In Bladesbat Cave

Warp Speed

If you have nothing better to do than watch this blog (and I hope indeed that you do), you'll notice that I'm posting at a bit of a frantic pace. That's because I am simply trying to, as they say, catch up. As I mentioned recently, E. tired of Tyron once he reached Owlsnest and rolled a new character, the better part of three weeks ago. I still have to relate:

• How Thorgun grew up fighting large insects


• How, in his search for the delicacy Grick, he discovered the Dark Highway


• How he set off for Owlsnest, pursued by old enemies


• How it was a long way


• How he fell in with a foe, and they reached the city together

So I better get on it.

Thorgun Arrives

Thorgun is a half-orc barbarian, who grew up in Bladesbat cave, far in the southwest of Thorion Island, near a swamp that swelters at the foot of the Black Mountains. (You might remember that this is the home of the black dragons that were driven away from Dragontown). Barbarian, for those of you who've been away from D&D for a while, is a new sort of warrior with maximum hit points, and a limited, combat-and-outdoors type of skill set. It appears to be what we call in the world of on-line RPGs such as World of Warcraft a good "solo class", meaning it's a viable class for solo adventuring (unlike, say, a starting wizard or sorceror who can cast 3-4 spells per day.

Once again, the game got underway more or less by E. deciding which monsters in the MM looked interesting. Being interested in animals he again lit on things like giant centipedes. So off he went to defend the swamp from giant centipedes. He defeated a medium sized one, then later went back to battle the Really Big One. And here, for the first time, a setback. He defeated the monster, but was left for dead. In fact he got reduced to 0 hit points, which D&D now treats as an unconscious but stable state. But I told him he was "sort of dead" or at least defeated, and he didn't take it well at all. In fact a wandering party from his cave found the aftermath of the battle, took him and the dead centipede back, and patched him up. This was the beginning of Thorgun's reputation as by far the craziest half-orc Bladesbat had ever seen.

In Praise of Droon

In one of my recent posts, I dismissed Tony Abbott's Droon series as "tooth-grinding." And so it can be, but I have to admit: it contains non-stop action, an endless series of encounters with fearsome and legendary creatures, and no one ever gets hurt! And it has some neat ideas. Somewhere in the old history of the world is a giant tortoise that carries an entire city on his back. The kids travel through various aspects of Droon's past in one book, and they are able to tell about when they are by observing the extent to which the city on the tortoise's back has grown.

I'd do better to emulate what makes his books work than just to wag my finger at them ...

A Long Time, That's How Long!

I think one of the things that contributed to E's (temporary) loss of interest in the game was not only the pedestrian nature the adventures had assumed (another spider on the Owlsnest road!) but the slow pace of my producing them.

A week or so ago he asked me "Dad, how long would it take to get ready if we were going to play for a WHOLE DAY?" He had already heard me say that in high school and college our games sometimes lasted for six to eight hours.

I thought a bit and pulled out the old classroom prep ratio of four to one (four hours of prep per classroom hour). "About four days" I told him. He was suitably impressed.

But here I am back from trip, with some free time, trying to whip up an adventure that will suit his avowed taste for something interesting and "legendary" (a word he used this morning when we were reading some of Tony Abbott's tooth-grinding Secrets of Droon series). I've been hacking away at this story for bits of the day, and so far I have two single-spaced pages of backstory, and perhaps 15 minutes worth of actual gameplay in the present! Hmm, a problem I know well from my efforts at novel-writing.

Well, back to it. Those of you who are seasoned blog consumers know these things apper in reverse order by default. I've posted three times today, so don't miss the others that are further below.

(Interesting how the semi-public forum instantly sharpens one's sense of self-promotion. "Don't miss..." indeed!)

Rumblings

I was away for 3 days on a business trip last week. On getting back, I realized there was an odd sort of silence. Something wasn't getting said. Then I realized: E was not asking to play D&D!

