a force for good.At that point, we wrapped the game and had dinner.  All in all, it was not the most successful of games--probably our worst session so far, in fact.  In addition to the issues with Deforch's mommy getting bloodied, there were some pretty big issues with my son having wandering attention and wanting to tell his own story.  Starting when my son is tired is never a good idea, although I didn't feel like I had much choice.  Still, he mostly had fun and everything turned out okay.</blockquote>

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