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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cerebral Paladin" data-source="post: 5626710" data-attributes="member: 3448">Deforch's 14th and 15th AdventuresMy 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.</blockquote>

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