I approached him. "Hey kiddo, do you want to play some D&D sometime?"

"Yeah, I guess."

Hmm.

"OK, well. I'll try to think of our next adventure."

"OK."

Next day, more silence. "Hey E, do you think you're going to want to play D&D again?"

"Yea, I dunno. Maybe not."

AAGH!

"Not enjoying it so much anymore?"

"Maybe not. Well ... I might want to play if the adventures weren't so BORING!"

Hmm.

"Boring eh?"

"Yeah, I want to go on a REAL ADVENTURE! Like a really real one!"

OK, I acknowledge all the back and forth across the island has gotten a bit repetitive. I haven't even posted all the adventures of his second (current) character. But could it be that D&D is just a two-week fad? Well, perhaps.

Perhaps.

That's all for Tyron

Tyron pushed on from Holborne. At one point he cross a bridge and found another huge thick web across his path. As he tried to decide what to do, he became more and more worried about the dark cracks in the high rock walls that had closed in on either side of the path. Finally he decided to cut his way through the web, just as Something began to struggle out of one of those cracks. (He was convinced, perhaps rightly, that the spiders were being led by an aranea, a powerful, shape-shifting, spell-using spider).

From there he pressed on quickly to Owlsnest. He'd been deputed to find a sorceress who might be able to help figure out the reason behind the invasion. He found her at the end of our session, after a frustrating verbal dance with a tower-keeper.

And having reached Owlsnest at last, E lost interest in old Tyron, and decided a new character was in order ...

Holborne Besieged

All through the woods there were signs of spiders. With E's interest in animals, the household has learned a lot about spiders. Rather than the stock single-layer net-like webs we imagine from Tolkien, I envisioned huge funnel webs with their thickets of trip-lines trailing into darkness.

My memory is shaky, but I believe they must have encountered at least a few more spiders on the way to Holborne. They arrived to find the gates shut, and had to talk their way in. There they encountered a nervous mayor who told them they expected a spider attack that night, and offered them a princely reward (fifty gold pieces, if I recall correctly) to aid in the defense. (It appeared that the mayor and the whey-faced town guard were hoping this sum would suffice for Tyron and Fredegar to conduct the defense by themselves, but they were persuaded otherwise).

Night came, and torches were lit along the stockades.

The promised attack was not long in coming, and the defense was fierce. Many spiders lost their legs (Fredegar could be heard howling "C'mere, dinner!" from somewhere away along the wall).

At one point Tyron found himself directly behind the gate. He had learned that paladins had a few spell-like abilities, and decided to use Detect Evil (through the gate). He learned that, though spiders are generally not evil per se, being essentially bestial, there was indeed a considerable evil lurking just behind the gate.

Tyron immediately swung up on the wall and was going to jump down outside the gate to confront the evil when I suggested this might lead to troubles, what with the main body of the spider troop boiling about down there. He grudgingly conceded it might be better to stay on the wall.

After some more fierce fighting the spiders were beaten back. The townspeople repaired to inn and hearth to bind their wounds. In the morning, panic ensued when it was learned that Tyron and Fredegar intended to continue to Owlsnest. In short order the mayor opened the town bank, dispensed the reward, and promised Fredegar extra to stay behind. Tyron and Fredegar conferred, and determined that Tyron felt safe enough going the last leg to Owlsnest alone.

It did not seem to Tyron, as he pushed back the gate, that the evil that had lurked behind it the night before was entirely done with ...

Of Herbs and Fried Spider

Tyron was eager to get on the road. I didn't think it'd be too safe for him to travel alone. Along came a half-dwarven merchant named Fredegar, who as luck had it was also headed to Owlsnest. Fredegar spoke loudly, carried a big stick, and carried his goods on the back of a pack pony. Off they went into the piney forests north and west of Dragontown.

After making camp, Tyron went off to hunt,or perhaps off to pee, who knows. While about his business, he heard a sort of hissing sound, and saw a cluster of eight eyes regarding him from the wood.

A digression on systems

If you haven't played D&D in a while, things have changed. From my dim memories, I'd say it's gotten easier. Most "rollable" activities (combat, skill checks and saving throws as far as I can tell) are based on the roll of a d20. The scale you roll against, is open ended, and the roll can be heavily modified. A level 15 fighter might have a bonus of +12 or the like to his Fortitude save, but the poison of the queen of the spiders is so strong he needs to beat a 27 to survive. (Hence 15 or better on that 20-sider).

Generally your roll needs to be compared to something. For a skill check, the GM assigns a certain difficulty class (DC) to your attempt: using your Climb skill to scale a sheer icy cliff might have a DC 25 or so, so you'll need plenty of experience and bonuses.

Or, if a goblin is hidden and you're trying to detect it, you compare your Listen check to the goblin's Hide check.

One thing this makes much easier is combat. Armor class,for example, is simply a number, from 0 to whatever (as opposed to the old -10 to +10 I think I remember). To hit a foe, your adjusted combat roll needs to beat its AC. Simple. And as you go up in levels your combat bonus increases. Fighting classes increases their combat bonuses the quickest.

So this does away with those huge table that cross-reference your class and level with an opponent's AC.

As a result, it's been easy to have combats -- scribble a few numbers from the MM and you're ready to go. (Now, D&D 3 and 3.5 then throw in a host of additional combat complexities that put the old Steve Jackson Melee games to shame and make one think instead of Advanced Squad Leader. But you will not be surprised to hear that if you omit such considerations as flat-footed AC reduction, flanking moves, areas of threat and attacks of opportunity, the game still plays Just Fine).

Now, to those of you who've followed gaming, this news is probably 15 years old. To me, though, it is "new"! Delightful to be out of touch.

There followed a combat in which young Tyron handily defeated a large spider and reported the same to Fredegar.

"Spider? Where's the legs?"

"Legs?"

"Legs! That's dinner!"

Fredegar fried up the legs, and a fine meal was had. (I have to admit this is due to the influence of World of Warcraft, in which spiders are a prime food source and shed things like "white spider meat" and "crunchy spider leg." Hmm, sounds a bit like a punchily named Thai noodle dish, doesn't it? Crazy Spider Noodle.)

It soon developed that the woods were full of spiders. They set watches, and headed off early, hoping to reach the town of Holborne.

Getting Underway

Obviously, it was the Monster Manual that captivated E to start with. But he quickly got the idea of the game. First he needed to choose a KIND of character (race), then a calling/profession (class). The pictures in the Players' Handbook helped -- two page spread of all the races, in each gender. He browsed over those for a while and chose a half-elf.

Class was trickier. I explained all the options as best I could. He decided on a paladin. We knocked together some stats for him and I scribbled it on a sheet of paper, still being utterly new to D&D 3rd edition rules, and figuring anyway that "rules" were not so much the point.

"OK," I announced. "Now comes the fun part. We need to decide where he lives. Where does he live?"

(Thought) "He lives on an island."

I grab a blank sheet of paper and begin to draw coastline. Suddenly I am 14 again. Or 10, looking at the map of Verne's Mysterious Island. Here's a long peninsula called the Spike. Here three wide bays beside each other, each presumably with its dominant town. Here a wild coast that we know lies empty and unexplored.

"What's the island called?"

(More thought). "Thorion Island." I scrawl it in the corner like a dying seaman.

"OK, now we need to decide where he lives. Where on the island should Tyron live?"

"Ummm.... Dragontown."

"Interesting." I put a Dragontown dot near the center of the island, plunk it next to a lake, let a river trickle from the lake toward the eastern coast. "Why Dragontown?"

"Because ... a lot of dragons used to live there."

"Where'd they go?" (Socratic gaming)

"They got driven away by the people who came to live there. They went away to ... to the .. the Black Mountains! Because they were mostly black dragons."

(Dragons are a favorite monster and E was duly impressed by the MM's pages of dragons, and wanted to learn the different types etc. By this time he had learned many of them).

I duly draw in a mountain range and label it The Black Mountains.

One other thing E has lit on is a Giant Owl. The MM has these, and he's read that they can be trained. He wants his character to train a giant owl as a pet. (Animals have been a major preoccupation of his since he was quite young). We figure out that the giant owls live in the northern forests, and that owl trainers can be found in an around the city of Owlsnest.

And before long we had the following:



(We've added other items since then. Some roads are hard to see. And yes, my handwriting is medieval. OK, not really. For really medieval writing go here).

So his half-elven paladin Tyron came into the world high in the mountains, in Dragontown, with one goal in mind: to get to rocky Owlsnest, in its northern perch beside the sea.

Whence the name, this place, and our further adventures ...

Family Traditions?

I thought I'd get things started with my first email on this topic:

============

All:

Please forgive the mass email format -- though it's not really very mass, at only ~10 recipients. I wanted to write down an experience that occurred (is occurring?) over the vacation we just finished, and sharing it with this group seemed as good a motivation as any to write it down.

As a parent, I'm not really one to "get my kids into" things. If you've been about me during my parenting years, you know I'm one of those worried parents who's more concerned with keeping their kids OUT of things: no TV, though videos aplenty, affording lots of opportunities for parental differences of opinion over which ones are appropriate; no video games, because even the non-violent ones are hideously addictive and we wouldn't want them to grow up like me; etc. (Those of you who do let your kids watch TV and play video games please do not feel judged: my hangups are my own :->).

So anyway.

My kids are masters of imaginative play. Each of them can go off and spin long narratives about this or that, in which they act many of the parts and leap about the room (what the school teachers apparently now call "kinesthetic learning"). Their play tends more animals and fantastic creatures, with E's creatures generally fighting and being fierce, and R's creature engaging in complex interactions (this is a gross generalization, but onward).

Most of you probably also know that I was a big RPGer in my earlier days, starting in 6th-7th grade with the original D&D boxed set, Judges Guild materials, EPT, C&S and others, continuing more or less through college with increasingly home-brewed systems. But mainly 1977-1987. And since 1996, I've played far too many computer games, including, at present, World of Warcraft, which, though extremely addictive and immersing, is in many ways a pale shadow of a well-run RPG.

But again, I have generally been oriented on keeping the kids out of my current hobbies, rather than involving them in my older ones. Though E recently became aware of my old figure-painting hobby and periodically demands that I bring out my collection of painted figures to pore over. But this never led to a discussion of D&D or the like, and had it done so I probably would have indulged in the usual "nah, he's too young."

Yeah, right.

So here we are, on vacation at my sister-in-law's house in South Carolina. I am sitting in the guest bedroom noodling about on the computer, and E is scouring the bookshelf for interesting books. Suddenly he cries out

"Hey Dad! I found a book called ... Dungeons and Dragons, Monster Manual!"

Well hmmm.

On goes the parental radar. Is he ready for this? Will it scare him? Will it somehow lead to the discovery of computer games? Drugs, herpes?

Nah. My brain did all the work in some small piece of a second and said "let's just see what happens."

"Monster Manual? You don't say."

"It's full of monsters!"

"Hmm, pretty neat."

"What's this book about, Dad?"

"Well, it's actually for a game."

"Well how do you play?"

Hmm. Well, I have let this email sit about a week wondering how best to describe what happened thereafter. Suffice to say that within a day he had started two different characters, and a day or so after that he designed his own dungeon and ran me through it (though the many 20th level NPCs he had accompany me did most of the work).

I'm considering starting a blog devoted to the ins and outs of being a gaming dad. Given how long it took me to get out this email, though, I don't know.

Anyway, thought you all would get a chuckle out of this.